Guild Wars 2 Needs (Fractal) Dungeons

[@Sturmjaeger]

That the last few Fractals have just been 5-man Strikes is honestly annoying.

[@TehOwn]

I've basically quit Fractals since their release. I played a ton of Nightmare and Shattered Observatory. Sunqua was simply a good strike, not much of a fractal.

[@TheEightDomain]

Nah Silent Surf and Lonely Tower is easy af, its just most people got some skill issue and do 5k dps inside... i have my group finish it under 5 minutes without dying lol.

[@Adreqi]

This is funny, I think the same about convergences. Feels like strike bosses slapped into 50-player instances with no consideration on how the difference between 10 and 50 player can impact the readability of the fight. I mean strike missions are cool but not everything needs to be one.

[@hyggsy]

​@@TheEightDomainThem being easy isn't the point of the comment nor the video.

[@Zedrinbot]

More dungeon-y fractals are not only fun, they're cool for learning about the lore of the game and seeing the environments. I'd imagine they're gravitating towards 5-man-strike style fractals cause it's cheaper to develop a single arena than a sprawling map. The cool exploration puzzles and mechanics for fractals is the big thing I've always talked about GW2 when comparing it to dungeons and duties in other games, specifically how GW2 takes advantage of using 3D space, rather than just being 3D models in a 2D space.

[@TehOwn]

Except they don't need to develop a sprawling map. They can literally just copy-paste sections of existing maps and create fractals within them. Nightmare fractal was based on an existing instance from the Nightmare Tower releases. That's actually the only reason it was greenlit in the first place. The Lonely Tower is set within The Wizard's Tower. Honestly, if they don't want to make more content then reduce the boss HP and let us kill them before we get bored of their 3 attacks.

[@hikaruyuugure6900]

5mans are hard because 1 of 4 dps sucking could be a 25% dps loss or even a loss of quickness or alac. 40mans are hard because of coordinating 40 people. 10mans are....... more room for error and 10 people is really not that hard to coordinate..... uhhh Anet wants everything to be like the 10man content because its easy. They dont want puzzles and envirometal mechanics well going through a dungeon because its more expensive to dev. They make us feel we dont want it by giving the same rewards for a long frac as we get from a short one. So we dont feel it is worth it. However making fun content and balanced rewards does not seem to be the focus. Putting out cheap below average content to hold players so they make money off the gem store well they dev a possible gw3 is the target. Dev's admitted they screwed up boons and many other things so I expect them to just keep throwing things at the wall to see what sticks. Its trial time. What works ends up in the next game. Gw2 is a test zone.

[@Snebzor]

Teapot captured me in the middle of the night, strapped me to a plank, made me roleplay as a pirate, then FORCED me to write a comment on his youtube video to support the algorithm. I'm confident it's some kind of weird cult. Help.

[@MisterNo1111]

Must be a example for a new fractal-dungeon! 🐣 🎯 🐣

[@supersand7502]

Why did I read that comment in your voice sneb😂😂😂

[@visceras7979]

When is the slug stream happening?

[@Snebzor]

@@visceras7979 Likely July / early August. I will announce it.

[@xbsidesx]

yeah, happy lgbt month

[@SilhouetteGaming1]

Now this is content. We'll done Teapot. The repeatable content scene is the core of keeping players engaged with the game, and fractals is pretty accessible because of the 5 man requirement. I feel that one of the aspects that was missed is appropriate scaling, the newer fights feel pretty similar across all tiers as opposed to scaling the mechanics up- in nightmare the "orb phases" scale in difficulty, the slam has fewer clones, and so on. I would like to see a fractal introduced that uses a "hard fail" mechanic like an "escape the city" type deal where it's a race against the clock, which would be totally valid even if there is no "big bad" you need to fight. And you can scale the difficulty by just tightening the clock and adjusting any kind of "slowdown" mechanics. But now we are in fanfic land.

[@Nemeroth77]

100% agree, I did silent surf t1 and t4 in the same day before and wondered why he has almost the same health pool, took forever to kill him.

[@dazt6h]

I think something useful to get more people into Fractals and informing players on it would be making the menu part of the UI, just like PvP and WvW menus. Maybe even open the fractal hub (the one before going into any fractal) and make it like a public lounge. Just like de PVP one.

[@thomasnguyen4427]

I have tried only one dungeon in my very short stint after Endwalker patches, and I got so hard carried. It was some tomb near the furry city. But it was super interesting as a dungeon in a different game, with a different aesthetic, and different design. And it was very fun getting all the loot! especially at the end, where we went around different hallways from a central pillar where the final boss was fought! GG's was said all around and I am really thankful for the help from strangers!!

