Guild Wars 2

Disclaimer: I might be venting a bit here, and only hope others feel the same way ;p

I complete my daily fractals and, with bated breath, I begin double-clicking each of the 12 saved chests.

Ascended…salvage tool? yay?
Another ascended salvage tool. Ooh, maybe it can stack with the other tool? Nope!
Bolt of Damask. On the surface this looks like a good drop, but if you translate it through the Trollspeak dictionary you end up with “hah! I used to be an ascended chest!”
Ascended salvage kit.

There aren’t even many ring drops anymore, not that we need them. Clearly there have been secret updates to the fractal drops which I think need some discussion. The number of salvage tool drops feels super trolly after a lot of hard work. Fractal 100 can easily take over half an hour, even if everything is going well.

Ways to fix this:
1. Make these salvage tools sellable back to vendor for no loss (the same 1g return).
1a. Might as well make them stackable. Identical ascended chests should also be stackable, btw, as in two “Malicious Chest of Boots”. Leystone coat boxes are stackable…
2. Drop something actually attractive. Sinister or assassin’s trinkets would be awesome, of course, to have an alternative to grinding LS2 achievements or dungeons.

If anyone else feels the same way or has ideas to improve these drops, feel free to add comments.

icy`

The only way to improve those drops is to remove them from the table entirely.

I sincerely doubt anyone wants ascended salvage tools, potions, a single ecto, a random dye, black lion goods kit, a single mystic coin etc….

Nah, if you look at the drop rates, that bolt of damask did not used to be an ascended chest. Drop rates of ascended chests are actually higher than they were before. All that other stuff is there so that you don’t get literally nothing but a few stabilizing matrices 85% of the time. Maybe you would prefer to get nothing instead of a medium value item. I wouldn’t.

The problem there is that those few stabilizing matrices are more valuable than some of the rubbish that drops instead of them.

Wow. People complaining they get mats worth 10 gold on tp.

reikken.4961:

Nah, if you look at the drop rates, that bolt of damask did not used to be an ascended chest. Drop rates of ascended chests are actually higher than they were before.

Nope, they aren’t. That’s only what Anet claims, but it’s not what has actually happened. Current statistical data gathered by some guilds ([Kings] for example) clearly show that as far as ascended gear is concerned, last fractal rewards update was a nerf.

[KING]’s data is what I was referencing. Previously, doing your dailies gave you about a 16% chance to get an ascended chest. Now, doing them gets you about a 24% chance for one.

reikken.4961:

[KING]’s data is what I was referencing. Previously, doing your dailies gave you about a 16% chance to get an ascended chest. Now, doing them gets you about a 24% chance for one.

I know it’s RNG/small sample size and whatnot, but I’m not seeing anywhere remotely near those drop rates. If this were the case, you’d expect an ascended drop most every run. (If my math is correct, with 5 players and a 24% chance of an ascended chest, 75% of the runs would have at least one ascended drop?) Does that feel like the case to you guys? Because it definitely does not to me.

Oxidia.8103:

Wow. People complaining they get mats worth 10 gold on tp.

+1

Also I personally love getting free ecto/mystic coins/salvage kits. Salvage kits in particular translate directly into gold assuming you have a ring to salvage, and I still get a ton of those so that’s never a problem. They’re also useful if you ever need dark matter for anything (new legendaries).

The only thing I really agree with from the OP is that ascended salvage tools should be stackable or sellable. It’s way too easy for them to build up, especially if you’re saving most of the ascended accessories you get because you don’t have duplicates.

You can look at KING’s data spreadsheet yourself here

You can choose to agree with it or not, and their sample size isn’t great yet. But assuming I’m OK at math their data indicates a ~23% chance to get an ascended box of some sort from a full set of dailies (3 of each chest, I’m excluding recommended scales which many people don’t do). Even if you round their numbers down you still get like a 21-22% chance. These figures are about in line with what I have been seeing in my guild, so I think they’re at least reasonably accurate.

20%+ per day is a really good droprate for ascended chests. It sucks if your luck has been bad and you haven’t gotten any, but most players I know have gotten at least 1-2 since the patch, and many players have gotten much more.

The other drops are good as well. Mystic coins and linseed oil can be easily deposited or sold for a bit of cash. Fractal potions are actually pretty expensive in terms of relics so its nice to get some from dailies. Salvage kits/tools are nice because previously they weren’t worth the 1g cost, though non-stacking tools is pretty obnoxious as OP said. Ascended mats can be viewed as getting a fraction of an ascended box, or as a 10+ gold reward which is pretty solid. Ascended accessories are cool but mostly just take up space, but hey you can salvage them with all the extra tools and kits you get!

So yeah I’m not seeing what the issue is, besides maybe people being upset at their own bad luck =P

TexZero.7910:

I sincerely doubt anyone wants ascended salvage tools, potions, a single ecto, a random dye, black lion goods kit, a single mystic coin etc….

Please send me all your ecto, mystic coins, and unidentified dyes. It’s not like those items are all worth 50-70s each… oh wait they are.

The Ascened Salvage Tool essentially is a way for you to turn the Ascended Rings you don’t want (all of them) into Stabilizing Matrix.

Astralporing.1957:

reikken.4961:

Nah, if you look at the drop rates, that bolt of damask did not used to be an ascended chest. Drop rates of ascended chests are actually higher than they were before.

Nope, they aren’t. That’s only what Anet claims, but it’s not what has actually happened. Current statistical data gathered by some guilds ([Kings] for example) clearly show that as far as ascended gear is concerned, last fractal rewards update was a nerf.

KING’s presentation of the data is misleading, because they show the absolute chance from a master’s chest (current) and we can see that its odds are less than the old rate for the champion-level chest. While that’s true, that doesn’t represent what actually happens now — the overall chances have improved significantly.

Previously, we needed to run three fractals for a single champion’s chest and now we can run a single T4 fractal to get four chests (master, expert, initiate, and adept). So the odds for the master’s chest can be lower now and yet our chances of getting ascended gear can be higher.

In particular:

• Pre-update: KING’s data shows a 14.4% rate of ascended boxes (armor or weapon) per daily champion-tier, 0.144 boxes per set of three islands.
• Post update: master’s chest: only 4.8%, expert: 2.9%, adept: 1.2% — all that looks lower than 14.4%, however…
  • For a single T4 run, this ends up being 8.4-9.9%, after opening all four chests, which is still below the old 14.4%. (It’s also only one island.)
  • For running three T4 dailies (the closest equivalent to the old Champion daily), the chances are >27%, which is significantly greater than the old odds.
  • Despite that seemingly high number (for 3), it’s common to see bad luck streaks of 50+ T4 runs without any ascended box (over 5% of runs in each simulation). Even median bad luck is around 7 runs.
  • Part of the reason for the long streaks is that it’s possible to get more than one box in the same run (e.g. from both master’s and expert).

(For those running just T2, the odds are also better than before — the Adept chest and the old veteran chest both have rates of ~1.3%, but the old veteran required 3 islands and the new adept only requires one island.)

Because people get hung up on the math for probability, I used an Excel simulation to calculate the chances based on 10,000 runs using KING’s post-update data. I assumed that a single chest could only drop a single ascended box (weapon or armor, not both). I included a rolling-3 average and a rolling-21 average, the first to estimate what drops would look like for people running all three T4 dailies and the latter for people doing that for a week.

I ran multiple simulations to ensure that the results were consistent with KING’s data and with each simulation (they were).

tl;dr the chance of getting an ascended box from running three daily tier 4 fractals is a lot higher than the chance of getting an ascended box from running the Master’s tier daily before the patch.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

tl;dr the chance of getting an ascended box from running three daily tier 4 fractals is a lot higher than the chance of getting an ascended box from running the Master’s tier daily before the patch.

Sure, but here’s the rate I really care about: now versus the pre-HoT 40+50 runs. This is a rough estimate, but I find my old 40+50 runs didn’t take much longer than the three T4s now thanks to everything being horrendous bags of HP. Instabilities, previously ignorable, don’t help and greatly reduce my personal fun factor.

40 had about half the droprate of 50, so my gut feeling is that it’d end up being better than the current T4 chain. And imho way more fun.

This is a nerf – anyone who doesn’t see it is blinding themselves with statistics.

Compare a full T4 run today with a full 50+ run before. Let’s give it a go.

Pre-patch 50+ run had:

-Better odds
-Took less
-Was significantly easier.

Post-patch T4 runs:
Worse odds. Take significantly longer ( depending on what islands drop) and are significantly harder.

