Guild Wars 2

Well.. something that the t4 does award is ascended mats..

I’m not complaining too much when I get a elonian leather or bolt of D.

Well, I have now done T4 every single day since the change and received 0 ascended armour and 1 ascended weapon. That’s 1 asc weapon and 0 armour from 90 T4 and 90 T3 chests. So either my account is flagged, rewards are seriously nerfed, or the RNG system has a fundamental flaw.

Assuming a 7% drop chance (as per on the KING data thread), yes it seems you were a bit unlucky. Of course, if my binomial distribution math is not rusty, there is also around 9.8% probability to get exactly 1 chest out of 90 tries with 7% drop rate. So while it’s not likely to happen, it’s not that outlandish either.

RNG being RNG, while you have a lower than expected drop rate, some lucky guy out there is counting his sixth chest in a week.

I imagine the coding would be a nightmare, but it sure would be nice if we got RNG modifiers when we went abnormally long periods of time without getting a rare drop.

Actually your binomial distribution maths is a bit rusty it appears. Chance of exactly one drop in 90 tries with 8.9% drop rate [the KING figure I could find on their reddit thread] is 0.0019 – or approx 2 in a thousand. Now I guess that means that for every thousand players there are likely to be two of us, which means 200 of us if we assume 100k players are active and doing three T4 every day. And 2 people who have got nothing at all. This, I guess, at the very least leads us to option 3 in my above post. The system, by its very nature, does not balance out in the end for a small number of people.

Whoops, missed one zero there. It was 0.0098 instead of 0.098. My bad :P I used 7% because on the forum thread there is someone who calculates it at 7%, but it apparently is for armors only (excluding weapons), so 0.0019 is likely correct.

Back to the point, yeah, by the nature of RNG it does not balance out for people in the outliers. By nature, again, it does not keep track of historical data. The system doesnt care that we have gotten 89 drops in a row of bad drops. It only knows that the next crate we open has 8.9% chance of ascended box.

It’s a bit hard to figure out an alternative, though. Should the system keep track of each drop, labeling each as ‘good drops’ and ‘bad drops’, and after each drop, add a chance to get ‘good drop’ to players who get ‘bad drops’ and reduce the chance for players who already get ‘good drops’?

This will be a nightmare to keep track of, with each player having different drop chance for each kind of container. In the end, I think the RNG system is there because it’s the easiest available option.

Well I can see how one might think that either the maths or the programming are complex, but they are certainly not beyond Anet. There are three areas in which the RNG can hit hard – fractal chests, RAID chests and MF rolls. So really not that many things to keep track of. Against this consider the implementation of diminishing returns. Although Anet have never released exact details of how this works, it is known that the system keeps track of each character’s participation in each of the dungeons, each of the world bosses, each of the world map areas and per each type of mob, reducing drop rates and odds of loot until it reaches zero, and then slowly unwinds this according to some formula that tracks ‘alternative’ participation. All this to stop botting – fair enough. I would respectfully suggest that implementing a system on the 3 major reward areas whereby each account’s odds start a little lower and increment slowly as they roll unsuccessfully, then resetting on a successful roll, is a great deal less complicated than the system they already have in place for DR.

Limiting it to just Raid and Fractal chests does limit the scope a lot. If it’s possible to do so, it’s an interesting idea at least. People will still get shafted by RNG, but prolly this will reduce it.

However, as with all changes to existing systems, we don’t know about the existing system in place, and whether it will be a big effort to change it.

Maybe it’s just me… but the T4 chest mostly consists of ascended material, dyes, or ascended salvage kits. Most of my better drops comes from T3 and T2 chests. For example today I did only one T4 and the results were: 1 T4 chest, 3 each of T3, T2, T1 chests…. T4 gives me bolt of damask. 2 T3 chests provided 1 ascended armor and 1 ascended weapon. 1 T2 provided another ascended armor. So my armor set is finally complete. I probably only do fractals every other day or less. My experience seems to point to T4 not really worth doing?

