57 replies to this topic

[kanaxais_scythe]

i keep getting into teams at 30+ who insist on retrying until they start at swamp or underwater fractal. whats the point? you may get screwed witht he long ones anyway later. also with this comes the fact some players cant even figure out HOW to do the others since they only do the "easy ones". the people i play with when i dont pug run all of them just fine and rather fast so i dont understand what is with the pug mentality of retrying levels justt o start with a short when you can get the long one later.

i also do not buy the arguement of higher chance of other short ones since it is random. i have done swamp, then gotten dredge or sliffside then other other.

can someone explain this?

[Uhhsam]

It makes about as much sense as taking extra time driving around a parking lot looking for the closest spot, yet people still do it, because people generally don't make sense.

[chullster]

Easy to answer.

You have to do 3 random fractals, you can only control which on the first, so even if you do get long ones on the 2nd and 3rd you still have one quick fractal in the run.

2 long and one short then becomes the worst case scenario instead of 3 long ones.

The question is, why would you chose to do a long one at the start when you get the same rewards for a short one and get to the end quicker too?

The higher chance comment from someone just sounds like internet BS.

Edited by chullster, 14 March 2013 - 04:43 PM.

[Digilodger]

kanaxais_scythe, on 14 March 2013 - 04:12 PM, said:

also with this comes the fact some players cant even figure out HOW to do the others since they only do the "easy ones"

We have no reason to start out with Underground Facility Fractal (the dredge fractal).  No, none, nope, never!  If a team starts with this fractal and doesn't retry, I will quit that team and make another.  

It's not about difficulty; it's about the length.  The dredge fractal is too long; completing it alone requires about as much time as finishing 2 other fractals.  

I usually play a guardian for fractal runs (sometimes I switch to mesmer if the team already have 2 guardians).  So even the Volcanic Fractal would be better than the dredge fractals.

kanaxais_scythe, on 14 March 2013 - 04:12 PM, said:

you may get screwed witht he long ones anyway later.

Sure, we might get the dredge one in our 2nd and 3rd anyway.  But hey, at least that means we also have a chance that we won't get it at all.

Let me repeat what I've said earlier:  No reason to start out with the dredge fractal; it's way too long!

Even if we have to spend 10 minutes trying to look for a different one, it still worth it to avoid starting with dredge fractal.  And 10 minutes is extremely exaggerated because the only one we're avoiding is starting with the dredge fractal.  Everything else is pretty much fine at lvl 30+ in our team because we always have at least one guardian and most players running 30+ are very competent anyway.

Not starting with the dredge fractal means we only have 2 out of 9 chance of encountering it in our 2nd and 3rd fractal.

kanaxais_scythe, on 14 March 2013 - 04:12 PM, said:

i keep getting into teams at 30+ who insist on retrying until they start at swamp or underwater fractal

That was before the patch that fixed most of hte exploits, especially the one that made swamp fractal cake walk.  Nowadays I see most PUG team are fine starting with anything but Dredge Fractal and Uncategorized Fractal (the one with harpies' knock backs and Asura boss)---they still do them if it's our 2nd or 3rd, but just not starting with them.

Edited by Digilodger, 14 March 2013 - 04:55 PM.

[matsif]

same reason why people insist on running 4 warriors and a mesmer in cof speed runs, it's a perceived difference that overall really doesn't make much of a difference.  given I wouldn't want to start on the dredge fractal or cliffside either, but 9/10 times you are going to end up with one of those in the 3 fractals before jade maw.

my group just goes when we do fractals, regardless of what pops, because overall we just don't do them that often.

[Thaddeuz]

I will tell you what is the difference.

A level 48 with Swamp, Water, Snowblind take about 1 hour.

A level 48 with Swamp, Dredge and Volcanic can take 2-3 hours.

Now imagine a level 48 with Dredge, Volcanic and Uncategorized. I don't want to spend 3-4 hours in a fractal.

[kanaxais_scythe]

Thaddeuz, on 14 March 2013 - 05:24 PM, said:

I will tell you what is the difference.

A level 48 with Swamp, Water, Snowblind take about 1 hour.

A level 48 with Swamp, Dredge and Volcanic can take 2-3 hours.

Now imagine a level 48 with Dredge, Volcanic and Uncategorized. I don't want to spend 3-4 hours in a fractal.

are we playing the same game? i have done up to 38 and only spent 1.5 hours MAX, including doing two long ones. do you go into a dungeon saying you only have 15 min and hope to get it done? no, you do it when you know you have time. sure things come up but thats the exception. same thing here, dont start it if you dont have time for the full run.

