Guild Wars 2

When do I get Ascended rings? I’ve grinded Fractals level 10 for about 6 days now with no success of a ring, let alone the ones I wanted (Crystalline or Red Ring)

I’m just curious about the statistics here. Someone else got 6 rings within his 10 runs: [ Ouroboros Loop] [Rurik’s Royal Signet Ring] [Royal Signet of Doric] [Crystalline Band] [Red Ring of Death]

Whereas I had 0 after each time I beat the Jaw Maw. I just got tokens and some gold. I’m wondering what I did wrong, if I did anything wrong? Is it bugged? What is the success rate of others?

nope RNG is RNG. Gotten 2 rings in 3 attempts. Just gotta keep farming jade maw.

There has to be a bug. Ive gotten a ring pretty much every daily ive done past 10 while other people I know that have been running with me still have yet to get even one.

I’ve completed the level 10 daily 9.99 times (the 9th run we actually all got kicked to Lion’s Arch with Maw at like 30% because someone fell through the world and couldn’t die, so they left the group – apparently they were group leader?) and no ring.

Meanwhile I get to group with people who are complaining that their 3rd/4th/5th rings aren’t the one they wanted.

RNG is so amazingly awesome!

(actually not – my will to log in is kind of gone now – I had a complete day yesterday with nothing to do, and not once did I think of logging into GW2)

Kain Francois.4328:

When do I get Ascended rings? I’ve grinded Fractals level 10 for about 6 days now with no success of a ring, let alone the ones I wanted (Crystalline or Red Ring)

I’m just curious about the statistics here. Someone else got 6 rings within his 10 runs: [ Ouroboros Loop] [Rurik’s Royal Signet Ring] [Royal Signet of Doric] [Crystalline Band] [Red Ring of Death]

Whereas I had 0 after each time I beat the Jaw Maw. I just got tokens and some gold. I’m wondering what I did wrong, if I did anything wrong? Is it bugged? What is the success rate of others?

From what I’ve seen so far, it seems there are 2 groups of people. Those that get rings all the time and those that never do. Not sure if this is intended or a bug, but regardless, looks like you, much like myself, belong to the latter. Grats! My advice, save yourself the frustration and give up on FOTM.

GW2 is not pve game! Anet dont understood anything about pve, if u want to good pve change to game.

i take lvl 10 – 6 time lvl 12 -4 time lvl 14 – 4 time of course as daily still no ring from daily chest. i really think somthing is bugged.

The last 3 days I got 4 rings and 2 fractal weapon. Don’t give up!

see that why i think its bugged

I got my 1st two rings at 14 & 16 respectively. Didn’t get my 3rd till lvl 28. Then farmed for about 2-3 days till an infused one. After that rings were like flowing water. I kept getting them.

Same thing with mist vials.
I have only one from all my time in fractals while some people have more than 10 after lvl 5.
Ihope anet will look into it.

The RNG basically killed off what little desire I had left to do Fractals. I’m not going to spend hours of my time to come up with nothing because nobody has been creative enough to implement a way that isn’t just blind chance.

After doing level 10 for about 9 days I got absurdly lucky and got the defensive version of the ring with my preferred stats. However I have had 0 rings since then and I’m still at 2 vials and 0 crystals after ~110 fractals. Also the one time I tried level 20 I crashed at the very end so I didn’t even get a chance at any of teh lootz. I will probably take a little break until they get the DC/reconnect bug and all the new patch bugs fixed before trying again.

Honestly at this point, I’d be all for green rings dropping 100% of the time if they offered an infusion slot (while still having a pipedream’s chance of getting an ascended ring).

Don’t tread on me… or my progression

But that wouldn’t be in the spirit of the grindy treadmill at all!

Maybe you guys are wearing Magic Find and Magic Find now affects chest loot.

i made so many attempts to get one, and people have 3 even 5 and me not a one after got 1800 fracts relic….pls anet check,because i think i’m bugged or the chest now is…i can’t believe after all these tries never got one

I got a ring on my first Lv.10 run and it wasnt a very good ring (Snaffs Gyre: ~80Pow ~80 prec 10% MF – offensive slot). It took me about 10 dailies before I could get another one and it was on Lv.16 when I basically gave up trying for dailies (Doric’s Royal Signet: ~100pow ~80tough ~80 vit – defensive slot).

