Imo silent surf is good. The boss lives for a considerable amount of time with enough repetition of mechanics that you can't just brute force through. Bit on the longer side, sure, wouldn't hurt if it was a little less tanky. If your number one quality of a fractal is how 'rushable' it is... Idk lmao. I guess I don't farm them past dailies, I never had an issue. Twilight really isn't long pre boss if you run correctly. Shattered's sequence between Skorvald and Aartsariv takes maybe 2 minutes out of your day and the rest is just good bosses.
Reducing things to a black-and-white level of complexity makes it easy to bash them, right? Idk lmao.
On a more serious note, too much of fractals and content in general is bloated with filler. Molten Furnace was fun until Anet decied that the endboss had to hide every 10 seconds and be invulnerable during the 50.000 animations. Why? What value does that add? Deepstone boss teleports as well, but he stays vulnerable and you have addtional light mechanics like floor restoration or CC/floor destruction. Molten Furnace is "walk 50 units that direction, attack 7 seconds, wait another 15 seconds". That's a time waster.
Same with the Deepstone "maze" room. A tenth of it would also have explained the mechanic. It does nothing but waste time.
Sunqua is a Walking Simulator with 20 hours of talk. What the actual fuck were they thinking? Cut out 90% of the distance and 100% of the talk and we're starting to get somewhere.
Rushability (totally a word) is where it boils down if you do the same thing 25.000 times. No, it's not fun standing there staring at the NPC waiting to be let through. No, it's not fun standing there staring at the wall, or have a boss transist through 17 phases, all with a 25 second invuln animation. Fraenir has up to 30 seconds and it bores me out of my fucking mind. Someone should take away invulnerability from ArenaNet and see if they can create an encounter without that crutch. For fuck's sake.
Here is the pattern: every Fractal has to take 20 minutes, being fast isn't allowed. No, it's not every Fractal, but next to all updates have lengthened the updated Fractal and made it more tedioues. That's what makes Silent Surf so hilarious to me. Fucking hell, the Fractal was amazing at first glance. Fly around like bloody Spider-Man! And then: WHAM! 20 min boss wall to the face, because we can't have shit that's quick and enjoyable.
Let people have their popcorn content for God's sake, why does everything has to be artificial pumped up to 20 minutes. And in the laziest way possible!
why does everything has to be artificial pumped up to 20 minutes
Because the gold / hour cannot be too high compared to other content. The problem is that the time is wasted on fillers instead of actual content, like another boss or some difficult trash packs maybe.
Sunqua is a Walking Simulator with 20 hours of talk. What the actual fuck were they thinking? Cut out 90% of the distance and 100% of the talk and we’re starting to get somewhere.
Sunqua normal mode is a tutorial for the CM, which does cut out all the walking and talking.
You don't need a guild for that. At least when we talking tier 1 and 2. Just take a look in LFG or start your own party with "T1 dailies" and your party will fill up fast.
I don't think it's that bad, not a fan of sirens reef and oasis but otherwise fine. But i don't play those daily, so maybe haven't yet played often enough :)
Though, how can anyone in their right mind like aquatic is beyond me :D (no offense, everyone their own)
Silent surf really is a drag, but I like many fractals of the ones you listed. I like the riddle room in deepstone, I like twilight oasis because it takes some time but is still fast paced, I don't see where shattered observatory takes long (just do cm lol).
On the other hand I dislike Cliffside. The hammer mechanic is kind of a nice mechanic, but so finicky to get right and I think it should be displayed more clearly.
Shattered, I imagine, is fast with a competent group. But watching people not using their skill to go directly to the last island or failing the bouncy ball to open the rift...ugh. Pugging is an adventure in itself I suppose, heh.
But fascinating to see people's preferences. Cliffside being a drag because people fail the hammer mechanic is something I usually only see in sub4 tiers.
Only problem I have is the boss has too much hp. But to reduce the health, the CC would have to be reduced to like every 20%, instead of 10%. Otherwise skills wouldn't be ready otherwise.
The jumping at the start is fast once you know what to use where.
I really enjoy the jumping, yeah. Especially once you discover the bomb-jump, you can really shorten it all. It's a fantastic design, everyone has a slightly different way of proceeding.