Guild Wars 2

Along the road to a personal level of 50 (or more pre-fractured) most will have purchased everything usable from the relic vendor.

Obsidian Shards and Skill points are handy, but an obtuse money maker when other dungeon tokens directly correlate to either ectos or Mystic Forge exotic precursor rolls.

And collection progression.

Those that have been doggedly attacking top-tier Fractals have had their rewards obfuscated, bugged, or simply un-implemented for a long time. Fractal weapons basically did not drop at 50 most recently, weapon boxes only drop at un-implemented difficulties, progress was reset…

…Fractal veterans have had the short end of the stick and no communication regarding it. The rewards have been bugged for a year or simply removed briefly with a reset. We should at least get something we can do to turn these giant piles of tokens into some gold.

Skillpoints are going to become much nicer to have a consistent source of.

Yes please….

You can buy ascended rings with them. I think that is enough reward for fractals considering normal dungeons give you no ascended.

xDudisx.5914:

You can buy ascended rings with them. I think that is enough reward for fractals considering normal dungeons give you no ascended.

Yeah you are so right! /s

spoj.9672:

xDudisx.5914:

You can buy ascended rings with them. I think that is enough reward for fractals considering normal dungeons give you no ascended.

Yeah you are so right! /s

Fractal is already giving way too much rewards right now. You get free 20 slot bags, dozens of ascended rings, can buy obsidian sharts, one of the highest changes to get ascended chests and unique skins. Also get gold and karma.

Now let’s see normal dungeons: gold and tokens to buy exotics.

Why buff the rewards?
I don’t remember anet saying fractal should be the best reward in the game. It is working as intended.

Yeah dozens of ascended rings worth absolutely nothing. Highest chance for ascended chests except for PvP and every other source of ascended chests. Unique skins which almost never drop and you never get the ones you want. Also you cannot do anything except destroy any duplicate skins.

Normal dungeons have gold and tokens which can be turned into more gold. So yeah dungeon rewards are far superior. And dungeons take between 3 and 15 minutes. Whereas fractals at the higher levels take about 40-50 mins on a good run. Hmmmmmmmm.

xDudisx.5914:

spoj.9672:

xDudisx.5914:

You can buy ascended rings with them. I think that is enough reward for fractals considering normal dungeons give you no ascended.

Yeah you are so right! /s

Fractal is already giving way too much rewards right now. You get free 20 slot bags, dozens of ascended rings, can buy obsidian sharts, one of the highest changes to get ascended chests and unique skins. Also get gold and karma.

Now let’s see normal dungeons: gold and tokens to buy exotics.

Why buff the rewards?
I don’t remember anet saying fractal should be the best reward in the game. It is working as intended.

lol

So some of the toughest PVE should be less rewarding than mindlessly plinking range damage at bosses in SW… yeah, makes sense…

spoj.9672:

Yeah dozens of ascended rings worth absolutely nothing. Highest chance for ascended chests except for PvP and every other source of ascended chests. Unique skins which almost never drop and you never get the ones you want. Also you cannot do anything except destroy any duplicate skins.

Normal dungeons have gold and tokens which can be turned into more gold. So yeah dungeon rewards are far superior. And dungeons take between 3 and 15 minutes. Whereas fractals at the higher levels take about 40-50 mins on a good run. Hmmmmmmmm.

i think i get pink chests from fractals more frequently than pvp, normalized for time spent ofc.

dungeons give you liquid cash. fractals gives you expensive things you may not want. whether its worth it depends on your long term goals.

Taku.6352:

Yes please….

you are short in karma. That is presume you actually use it.

I burned through my 30 million karma. Wont’ mind to use the fractal relics to get more karma.

I think the problem is fractal rewards good karma, but many people dont’ need it. Skill point might be hard to come by in the future. Those relics might be useful.

laokoko.7403:

Taku.6352:

Yes please….

you are short in karma. That is presume you actually use it.

I burned through my 30 million karma. Wont’ mind to use the obsidian shard to get more karma.

I think the problem is fractal rewards good karma, but many people dont’ need it. Skill point might be hard to come by in the future. Those relics might be useful.

I use up my karma roughly every 2 weeks, got roughly 1500 obsidian shards in my bank and 8 legendaries. Doing 20/30/40/50 every day gives me more karma than I could ever use.

Karma can be turned into linen scraps, cotton, etc. You also get gold at the end of the fractal.

