Guild Wars 2

Let me preface this whole thing by saying this: I thoroughly enjoy the Fractals of the Mists. I enjoy the setting of each Fractal, the difficulty as you progress, and the encounters, with only a couple notable issues; the Dredge Powersuit past Rank 10 can go die in a fire, and the Giant Jellyfish is a boring and overly lengthy fight even when you drag him around to the electrified cages.

Now for the issue. It has become apparent to a number of players that something should be done about the issue involving getting Agony Resistance gear through RNG.

As it stands, once you reach Rank 10 in the Fractals, the end boss of each Fractal begins casting Agony on a random player (or players if people are too close together). Agony can’t be removed (it can be dodged if you are paying close attention), and the only way to reduce it’s damage is from Infused gear. The only way to obtain Infused gear is entirely based on RNG.

This is a huge problem. It’s holding players back from progressing efficiently into further difficulties in the Fractals. Sure you can do it, but you’ll die more frequently than a player who’s luck has favored him/her and they’ve been able to acquire Vials and/or Rings. It’s starting to feel a lot like early WotLK WoW (basically before Icecrown Citadel) where if you didn’t farm the same Raid over and over to get the full Tier set, you weren’t often wanted in the next Tier of raiding.

If you get lucky between Fractals 1-9 and get a Vial of Condensed Mist Essence to drop, you can craft yourself a new back piece with an Infusion Slot before reaching Rank 10 and Agony. You can get the Vial after Rank 9 but by that time you want the back piece and you’re negatively effecting your group by not having it. After that, every even difficulty Rank from 10 on you can possibly get an Ascended Ring from the Bonus Chest when you beat the Jade Maw. The ring RNG issue is twofold though; first you have to get a ring and then you have to hope it’s the ring that fits your build and gear. It’s not right that we should have to equip an Ascended Ring with stats that don’t fit us, in order to have Agony resistance, at the cost of lower stats in our spec, nor should we have to acquire new gear and change our traits around to match the Ascended Ring’s stats.

The issue needs resolving. Here are my thoughts on how to do this.

• Add the Vial of Condensed Mist Essence to the Fractal token vendor for 50 or 100 Tokens.
• Add the Ascended Rings to the Fractal token vendor, for say 500 Tokens.
• Remove the Account Bound restriction on the Rings/Vials so they can be sold (I am against this because people will want far too much for them)
• Allow the Rings to be traded to the Fractal token vendor along with Tokens, for the Ring that fits your stats
• Allow the Rings to be placed in the Mystic Forge along with the proper T6 mats (NOT 250….stop using that number) to change it to the ring you want.

It really boils down to this: RNG should not effect a players ability to efficiently progress in a dungeon.

Only real issue I have is the double RNG on rings. Vials have a decent enough drop rate, if you’re tagging things in fractals, you’ll have 1 by the time you get to 9 (I had 5, and nobody in my guild progressed beyond 9 before finding at least 1).

However, the rings.

I’ve had 2 rings drop for me. Neither one was for my build, but I equipped them anyway because I needed more agony resist at 20+. I’ve only had 2 rings drop from the daily after doing it 5 times, and I have yet to get anything from the T3 daily (only done that one twice).

So, I’ve had 2 rings drop, they’re terrible for my build, but I’m forced to use them to survive agony attacks in T3.

Why is it that every other dungeon utilizes tokens so that gear with your stats can be purchased, but that idea got tossed out the window on fractals? Have the daily drop a “Ring Token” that can be used to purchase the ring you want from a new ring vendor in the fractal area. Have it be the same drop rate as current rings if you want to keep them rare, but at least let us choose the stats we want on our rings.

Also, please add an MF recipe to upgrade rings. thx.

TheRabbit.9478:

Only real issue I have is the double RNG on rings. Vials have a decent enough drop rate, if you’re tagging things in fractals, you’ll have 1 by the time you get to 9 (I had 5, and nobody in my guild progressed beyond 9 before finding at least 1).

That’s just it. The RNG effects that as well. I have run over 60 Fractals, tagged and looted so much stuff I’ve had Fractal runs where all of my 20 slot bags are full, without collectibles to deposit and not one Vial. A group I frequently run with pre-Rank 10 all have at least 3 Vials. I’m wearing MF Gear, they aren’t. RNG is just that, random. And random is not good.