Let’s face it – farming 3 swamps in half-afk mode was the best way to get ascended gear. Even if you’re going to argue that the odds are better now than they were then – odds aside – the amount of work vs reward has increased out of proportion.

If you have 3 T4s and one of them is level 100 Mai Trin – you’ll spend as much time fighting level 100 Mai Trin as you would be beating Bloomhunger and Mossman on a pre-patch run on scales 56 and 67.
With the old system another 7-8 minutes of 77 and you were done. With the new system 7-8 minutes later at best you’re halfway through your next T4 with another T4 to go.

It’s a buff compared to Pre-HoT and the comparison to Pre-patch cannot be made because it wasn’t intended to run 56-67-77 and get the most possible reward!
Furthermore the most fractals are way easier than lvl 50 in the good old times – even with pugs. As long as it’s not Underground, Thaumanova or Mai Trin 100 together the walkthrough is a joke if you are using condi classes.

For me – sure this is subjective – the drop rate of ascended boxes has increased a lot compared to both status’ (Pre-HoT and Pre-patch) before. Since april, when the patch was installed I have gotten 7 asc boxes and never had such amount during the old fractals with 4 islands and neither the last 6 months.

Vinceman.4572:

It’s a buff compared to Pre-HoT and the comparison to Pre-patch cannot be made because it wasn’t intended to run 56-67-77 and get the most possible reward!
Furthermore the most fractals are way easier than lvl 50 in the good old times – even with pugs. As long as it’s not Underground, Thaumanova or Mai Trin 100 together the walkthrough is a joke if you are using condi classes.

For me – sure this is subjective – the drop rate of ascended boxes has increased a lot compared to both status’ (Pre-HoT and Pre-patch) before. Since april, when the patch was installed I have gotten 7 asc boxes and never had such amount during the old fractals with 4 islands and neither the last 6 months.

Please don’t make me laugh.
“It wasn’t intended” – this is a joke. Developers should know better and honestly even if they were that bad that they couldn’t have the foresight to anticipate that the classic 56, 67, 77 runs would appear – there’s still no excuse.

Why? Because I and many others told them this would be exactly the case if the random nature of fractals would be changed.
I specifically made the argument people would just do the fractals that had the best reward to work ratio. Nobody cared – nobody listened.

And I didn’t post this in some obscure forum thread – me and many others brought this up in the Fractal CDI thread – made BY the developers – where they specifically said they would read and take notice of the things that were written.

And now they’ve changed it back to the original system.
Only now the fractal islands aren’t random – the dailies are – but in the end it’s the same thing. You have to have randomness in the system or people will game it exactly like they did with the old 56-67-77 runs.

The problem with “most fractals are easier than in the old 50 times” is that while this is true old 50 even if harder had a few things going for it that made it clearly superior -at least for me:

1. It wasn’t annoying – it didn’t have annoying instabilities – Fractal avengers and other things. This has been partially fixed with the instability rework – but up until the recent patch instabilities were incredibly annoying and unfun.

2.The old 50 FOTM you could sell – these ones you can’t. The old 50 was good because you could 3 man it and make a good amount of gold on top of your drops. Now – the new T4s take nearly as much time but you can’t sell anything.
More time in – less stuff out – seems like a nerf to me.

I’m not even mad about the ascended drops – as far as I’m concerned I’ve gotten more than my fair share – since HoT dropped I’ve pulled 3 whole sets out of FOTM. Plus a lot of stuff on the side ( half a set and around 10 weapons).

I’m just mad people look at a nerf and call it an “improvement”.

Harper.4173:

Compare a full T4 run today with a full 50+ run before. Let’s give it a go.

Pre-patch 50+ run had:

-Better odds
-Took less
-Was significantly easier.

Easier, yes. Swamp x3 is much easier.
Better odds, no. Odds now are roughly 50% better than they were before.

Harper.4173:

Vinceman.4572:

It’s a buff compared to Pre-HoT and the comparison to Pre-patch cannot be made because it wasn’t intended to run 56-67-77 and get the most possible reward!
Furthermore the most fractals are way easier than lvl 50 in the good old times – even with pugs. As long as it’s not Underground, Thaumanova or Mai Trin 100 together the walkthrough is a joke if you are using condi classes.