Given how much time fractals take compared to dungeons, the gold at the end is a joke. Karma can make up a bit for it (as you say, you can turn karma into gold), but not all the way (especially if you’re doing 50 and not getting any karma!). The ascended chests and fractal skins are too rng-dependent, given their drop rates: the chances you’ll get the stats/skin you want are very low. You quickly get everything you need with relics and rings, after which they pile up uselessly.

Of course, fractal rewards shouldn’t massively outstrip everything else. But it’d be nice if all the useless stuff (relics, rings, unwanted skins, items with unwanted stats) turned into useful stuff.

insanemaniac.2456:

spoj.9672:

Yeah dozens of ascended rings worth absolutely nothing. Highest chance for ascended chests except for PvP and every other source of ascended chests. Unique skins which almost never drop and you never get the ones you want. Also you cannot do anything except destroy any duplicate skins.

Normal dungeons have gold and tokens which can be turned into more gold. So yeah dungeon rewards are far superior. And dungeons take between 3 and 15 minutes. Whereas fractals at the higher levels take about 40-50 mins on a good run. Hmmmmmmmm.

i think i get pink chests from fractals more frequently than pvp, normalized for time spent ofc.

dungeons give you liquid cash. fractals gives you expensive things you may not want. whether its worth it depends on your long term goals.

Well ive heard that ascended chests drop more at lower levels. As someone that does 50’s regularly. I can say without a doubt the rewards are beyond terrible. Noone gets skins, noone gets ascended boxes. Everyone gets either a ring they have 5000 of already (often uninfused) or nothing at all. And then in the boss chest we would be lucky to get a single rare and maybe a cheap glacial core.

And then you also have to remember that endgame content that rewards you stuff that you dont need and cant do anything with is a bit messed up. Getting a bad stat combo armour box or your next useless ring only takes up a bank slot or gives you a couple of silver. This is repeatable content which should be rewarding to hardcore players no matter what.

We should be able to do things with the rewards we get. So give us ascended salvaging or up the vendor price on rings and armour boxes. Give us the option to spend relics to trade in our unwanted rewards for different rewards. Then we might be able to agree the rewards arent bad. Oh and make the gold reward between the tiers noticeably different. Fractal 50 giving 30s more than a fractal 10 is a huge joke.

spoj.9672:

And then you also have to remember that endgame content that rewards you stuff that you dont need and cant do anything with is a bit messed up.

Just to emphasize this point, even Anet used to recognize that “loot drop systems that require doing a dungeon with a tiny chance the item you want can drop at the end” are bad. And the original dungeons didn’t give us loot systems like that. But for some reason the dungeons added after release (fractals, aetherpath) did.

I would be content with Fractal rewards if I could choose which stats I get from ascended rings and chests and which skin I get.
I understand that some people perceive Fractals to be very rewarding when veterans link the 20 ascended healers chests they have in their bank. These people have to realise that these items are completely, 100% worthless for any ambitious PvE only player who uses berserkers and assassins gear exclusively.
Doing the hardest content in the game only to get something you might as well destroy when the same group can probably do a full CM run in 20 minutes feels underwhelming.
It would be interesting to calculate whether it’s faster getting 20 slot boxes and backpieces from Fractals as opposed to dungeon running. Dungeons give so much loot if you account for the exotic insignias and the ecto you get from tokens plus they have a guaranteed gold reward that is actually pretty decent.

xDudisx.5914:

spoj.9672:

xDudisx.5914:

You can buy ascended rings with them. I think that is enough reward for fractals considering normal dungeons give you no ascended.

Yeah you are so right! /s

Fractal is already giving way too much rewards right now. You get free 20 slot bags, dozens of ascended rings, can buy obsidian sharts, one of the highest changes to get ascended chests and unique skins. Also get gold and karma.

Now let’s see normal dungeons: gold and tokens to buy exotics.

Why buff the rewards?
I don’t remember anet saying fractal should be the best reward in the game. It is working as intended.

I disagree with " fractals giving too much rewards right now " ALTHOUGH, I will agree that the rewards are fine.

Sarahfull.4930:

snip

So you don’t think that all the useless rings, chests and skins in combination with the meager monetary rewards are underwhelming? (It’s an honest question and in no way condescending/aggressive/negative/to be interpreted as ad hominem)

I would love more useful rewards as well. Sure, there are nice rewards available, but the complete reliance on RNG is off-putting, to say the least. Having fractal skins and ascended gear available in exchange for pristine relics would make me do fractals on a daily basis again.