Is a vial of linseed oil considered a T7 mat? If so, wtf! I have gotten 3 of those so far.

dragon.8071:

Maybe it’s just me… but the T4 chest mostly consists of ascended material, dyes, or ascended salvage kits. Most of my better drops comes from T3 and T2 chests. For example today I did only one T4 and the results were: 1 T4 chest, 3 each of T3, T2, T1 chests…. T4 gives me bolt of damask. 2 T3 chests provided 1 ascended armor and 1 ascended weapon. 1 T2 provided another ascended armor. So my armor set is finally complete. I probably only do fractals every other day or less. My experience seems to point to T4 not really worth doing?

Anyone looking at a small sample size is bound to have streaks of good or bad luck. So it’s not very meaningful to talk about your master’s chest results for one day or even a couple of weeks. That’s why groups like [KING] keep track of everyone’s drops and collate the results.

Rhea Ravenseeker.7105:

Well, I have now done T4 every single day since the change and received 0 ascended armour and 1 ascended weapon. That’s 1 asc weapon and 0 armour from 90 T4 and 90 T3 chests. So either my account is flagged, rewards are seriously nerfed, or the RNG system has a fundamental flaw.

Based on my simulation, about one person in 20-30,000 will see a streak of 90 T4 fractals in a row without any ascended. So your luck is simply bad. If 100k people do fractals regularly, then someone among them must have worse luck than you.

tl;dr We cannot conclude from your experience that your account is flagged, nor that the loot is seriously nerfed, nor that there’s a fundamental flaw in the system (other than the generic issue with using RNG to reward players).

RNG systems in general have an issue in that someone will be extremely lucky and someone will be extremely unlucky. The only way to reduce such discrepancies is to add a token system, something like what we have for BL chests: chance of a whole ticket is low, but chance of a scrap is pretty high, thus making it much more likely that people can’t open a ton of BL chests without getting at least one ticket or its equivalent.

Fractal loot works vaguely the same, in that we can now get ascended mats, which could be used to create ascended gear. Unfortunately, it’s too rare a drop and it’s split between four mats, so at best, it doesn’t feel as if we’re making progress towards ascended.

I can’t even get a kitten full ascended salvage kit, just single tools. And I’ve got 30+ rings sitting in the bank. I’m not gonna sink 20 gold into clearing my inventory….

The single stack potions are also salt on the wound, that’s just insulting. Rings shouldn’t even be dropping in T3 or T4 chests to begin with.

Na, firstly the numbers you produce are pretty well the numbers I have already stated, so no addition there.
Re: no fundamental flaw apart from RNG itself, my point exactly.
Re: the “Only way to reduce such discrepancies ….” – actually it’s not the only way, I have clearly outlined an alternative way above. Please read the posts more carefully.

Zenith.7301:

I can’t even get a kitten full ascended salvage kit, just single tools. And I’ve got 30+ rings sitting in the bank. I’m not gonna sink 20 gold into clearing my inventory….

I think only the single tools drop. I’ve never seen anyone get a full kit.

Just vendor the rings. On average, I break even salvaging them so now I vendor all non-infused rings.

I got a full kit twice out of fracs. It definitely drops.

Rhea Ravenseeker.7105:

Na, firstly the numbers you produce are pretty well the numbers I have already stated, so no addition there.
Re: no fundamental flaw apart from RNG itself, my point exactly.
Re: the “Only way to reduce such discrepancies ….” – actually it’s not the only way, I have clearly outlined an alternative way above. Please read the posts more carefully.

I responded as I did because I read the post carefully. The post suggests it’s possible that your account might be flagged or that the loot might have been nerfed. Neither claim stands up to the data.

The statement about the RNG system is ambiguous. As phrased, it implied that there’s something wrong with ANet’s implementation. My point is that there isn’t — it’s working as intended.

If the idea was to suggest that using RNG alone (as ANet does) is always going to produce outlier results, which some people find dispiriting — well, even ANet’s economist agrees that’s a problem. When he’s posted on the topic, he reminds us that it’s not easy to come up with a better system that doesn’t feel grindy, mostly by asking us what that better system would look like. (For example: a lot of HoT rewards are token based, not RNG, but people complain about how grindy they are.)