RNG ISNT FUN! I have no idea why developers so love that.
- In my stable fractals group all players has 2-4 ascended rings me nothing at all.
- Also warriors has much better loot then others. I know it cant be logicaly true but it simply is.
- Before Fractals we did with same party TA every day (over 60 full runs over all). One of that warriors drop core or lodestone from every kitten chests every run. I have 3 cores from that 60 runs.

Anet pls rework your loot system and make it fair for all of us with bad luck. Thx.

RNG rings is easily the worst time I’ve had with this game. It killed any desire to play, including doing things not even related to fractals. I dont want to play my alts, I dont want to continue farming for my legendary, I just dont want to click on that GW2 icon at all.

In my opinion the drop rate for rings is far less of an issue than the fact that you can’t choose which ring you get. Btw, you can do the dailies for lvl 10 and 20 without any resistance (just need one person in the group to have agony resist for maw transitions on lvl 20).

If only there was a different MMO out there… One developed by a company that would come out with a Manifesto where they would specifically say that RNG is un-fun and would be replaced with tokens; so that players always got rewarded and could always estimate exactly how much time and effort would be required to obtain an item.

I was about to start a new thread on this issue, then I saw this.

RNG is stupid and unfair when it comes to progression. I ran a group today and my guild mate got his second ring (2 rings in 2 attempts), while another guy got it in the daily reward. People are moving on, while I am stuck behind.

I used to run with a group who got multiple rings, and I am stuck without a single drop. They have moved on and I had to step out because I felt that I was becoming a liability.

Out of 8 attempts, I am yet to get a single ascended item. Come on Anet, this is rather unfair -even if just in principle- and I am really getting bored and losing incentive to keep playing, because honestly FOTM is the only dungeon I enjoy playing.

I am not sure where the devs stand when it comes to effort vs reward. In many cases in this game, effort vs reward is lacking, especially when it comes to all the RNG involved in pretty much everything. And while it is ok in most cases, it is really a hindering problem when it comes to progression with increased difficulty.

Seven attempts here at level ten and no ring for me yet. I hate RNG too. Please up the drop rate.

Hmm 1-19 can be done without agony res. Wait till you hit 20 and your entire party has only 10 agony res hahahaha! Can’t wait till the majority of you whiners hit that stage =)

Humposaurus.5764:

Hmm 1-19 can be done without agony res. Wait till you hit 20 and your entire party has only 10 agony res hahahaha! Can’t wait till the majority of you whiners hit that stage =)

I can’t wait for halfwits like these to understand there is a difference between “whining” about difficulty, and suggesting/requesting that RNG not be a deciding factor in dungeon progression.

Having Ascended Back Pieces or Ascended Rings is not, at this point, indicative of skill or Fractal progression. It is merely an indication that RNG went your way.

Over the past 6~7 years of playing MMOs, I have experienced one glaring thing about RNG-based rewards and I have found that 9 times out of 10 in groups of random participants of various skill levels (as opposed to a guild or “static” with roughly equal skill levels), the person who does the least effort often gets rewarded better than those who do more. It’s strange how that works and I can see the “odd logic” behind it. It’s like saying “Hey! It looks like you’re not doing that great, so we’ll give you an upgrade so that you can be on-par with your teammates!” Most of the time, that sort of donkey-backwards award system has a tendency to award the weakest link a bit too much, perhaps to the point where the players who always put in their 110 percent have to put in way more than they have to just to get justly awarded.

RNG can be fun for cosmetic items that don’t give a statistical advantage over others, but if it’s the only thing that awards upgrades and necessities required to actually progress through more difficult content, then it could really break certain dedicated groups and those who fall behind might end up being dropped for someone who is geared for the content of interest. Unfortunately, that person being dropped is sometimes someone who was previously up-to-date or even ahead of the curve when it came to progressing through previous content.

But if RNG should be involved in something, perhaps the drop rate for Ascended rings should be higher on harder difficulty levels of that tier bracket. For instance, the chance should guarantee an Ascended non-infused ring (regardless of stats) at level 18 but the chance is should be lower at level 10. If the ring has undesirable stats, there should be a way to trade it in for something desirable, as mentioned in the OP.