There appear to be some pretty high tier ones out there that I think are Lv.20+ rings and increase like 5 or 6 different stats.

You get them when they drop.

You’re not doing anything wrong, you’re just beating your head against the worst loot system in recent history. Just do your daily for your 20%-30% chance to be able to progress that day. If you have an alt, or are on scale 20, you can roll twice a day to have a chance to progress; it really comes down to how much stomach you have to beat your head against this abomination.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

If it is any consolation I am on scale 22 and have accrued over1600 fractal tokens and not yet gotten a ring either. It is RNG with the Jade Maw.

We are exploring alternatives to the current system.

Also add a solution to infused rings, like putting any 4 ascended rings into mystic forge for one random infused one.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

If it is any consolation I am on scale 22 and have accrued over1600 fractal tokens and not yet gotten a ring either. It is RNG with the Jade Maw.

We are exploring alternatives to the current system.

This. Is. Awesome!

Robert Hrouda.1327:

If it is any consolation I am on scale 22 and have accrued over1600 fractal tokens and not yet gotten a ring either. It is RNG with the Jade Maw.

We are exploring alternatives to the current system.

10 days straight no rings, im so depressed. This quote really cheered me up

TimeBomb.3427:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

If it is any consolation I am on scale 22 and have accrued over1600 fractal tokens and not yet gotten a ring either. It is RNG with the Jade Maw.

We are exploring alternatives to the current system.

This. Is. Awesome!

NO ITS NOT. This shouldn’t have been like this in the first place!!!!! Proper QA would have shown that the RNG SUCKS! Not surprised after seeing the dungeons in this game especially CoF.

I think developers and players will always have opposite opinions on randomness. Developers like it and players hate it. Maybe randomness should be kept away a bit more from gear that increases a characters combat effectiveness, in contrary to cosmetic and optional things like skins.

DandySlayer.7019:

TimeBomb.3427:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

If it is any consolation I am on scale 22 and have accrued over1600 fractal tokens and not yet gotten a ring either. It is RNG with the Jade Maw.

We are exploring alternatives to the current system.

This. Is. Awesome!

NO ITS NOT. This shouldn’t have been like this in the first place!!!!! Proper QA would have shown that the RNG SUCKS! Not surprised after seeing the dungeons in this game especially CoF.

The fact you’re angry doesn’t change the fact that it’s a good thing they realize it was a bad idea and are changing it.

At 250 fractals completed myself. Got two rings early on, then when I got to level 20, got two infused rings on my 2nd and 3rd dailies. Two weeks later running 10 and 20 dailies every day, I just got my 5th ring total. It’s RNG. Not ideal by any means, but if you’ve only run like 10 dailies and haven’t gotten a ring, there’s really no reason to whine, you haven’t run many at all. Don’t even need any resist until level 20 anyway, just learn the animations and mechanics and you’ll be fine.

DandySlayer.7019:

TimeBomb.3427:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

If it is any consolation I am on scale 22 and have accrued over1600 fractal tokens and not yet gotten a ring either. It is RNG with the Jade Maw.

We are exploring alternatives to the current system.

This. Is. Awesome!

NO ITS NOT. This shouldn’t have been like this in the first place!!!!! Proper QA would have shown that the RNG SUCKS! Not surprised after seeing the dungeons in this game especially CoF.

On an badly programmed RNG system based game, what are you surprised of? I met a lot doing the lv10 daily who still dream to get one, and sometimes they have one, except absolutely not their stats, or a mf one.

Nepumuk.6071:

I think developers and players will always have opposite opinions on randomness. Developers like it and players hate it.

Developers like it because players like it – see Vegas if you really need evidence that players love randomness. The issue is the amount of randomness – very low levels of randomness are boring, while extraordinarily high levels of randomness are disheartening. Randomness is this delicate thing that isn’t just about aggregate payoffs, but is about the frequency and size of payoffs as well; balanced well, and you’ll have an incredibly addictive reward structure, while poor design drives players away.