Veydar.5017:

Sarahfull.4930:

snip

So you don’t think that all the useless rings, chests and skins in combination with the meager monetary rewards are underwhelming? (It’s an honest question and in no way condescending/aggressive/negative/to be interpreted as ad hominem)

Nope, I dont believe the fotm rewards are underwhelming.

While I can agree with everyone that you should get infused rings not normal rings at higher levels. Yes for me the rings are just sell-able loot although, I am thinking of making a assassians outfit so Ill be on the look out for those rings so I dont sell them.

As for the skins. I’m a engi so I cant use them and I have the skins I want anyway so they are all " useless " my peoples terms here. I collect then though like a personal collection so I enjoy getting them.

As for the chests, well.. Im a beserker player so that is the stats I like. I do like the ascended artisan achivement so Im workig slowly towards that with the chest I get. Yes I do go " aww :< " when I get another glove chest but thats the luck of the draw and waiting for it is ok with me.

Sarah

The rings are worth 5 silver thats not even worth vendoring. They are completely useless to anyone that does regular fractals as they should have stockpiles of them already.

The skins are totally useless when you get something like your 3rd fractal scepter. All they do is take up bank space. Before when they were statless exotics we had to use transmutation stones to put the skin on a weapon but at the least we could salvage them for exotics if we didnt need them. Now we cant even do that. I dont have any use for my stockpile of fractal skins. Id like to be able to do something with them.

As someone said before. The rewards are pretty good for new players. The problem is fractals are endgame content for hardcore players. They should be rewarding for hardcore players.

spoj.9672:

The rings are worth 5 silver thats not even worth vendoring. They are completely useless to anyone that does regular fractals as they should have stockpiles of them already.

The skins are totally useless when you get something like your 3rd fractal scepter. All they do is take up bank space. Before when they were statless exotics we had to use transmutation stones to put the skin on a weapon but at the least we could salvage them for exotics if we didnt need them. Now we cant even do that. I dont have any use for my stockpile of fractal skins. Id like to be able to do something with them.

As someone said before. The rewards are pretty good for new players. The problem is fractals are endgame content for hardcore players. They should be rewarding for hardcore players.

Well thats up to you. I do fractals regularly and I vendor mine so I dont have a stockpile. True having an option to make fracral skins exotic, I like that.

The fractal rewards are to help for later fractals ( for the most part ) its just everyone reached the top really fast and I think this will always be a problem.

Sarahfull.4930:

The fractal rewards are to help for later fractals ( for the most part ) its just everyone reached the top really fast and I think this will always be a problem.

There are plenty of better ways to design the rewards so that this isn’t a problem.

To get back to what the OP was saying, if we could buy skins with tokens we we would at least be making constant progress and fractal runs in which you don’t get a useful skin wouldn’t be a complete waste. Right now the chance of getting for example the daggers is equal for someone doing his 1st level 50 fractal and someone doing his 1000th. The latter just had more dice rolls.
And yes like spoj is saying, and I agree with that, fractals are the closest to hardcore pve endgame content we have, so their rewards shouldn’t be scaled to new players. I have a gazillion rings and I’ve completed the ascended armor collection long ago so a fractal run in which I get a scepter skin or a healers chest is a complete and utter waste of my time.

Potential extra uses for Fractal Relics/Pristine Fractal Relics:

- Fractal weapons/weapon skins.

- Ascended Earrings (most expensive at 40 laurels and 50 ectoplasm, yet not as powerful as amulets/rings stat wise.)

- Ascended weapon/armor recipes.

That being said, it would also help if Fractals were actually fun and challenging in a good way instead of all the cheap gimmicks they usually throw at you.

I’ve come to a point where I wished I could throw 4 random ascended rings at Zommoros for a guaranteed infused ring with RNG stats…we could at least gamble with all the surplus…

Otherwise: Haven’t done as many fractals as most of the guys/gals here I still think the weapon skins should be buyable for relics/pristine relics, also Asc. Earrings would be a nice addition as well as recipes.

I am getting more ascended chests from eotm per month than from fractals in total. If I counted right I had 5 or 6 ascended weapon chests and 2 armor chests from eotm this month.
I got 2 ascended weapon chests in total from fractals and I got over 25k leftover tokens.

Toss on “crafting bags” to the fractal merchant for pristines (like the ones from laurel vendors).