[Zhaitan]

In my experience, people prefer swamp+jelly+ascalon combo for fractals. Why? They are the easiest. Most people are trying to do daily for their 100+ tokens. So, why  would you waste time on things that do not reward you with anything extra?

Personally, I think it is better to do cliffside as #1 fractal in the rotation than #3. Same applies to the Grawl one too.

Uhhsam, on 14 March 2013 - 04:17 PM, said:

It makes about as much sense as taking extra time driving around a parking lot looking for the closest spot, yet people still do it, because people generally don't make sense.

Don't forget the same people also drink only Diet Coke with Big Mac.

Anyhow, Fractals are so 2012, who do them anymore?

[Digilodger]

kanaxais_scythe, on 14 March 2013 - 05:30 PM, said:

are we playing the same game? i have done up to 38 and only spent 1.5 hours MAX, including doing two long ones. do you go into a dungeon saying you only have 15 min and hope to get it done? no, you do it when you know you have time. sure things come up but thats the exception. same thing here, dont start it if you dont have time for the full run.

No one said that we only set aside 15 mins to finish Fractals of the Mists---not the poster that you've quoted, not anyone in this thread; actually, it was just you and you alone.   I would appreciated it if you don't go around and put words in our throat!


Anyhow, the dredge fractal is truly long. Even in a good team, it takes a almost an hour to finish.  I always use 30-min consumables in my 30+ and 40+ fractals runs so I usually have a good sense of how much time it takes to finish these.  And in dredge fractals of lvl 30+ and 40+, I always have to apply my consumables more than once.  

In other words, we can finish 3 other fractals (without dredge fractal) within 1 to 1.5 hours in a good team.  However, with the dredge fractal, the time goes up to 1.5 to 2.5 hours, simply because it takes ~1 hr to finish that dredge fractal alone.

Edited by Digilodger, 14 March 2013 - 05:48 PM.

[kanaxais_scythe]

Digilodger, on 14 March 2013 - 05:47 PM, said:

No one said that we only set aside 15 mins to finish Fractals of the Mists---not the poster that you've quoted, not anyone in this thread; actually, it was just you and you alone.   I would appreciated it if you don't go around and put words in our throat!


Anyhow, the dredge fractal is truly long. Even in a good team, it takes a almost an hour to finish.  I always use 30-min consumables in my 30+ and 40+ fractals runs so I usually have a good sense of how much time it takes to finish these.  And in dredge fractals of lvl 30+ and 40+, I always have to apply my consumables more than once.  

In other words, we can finish 3 other fractals (without dredge fractal) within 1 to 1.5 hours in a good team.  However, with the dredge fractal, the time goes up to 1.5 to 2.5 hours, simply because it takes ~1 hr to finish that dredge fractal alone.

i have not yet had a 1 hour dredge fractal and done all the way to 38. so i am still wondering if we are playing the same game. the 15 minutes was an exaggeration and not reflectign anything specifically said, was just meant to get my point across.

[Thaddeuz]

kanaxais_scythe, on 14 March 2013 - 05:52 PM, said:

i have not yet had a 1 hour dredge fractal and done all the way to 38. so i am still wondering if we are playing the same game. the 15 minutes was an exaggeration and not reflectign anything specifically said, was just meant to get my point across.

Man I never talked about level 38. I was talking about level 48. And are you talking since the last path or before, because the nerf of the Ash Spy Kit give a whole new level of difficulty for some Fractal. 48 and 38 are not the same thing, like level 26 and 36 are not the same thing. At level 38 you are happy to have Ascalon, but at level 48 its a freaking pain in the ass. So no we are not talking about the same thing, i'm talking about 10 more level than you do. I can still take one hour to complete a level 48, but it could took me 2,5h because shit can really hit the fan sometime.

Edited by Thaddeuz, 14 March 2013 - 07:00 PM.

[KodakMoment]

Like others said you are guaranteed the easy 1 you start with. Dredge takes around 30-40mins at level 40 depending on the team. The room with the waves/champions takes 10-15mins alone

Edited by KodakMoment, 14 March 2013 - 07:09 PM.

[kanaxais_scythe]

just completed a level 36 dredge in 28 minutes and cliffside in 20 minutes, with a pug. anyone still want to complain about length? not even full beserker teams either.

also i see players at level 2 complaining about length. hard to be lieve so many people would be at 40+ to know and complain.

[Pipples]

kanaxais_scythe, on 14 March 2013 - 04:12 PM, said:

i keep getting into teams at 30+ who insist on retrying until they start at swamp or underwater fractal. whats the point? you may get screwed witht he long ones anyway later

It makes as much sense as skipping content in non-fractal dungeons knowing one or more don't know the routes (or don't like to skip content) and wiping multiple times, spending all that 'saved time' on corpse runs.