Ascended rings are as close to a textbook example of how not to do randomness as there exists:

- Locking it into daily achievements, making it difficult if not impossible to improve the odds by spending more time on it
- Making it an all-or-nothing roll, completely lacking the granularity of lesser prizes that keep people motivated to play
- Binding every drop on acquire, taking any ability to even the randomness out through the market out of play
- Making the items un-salvageable, which combined with the previous point make a lot of your ‘hits’ not just misses, but misses that feel really bad because you have this rare item that isn’t useful to you and cannot be sold or converted into something valuable in any way
- Gating progression behind hitting these rolls

Every single one of these ideas is terrible (EDIT: in the context of the other decisions made – any one of these ideas is perfectly fine with the right supporting structure), and when combined delivered a massively unsatisfying reward structure.

Fractals on the whole is this fascinating example of game design – there are aspects of the dungeon that are absolutely brilliant – cutting edge, changing the industry in ways that you should expect to be copied kinds of great. Right next to that are these utterly boneheaded designs that are so bad that I’d wager you could go and pick up a bunch of random Mexicans from in front of Home Depot and they’d deliver better work.

Such stark contrast is truly rare, and I’d love to understand the company dynamics responsible for such a combo.

Totally agree, seems more 1 talented graphic engine designer (sorta of, considering highend 300 bucks GPU handle the game at 40 fps when in LA, 60 fps into dungeons at best with most high end graphic card and systems i7 included) surrounded of middle way IT students programming a cheap badly done game, and a gambler who took care of mystic forge.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

If it is any consolation I am on scale 22 and have accrued over1600 fractal tokens and not yet gotten a ring either. It is RNG with the Jade Maw.

We are exploring alternatives to the current system.

implying you didn’t use an ingame command to spawn the ring with even more amazing stats than a normal ascended ring, you cant fool me anet
also: spend like a month trying to get a ring, finally get one, it’s a condition damage ring, t-thanks…

No well, they have 2 clients. One is with debug menu, /.kill commands, invisible commands so noone see you etc, one is normal client. Devs, QA and other employee sometimes use normal client acting if they was normal players. Except noone of them complains about crappy lootsystem, unrewarding grinding game, etc (they love to keep their seat until last , considering the recent internal troubles )

Robert Hrouda.1327:

If it is any consolation I am on scale 22 and have accrued over1600 fractal tokens and not yet gotten a ring either. It is RNG with the Jade Maw.

We are exploring alternatives to the current system.

Is there any downsides to a system that lets users simply buy the rings after acquiring enough dungeon tokens?

BaconCatTheGreasy.9542:

raahk.2786:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

If it is any consolation I am on scale 22 and have accrued over1600 fractal tokens and not yet gotten a ring either. It is RNG with the Jade Maw.

We are exploring alternatives to the current system.

Is there any downsides to a system that lets users simply buy the rings after acquiring enough dungeon tokens?

None Whatsoever. Which is why it will never ever be implemented because good ideas are to ANet what water is to the Wicked Witch of the West.

I’d have to say that it’s not good ideas that they are lacking, rather it’s the attempt to utilize those ideas. They’ve had good intentions with this game, but it hasn’t exactly gone the way it should’ve due to a variety of reasons. Unfortunately with every patch it appears that those reasons are growing.

i got like 2800 tokens now… didnt get one ring at all in the beginning… now i got 8 in a row… 8x crappy stats

i need for example prec tough cond…. i got this stat ring like twice.. but WHY IN HELL there has to be HEALING in it O_o

raahk.2786:

Is there any downsides to a system that lets users simply buy the rings after acquiring enough dungeon tokens?

No, and Anet learned this before Nightfall came out for GW1. That’s why they implemented the system that they did in DoA. It allowed people to save tokens and buy something useful to them as a reward. Then before GW2 came out, in pre-interviews, they stated they would have similar rewards in GW2 which they did implement with normal dungeons (and it worked great!) Then suddenly in FotM they take a complete turn and head off in the opposite direction. I don’t know why. They know which system is more fun for their players.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

If it is any consolation I am on scale 22 and have accrued over1600 fractal tokens and not yet gotten a ring either. It is RNG with the Jade Maw.

We are exploring alternatives to the current system.

As a matter of interest, do you run this with random people? You should if you don’t. Don’t go in with other ANet people, and don’t use 3rd party sites or systems (like teamspeak) to find a group or while running the dungeon.