For me – sure this is subjective – the drop rate of ascended boxes has increased a lot compared to both status’ (Pre-HoT and Pre-patch) before. Since april, when the patch was installed I have gotten 7 asc boxes and never had such amount during the old fractals with 4 islands and neither the last 6 months.

Please don’t make me laugh.
“It wasn’t intended” – this is a joke. Developers should know better and honestly even if they were that bad that they couldn’t have the foresight to anticipate that the classic 56, 67, 77 runs would appear – there’s still no excuse.

Why? Because I and many others told them this would be exactly the case if the random nature of fractals would be changed.
I specifically made the argument people would just do the fractals that had the best reward to work ratio. Nobody cared – nobody listened.

And I didn’t post this in some obscure forum thread – me and many others brought this up in the Fractal CDI thread – made BY the developers – where they specifically said they would read and take notice of the things that were written.

And now they’ve changed it back to the original system.
Only now the fractal islands aren’t random – the dailies are – but in the end it’s the same thing. You have to have randomness in the system or people will game it exactly like they did with the old 56-67-77 runs.

I would agree that anet probably should have anticipated the swamps of the mist situation but that doesn’t really have anything to do with the quality of the rewards, then or now.

Harper.4173:

The problem with “most fractals are easier than in the old 50 times” is that while this is true old 50 even if harder had a few things going for it that made it clearly superior -at least for me:

1. It wasn’t annoying – it didn’t have annoying instabilities – Fractal avengers and other things. This has been partially fixed with the instability rework – but up until the recent patch instabilities were incredibly annoying and unfun.

So in this patch they’re not annoying and unfun? I would agree in general, especially if you spend most of your time in t4 where the instabilities are good, but this seems to go against what you are saying overall.

Harper.4173:

2.The old 50 FOTM you could sell – these ones you can’t. The old 50 was good because you could 3 man it and make a good amount of gold on top of your drops. Now – the new T4s take nearly as much time but you can’t sell anything.
More time in – less stuff out – seems like a nerf to me.

Saying the rewards on something are nerfed because you can’t sell it anymore is ridiculous, because it applies to only a small group of the population. For 99% of people the ability to sell or not doesn’t change the rewards at all.

Also, I have seen people buying mai trin 100 for the achievement, though I don’t know how common that is.

Harper.4173:

I’m not even mad about the ascended drops – as far as I’m concerned I’ve gotten more than my fair share – since HoT dropped I’ve pulled 3 whole sets out of FOTM. Plus a lot of stuff on the side ( half a set and around 10 weapons).

I’m just mad people look at a nerf and call it an “improvement”.

It’s an improvement for everyone that hated runing swamp x5 molten bros x2 every single day. Maybe on average the reward per unit time is worse (which I don’t think is even true factoring in the non-ascended box stuff you get but w/e) but the reward overall is better, and fractals are actually somewhat enjoyable to do again. I haven’t encountered a single person besides you who thought the swamps of the mist fotm was more enjoyable than the current iteration, and that certainly makes it an improvement, reward nerfs or no.

Harper.4173:

Please don’t make me laugh.
“It wasn’t intended” – this is a joke. Developers should know better and honestly even if they were that bad that they couldn’t have the foresight to anticipate that the classic 56, 67, 77 runs would appear – there’s still no excuse.

Why? Because I and many others told them this would be exactly the case if the random nature of fractals would be changed.
I specifically made the argument people would just do the fractals that had the best reward to work ratio. Nobody cared – nobody listened.

“Hindsight is easier than foresight.” Only because you told them it was not 100% sure that people would take the path we had for about 6 months. I think they had some thoughts about the last daily system but it didn’t pay out. And we also know that the decisionmaking has been very special at Arenanet since release.

Harper.4173:

1. It wasn’t annoying – it didn’t have annoying instabilities – Fractal avengers and other things. This has been partially fixed with the instability rework – but up until the recent patch instabilities were incredibly annoying and unfun.

Yes, but it’s fixed now. Atm I see no problem with instabilities in any of the higher tier fractals.

Harper.4173:

2.The old 50 FOTM you could sell – these ones you can’t. The old 50 was good because you could 3 man it and make a good amount of gold on top of your drops. Now – the new T4s take nearly as much time but you can’t sell anything.
More time in – less stuff out – seems like a nerf to me.