[@nytros_realm]

Yep, this is exactly right. My small guild would do fractals every day and loved every minute of it. Ever since the introduction of silent surf, we have stopped doing fractals. Nobody wants to do silent surf, it is not fun. And i know that it isn't the daily every day, the fact is that people don't even want to see what dailies are up anymore because getting in a groove of daily fractals is interrupted every time that fractal comes up. At first we did just skip that fractal, but it didn't take long for people to just give up on the whole routine. Like you said, if we wanted to do strikes, we would do strikes. Fractals are not strikes and are not really even comparable to them. If they aren't going to put their heart into making a fractal, then don't make fractals at all.

[@shavy3967]

Thank You Teapot for supporting Fractal Community. I also think, that fractals should basically look like Nightmare or Shattered Observatory CMs. Sunqua Peak is not bad - it's fast paced dynamic condi fight, which is kinda nice to do. It's a good alternative to power ones. Last 2 fractals are basically strike missions, which is definetly not the good direction. Make fractals good again, we need power, fast paced dynamic fights.

[@Bleederhosen]

Why is Sunqua Peak a condi fight?

[@shavy3967]

@@Bleederhosen Mainy dark ai, all time record (done by my group) of Light ai is done on power :D But you need to be omega fast and well organized to do sth like this.

[@chester1882]

I mean, if you take all the evidence together: Silent Surf was going to be a Strike mission but was told to change lanes into a Fractal - see the Fractal related achievements being broken when it was launched, not being able to revive dead players.

[@aurelienpluot2603]

Completely agree on the whole topic and I am glad to finally see discussion about it. Actually this motivated me to reply just to boost the video. That said, I also have something to add : single encounter fractals also have a very tangible negative side effect : failing becomes unreasonably punishing. Failing a boss at the end of a dungeon usually means losing a couple minutes per try but when the boss is kind of the whole fractal you may very well lose up to 10min per attempt. This kind of time cost is fine in challenge modes or raids where you are to be challenged and implicitly accept the cost but fractals are supposed to be fast and mostly relaxing content outside of challenge modes.

[@RaptorJesus.]

i actually prefer the old style dungeons and wish we had more of those, as you said in this video fractals are more like "5 man raids" and you even need to spec into agony resistance to not get cheesed. but the old dungeons you can play with whatever gear you want.

[@Kantharr]

I thought this was going to be a video about story dungeons needs tiers with higher difficulties like fractals to make them more relevant. But this talk about the newer fractals being more like 5-man strikes as an issue is pretty spot on.

[@enorenwtf]

Anet devs after watching the video: "ok, I think we get it, you want more pre-events in the Lonely Tower fractal, noted"

[@DHXPmusic]

ded💀

[@TehOwn]

I want to see ArenaNet devs actually play the Fractals in T4/CM. Ideally the ones responsible for designing new ones.

[@pwntmatch]

adding tedious mechanics and bugged HP doesn't make it a fractal dungeon . it makes it a CBT mini game

[@RiskyRaeden]

Add LFG RNG onto that and its a CBT super game.

[@BryanCF]

As a new GW2 player, I don't feel so invested in single encounter bosses, even if they're fun to do sometimes. Dungeons, on the other hand, have the potential to merge all the mechanics from the game (puzzles, jumping puzzles, level design, and a story/theme) and combine them into a single piece of content for players to enjoy after reaching level 80 and gathering some friends to do some content. I know regular dungeons were left behind eons ago, but I think their design was pretty interesting. Fractals have the potential to be a more streamlined version of those, and I would rather they followed this path instead of becoming semi-strike missions.

[@VamanaGW2]

Agree wholeheartedly and I think you put it well. The most tragic part has been seeing the gradual distancing from traditional dungeon content that Anet has taken. We went from two of the most peak, representative stages in Nightmare and SO to a primarily one-boss encounter that was still well designed in Sunqua Peak, to arguably #2 and #1 worst feeling encounters in the game in Silent Surf and Lonely Tower. I wonder, in your opinion, why Cerus and Deimos in 100cm actually don't feel very good at all to play despite being the kind of 'burst down a relatively simple boss' archetype that otherwise feels good in other fractals? In all the runs of 100cm I've done so far (which, to be fair, is less than 10), no one has remarked that they enjoy the Cerus/Deimos part, nor the puzzle minigame that comes before it either.

[@linkazzatore]

Regarding deimos/cerus section: 1: they do not do any damage 2: they move so slowly that it takes 15-20s to get them to stack for burst 3: by the time they stack, there is already an oil spawned you can burst them down but there is nothing interesting about them

[@Ficohaker]

Thank you very much for actually coming out and calling them out for what they had done, precise and constructive feedback was given, and I hope this achieves the desired goal for change. At the end of the day we all just want to play the best game gw2 can, and that obviously goes hand in hand with devs wanting to make it the best game it can be, so thank you for actively making it happen.