Rozbuska.5263:

RNG ISNT FUN! I have no idea why developers so love that.
- In my stable fractals group all players has 2-4 ascended rings me nothing at all.
- Also warriors has much better loot then others. I know it cant be logicaly true but it simply is.
- Before Fractals we did with same party TA every day (over 60 full runs over all). One of that warriors drop core or lodestone from every kitten chests every run. I have 3 cores from that 60 runs.

Anet pls rework your loot system and make it fair for all of us with bad luck. Thx.

Warrior dont got more loot than other classes ! Made 20 21 22 today guess what 2 rares no exotics , made 6 daily (10-18) guess what 1 ring only , made lvl 20-28 daily 3 times guess what bag of gold 3 times , nothing more , no cores as well!

RNG makes sense to developers in monthly subscription games because they force the players to chase that carrot for months on end, which means increased income for the said games.

However with the B2P model, this attitude does not make sense, especially when you take into account that the higher levels of FotM kinda require the players who participate to be lvl80 in full exotic, who most likely aren’t going to buy any form of boosters (fractals are awful for karma and exp gain so no point)… maybe magic find booster I guess ? But since MF seems genuinly broken and you can reach 140-150% MF without the help of the BL booster it makes NO SENSE WHATSOEVER to implement RNG in this game.

Dear mr developers, you want people to stick around playing your game and ensure that micro-transactions carry on ?
Here is a tip coming to you right from the heavens : create a token booster : X% gain for X hour(s).

Now add a lot of loot to gain through tokens and guess what ? People will farm the fractals (or any other dungeon they might be after) like crazy, purchasing micro-transactions that make SENSE to them and the vast majority will stop complaining about RNG because everyone HATES RNG. Even those who got lucky do not like it because they know once more gear is released they will have to try their luck again…and might be so lucky this time. Only idiots who got lucky and can’t see past that one update are satisfied with this gear progression.
Just keep releasing loot and cool looking skins through token vendors on a regular basis to keep us happy.

I get it, you’re a business. Nobody invests millions just to make people “happy” and “having fun”. You want a return. Sure.
Well so do we. Investment needs to be rewarded. Nobody goes to a restaurant, orders a meal and may or may not get it. WTF lol.
The consequences is people stop going to that restaurant, no matter how appetizing the meals might be. RNG belongs with monthly subscription games.

You are not going to encourage us to buy gems when what is on the BL is utterly pointless for lvl80s, which is where each and everyone of your customers is eventually going to end up.

We don’t mind sticking around and helping you stay afloat Anet.
We’ll rub your back if you rub ours.

So much understandable hate for RNG… I like it though, yeah I’ve gone through 5 straight runs of nothing but greens, no rings… nothing. Oh well npc those and still make 30-60s a run still decent for someone like me. Then do 1 run and get 2 exos, buncha cores, and a few rares poof 8.5g woohoo HUGE boost to my funds, never happened again… haha

I see why people are mad about not getting rings but… this dungeon has only been out for a few weeks now?! Cmon, some things shouldn’t just be handed to you in no time at all, I like not knowing when or what I’ll get instead of “I need to get X tokens so I can buy X item”. That just makes me feel like “Ok do this dungeon 20 times, then I got what I want and I won’t be doing it again, why bother when I got the best thing from it”. And then you get more pug groups who want to do “Speed runs”, skip everything possible, do everything as fast as possible, then repeat. That’s not fun for me. Plus this dungeon is tons of fun

The reason I like RNG is because it DOESN’T effect chests. So I don’t need to buy gems to get the same chance as some person with tons of money to blow using mf boosters and crap all day long. Then the one thing I don’t like about RNG is worrying aboot how many people will run with full mf gears and suck kitten doing it, yeah some people can run mf and still pull their weight but a lot can’t, and if they didn’t they would be a lot more effective to the party.

Edit : I realized RNG does effect chests… What I meant was You can’t buy higher RNG from chests, everyone has equal good or bad opportunity from them.

So here’s to a apposite opinion on RNG, I like it