You can still sell fractals and there is also demand for it (Mai Trin 100). It’s soloable. Others are able to low man too without bigger problems.
But ok, you got hit here which leads to a statement Anet has made about selling: As long as it’s possible they don’t forbid to do it but they also won’t support it and if there are changes you cannot rely on the selling part for the future.
To the “more time in – less stuff out”: Did you realize the amount of gold you are making now in just playing fractals without selling? After finishing all T4s (3 islands!) I get at least 10 gold or more + drops. Sometimes the gold is a little bit reduced when getting an asc box – seems very legit to me.

Harper.4173:

I’m just mad people look at a nerf and call it an “improvement”.

Well, regarding the lfg with tons of offers every day and many ingame and guild mates it was a big improvement for most of the players. Seems like you are one of the few that have a different view – can happen.

reikken.4961:

Harper.4173:

Compare a full T4 run today with a full 50+ run before. Let’s give it a go.

Pre-patch 50+ run had:

-Better odds
-Took less
-Was significantly easier.

Easier, yes. Swamp x3 is much easier.
Better odds, no. Odds now are roughly 50% better than they were before.

So let’s put it this way. You had better odds for the time and effort you put in.
You could have fractal dailies that give you odds double what you get today on drops that keep you in FOTM for 4-5 hours – would you say that’s a buff?

Dinosaurs.8674:

Harper.4173:

Vinceman.4572:

It’s a buff compared to Pre-HoT and the comparison to Pre-patch cannot be made because it wasn’t intended to run 56-67-77 and get the most possible reward!
Furthermore the most fractals are way easier than lvl 50 in the good old times – even with pugs. As long as it’s not Underground, Thaumanova or Mai Trin 100 together the walkthrough is a joke if you are using condi classes.

For me – sure this is subjective – the drop rate of ascended boxes has increased a lot compared to both status’ (Pre-HoT and Pre-patch) before. Since april, when the patch was installed I have gotten 7 asc boxes and never had such amount during the old fractals with 4 islands and neither the last 6 months.

Please don’t make me laugh.
“It wasn’t intended” – this is a joke. Developers should know better and honestly even if they were that bad that they couldn’t have the foresight to anticipate that the classic 56, 67, 77 runs would appear – there’s still no excuse.

Why? Because I and many others told them this would be exactly the case if the random nature of fractals would be changed.
I specifically made the argument people would just do the fractals that had the best reward to work ratio. Nobody cared – nobody listened.

And I didn’t post this in some obscure forum thread – me and many others brought this up in the Fractal CDI thread – made BY the developers – where they specifically said they would read and take notice of the things that were written.

And now they’ve changed it back to the original system.
Only now the fractal islands aren’t random – the dailies are – but in the end it’s the same thing. You have to have randomness in the system or people will game it exactly like they did with the old 56-67-77 runs.

I would agree that anet probably should have anticipated the swamps of the mist situation but that doesn’t really have anything to do with the quality of the rewards, then or now.

Harper.4173:

The problem with “most fractals are easier than in the old 50 times” is that while this is true old 50 even if harder had a few things going for it that made it clearly superior -at least for me:

1. It wasn’t annoying – it didn’t have annoying instabilities – Fractal avengers and other things. This has been partially fixed with the instability rework – but up until the recent patch instabilities were incredibly annoying and unfun.

So in this patch they’re not annoying and unfun? I would agree in general, especially if you spend most of your time in t4 where the instabilities are good, but this seems to go against what you are saying overall.

Harper.4173:

2.The old 50 FOTM you could sell – these ones you can’t. The old 50 was good because you could 3 man it and make a good amount of gold on top of your drops. Now – the new T4s take nearly as much time but you can’t sell anything.
More time in – less stuff out – seems like a nerf to me.

Saying the rewards on something are nerfed because you can’t sell it anymore is ridiculous, because it applies to only a small group of the population. For 99% of people the ability to sell or not doesn’t change the rewards at all.

Also, I have seen people buying mai trin 100 for the achievement, though I don’t know how common that is.

Harper.4173:

I’m not even mad about the ascended drops – as far as I’m concerned I’ve gotten more than my fair share – since HoT dropped I’ve pulled 3 whole sets out of FOTM. Plus a lot of stuff on the side ( half a set and around 10 weapons).

I’m just mad people look at a nerf and call it an “improvement”.