[@McMarc_1993]

100% I've been missing the traditional dungeon experience a lot. Boss fights should be the cherry on top after a nice and perhaps even challenging dungeon.

[@siegfurd]

Pretty based opinion, as an avid fractal CM gamer kanaxi was a huge meme, fractal god not working on release and it taking months for it to be fixed was nuts. Lonely tower doesn’t even feel like a fractal.

[@SquallSwift]

It is really telling that the majority of groups I see in server discords and LFG will never do Silent Surf or Lonely Tower, even as a daily. They are what you do if you hate melee gameplay and enjoy pain.

[@qwoz2327]

Fully agree. Played gw2 on/off throughout the past year and as a past mmo player, i've recently got into a static slightly less than a month ago and my fav fractals so far are mai trin, observatory cm and sunqua cm They're all snappy, simple mechanics oriented fights that are great for the mid - end players. Kanaxai and Eparch are cool fights in a vacuum but are tuned to taking too long as individual fights making them incredibly tedious for daily clears and taking at least twice as long as some older fractals. I'd love to see them either fit in with the design philosoohy of prior fractals instead of being dailies that a majority of the community actively skips. Whether the fights are changed to 5man fights on a weekly rotation similar to newer strike releases or made to be in the vein of and of similar difficulty to the category they're released under. If eparch had his cc phase actually progress towards removing his buffs and the 66%, 33% add phases of his not be sth you'd have to actively use an exploit to beat then he'd be a solid fractal boss.

[@DocM94]

I couldn't agree more. What makes fractals feel good are the exploration, movement and burst components, and bosses with multiple phases, things that are sorely lacking in the latest 2. I think that one of the problems for anet is that they decided to make a CM for every new fractal, which in my opinion is unnecessary. I'd rather have a true, old school, fun fractal that just has a normal mode, then a CM for something that is just a 5 man strike mission. But my confidence in anet encounter team is very low after SotO, both for fractals and open world metas (and possibly even the new raid)

[@hyperiel]

just fell to my knees in a LIDL parking lot

[@ConradKirby]

Agree broadly with this. May be a good discussion to rank fractals. Not in a 'which is best' but to better identify what makes a good fractal. To give an example, I really like Deepstone because of how it breaks up fairly simple combat with puzzles. Where as the newer fractals seem to try breaking that up with new systems rather than sticking with the GW2 Fundamentals. Heck even a Teatime topic of trying to identify what those fundamentals are could be fun. The bullet hell of Nightmare and long ramp of Uncata both promote 'active avoidance while progressing'.

[@Razofgal]

They also have the DRMs that could with not so much work be turned into fractals, they are rather similarly set up to what you described at the end. Would also make it so that that content gets reused, especially if it got a bit fixed and tuned for a fractal release

[@xezzee]

Rewards.... weekly and daily. Once a week when you finish each CM fractal once for special reward. Like Raids and Strikes. Once a Day you can clear any 3 CM Fractals for extra loot. Now add CM to all fractals 😂 currently you have to clear 5 fractal CMs daily on top of 3 dailies and 3 recommended... if they keep adding CM Fractals the number you can clear daily just goes up and up...

[@uniquename111]

I think you hit the nail pretty hard on what is wrong with fractlas right now. I think Anet lost their definition to what Fractals really are and are trying to make everything to overcomplicated to attract both the goodies in the badies. Imo fractals should be fast and fun and engaging. If they want to make something harder then do that in CM but even there dont forget it is a fractal. Strikes and raids is where they can look in to harder and more complicated content, normal fractals should be possible for all to do. As it is now it seem like a lot of people skipping the last fractals that have been released, even those in normal mode, because it feel more like Strikes. So thumbs up and spot on to you.

[@vanrijn]

100% agree. Very nicely explained, thank you Teapot!

[@Archi-The-Baguette]

To add on what you said, Anet needs to revamp old dungeons. They are fun, but really, rewards are non existant, ennemies are way to easy, and the only thing encouraging players to do them is to get enough currency to buy monk runes, which feels boring for many people. If they just change the rewards to what it was before and buff the bosses, dungeons may be played a lot again

[@tavish1658]

I believe the game is stretched thin by content and each new release dilutes the playerbase even more. It's not inherently a negative thing, but I think at this stage of the game's life, it would greatly benefit from weekly objectives, with each week focusing on a piece of group content with extra rewards attached. It could be dungeon week, fractal week, living world season 3 week, Path of Fire week. These things would shuffle the playerbase around the content the game has to offer.

[@whyisthisathingnow...]

perhaps they could be converted into fractals as well?

[@chester1882]

@@tavish1658 We've had those in recent memory and they were successful. Also the Wizard's Vault does this too with the weekly objectives and Seasonal objectives. I think we will see more of them.