Toss on “supply bags” like the “bag of stolen goods” that you see in silverwastes for bandit crests for normal relics.

Boom, you have a way to spend your supply of relics to pull money out, increasing the reward for fractals in general.

That’d be enough to make me quite happy.

Sarah, while I don’t really disagree in that I have no real problem with the rewards, personally speaking, it’s basically because I find them fun to do and don’t really give a hoot about the rewards. Objectively speaking with respect to the relative value of the rewards for your time compared to other avenues of play, it really is pretty bad, again though, personally not a problem, i get some rewards and I play something I find fun. But there are a lot of things that simply go to waste and are “rewards” but aren’t helpful.

When you look at Dungeon tokens, you can always spend your superluous tokens on rares/exotics and drain some gold out of that, not so with relics or rings. Giving us ways to do that would go pretty far to increase the rewards for fractals, which again, objectively with respect to other game modes are lacking.

Another ridiculous thing is you can get a fractal spoon now (basically a middle finger at players when they see an exotic chest drop) worth 10s. An exotic piece of junk worth 10s compared to ascended rings worth less than 5s. I’d love to convert all my rings to Spoons and double the silver income from them.

I’ve always advocated for 4 rings into MF to make something. Maybe even something like
3 infused rings and 250 Pristine relics to make an accessory.
1000 fractal relics for a weapon skin of your choice.
1000 fractal relics + 250 pristine relics + 20g for an ascended box of your choice.

I wouldn’t want to be able to get fractal skins with relics, but having upwards of 65k relics i would love these to be useful apart from buying skill points.

In my opinion this is what they should have done a kittening year ago at least do…

Rings:

a) Increase rarity of both infused and uninfused rings by a debatable amount, but give them a vendor value of 10x so it would be ~50s instead of ~5s.

b) Allow any uninfused or infused ring to be forged with an exotic essence of luck into a guaranteed infused ring. no guarantee of which ring it would be, just a guarantee of it being infused.

Pristine Relics:

a) Open up a third vendor tab option on that one golem that sells every fractal skin for (50/75/100) pristine relics each. This way it would ensure that it would take a lot of fotm to get the skin(s) that you want. The amount of pristines it should cost are up for debate but in my opinion any higher than 100 sounds obscene and any lower than 50 sounds even worse.

b) Kind of goes with the above, but also sell the fractal tonic for perhaps 250 pristines.

Oh hell why am I even bothering to type this.

Anet doesn’t care.

Purple Miku.7032:

Anet doesn’t care.

i think they care, but theyve certainly been deaf since fractured.

Buying skins for pristine relics is a bad idea.

serenke.4806:

Buying skins for pristine relics is a bad idea.

Can’t see any reason why. It would allow players that are not blessed by RNG to have a sure way to progress to get the skin they want. If the price was like 75 pristine per skin it would take between bit over 3 months of doing 1 fractal a day to 15 days of doing every possible daily tier.

Relying on RNG rewards is a bad way to lure people especially when it’s time gated and you can get the same stuff over and over without ever getting the one you really want. Even legendaries are easier to get than fractal weapons since you don’t have to rely on a time gated chance to get one skin out of 19, especially after HoT when they bring out precursor collections (provided the collections are not RNG themselves).

I feel like around 50 or so fractal relics maybe 50 for offhands like focus and 60 or 75 for mainhands/ two handed weapons like dagger or greatsword along with a boost to the rng and a box that lets you choose a fractal weapon would make the rewards way better. The fractal skins are some of the best in game and It would be nice to at least have the rng reflect the difficulty i.e. more chance at level 50 than level 40 or 30.

My question is do you think it would be a good idea to be able to sell them on the TP? I dont like that idea because it would mean players farming silverwastes could run around with fractal wep skins….but at the same time many who get lucky at level 10 and get the weapon they want already do. It could be nice considering if you do fractals a lot and get all of the skins or at least the ones you want, you would then be able to sell them to make a fair profit. Im on the fence about it.

It would be great if they could fix fractal rewards so that skins become a mark of experience and skill (Maybe add new skins special to higher levels, kind of like how SAB weps had diff colors) . Nowadays its disheartening to see someone with the skin you want in nomads gear never dodging, knowing they got the skin by luck not by being good at fractals. It’s the only rewards in the game that actual has the potential to be a symbol of a good player instead of just ability to grind/ faceroll

I understand it can be disheartening to get no skin for ages, or to get duplicates. It’s the one time when you do get it that makes up for it.
It’s also stupid when someone gets the skin you wanted on their first run while you didn’t get it for months.