It’s an improvement for everyone that hated runing swamp x5 molten bros x2 every single day. Maybe on average the reward per unit time is worse (which I don’t think is even true factoring in the non-ascended box stuff you get but w/e) but the reward overall is better, and fractals are actually somewhat enjoyable to do again. I haven’t encountered a single person besides you who thought the swamps of the mist fotm was more enjoyable than the current iteration, and that certainly makes it an improvement, reward nerfs or no.

1. Instabilities are always annoying and unfun. I dislike them. They were worse before the latest patch though – at least now you don’t get random fear.

2.I’m giving my perspective – and just because 99% of people didn’t do it doesn’t mean it wasn’t nerfed.
If Anet nerfs a skill that 99% of people don’t use that doesn’t mean it wasn’t nerfed.
Overall I’m saying if you wanted to you could make a lot more money – you could choose to or not – but you had the choice.
That choice is now gone – even if there were just a few who made that choice – taking it away constitutes a nerf in my book.

3. Everyone who hated running molten boss x 2 and swamp x 5 each day were free to run whatever they wanted whenever they wanted – they just didn’t run it because at the end of the day they were just as greedy as everyone else.

If it was unfun for them they could have chosen to just do what was fun for them – instead they chose to do swamp and complain – so the developers had to come in and change the game because some people literally couldn’t control themselves.

Fractals and enjoyable – pick one – you can’t have both.
Why is that? Because it’s old. They’ve failed to add in new fractals or have any sort of significant changes come in – so the content is so old and stale it’s not even funny.

At least I can’t find them enjoyable anymore – So I’d rather have swamps of the mists because at least that was over quickly and didn’t require me to pay fractals too much attention.

As far as my preferences go:

Old random fractals chained together that you couldn’t interrupt ( old 50) > Swamps of the mists > the T4 stuff we have today.

A lot of people made some great points here; I’ll definitely have to take the time to examine KING’s data, @ reikken, Dinosaurs, Illconceived.

I suppose part of it could be my bad luck. I’ve been doing daily T4’s for a while now and I’m just not seeing the ascended chest drop at 20%. I did see a few odd glove or boot chests, but my impression (yeah, I didn’t keep notes) was of a far lower rate. Since they added salvage tools/kits, I’ve already gotten 3 stacks of kits and dozens of tools. A few times I salvaged uninfused rings for a hypothetical loss.

Instabilities definitely got better, though in my case, 99% of the time I’m running fractals on my thief. Thief no likey lethargic ;p

Having trouble completing gear on my necro because I have not seen an asc weapon drop in forever! Last one I saw at Teq in December or so, and I try to do Teq daily as well.

Vinceman.4572:

Harper.4173:

Please don’t make me laugh.
“It wasn’t intended” – this is a joke. Developers should know better and honestly even if they were that bad that they couldn’t have the foresight to anticipate that the classic 56, 67, 77 runs would appear – there’s still no excuse.

Why? Because I and many others told them this would be exactly the case if the random nature of fractals would be changed.
I specifically made the argument people would just do the fractals that had the best reward to work ratio. Nobody cared – nobody listened.

“Hindsight is easier than foresight.” Only because you told them it was not 100% sure that people would take the path we had for about 6 months. I think they had some thoughts about the last daily system but it didn’t pay out. And we also know that the decisionmaking has been very special at Arenanet since release.

Harper.4173:

1. It wasn’t annoying – it didn’t have annoying instabilities – Fractal avengers and other things. This has been partially fixed with the instability rework – but up until the recent patch instabilities were incredibly annoying and unfun.

Yes, but it’s fixed now. Atm I see no problem with instabilities in any of the higher tier fractals.

Harper.4173:

2.The old 50 FOTM you could sell – these ones you can’t. The old 50 was good because you could 3 man it and make a good amount of gold on top of your drops. Now – the new T4s take nearly as much time but you can’t sell anything.
More time in – less stuff out – seems like a nerf to me.

You can still sell fractals and there is also demand for it (Mai Trin 100). It’s soloable. Others are able to low man too without bigger problems.
But ok, you got hit here which leads to a statement Anet has made about selling: As long as it’s possible they don’t forbid to do it but they also won’t support it and if there are changes you cannot rely on the selling part for the future.
To the “more time in – less stuff out”: Did you realize the amount of gold you are making now in just playing fractals without selling? After finishing all T4s (3 islands!) I get at least 10 gold or more + drops. Sometimes the gold is a little bit reduced when getting an asc box – seems very legit to me.