[@nautilaz]

#makedungeonsgreatagain Yep I played at launch for about a year, but I liked the dungeons the best, the most memorable content. Seems there was more team building and strategy than just a quick speed run like fractals. But times have changed I know. I second that the rewards are pretty shit, and they could easily add a dungeon to a weekly vault reward.

[@ummwht_y]

I just did Silent Surf for the first time today and I never want to play that fractal again. Haven't tried Lonely tower yet. but from what I've heard. i really don't want to waste time in that one either.

[@lukash7369]

fuuu lonely tower i thought silent surf was bad, but boy did they topped it

[@rock00dom]

Very good well said!

[@leftrom9738]

As a player who loves fractals (have achieved fractal god), I couldn't understand why I didn't like the last/new fractals. Your video put that into perspective, thanks.

[@J0kuc]

"You can have long encounters that are fun if it has multiple phases and new mechanics that pop up" EXACTLY. This is what I've been saying all the time, and it annoys me quite a bit how people said "kanaxai is bad cause it's too long". No. The issue was that you do the same thing over and over for 6 minutes, not that it's 6 minutes. Give us multiple phases, make the mechanics change more. Then the fight is more interesting and the 6 minutes don't feel like 60.

[@fototo5616]

Then it would be an interesting fight maybe but still an awful fractal

[@PrettyPufferPenquin]

I enjoy fractals and usually pug the dailies. I dont do them on days where lonely tower or silent surf are on the list. Frequently pugs will fail these and it just wastes my time.

[@andrewmarceau422]

Preach!

[@nashi-nz]

100% agreed! Would love to see something similar to Uncategorized /Sunqua/Cliffside etc where the trash mobs/mini bosses team you about the final bosses mechanics. I've noticed a trend in recent years where the content being released can't be completed without third party guide. It's not enough to add the bosses core mechanics as a tiny icon hidden among the 20 boons on your boon bar.

[@dieselsandwich42]

I miss puzzle-like fractals too. The collossus fractal where you go around breaking the binding seals with that crazy life draining hammer to release the big guy, that is one of my fave fractals.

[@andrewmarceau422]

Agree- but even that, they could lower the runing back and forth by about 1-2 mini phases. Its about what? 4-5 mins of most people sitting back hitting 3 adds as 1 person hits a gong. That being said- far better than 10 mins of single boss with boring mechanics, only to die to start over, feeling like you've not accomplished anything.

[@Candlesticksify]

This was very cathartic to watch. I couldn't articulate why I didn't like Silent Surf/Lonely Tower and this really did a great job of breaking it down. They're just not fun and I usually skip dailies when they come up in the rotation. Which is sad cause I never used to skip.

[@nnarcus]

Really good feedback and opinions that are well thought trough and explained!

[@exoqqen]

huge fan of the short video. I dont care about pve enough to listen to a 30 minute stream segment, but i played enough dungeons and fractals years ago to know which parts made those fun

[@johnharbord9748]

Agree with everything you said Teapot. With respect to a sample size of one, I enjoy playing T4s daily (when I can) but actively avoid playing Silent Surf and Lonely Tower. If those are in the daily or Rec rotation, I simply skip my daily or rec fractals that day. Nightmare I really like, even though personally I often struggle with the circles in the final boss fight at T4. There are few experiences in the game like a well-oiled fractal team blasting through the content. And I find fractals more personally rewarding to play, in the sense in a five-person team the experience is more intimate than in a ten-person team. Or, put another way, your contribution is more obvious for what you, Teapot, might call a mid-tier player like me.

[@MelonRoulette]

I totally agree with you. I used to like only frac before I wamrned upt to strikes/raids but they serve different purposes. Frac is fun to blast through different mechanics and/or mini bosses. I don't want one bullet sponge in fractal

[@waynelangins11]

very well put and accurate. Anet's fractal team has lost their way.

[@marcelo_roger]

I completely agree to all your points. Spot on

[@Mister5597]

Its cool you are shining a light at this issue with the recent fractals.

[@paradachshund]

This might be an unpopular take, but I really dislike how the game avoids "trash mobs" more and more in instanced content. I put it in quotes, because contrary to what I hear a lot of people say online, some players like myself really enjoy the exploration and "trash" portions of dungeons, and losing that actually removes most of the fun for me. A cool boss is fine, but it's far from my favorite part. I know not everyone feels that way, and I've largely accepted the fact that instanced content is moving in a boss-focused direction for a while. It's meant that more and more the instanced content in the game isn't interesting to me anymore. This analysis struck a chord with me, and I think some of what you're saying lines up with what I've been missing.

[@Warcrafter4]

I think for "trash mobs" it just depends on what they do. No one like the stun spamming water spirits "Trash mobs" in the Sunqua Peak but no one ever complains about nightmare enemies. The bad "Trash mobs" have poisoned the well so badly for the MMO community that all that it gave all dungeon enemies the title of "Trash mobs".

