Some time ago I started recording the rewards me and my wife got from Fractals with the intention to find out the chance to get a fractal skin, so 100 successful runs later, here I am with 0 (zero) fractal skins and a few things that I would like to share.
I’m going to start with the most obvious things I observed in these months.
Problem: Random Map Rotation “forces” players to go back to the observatory until the Swamp is the first fractal. Specially in higher level fractals. While this is not really a major issue, I think it is quite boring and stupid. The reason for this is that there are some really quick fractals, while other are very very slow and may take forever to complete, and people just want to try to avoid getting three long fractal maps in the same run.
Proposal: Map Rotation based on Fractal Length: I think that instead of completely random, the fractal maps could be classified by expected time to complete, and then rotate them so you will always get short and long fractal maps. For example, split them in Fast (Aquatic, Snow, Swamp), Normal (Urban, Uncategorized, Volcanic) and Slow (Cliffside, Underground, Volcanic) maps; then you will always get 1 from Fast, 1 from Normal, and 1 from Slow.
Problem: Fractal Specific Rewards have no uses. And by this I mean the Mists Essences (ascended material) and the Pristine Fractal Relics. These rewards have very limited uses compared with other similar rewards (for example, like dungeon tokens, or any other material). As far as I know Mist Essences can only be used for either A) Infusing ascended rings, or Crafting (very expensive) ascended back items. And let me put this “very expensive” statement in perspective… I’m in the process of crafting my fourth Prototype Fractal Capacitator, and in all this time I’m not even close to get the materials required to craft one of the other back items.
Proposal: Add more uses to these rewards. In the case of the Pristine Fractal Relics, I would add the same rewards that you can get with Standard Fractal Relics but with a Pristine Fractal Relic version. I mean the Obsidian Shards, Fractal Capacitators, 20 slot bags, etc… And in the case of the Mist Essences I would convert them in materials that can be used with the artisan disciplines. Maybe adding some cooking recipes (who knows, they may be delicious) and stuff like that. Also, maybe upgrade them in the same way Ectoplasms were updated, so we can salvage them for Dust or Ectoplasm.
The next point may be controversial, so let me give you the rationale behind it. In my observations I found out that the average drops are very similar regardless of the level played, actually, for one specific type of drop I got worst results the higher the level. Let me put this in perspective, in these 100 runs, I got exactly 31 ascended rings, this means 0.31 rings per run (yes, I’m super lucky with rings, except that I only get 5 silver from each ring from vendoring :p ). Now, when I look at this statistic by fractal level, I found that my average is always very close to 0.31 in levels 10 to 19, also 0.31 in levels 20 to 29, again 0.31 in levels 30 to 39… This may be pure coincidence, but I got the same results with other drops, like Mist Essences, and the same again for Cores, and again for Lodestones. I haven’t got enough Exotics (only 4), or Fractal Skins (0) or Ascended boxes (0) but I believe that it is the same for them. So the conclusion I got is that I’ve been averaging the same number of rings in level 10 than in level 30 (yes, I know that in level 26+ you get ascended and infused rings, but what I’m looking at is the number of drops).
What really gets better, is that you get more Standard Fractal Relics, and more karma. And that’s it.
So now you may say… But I know that people doing level 48 get lots of Fractal Skins, and Ascended Boxes, and Precursors… Well, I don’t have enough data to claim this to be true or false with a 100% of accuracy, BUT, it is true that usually people doing level 48 will be farming this level, or just increasing their personal reward level playing higher levels, so obviously most of their drops will always be at level 48, but this does not mean that if they were doing level 26 they were not getting the same things. So finally, based on my observation, the next point is: