Guild Wars 2 Fractals of the Mists 2012

November 2012
Guild Wars 2, Fractals of the Mists

I guess it's time for me to admit how much I hate the new Fractals of the Mists dungeon. Let's start this up by noting the two terrible things that were forced upon us to progress through it. We were given a resistance-check through a hardcore material grind and daily-RNG reward. I don't know what's worse.

We can't group with the players we want to. Backtracking is miserable. Fractal levels are character-specific, I definitely don't want to repeat the lower levels with my alts, it's too repetitive.

Being unable to re-enter the dungeon after being disconnected is miserable. Two weeks later, ANet is still "looking into it."

The loot seems significantly shittier compared to the first few days. ANet is constantly changing their droprates and it drives me insane.

All of the old dungeon content is out-dated and still untuned and unfixed. All of the dynamic event bugs are unfixed. Droprates in the world environment were nerfed into oblivion. There is absolutely nothing to be gained by doing any of that shit, the only thing to do is Fractals.

Fractals have already become boring to me. I usually have a lot of patience, but after having experienced what Fractals have to offer, and after reading the recent GW2 Reddit AMA... It's safe to say I'm pretty demotivated from spending that much time in this game anymore.

I'm still pissed off about the retarded Karka event with trial accounts getting precursors for free that one Sunday. It really makes any work someone puts into their character feel like a complete waste.

Now onto Ascended gear, and future patches.

The AMA explained how Ascended gear is going to slowly roll out through each content patch/event. All slots will eventually have Ascended pieces, and they plan on introducing new ways to acquire it all (including multiple ways to acquire each piece). Considering that each piece is 5% better than exotic, obviously we are all going to want a full Ascended set, the same way we wanted/needed a full exotic set over rare. Except, it's more difficult to custom-build a set with Ascended gear as some of it involves RNG, and some of it involves excessive grinds.

It costs as much to create one Ascended back piece as it costs to create a complete set of exotic gear (armor, trinkets, runes and sigils combined). Alternatively, you can grind fractal relics endlessly, to get a different, better version. Obviously, this limits a player from creating multiple sets for different purposes. With Ascended gear, we've got to choose very carefully what we craft.

Then on the other side of that, we have Ascended rings that drop for free, but which involve complete RNG once per day. So, whatever we get is what we're stuck with. Imagine yourself in a position where you do 30-40 levels and get nothing but garbage for your character (or nothing at all), while the shitty pugs you group with are getting hooked up.

While Ascended gear might seem like a good thing in the long run, consider that there will eventually be new level caps in the upcoming GW2 expansions--will all of the time, gold, or money players throw into Ascended gear be worth it, at all? We've already gotten a taste of it so far: 250 tier 6 mats, 50 ectos, 250 ectos to upgrade (If you don't know current prices, T6 mats cost five times as much as they did last month, ectos double). Constant market speculation every single content patch. Playing wallstreet, playing the lottery, getting screwed over because you didn't log in at the right times. Getting placated by the development team, or just flat out lied to.

I don't know what to think about this game anymore. What do you think?