[@paradachshund]

@@Warcrafter4 Definitely. What I look for in regular mobs for dungeons are things that have some real danger and menace to them. What I like about regular mobs over bosses, is bosses are often more of an exercise in memorization, while regular mobs are more dynamic and fluid with how they move around and do things (when they're done well of course). I prefer that more improvisational gameplay compared to boss prog.

[@brandonuzumaki]

Good trash mobs for me are the ones in Urban Battlegrounds/Twilight Oasis for example, they hit hard as hell, but die easy, you can skip them, or you can kill them if you want, overall they are a good "roadblock" leading to last boss. Bad trash mobs are the ones in Siren's Reef, they don't do a lot of damage, but they never stop spawning, they perma boon themselves, bombard you with the most annoying condies (i remember having cripple, chill and slow all at once sometimes lol), and are tanky as hell, so much so that the "meta" for last boss is basically ignoring all mobs and powering throught the boss until the end, all of this makes that fight the most annoying in the entire game in my opinion.

[@tracephage]

New Fractals felt like HM strike missions, content nobody wants to replay or can complete.

[@DaFunkz]

I miss the dungeon format. I like the feeling of delving and exploring they give. Nothing feels better than coming across a dungeon entrance in a game world. I also enjoyed the environments more on repeated runs. The path system allowed for a variety of content that fit well with different play times. I also think the reward system was good for a horizontal games. An Armour set, weapon set, a good way to get exotic gear at the time, rune set, sigils, other little cosmetics and legendary crafting items. I think the fractal scaling and instability systems are ultimately failures as well.

[@swarnendusikdar4776]

I 100% agree by your opinion. I daily do Cm's+t4 in fractals. From my prospective stattered observetory and Nightmare is still the best cms. I also personally like Sanqua peak cm. So when these 3 were the only cms available I was very happy doing it daily till I got my 'Fractal God' title. But then Silent Surf came. I tried it first and absolutely hated the normal mode jumping puzzle section. Also tried cm version and didn't understand the fight nor like it. I started to avoid doing surf but after some time lfg also adapted to it and i was getting less grp for only older cm grps. After that I took a break from gw2 and came back to game 1 month ago. Then tried to learn surf again and now I am good at it. I don't perticularly like it but I have to do it. Still i have to use revive orb sometime for either some bullsh*t fearing eye push me off the platform or tied to jump to another platform to kill add and failed the jump. Now lonely tower is another story all together. The starting phase is boring all together though Deimos is kinda interisting but not by much. Epoch is the worst boss in all of fractal(siren's reef last boss is better than epoch). Tons of aoe on the ground. Every thing is either corrupting ur boons or giving u conditions. Ur standing at the side of trageted wave arrow but still getting hit. And the orb mechanics every 30-40sec just collect orb. Every other fractal cms also have phases when u need to collect someting or be separate and then comeback together but its happening so frequently in epoch that I dont have words. I cm mode you don't directly start fight with epoch but do the whole pre button clicking and double demon fight, i don't understand why. I haven't still cleared the lonly tower cm. All the factor teapot mentioned aside my personal opinion is fractal was a quick fast pased and very fun way to earn money but now adding more and more of cms is not doing great in terms of fast pased runs. Pro grps are still ok with it but 10-25kp grps takes long time. It would still be ok but last 2 fracs are not fun also. Now another cm is adding with janthir wilds. I don't know how it will be ijust hope its better the lonly tower. Sorry for my long ranting. I just love doing fracs but after watching teapots vedio my emotions got better of me.

[@nb4115]

Can feel your pain

[@davidjasper6962]

Honestly, the actual old school dungeons are very fun. The environments feel very much like a “dungeon”. I don’t know why they ever abandoned those. They could have just added a scaling system and more rewards and made a new dungeon for each open world map. Would have been epic.

[@Warcrafter4]

If I'm remembering correctly they said they abandoned dungeons because of massive deep rooted technical dept and instabilities that happened when they were made. Which got worse when the original coder left the company early on in GW2's life. Aka its hard to build on an unstable foundation. Which is why they replaced dungeon releases with fractals because fractals are(Ironically) infinitely more stable.

[@IFredDi1]

I also want to point out how the older Fractals have all options for some Skips/ faster finish times for the dedicated and experimential Gamers - for me that also is a huge part in the fun of Fractals, as such knowledge doesn't hurt the initial tries but helps with re playability imo. Furthermore for the CM's it seemed to me like the older ones had u progress through to prepare you for the final encounter (Observertory's SPAK / EYE/ ANO ; Nightmares Split-ups > first move as group, 2+3-way splits in between then 4+5 splits for the last two bosses).