But once you can actually put a price tag on fractal skins (time spent, not gold) they are just worthless because you can get it guaranteed if you just work for it.

“Work for it…”

Getting them guaranteed will turn fractals – the only place which is not afflicted by this – into something resembling a regular workplace.

Bottom line is, do fractals because you enjoy doing it, because you do it with friends or guildies and when you get that skin, be happy. Don’t turn it into a second job.

Guaranteed rewards encourage more players to experience the content. That can only be a good thing.

Anyway as far as im concerned. Rewards should have the option to be monetized. I have no need for anymore ascended trinkets. And the only use for ascended armour boxes and weapons i have is if i happen to get raiders and its something other than gloves (only need medium ascended armour at this point). Ive got almost all fractal skins i want. So i have no use for those either. If i could trade in unwanted rewards for relics. And then buy things i can make money with from those relics. I would be happy.

And i dont think buying fractal skins or the tonic is an issue (it makes the rewards representative of someone who has actually spent a lot of time doing fractals rather than who is just super lucky). But i would also just be happy with the fractal weapon box we were supposed to get. Hopefully the rng on getting that isnt totally borked.

One concern raised in the CDI about buying skins with relics was that people who never progress past personal reward level 10 could eventually get all the skins. That’s fixed easily enough by having the merchant only sell skins to people whose personal reward level is 50 or 40+ or whatever, though even those people would then be able to get all the skins by grinding low level fractals. I think some people have a problem with that, although I dunno how many people do.

And yeah, simpler than all of this is to just replace skins with a box that lets you choose a skin (they wouldn’t even have to change the drop rate!). It doesn’t solve the problem of having nothing to do with extra relics/rings, which is the actual topic here, but that problem doesn’t have to be solved with skins.

Higher fractals reward more relics. So i dont see that as a problem. I do agree it might be good to make the vendor require 50+. Or make some items require 50+ (tonic). Or even add a new tier of relic which is only awarded at 50+ which can be broken down into pristine and then again into regular. Then make things like the tonic and fractals skins require that new type of relic. But keep rings and other rewards paid for by pristine and regular relics.

serenke.4806:

But once you can actually put a price tag on fractal skins (time spent, not gold) they are just worthless because you can get it guaranteed if you just work for it.

Why is the a bad thing? This is the goal.

Make the total relics cost approximate the number of runs it would take to get the skins via RNG and you’re not making them worthless at all.

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

serenke.4806:

But once you can actually put a price tag on fractal skins (time spent, not gold) they are just worthless because you can get it guaranteed if you just work for it.

Why is the a bad thing? This is the goal.

Make the total relics cost approximate the number of runs it would take to get the skins via RNG and you’re not making them worthless at all.

expected runs for any single weapon is about 200, expected runs for a random weapon is about 10.. at 41-50

200 is a bit out there imo in terms of cost

I agree with the premise that fractals aren’t rewarding.

Realize that rewarding doesn’t mean in this context that Fractals can’t give out nice things, but that rewarding is not getting a bunch of literal junk or literal nothing or a bunch of random things you can neither control nor work towards in a guaranteed way. This is even further exacerbated by the notion that if you happen to roll “You win a Fractal Skin!”, you then have a 1/19 chance of getting whatever one you’re after. Bundle this up with a significantly lower gold/hour ratio in Fractals compared to dungeons, and you’ve got a real issue.

Imagine if instead of buying dungeon skins with tokens, the tokens just gave you ectos and you had to wait for an RNG chance at the end of every dungeon path to get what you wanted. That would be horrific, and we would be seeing a lot of threads about that being a problem… Except we see precisely zero of those threads because dungeon rewards are reliable and consistently rewarding. Fractals rewards are not.

What actual numbers get used are up for debate, but the core premise that Fractals needs some reward rebalancing is definitely a notion that I agree with.

I disagree,

I would not like to see fractals turn into another coin per hour dungeon. Also being able to " buy " the tonic/skins no.. just no.

Thats all Ill say for now.

Sarahfull.4930:

I disagree,

I would not like to see fractals turn into another coin per hour dungeon. Also being able to " buy " the tonic/skins no.. just no.

Care to explain why? What about more people playing the content for reliable rewards is unappealing to you?

I was thinking about it last night, and now I’m torn a little.

