The reward systems put in place for Fractals of the Mists seems bad. The mundane-mess of the chests, coupled with how the daily rewards and tokens work, make the rewards from FotM feel very out of place and broken. Fractals was meant to reward players for their ability to complete more difficult levels, but it seems to work in opposite: players at higher levels are punished with longer runs and similar quality loot.
First lets talk about the reward systems.
Chest Rewards
I will be comparing level 48 fractals with [Hard Mode] Urgoz’s Warden, an Elite Dungeon from Guild Wars 1 with Zodiac and Urgoz weapons.
In Fractals of the Mists, the chests share the same problem that other dungeon chests face: they are unrewarding and often just give you trash to vendor later on. The difference in FotM is that, at high levels, these chests remain underwhelming with no reward for an increase in difficulty.
In Urgoz, the chests that could be scattered throughout the dungeon, and at the end, were very much rewarding and often fun to open. The major differences between chests in these two games are as follows.
- In Urgoz, locked chests had a fairly good chance to drop an item of Rare value. It was always a joy to open a chest and find a rare inside. FotM has a very small chance of rare or exotic items dropping.
- Futhermore, in Urgoz, there was a chance to drop a random rare skin unique to the dungeon, or other unique skins that were rare and can be sold. In FotM, unique skins do not drop from these chests. On the off chance an exotic drops, it shares a skin with an existing set found fairly commonly in the world, or as a cultural weapon.
- The final chest of Urgoz dropped crafting materials and a Named Weapon that fell in line with the dungeon. You could use the crafting materials to buy Elite (“legendary”) armor. In FotM, the crafting material drops randomly from mobs, and is not used in creating any armor or weapons.
These issues are very much shared with other dungeons in the game, with the only difference possibly being the difficulty level of dungeons. This leaves chests feeling very stale.
Since the patch in January, the loot from the chests in FotM seems to have taken a hit, and is no where as rewarding as pre-Jan levels. This is, however, only based on personal observations, and it is entirely possible that I have just had terrible RNG rolls for two months straight.
Weapon Skin Rewards
While there is a problem with how and when skins drop, FotM is specifically bad at Weapon Skin rewards.
- Unlike in many other games, there is no need/want/pass system to distribute skins to players who need it.
- Unlike with Urgoz in Guild Wars 1, the fractal skins do not drop from the chests of the dungeon, and cannot be traded or sold because they are account bound.
- Unlike in Guild Wars 2, these skins cannot be bought after a significant time spent doing the dungeon because it is no available as a token reward.
- These weapons cannot be crafted, and rely completely on a random roll. This punishes players with an unusable weapon more often than not.
Considering the rarity of the weapons compared to the rarity of Zodiac weapons in Guild Wars 1, it does not make sense to have the weapon be both entirely based on RNG and not available with some kind or recipe using tokens.
I proposed a possible recipe to fix this issue here.
Ascended Gear
Ascended Tier rarity feels incomplete when compared to how other tiers of rarity work.
- You are unable to salvage ascended gear, though you are able to salvage every other type of rarity, including Legendaries.
- Ascended Gear is unavailable through FotM save Rings. This proves problematic, because FotM is the only content in the game where Ascended Gear is required to progress, yet it is absent from being attainable in the place where it is needed.
It is odd that a FotM player is required to participate in outside content for gear relating specifically to where she is required to run that specific gear.
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If no improvements are to be had in the March 26 patch, I very well might be done with this dungeon for sometime. After 3 months of 3+ hours a day inside of it, I am frustrated to no end, with my brains falling out one ear and my patience falling out the other.
This itself is even more frustration, because for these 3 months, I remained persistent and repeatedly ran difficult content, and have not received the proper reward for my effort.
Constantly getting rewards that are subpar or are not proper or usable for your character results in more loathing than feeling content.
This is a problem I hope is fixed or acknowledged, because it has remained for far too long.
edit:tl;dr: Rewards are done in a poor manner, and skins are done in a worst manner.
(edited by Lanser.8520)