[@rayu7191]

I enjoy fractals, but the latest fractals just take too long and takes away from the concept of fractals where you have to do 3 different ones a day, and even 6 including recs. One more thing that I agree with your video, is that the new fractals are too mechanics based. As a solo player like me, we need more content that doesnt need so much coordination with teammates. We have strikes and dungeons for that. Fractals should be me coming home from work, and just wanna chill with my character. Similar to final fantasy IV dungeons where mechanics are not OVERLY complex

[@ElderNewt]

Dungeons/Fractals have a theme Strikes/Raids have a theme. It's not ideal to mix and mash Dungeons, Fractals - strikes and Raids.

[@ian1882]

One of my favorite fights in the game is Qadim (1). Part of that is that there's a ton of different phases! There's the hydra phase, burn phase, destroyer, burn, wyverns, jumping puzzle, then final burn. I was so disappointed in the past few strike and fractal bosses because most of them are completely the same throughout most of the duration! Bring back phased fights over these endurance fests!

[@tavish1658]

I think the recent one boss encounters are much easier for ArenaNet to put together. I really don't hope it's the case, as that's a show of laziness. I think you are on point on having mix up in encounters and different phases without having too confusing mechanics. I think Chaos is taking some mechanics to it's absolute limits within Fractal play. Taking it any further would turn it into something akin to raid encounters.

[@Bf3GentlemanXY]

Exactly! Spread the word.

[@ramschasar7654]

The "spam your shit whenever it comes off cooldown" combat is the worst part of gw2 for me. I liked the strategic gw1 combat more. That said, gw1 is just too clunky and outdated and the playerbase is too low. So here i am.. waiting for their successor xD

[@rsownageXxX]

I've always wondered what the game would look like if instead of fractals (or alongside) Anet released dungeons like the originals. It'd be so cool to get 2-3 dungeons per expansion with their own stories, paths, unique weapon and armor sets, and whatever other special rewards. They could've continued to push side stories in these and have fun repeatable content without abandoning the system they had in place. I like fractals but I really wish I could experience that core MMO big building or spooky cave with a dungeon entrance ready to be explored again like I did on release.

[@Tewlipz]

Honestly, after playing FF14 for a few months, I kinda get it when you say it's just fun to run through a pile of mobs and just blasting them efficiently. It's obviously nowhere near M+, but when you have a good group in FF, dungeons are just really fun, especially the max level ones where everyone just blasts, each group goes down in a few seconds, you move on to the next group or the next boss. There's a good place for that kind of content in Gw2, and it's a shame to see fractals don't really fulfill that niche as much anymore with the newer fractals. As much as I loved Sunqua Peak for the Ai boss fight, there's just something special about just mowing through trash mobs as efficiently as you can. Heck, that's at least partially why people would speedrun dungeons so much back in the day.

[@masterchief44004]

Extremely well put video and great feedback for anet

[@passman36]

Seems like a lot of GW2 players aren’t that happy. Just rip it down and give us Gw3 lol. DLC expansion, undercooked dungeons experience. I’ve always felt Gw2 lacked really far behind when it comes to instanced content like raids and dungeons. To me they just never had the quality of wow, ff14 or heck even eso.

[@GOTHICforLIFE1]

Yea i really miss the speed run concepts with fractals - practicing skips and optimizing those runs specifically - Not only do they patch our a lot of skips, but you often don't even have much to skip in the current ones

[@jonasalmstrom4986]

What made me love fractals were optimising routes, perfecting skips to make it faster, and the rapidly changing gameplay sections. I sincerely hope that they can return to the original formula at some point, maybe the next expansion could even reintroduce dungeons again 🙏

[@icata12345]

i like silent surf, specialy the CM but ye, that's like a strike, i dont mind if we get some OG styled new fractals

[@Snowshill]

fractals are efectivly turning into strikes, which we have that we have strikes, they already exist -.- with the bosses having so much health that the fight can with bad dps take 30+ minutes just to kill one boss is really dumb and just makes them feel liek they were designed as strikes then tuurned into fractals as a "oh dang we havnt gotten a fractal idea done lets just use this half bakes strike" second thought -.- I think the nightmare fractal is ok, short leadup fights to get you used to the emchanics of the last boss, this is a good design philosophy, although the jade sea kinda does this too the last boss uses mechanic that are not shown to you and has way to much health

[@xargonanaris2516]

I personally think that the point of not wanting what to they actually want is one of the major weaknesses of Anet. Like we have tried out so many concepts now that at some point they should have commited on something.... For Raids I think the concept of "Strike+" - meaning an open world content that is paired with better mechanic - seems like hopefully the refined form ... but for fractals I have the feeling they will iterate a few times again ...

[@ILuxusproblem]

I also would enjoy a new little Story throughout new Fractals like the one with Yoko.