To get the true player experience.

raahk.2786:

Is there any downsides to a system that lets users simply buy the rings after acquiring enough dungeon tokens?

Fixed dungeon token rewards are simply not nearly as fun as random rewards for a pretty wide range of random generator functions. Opening a reward chest and getting something awesome is fun, and people respond very well to that. The problem with the rings isn’t that they are random, but that they’re a very extreme form of random, combined with the pressure of needing them to advance, that’s well outside the bounds of the kind of random that is fun.

A system that would be fun would be something like:

- Daily chests have a chance to give a ring, as it is now.
- When the daily chest does not give a ring, it will always give at least a vial of mist essence (including on lower tiers). On higher fractal levels, you also have a chance of getting a glob of mist essence.
- Rings can be salvaged for (1-3) globs of mist essence, in addition to other materials.
- Non-infused rings can be crafted using, say, 3 shards of mist essence, along with other materials (tokens, etc).
- Rings can be infused using a large number of shards of mist essence and other materials.

Why is this system better?

- Every daily chest helps advance you towards your goal of getting the ring you want. Even if all you can do is grind difficulty 2 for one vial a day, you will eventually build up enough to get your ring. Unlike the current system, a bad roll does not waste your time.
- Getting a ring you don’t want is still a boon; even though it isn’t the best case scenario, you can still salvage it to make substantial progress towards the ring you wanted.
- There is still the possibility of getting the perfect roll and getting the ring you wanted instantly – you can still hit the jackpot, which is fun.
- You don’t feel awful equipping a ring just to progress. Instead of that being a wasted ring long term, you can eventually recycle it into a ring you do want.
- Vials, globs, and shards do drop in the dungeon, so you have a chance of progressing outside of the daily chest as well.
- Providing an upgrade path for non-infused rings makes getting a ring with the stats you want, but not infused, a good drop, since you can invest in infusing that one, instead of being stuck with it in your pack while you again have to use infused rings with bad stats in order to progress.

Numbers are, of course, made up on the fly. The short version is that the key problem with the current system are that when you whiff on the ring you want, you’ve made zero progress – with a secondary concern being that bad rings feel really bad since they should be good, valuable drops, but just aren’t. Adding a small reward that will eventually add up to the big reward keeps the benefits of the current system while fixing the bad misses plaguing the current system.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

If it is any consolation I am on scale 22 and have accrued over1600 fractal tokens and not yet gotten a ring either. It is RNG with the Jade Maw.

We are exploring alternatives to the current system.

Hi Robert. Very pleased to read your response. Fractals is an amazing dungeon, mostly held back only the RNG of rings.

I really like the post above me by Ensign however. Randomness is sometimes a fun thing. It’s the feeling of hitting a brick wall and lack of progression that sucks. That brick wall is the difference between randomness and “rng” when the term is used negatively.

In short, a feeling of progression is always nice. DoA in GW1 did things perfectly where you had both random gem rewards and endchests. It also was not limited by a silly thing like “daily” which kills the fun of players who like to grind.

As I see it, the only reason ascended items are this difficult to obtain right now is because they’re trying to strike a balance between the relatively easy exotics and the extremely time-consuming legendaries.

Also, I wouldn’t say you’ve made absolutely no progress when you obtain a ring with stats you don’t want. You’re being gear-gated in higher levels of the fractals so any ability to provide agony resistance is allowing you to progress. The problem is, this is the exact way you don’t want to progress; forcing players to wear gear they don’t build for, or otherwise wouldn’t use, simply to play at higher difficulties.

Will changing your stats out on one of your rings completely change your character? No. Will having stats of a different build on one of your rings make you ineffective in your current build? No. Does it feel wrong to wear stats that do not coincide with your character’s build? Yes. Sometimes, all it takes is for something to feel off to put a player in an unwilling mood. If you feel like you’re being forced to play with inadequacies (and in some cases you are with Agony), you’re not playing “the way you want to play” which happens to be sort of a mantra for GW2.

On the other side of the coin, however, they’ve committed themselves to adding this new tier (ascended) to the world slowly. With that, I would expect you to see a host of new ‘obtainment’ methods being implemented, tweaked, and perfected. They’re currently seeking a way to give substantial rewards to players who do not grind while giving the grind-happy players reason to come back for more, but without causing a massive gap between the two. That’s hard to do.