Now maybe this is all because I’m just some dirty kazul, but, the fact that fractals are so unrewarding is kinda nice. I say this as someone who does PUG things, in dungeons often I come across people who simply make it incredibly unfun. The rush for gold and focus on speed because of that has created a bit of a diffrent attitude.

Now that’s not to say I don’t like doing things quickly and efficiently, I do. My problem is when someone takes that to a point that it ruins the fun. And I get it, some people feel that there is no fun to be had in dungeons, that they’re all just boring and repetative and they’re only there for rewards… but that’s exactly my point.

Fractals we don’t have that attitude because anyone there for rewards is pretty dumb. Of course people are after their skins, but you don’t get uppity about being delayed 30s, or at least I haven’t come across people like that yet. I can’t say the same about people in dungeons.

insanemaniac.2456:

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

serenke.4806:

But once you can actually put a price tag on fractal skins (time spent, not gold) they are just worthless because you can get it guaranteed if you just work for it.

Why is the a bad thing? This is the goal.

Make the total relics cost approximate the number of runs it would take to get the skins via RNG and you’re not making them worthless at all.

expected runs for any single weapon is about 200, expected runs for a random weapon is about 10.. at 41-50

200 is a bit out there imo in terms of cost

Pre fractured the drop rate was like 1 in 4 runs at 48. So 4 runs for a random weapon, or 80 for a specific one. Split the different and say 125 pristines for a single weapon of your choice?

My point is there are ways of doing this to rid the dungeon of nasty RNG while still maintaining THE SAME rarity as now.

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

insanemaniac.2456:

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

serenke.4806:

But once you can actually put a price tag on fractal skins (time spent, not gold) they are just worthless because you can get it guaranteed if you just work for it.

Why is the a bad thing? This is the goal.

Make the total relics cost approximate the number of runs it would take to get the skins via RNG and you’re not making them worthless at all.

expected runs for any single weapon is about 200, expected runs for a random weapon is about 10.. at 41-50

200 is a bit out there imo in terms of cost

Pre fractured the drop rate was like 1 in 4 runs at 48. So 4 runs for a random weapon, or 80 for a specific one. Split the different and say 125 pristines for a single weapon of your choice?

My point is there are ways of doing this to rid the dungeon of nasty RNG while still maintaining THE SAME rarity as now.

/shrug i think good cases could be made for any of 20, 25, 50, 75, 100, 125 since those are all nice ocd numbers

(for 20/25, you can use the logic that rings cost 10, and while they require an upgrade, theres also a larger pool of rings to rng from so selecting 1 is really valuable and priced accordingly)

Rising Dusk.2408:

Sarahfull.4930:

I disagree,

I would not like to see fractals turn into another coin per hour dungeon. Also being able to " buy " the tonic/skins no.. just no.

Care to explain why? What about more people playing the content for reliable rewards is unappealing to you?

I would LOVE to see more people do fractals, it would be awesome!

I believe the reason why the fractal skins/tonic are so rare is, the fact you cant buy them. This is what adds to the excitement and disappointment when you finally get one. Everyone wouldn’t be as excited if you got one from buying it as someone else who just got it as a RNG drop. I do however, say that a chest in this day and age would be better although I would group up the skins and put them in different chest so its still a little RNG ( for example: melee, range, underwater fractal skin chest ).

Not everything needs to compete for reliable rewards per hour. There should be things that aren’t so " rewarding " as others, so I don’t see why fractals needs to compete against dungeons. If you want that all important coin per hour go do a second dungeon tour or do silverwaste. I’m sure that " late-game content " isn’t always the most efficient farm out there for other games too.

Speaking of rewards, fractals gives you ascended stuff so you can go higher, I believe this is the goal that anet tried to aim for. The fact that people have farmed so much that they are stockpiling these rewards was overlooked by anet.

I was thinking of a use for the extra stuff with what I think anet’s goal is, and I came up with this: All ascended stuff ( rings, armor, weapons etc ) can be salvaged but they all salvage down into like a fractal metal ( while the armor and weapons would salvage for normal stuff as well ). This would pull all ascended stuff into one material, and now that its just one material you can make alternate recipes for all ascended recipes using this new material, so you could loop them back into ascended things that you needed.

I want to be able to buy 1power/1 AR infusions that can be combined to be more powerful stats(2^n-1). Considering that it cost me 1500g to get 12 +5power infusions for my thief. I basically have reached a point where I have nothing I want to buy now and a stats reward would be nice.