[@onlyXknives]

quit playing fractals when silent surf came out, never returned for any fractal after, surf ruined my experience, too high of hp at any tier and too long of a fractal to complete, nerf those 2 things and i'd consider playing them again, and no i dislike playing tarzan in that fractal too but id suffer through it if they fixed rest.

[@nashi-nz]

That fractal is almost unplayable for me on 200 ping, the delay is super noticable with the grapling hook

[@RiskyRaeden]

This is the best take i have seen on the latest fractals. I refuse to do them. Got the title for Kanaxai and would pug it for months and that in itself is a just a pain but it was pretty reasonable to clear all CMs. I did the lonely tower once and killed Eparch nm. since then i have refused to do them at all. I will not join a CM group if they are doing Kanaxai. It is just too much time for what I want and it is also very unfun. If i am farming money from fractals I want to have fun while doing it. Even if it wasn't super profitable I would still want to do Ai, Shattered, and Nightmare CM weekly at the minimum. Eparch and Kanaxai? Not even monthly. Please A-Net.

[@PaxV]

While I'm not always on your side, Teapot, I'll say: You are right! Your vision is solid. I do not like the latest fractal. Feels just number slugging and while your guild can mop this up faster, I first completed tge fractal at lvl 50 with a group of randoms and it took forever and then some.

[@R_a_s_e_]

I actually miss doing the old dungeons but since the rewards are pretty useless nowadays nobody does them anymore.

[@taylordavis6072]

I used to do fractals daily. Silent Surf had me dodging dailies. This new one killed my interest. Sucks when something could be made better by removing additions.

[@johannes40]

Awesome video Teapot!

[@The92Ghost]

He does speak the truth as always. I've watched almost each tea time gatherings lately, and I have to say that Teapot has touched on really good things that are tedious for him, for me and for a lot of casual players. Lonely Tower being a prime example of what ANet SHOULD *NOT* do. The CM fractals are fun content if the right instabilities appear, but if the wrong ones spawn, then it becomes the most horrible experience and ANet should really look into this. While I do agree that some mechanics need to overload the player, I disagree greatly that going hardcore on the mechanics, like Eparch, Silent Surfer are a tad bit too much. Maybe if there were one or two less mechanics that content could be actually great. When you overload the players with mechs, and punish hardcore the player for not doing every single little mechanic, well lets say that it is not experience neither for me as a player nor to my group that grows extremely annoyed due to the countless failings. Eparch being one of those fights that seriously outlines that and Silent Surfer following it shortly after that. Too much is too much and players cannot manage endless amount of mechs. Sure, give them around 3 mechs top to do at once but if you go over 3, it is when it becomes tedious and infuriating especially if all players need to do those mechanics and have no time to help a teammate to complete one of the three mechs for your party member.

[@Vietcongster]

With how these new Fractals are turning out, the Fractal progression system will become a major hindrance. New players can't join the LFG for higher tiers without doing Silent Surf and Lonely Tower, so they have to deal with it somehow. If this keeps up, I can see some veterans advertising groups to help skip those Fractals, defeating the purpose of tiered progression.

[@andrewmarceau422]

Ya- I did this on my alt account recently- and just advertised Mai Trin train to blow through most levels- and then had to rely on someone that could get us from her to the following tier. Even Senaqua, though I like it- a lot of people want to skip that as it just takes so long. So that's often 3 to by-pass on your leveling progress.

[@KitTheTraveler]

Great video. I do wish they bring back dungeons and add more. I do enjoy them for the lore, and for smaller group content. But also would love them to have a CM mode for dungeons.. give us that classic Hard mode they had back in Guild Wars 1. Fractals are alright but they are also just meh for me.

[@WiiWillCtrlU]

I’d love to have an opinion on the newest fractal (Lonely Tower), unfortunately everybody in my main guilds hate it so bad they don’t want to run it with me. LFG group I ran with earlier saw it at t3 rec and said it wasn’t worth the time. So I’d really hope for better and more cohesive fractal/encounter design to come with future releases, because its not only impacting people who have played them, but even those who HAVEN’T (be that via the technicality in my case that nobody’s run with me, OR those who are only hearing all the horror stories around them)

[@Thakkii]

When i was exploring the map i got approached by a new player ask me about where is dungeons , i told him what kind of kind of dungeons we have , his instant reply was " i prefer the dungeons in WoW"

[@GrayveStone]

GW2 doesn't have the staff to make content. Even the new expac is heavily reusing existing assets, designs, features, etc. I can't see them adding 'dungeon' content, either they have been cut to the bone staffing wise, or all the staff is on other projcts and they have a skeleton team doing enough to keep GW2 barely active. I don't feel hype, just weary acceptence.