Harper.4173:

I’m just mad people look at a nerf and call it an “improvement”.

Well, regarding the lfg with tons of offers every day and many ingame and guild mates it was a big improvement for most of the players. Seems like you are one of the few that have a different view – can happen.

Vince I appreciate you trying to stick up for them but let’s be honest with ourselves here.
I’m a player – if I could think it up others could as well – and it’s not like developers are new to the fact that players take the path of least resistance and stick with it.
How many times has it happened now?
Dungeon stacking and skipping? Exploiting various things all over the game? Event failfarming?
The list goes on – all issues in GW2 that the devs had to fix ( so they were aware) – all evident of the fact that players take the path of least resistance.

It’s game dev 101 to understand and anticipate that.

Also – I don’t really make more gold now than I did back in the day selling a 50.
As for – less stuff out – that is still true – during the glory days of swamps of the mists I could do FOTM and farm the amount of gold you make during all your T4s in the same amount it took you to do your T4s.
And the best thing was – I could do it every day- it was predictable – your T4s get harder and easier at random.

I have a different view because I value my time more – and I tend to be very interested in getting the most out of my game time.

what exactly is stopping you from selling fractals? yourself? last time i checked, i could still duo most fractals at 80+ and they havent restricted the bouncy chests in any way.

are you complaining that now you have to sell each island? are you complaining that now people wont buy cuz fractals are too easy? are you complaining that people wont pay 15g for something only worth 5g?

insanemaniac.2456:

what exactly is stopping you from selling fractals? yourself? last time i checked, i could still duo most fractals at 80+ and they havent restricted the bouncy chests in any way.

are you complaining that now you have to sell each island? are you complaining that now people wont buy cuz fractals are too easy? are you complaining that people wont pay 15g for something only worth 5g?

the market for selling FOTMs was largely there because of the time investment they presented.
The random nature of 3 islands + 1 boss fight that you couldn’t pick meant that not everyone could set aside the amount of time completing a full run might take. So you could sell.
You can sell now – you can sell FOTM 100 as many have pointed out but I doubt 100 will be sustainable – as soon as all the people who care about their backpiece have it – the market will die out.

You can theoretically sell individual islands – but more often than not there won’t be a market for it – because the fractals are now easier individually than the old 50s were. So people can do them themselves.

So it’s a combination of them being nerfed and made more accessible (time-wise) that has killed the market for selling most FOTMs.

100 is an exception – how log it will last remains to be seen – I’m betting a few months at most.

I’m just pointing out that from my perspective – things were nerfed.

ah. so you feel like your playstyle has been nerfed cuz you were taking advantage of the community’s dislike for hour long commitments that you could shorten to 5~10 minutes.

i dont think i have any sympathy. you shouldve expected it to end at some point.

insanemaniac.2456:

ah. so you feel like your playstyle has been nerfed cuz you were taking advantage of the community’s dislike for hour long commitments that you could shorten to 5~10 minutes.

i dont think i have any sympathy. you shouldve expected it to end at some point.

I provided a service for people that needed it and were willing to play.

Your way of thinking is pretty biased. Would you say me selling a stack of mats that recently spiked because of the new legendary shortbow is me “taking advantage of the community’s dislike for gathering their own mats and capitalizing on it to exploit them and profit?”

It’s pretty funny that you would think that way.

Harper.4173:

insanemaniac.2456:

ah. so you feel like your playstyle has been nerfed cuz you were taking advantage of the community’s dislike for hour long commitments that you could shorten to 5~10 minutes.

i dont think i have any sympathy. you shouldve expected it to end at some point.

I provided a service for people that needed it and were willing to play.

Your way of thinking is pretty biased. Would you say me selling a stack of mats that recently spiked because of the new legendary shortbow is me “taking advantage of the community’s dislike for gathering their own mats and capitalizing on it to exploit them and profit?”

It’s pretty funny that you would think that way.

i have sold fractals too. it certainly is a service. however, you need to remember that it is unsanctioned. anet doesnt say you cant, but they do not officially support services because “providing a service” is a subjective matter that they do not want to police. officially supporting it implies policing it or making it watertight, which would cost resources better spent elsewhere.

when faced with the option to disincentivize shortcutting the content by making it more accessible versus keeping sellers happy and making it more accessible, as a dev, which would you choose?