Regardless, the claim in the OP is that fractal loot was nerfed. I believe the evidence shows that, on the contrary, it’s been increased, for those who do T4 fractals. (Although, since it’s RNG, mileage varies — with low numbers, moderately bad streaks are common and super horrible streaks aren’t that uncommon.)

One aspect of the new loot that could make it appear to be nerfed is the inclusion of some really bad drops to the loot table. If you get a lot of those on a given day, it definitely feels like it’s worse than it was before.

I’ve had days like that. 3 single stack potions, 2 tomes of knowledge and a single mystic coin, out of my 3 tier 4 and 3 tier 3 chests. Nothing good out of the tier 2 and tier 1 chests. (As is to be expected.)

Conversely, I’ve had a day that gave me a weapon chest, an armor chest, a golden fractal longbow (hadn’t unlocked that one yet), an ascended accessory (berserker!) and 2 infused rings that salvaged into a total of 34 matrices, using the 20 charge tool I got a day earlier.

If they’d get rid of the really bad stuff, like the aforementioned tomes and single stack potions, giving the standard Stabilizing Matrix instead of them, it would improve people’s feelings about this new loot a lot, I’m sure.

Yeah, they just need to remove the garbage items like tomes of knowledge, single stack potions, and ascended rings out of the loot table.

I’d rather they just convert those to t6 mats/lodestones to take their place even.

I’d even take cloth/leather/wood/metal low tier material bags containinng like 10 of two low level mats.

Sorry Na, seems I have to repeat myself …
You assert that, and I quote “The only way to reduce such discrepancies is to add a token system ….” and you seem to hold to this in your later post.
Referring to my post you refuse to read, “… whereby each account’s odds start a little lower and increment slowly as they roll unsuccessfully, then resetting on a successful roll ….” is, in my opinion, at least a valid alternative. One which retains some elements of RNG, avoids the “grindy” elements he is keen to avoid, but helps to alleviate the pain felt by outliers.
I have also conceded the following “This, I guess, at the very least leads us to option 3 in my above post” and my intention, whilst seemingly ambiguous to you, is to tackle the design flaw, rather than assert an implementation flaw.

Five days on and I continue to await an ascended drop with bated breath …

Zenith.7301:

The single stack potions are also salt on the wound, that’s just insulting. Rings shouldn’t even be dropping in T3 or T4 chests to begin with.

Regular rings should only be T1 drops. Infused rings should only be T2 drops. Rings should be pulled from the T3 and T4 loot tables completely.

Just removing drops won’t change anything, because these now missing percentages would simply be added to the “you get nothing”-chance.

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

Just removing drops won’t change anything, because these now missing percentages would simply be added to the “you get nothing”-chance.

You get something. Not ascended but those percentages get added to actually valuable loot instead of worthless rings or single stack potions.

Zenith.7301:

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

Just removing drops won’t change anything, because these now missing percentages would simply be added to the “you get nothing”-chance.

You get something. Not ascended but those percentages get added to actually valuable loot instead of worthless rings or single stack potions.

Says who?
The only ones to decide that are the devs working on that and if they decide removing the “bad” drops and adding their droprates to the “nothing”-droprate, then it won’t make any difference whatsoever and to be honest, I really doubt they’d further increase the droprates of the good loot as they are pretty good already.

Fractal rewards are considerably better from my perspective, 1 to 3 boxes dropping for a group per daily. Even without box drops you can get ascended materials now which is miles better than the nothing you would get before the changes.

Over a month of T3 and T4 fractals, and I must conclude that my RNG just sucks. Always someone in my party who gets a golden skin or an ascended mat or a weapon/armor box. Highlight of my last week was an ascended accessory. Yippee!

In my earlier post I meant that regular and ascended rings should be removed from T3 and T4 loot tables, and odds of other loot should be improved. The reason being that most people who are doing fractals at that level already have 50+ rings in the bank and don’t need more.