[Thaddeuz]

kanaxais_scythe, on 14 March 2013 - 07:35 PM, said:

just completed a level 36 dredge in 28 minutes and cliffside in 20 minutes, with a pug. anyone still want to complain about length? not even full beserker teams either.

also i see players at level 2 complaining about length. hard to be lieve so many people would be at 40+ to know and complain.

Like about 3/4 of the post of this topic : It can take 28 min or 1h to finish the Dredge. Its a pug, you don't know what are the skill of the people you play with, you don't know what kind of build they have, what they are good at, and what they suck at. The higher the difficulty, and the more you need all your team to be good and work well together. To take the swamp at first just make things more easy, since its one of the only two things you can control in a fractal (the other being what you are able to do yourself, which represent 1/5 of the party).

[Wordsworth]

Yeah, you may get screwed later. But you start with something easy.

Not all that difficult to understand, really.

[Johny Bravo]

I would also like to mention a friend of mine was keeping statistics about how random the fractal map distribution is and it turns out that there is more of a pattern then you would think.  He was able to predict the maps that would come next in most runs.  

That being said With a swamp start you are more likely to pull a second map of water and a third map of Ascolon then any other start.  With a water start you almost always get either the dredge or grawl maps.  

While I can do any of these some take longer than other no matter how hard you want to argue it.  I would take swamp vs dredge any day.  Also as it was pointed out above the adds for the dredge champion alone take longer and longer the higher you get.  In some cases they can take longer than the whole swamp map by itself.  The grawl map at higher levels is a pug killer, there are certain team compositions that  just won't work on that map no matter how good you are.  I can say from my experience when starting with swamp the while the grawl map may pop up it has been very rare.

[moomooo1]

It's pretty simple right? People have been doing FotM to the point where it's quite tiring(I myself have quit doing them) but they so badly want those fractal skins which are RNG, making it worse. They don't want to spend any longer doing content they don't want to do, but they DO want the potential rewards. In this situation, why make it longer?

[KodakMoment]

Johny Bravo, on 14 March 2013 - 08:29 PM, said:

I would also like to mention a friend of mine was keeping statistics about how random the fractal map distribution is and it turns out that there is more of a pattern then you would think.  He was able to predict the maps that would come next in most runs.  

That being said With a swamp start you are more likely to pull a second map of water and a third map of Ascolon then any other start.  With a water start you almost always get either the dredge or grawl maps.  

While I can do any of these some take longer than other no matter how hard you want to argue it.  I would take swamp vs dredge any day.  Also as it was pointed out above the adds for the dredge champion alone take longer and longer the higher you get.  In some cases they can take longer than the whole swamp map by itself.  The grawl map at higher levels is a pug killer, there are certain team compositions that  just won't work on that map no matter how good you are.  I can say from my experience when starting with swamp the while the grawl map may pop up it has been very rare.

There is no pattern random is random. After you get swamp you have 1/7 to get 1 of the other fractals. Just because someone started swamp and got the same fractal after it doesn't mean that there is a pattern

Edited by KodakMoment, 14 March 2013 - 09:39 PM.

[Uhhsam]

KodakMoment, on 14 March 2013 - 09:35 PM, said:

There is no pattern random is random. After you get swamp you have 1/7 to get 1 of the other fractals. Just because someone started swamp and got the same fractal after it doesn't mean that there is a pattern

As a member of the dev team, are there any hints you can give us about the next update?

[JulianCasablancas]

kanaxais_scythe, on 14 March 2013 - 05:30 PM, said:

are we playing the same game? i have done up to 38 and only spent 1.5 hours MAX, including doing two long ones. do you go into a dungeon saying you only have 15 min and hope to get it done? no, you do it when you know you have time. sure things come up but thats the exception. same thing here, dont start it if you dont have time for the full run.

AFAIK anything below 40 doesn't mean jack. I can easily see 3 long fractals + maw taking around 3 hours.

[Jump_N_Move]

Might as well start with a short one. Swamp, Swim or Charrrrrrrrrr all the way. Snow is meh. I always forget about the debuff. Damn conditions icons are tiny.

[AKGeo]

kanaxais_scythe, on 14 March 2013 - 04:12 PM, said:

i keep getting into teams at 30+ who insist on retrying until they start at swamp or underwater fractal. whats the point? you may get screwed witht he long ones anyway later. also with this comes the fact some players cant even figure out HOW to do the others since they only do the "easy ones". the people i play with when i dont pug run all of them just fine and rather fast so i dont understand what is with the pug mentality of retrying levels justt o start with a short when you can get the long one later.

i also do not buy the arguement of higher chance of other short ones since it is random. i have done swamp, then gotten dredge or sliffside then other other.

can someone explain this?