Tentonhammr.7849:

TexZero.7910:

I sincerely doubt anyone wants ascended salvage tools, potions, a single ecto, a random dye, black lion goods kit, a single mystic coin etc….

Please send me all your ecto, mystic coins, and unidentified dyes. It’s not like those items are all worth 50-70s each… oh wait they are.

Context. Use it.

Do you enjoy doing fractals for a single mystic coin ? …. If you sincerely think that’s a reward then that’s a problem. Same for a single ecto, unid dye etc..

If for example instead of a single item it was in increments of 5-10 maybe it would be worth something. Obviously less due to how it would impact the market, but that’s a problem with the market and not the reward.

I think the drops are ok somewhat like I’d rather get a mystic coin than a ring of randomstatsthatineveruse. I even got a BLSK yesterday from the BL goods which was really nice.

They can ‘up’ the rewards by simply adding a lot more stuff like ascended trinkets to be buyable with pristine relics without affecting the markets all that much.

It’d be nice to be able to buy raid stats outside of raids for say WvW or other non raid PvE activities.

Harper.4173:

reikken.4961:

Harper.4173:

Compare a full T4 run today with a full 50+ run before. Let’s give it a go.

Pre-patch 50+ run had:

-Better odds
-Took less
-Was significantly easier.

Easier, yes. Swamp x3 is much easier.
Better odds, no. Odds now are roughly 50% better than they were before.

So let’s put it this way. You had better odds for the time and effort you put in.
You could have fractal dailies that give you odds double what you get today on drops that keep you in FOTM for 4-5 hours – would you say that’s a buff?

If you’re trying to say that it’s now a worse investment of time, then that’s something else altogether, and I won’t argue with that (though I don’t agree). But the chances of getting good drops from the dailies have definitely improved. That’s the only thing I am refuting.

As for why I don’t agree:
-Swamp 3 (or 6) times a day is boring. I sometimes did the other fractals anyway just because of that. I would much rather spend my time doing different fractals than the same one over and over.
-5 fractals gets you all of your dailies now, while it took 9 before
-Each t4 usually doesn’t even take that much longer anyway if you know what you’re doing.

Regardless of the chances – the quality of loot has to be measured by comparing time spent to loot produced.
If the ratio is skewed and you no longer have the better ratio of previous fotm iterations then the content is a nerf.

The previous state of FOTM considered as a baseline – you can easily see how the time put in vs loot taken out has shifted – thus creating the nerf.

Boring vs not boring is not what I was discussing.
And even if swamp did get boring ( it did) the amount of interaction with 3x swamp was so minimal you could ignore the ‘boredom’ by simply looking elsewhere for a while, pressing some skills, repeat.

What you haven’t realized reikken is that we are doing the same ones over and over again – no new fractals have been added – the content is stale beyond belief.

Yes I’d rather have done new fractals – and if ever since FOTM was introduced they’d added let’s say 1 fractal every 4 months let’s say we’d have 12 new ones by now – helping us deal with the fact that the old ones are old. But they didn’t do that now did they?

Just saying that if scale 100 takes longer than 30min (or anything close to that) certainly not everything is going well.

Besides that, I think the droprates are fine; this is coming from someone who’s getting shafted pretty much every day.
I do think however that they should remove the normal mist potions, only leaving the 5-stack ones in and maybe find a way to make single-use ascended kits stackable.

I pretty much see 100 mai trin and lose all motivation to do fracs daily tbh. It’s not hard it just takes aaaaaaages (15-30 mins) and is extremely boring. The loot/time ratio is fine for most fracs but Mai Trin is just terrible since it has no alternative in T4 that isn’t above 90 and everything above 90 is a massive HP sponge :/

so do 75 instead. 100 is just plain annoying so personally i dont mind skipping a single t4 chest whenever mai trin is a daily. and then you only need max 125~130 ar, which is like a million times easier to get than 150. you can skip infusing your back piece and not have a full set of armor, or whatever. everything in the 90s is also in 75-88. skip the hp sponges.

Yeah that’s a fair suggestion to do 75 instead but then I think of how the loot sucks in non T4 chests (just my opinion) and not bother with it.

I do like how we can skip and choose which fractal shard we can do though, so there’s definitely that.