Well i Quit fractals for now because: harder then in past to pug (and don’t give me this ‘guild’ solution, just doesn’t work for everyone).

That and for a month almost all t4 fractals gave me NO ascended apart from materials. Not even infused rings. Sorry but then it ain’t worth it.

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

Well i Quit fractals for now because: harder then in past to pug (and don’t give me this ‘guild’ solution, just doesn’t work for everyone).

That and for a month almost all t4 fractals gave me NO ascended apart from materials. Not even infused rings. Sorry but then it ain’t worth it.

Join groups with 1-2 necros and enjoy being carried. T4 fracs are easier than one month ago (release patch of Tiers).

Honestly, T4 is the easiest tier to pug. 9 times out of 10, everyone in the party is a real pro. It’s T2 and T3 where I had the most problems with pugs not knowing how to play.

Yeah, I definitely have a much better time pugging T4 than any other kind of content. The ascended gear and agony gates work surprisingly well as a noob filter.

Just sucks that I had to sink so much time and gold into gearing up for content that barely rewards me for my effort at all.

Osu.6307:

Honestly, T4 is the easiest tier to pug. 9 times out of 10, everyone in the party is a real pro. It’s T2 and T3 where I had the most problems with pugs not knowing how to play.

Speak for yourself.

I just came out of a Cliffside+Underground Facility T4 (90+) with a 166 mastery Dragonhunter who camped his godkitten longbow just outside melee the entire godkitten time.

I don’t know where these people come from, how they make it so far up to T4 and 166 mastery by just playing terrible builds.

I also had to endure him for pretty long because our group was druid+necro+DH+thief+me (the chronomancer), so we had no real might stacking and while nothing took us below 90% health thanks to that druid, everything died like a century later.

I wish they’d expand might sharing to classes like power necromancer/reaper, restore ranger’s ability to might/fury stack by unnerfing clarion bond and heal as one, and put mesmer’s might stack/sharing not on Chaos but rather on Inspiration or Illusions.

Hell, I’d take it even in Domination or Dueling where our grandmasters are all worthless in PvE.

I did say 9 times out of 10.

Everyone has a fractal horror story. I try to improve my odds of having a good group by trying to join diverse groups, when possible. Being a PS Warr, whenever I look for groups in the lfg tool, I try to avoid groups that already have one. I also avoid groups that have 2 or more of a single class. It’s not foolproof, but I think it helps.

Hi all,
This is my first post ever. Until now I only read the Forum. But in this moment I’m worried that the Fractals will become the next Dungeons in regard of rewards (despite the A Net statement that the post HoT end game will be the Raid and the Fractals).
The OP’s question was: " Fractal loot nerfed?" I will use only the ascendant armor drop as reference (this can become too long and boring by comparing all the other drops)
What we can see in the KING tables:
1. Pre Hot launch, the drop rate of armors:
Lvl 50 – 11,9% / Lvl 40 – 6,9% / Lvl 30 – 4,2% lvl 20 – 3,7%
2. Pre 19.04.2016 patch:
Champion – 11,4 / Veteran – 1,2%
3. Actual drop rate:
Master – 2,9% / Expert – 2,7 %
As you can see, the actual highest tier of reward gives you a smaller chance of ascendant armor than a lvl 20 tier fractal pre HoT. I won’t speak here of how easy or how hard is now a Champion lvl fractal compared with the highest tier in the past. But judging by the ascendant armor/weapons the drop rates only, I can see that the drop was not nerfed. The drop was almost destroyed. I don’t think the “replacements” as 1xGlob of Ectoplasm or 1xFractal Potion can make someone happy. Not even the ascendant mats – you can have ONE from a chest. A complete piece of ascendant armor usually needs several Damask + several Elonian.
I used to do fractals every day. But now I stopped doing this. With a PUG you need about 1 hour to complete all the 3 fractals on the +75 scale (this is valid for my case, I’m sure that other more skilled players can pug this lvl in less time. But I know cases when some players needed more than 1 hour) . For the actual reward, wasting 1 hour from my time is not worthy.
A Net statement was: " The Veteran tier reward was a little bit lowered. The Champion tier reward was buffed." The result of this buff: the ascendant drop rate for armors is now 2,9% instead of +11% in the past.
I think a clear explanation of A Net of what they means by “buffed rewards” is needed.