If you start out with cliffiside or dredge, you have the same chances of having the other long ones later on instead of swamp or underwater. If you start out with underwater, you're guaranteed that fast fractal, with the odds of the longer ones remaining the same.

Simple math states that a swamp start will on average result in a faster run overall, with bad luck with dredge/cliffside/volcanic upcoming being practically identical as with starting out on one of the longer ones. It's not like there's only one long, or one short/easy, fractal. They're pretty well balanced. Volcanic can be fast. Battleground can be slow. Blizzard and Uncat are about the same in length, midway between dredge and swamp on the extreme ends of the scale. But I'd rather risk a swamp, cliffside, dredge run over a dredge, cliffside, volcanic run. Which I've had.

Honestly I do fractals for the drops along with fractal weapons. So I really don't mind setting aside a couple hours for dredge/battleground/volcanic as they have the largest potential quantity of loot-dropping enemies. Those heavy miner's bags are the tits, I get a ton of shards/globs from battleground along with the rares/exotics, and the starting grawl on volcanic drop me quite a bunch as well, plus the powerful blood chances from the vampire bats.

Uncat has the harpies and their blood, but the end boss' golems don't drop anything at all, so I don't really enjoy that one much.

Blizzard has no drops until the elemental source, then people constantly skip the svanir in the forest which drop quite a bit. Guild runs always clear the forest.

I get a ton of armored scales from underwater, but it ends after those first three groups.

Swamp...laf. No drops at all except the final boss and the chest.

Cliffside: only the starting cultists drop anything until the final seal when all cultists drop, but it's nowhere near enough to make up for the frustration of that damn hammer.

Jade maw is a constant, and while I haven't had good luck of my own, I've seen plenty of named exotics drop while clearing. I myself have gotten a handful of onyx lodes from the jade creatures. I clear it every time unless outvoted in a pug.

Edited by AKGeo, 15 March 2013 - 11:19 AM.

[Stovokor X]

If someone has already beaten it multiple times generally want to get it over with ASAP. The first fractal you have some control ... sometimes makes for quicker runs. I reckon at this point, many people have better things to do besides this uninspiring content but do it anyways ( gear ).

[Coren]

Jump_N_Move, on 15 March 2013 - 02:13 AM, said:

Might as well start with a short one. Swamp, Swim or Charrrrrrrrrr all the way. Snow is meh. I always forget about the debuff. Damn conditions icons are tiny.

Well that's your fault for not noticing, ANet put things in to be annoying, only your fault if you don't pay attention like others

[Jetjordan]

Stovokor X, on 15 March 2013 - 11:29 AM, said:

If someone has already beaten it multiple times generally want to get it over with ASAP. The first fractal you have some control ... sometimes makes for quicker runs. I reckon at this point, many people have better things to do besides this uninspiring content but do it anyways ( gear ).

if you don't want to run an area for fun you should SERIOUSLY consider whether or not you actually enjoy the game you are playing.  Life is too short...

[Stovokor X]

Jetjordan, on 15 March 2013 - 01:59 PM, said:

if you don't want to run an area for fun you should SERIOUSLY consider whether or not you actually enjoy the game you are playing.  Life is too short...

So you think majority of the people are running fractals for the fun factor ? You must have a really low threshold for fun.
Personally for me there are other aspects of the game that I enjoy. I run Fractals out of necessity due to the gear-grind Arena-net instituted there for BIS gear.

[Johny Bravo]

KodakMoment, on 14 March 2013 - 09:35 PM, said:

There is no pattern random is random. After you get swamp you have 1/7 to get 1 of the other fractals. Just because someone started swamp and got the same fractal after it doesn't mean that there is a pattern

You can believe that the rotation is completely random if you want.  My point was I don't believe that it is completely random and the follow on maps are weighted based on the previous map.   I have done swamp -> Water too many times for it to be completely random.

[KodakMoment]

Johny Bravo, on 15 March 2013 - 05:53 PM, said:

You can believe that the rotation is completely random if you want.  My point was I don't believe that it is completely random and the follow on maps are weighted based on the previous map.   I have done swamp -> Water too many times for it to be completely random.

Look up what probability is

[Krazzar]

Build wars tendencies.

Jetjordan, on 15 March 2013 - 01:59 PM, said:

if you don't want to run an area for fun you should SERIOUSLY consider whether or not you actually enjoy the game you are playing.  Life is too short...

Far too many people never consider fun, it's just an occupation of time, an excercise in efficiency usually to make up for real-world deficiencies. The real bank account stays the same but at least the virtual one can keep growing easily and predictably.

Edited by Krazzar, 15 March 2013 - 06:27 PM.