[@frankmills1917]

Surprisingly, I enjoyed my time doing the 5 paths of Arah with some randoms in the lfg. I hope they add more content like this one and maybe overhaul/rework the previous dungeons by giving them a level 80 difficulty. Edit: spelling

[@aeroblizz1987]

Wow a 6 min video, didnt expect this from teapot 😂

[@icapi7961]

I rarely completed agree with you. This is a rare occurance!

[@rayrayz4667]

In my conspiracy theory opinion allegedly, the reason why these 2 fractals are so...different is because they were NEVER meant to be fractals. They were repurposed from their original purpose of being a part of the story so that they could skip making a new fractal because they had no time to do them logistically.

[@baazamut994]

I think this might be a time issue. In my view, fracs have always been fairly quick to finish. But Strikes also. I guess Arena is probably wondering if they should do short, easy fracs, or long raid like fracs, as no new raid wings have been announced. Also, thanks Teapot for your great content ❤❤

[@derpsterPRO]

Next xpac we get wing 8 though

[@emperorbless120]

One particular mechanic that I hate is the numbers on Kanaxai. The first few days/weeks you could avoid most of the damage with a well-timed dodge, but now, after they "fixed" it, it is just 15k or so unavoidable damage.

[@procerator]

can it be blocked or mesmer F4'd?

[@emperorbless120]

@@procerator It is ~5 hits, so you can Aegis one and only take 12k iirc. Don't know about block abilities, but once again Virt OP.

[@osmankirpat]

Personally, I don't enjoy regular fractals. I like five-men raid bosses. But the regular fractals and CMs are not exactly the same stuff. They don't offer a cohesive experience. Maybe putting raid-like CMs into a different catogory would be a better choice.

[@essdee800]

I agree. Thank you

[@evilspeedskater91]

Toataly agree. lets hope Anet hears this. good video!

[@rudee8827]

This video is very good.

[@chester1882]

If Anet needs more time to figure out how to make fractals like Nightmare - which is a rearrangement of existing assets with mechanics - then for delivering content that the players are will to engage with and instills confidence in the community, they might need to drop making a fractal every other year until they can figure out how to make engaging dungeon content.

[@3Tomatoess]

THANK YOU

[@luca7675]

I honestly quite like the silent surf CM fight. Same with Sunqua peak CM fight. They are both relatively fun and chill enough for an enjoyable CM fight. But i do understand how they wouldnt make real fractals. Specially silent surf. They feel more like a 5 player strike mission for sure.

[@andrewmarceau422]

Agreed- but even something like Cold War takes some coordination, knowledge of mechanics BUT skips the whole BS of JPs in Silent Surf. Its like they are mixing Metas and Strikes into Fracs recently. ANET cant possibly NOT see that people skip fracs on the days these are dailies....

[@metalmoory]

Anet should really hire teapot.

[@bastiaanzeeman3922]

Once raids came out I forgot about dungeons in gw2. Which is kind of a waste? I remember ascalonian dungeons for the first time. Found it very difficult and a great challenge, as a level 35 with suboptimal gear. I never really got the hang of fractals, because of the whole agony resistance theme and having to figure that out and put that onto my gear. I find it annoying so I’d rather go for raids and strikes. I don’t really miss 5 man pve end game content at the moment. I might like it (again)? Good loot is also a strong motivator for me to start playing.

[@erjikkzon]

Is this first video made by Teapot in this format type? It is very good

[@fivedarra7133]

Couldn't agree more. The old school fractals are by far the most fun I have had in this game. Apart from Twilight Oasis, I do not enjoy the newer fractals at all.

[@theonlylunarmage]

Some days I'll skip daily fractals because of certain fractals that do just drag on like that. I wasn't sure why until you pointed it out like that, they're static as all hell in terms of interactivity. It's just that they're 5 man strike missions, they're 5 man strike missions with none of the action strike missions actually have in them. And even if they were made to that level it still wouldn't be that enjoyable having them. You don't need two of the same type of content just with different player amounts.

[@andrewmarceau422]

I totally skip frac days with 99-100 now. And if they are the recs I will post as T4 & Recs minus Silent Surf or whatever. Just too much of a gamble on fail/rage quit in pugs.

[@willdeit6057]

You have my Agreement.

[@mizumisa6620]

Nightmare fractals is peek gw2 5 man content, its a shame that the power creep has made the fights easier, sometimes causing bypassing of phases and attacks. Fast paced Boss attacks, that slowly chip away you'r health and reward you for playing around them with things like reactive boon usage like aegis, protection, stab or vigor, and dodging or other support abilitys is what is I really enjoy.

[@agaaga7748]

Anet NEEDS to SEE this and WAKE UP (or lose all their players)

[@LocalAnonOnTheInternet]

I just want dungeons specifically, not fractals. I manage to get a group of friends that don't play GW2 as much, did Dungeons and had a blast playing through it, despite us getting stomped often (those slimes in orr).