Thanks for reading.

@Cristalyan
I think your interpretation of the data is a bit misleading. Remember, before the April patch we used to get 1 chest for finishing x3 T4 fractals. Now we get 12 chests for x3 T4 fractals, with 6 of them having a chance for an ascended chest. So you cannot directly compare the raw numbers.

Illconceived made a valiant effort at explaining it… I’m not good at statistical analysis so you should have a read for yourself:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Tiered-Fractal-Rewards-collated-KING-data/6149258

As above.

Remember that pre-HOT we only get 1 Level 50 fractal chest at 11.9% asc drop for 4 fractals run (as we only get them after the boss fractal). Pre 19 April we only get 1 champ daily fractal chest at 11.4% asc drop after 3 runs.

Now we have 1 T4, 1 T3, 1 T2, 1 T1 chest after 1 run. As per calculated in the thread referred, it’s around 8.9% percent chance to get Ascended (weapon or armor) or around 7% chance of Ascended armor. While it is less than the champ fractal box before, remember that it’s only 1 run, and we can do up to 3 daily fractal runs per day now. So for the comparable number of runs (3), we now have 3 chest at 7% each compared to 1 chest at 11% each.

If the data is correct (and the sample size is significant), we have a much better chance for ascended chest per number of fractals run now, somewhat up to 19.5% chance of ascended armor per 3 daily T4 (bigger if you count weapons too).

@zakaruchi4086.
Before HoT we got 5 (five) chests (from Fractal 50/40/30/30/10), four of them having the following ascendant drop rate: 11,9% / 6,9% , 4,2%, 3,7%. The last chest (lvl 10) is not worth counting. Now you get 3 (three) chests with a 2,9% and 3 (three) chests with a 2,7% chance. I cannot see the 7% chance you see.
I prefer to have a 100% chance of drop chest rather than 100 chests with a 1% chance each.
And now: This is not a discussion about the efficiency of doing fractals. Nobody forces you to do all 3 fractals every day. You can do only 1. Or you can do 3 /+75 fractals. Or you can do each fractal from daily. This means 12 fractals. This is not necessary a very normal approach, but it is possible. So – 12 runs = 12 chests. Only 6 drop ascendant at a rate lower of 3%. Compare with what you had before from 12 runs on the high tier fractals before HoT.

The math is on this thread. Check out the math by Ayrilana or Illconceived. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Tiered-Fractal-Rewards-collated-KING-data/6149258

Basically, for every one Fractal T4 daily run, you get 4 chests (T4,T3,T2,T1). At 2.9, 2.5, 0.8, 0.5 percent chance of armor (lets discount weapon for a bit) each. You can calculate (roughly) the chance of getting at least one ascended armor chest from these 4 by calculating the chance of not getting anything from each chest.

Chance of not getting anything = 97.1 * 97.5 * 99.2 * 99.5 = 93.4% of not getting any ascended armor from one fractal T4 daily run.

This means 100-93.4 = 6.6% of getting ascended armor chest from ONE fractal T4 daily run (4 chests). This hasnt taken into account weapons which push it to around 8-9% percent. And rememebr this is only one fractal stage.

Basically with this new approach, you get more chance per actual fractal stage run. 11.9% from four stage (pre-HoT) compared to 6.6% from one stage. Binomial distribution puts the chance of >=1 asc armor chests dropping at around 18.5% from three daily runs at 6.6% each(3 stage).

However, it’s true that now you can only run 3 times per day with decent chance of ascended (the dailies).

If you used to run Daily 50-40-30 for 12 total fractal stages daily, then yes, the expected number of asc chests you get daily is less than before.