The bad news is that we haven’t seen the last poor attempt at using the ‘RNG’ for rewards. The good news? When they make mistakes, we don’t have to suffer through them for the duration of playing the game as with most companies. They’re committed to change…which is kind of paradoxical if you read it right.

If I had to bet money, I’d say eventually you will be able to craft ascended gear as well; though the materials would probably come from unconventional sources.

Redscope.6215:

Will changing your stats out on one of your rings completely change your character? No.

But getting randon stats for every equipment armor part would.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

If it is any consolation I am on scale 22 and have accrued over1600 fractal tokens and not yet gotten a ring either. It is RNG with the Jade Maw.

We are exploring alternatives to the current system.

Great to hear it! (the alternatives that is, not your terrible luck =)) I got more lucky than average with a P/V/T ring on my 5th run through lvl 10 and it just doesnt seem right to me that people doing lvl 15, 20 or whatever and have run it many more times than me and who would almost certainly be much better players than me have less to show for it. Element of randomness is good, too much means too many people don’t get what they deserve (and too many get what they don’t deserve too).

Robert Hrouda.1327:

If it is any consolation I am on scale 22 and have accrued over1600 fractal tokens and not yet gotten a ring either. It is RNG with the Jade Maw.

We are exploring alternatives to the current system.

Can you think of a less fun, entertaining or enjoyable way to get these rings?

I know I can’t.

I’m 0 for 10 on daily chests (have mostly stopped doing them, but every 3 or 4 days I get stupid and think “maybe today”) and failing to see the entertainment value of Agony and Agony resistance, since combatting it is all down to RNG.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

If it is any consolation I am on scale 22 and have accrued over1600 fractal tokens and not yet gotten a ring either. It is RNG with the Jade Maw.

We are exploring alternatives to the current system.

Please Please Please for the love of all that is good in video games, do away entirely with the RNG loot system. It is such an archaic and terrible system.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

If it is any consolation I am on scale 22 and have accrued over1600 fractal tokens and not yet gotten a ring either. It is RNG with the Jade Maw.

We are exploring alternatives to the current system.

Give us a pop up with all the rings and let us pick one, seems pretty easy to figure out that “Alternative”, 2 days, 2 rings, boom I can continue to progress through the fractal levels. That makes FAR more sense then being stuck at w/e level because the RNG hates you.

To the “I like RNG based blah blah” people:
I like the RNG of things that DO NOT hinder my progression through content. I get the excitement of looting that chest/mob and seeing “phat lootz” too, so I understand that, What people DO NOT get excited over is “oh look… the RNG didn’t give me X item that I need to progress, lucky me”

Personally I’ve gotten 1 ring, on my first run through level 10 (which of course has completely worthless stats for…ANY of my characters" and nothing since then. I’m like “1/todepressingtokeepcount”

If something like what you wrote was possible, when you got your 2 infused version rings at lv20 daily, why the hassle to progress till 49 (after is just cheats)? We progress to have more opportunities to get the rings we want (assuming you have 30 def but wrong stats) while others, unable, still play the same daily. Too much easy suggestion,would terminate the content too soon than expected

Robert Hrouda.1327:

If it is any consolation I am on scale 22 and have accrued over1600 fractal tokens and not yet gotten a ring either. It is RNG with the Jade Maw.

We are exploring alternatives to the current system.

3 weeks daily with both Tier 2 and Tier 3, out of thirty daily runs, zero ring drop for me. (0/30)

In my honest opinion, I think this RNG function used on Jade Maw must be flawed and needs to be look into.

Welp, congratulations anet, fractals are dead for me now.

Some people are lucky, some are not. 2 weeks running 2nd tier dailies, only one ring so far (and the worst one for my build).
Now, some classes can run and without rings 3rd tier, but agony is really pushing necro (huge HP pool, poor heal), and I don’t want to be carried. So I’d prefer to slow down and get at least +10 agony resistance before going to 3rd. What options do I have besides RNG?
Getting back-thingy for fractal relics is way too much grind (hello, manifesto).
Getting back-thingy for gold is the same grind. I can afford (just don’t want), but many can’t.

Anyway, now I’m at the point where I’m sick of fractals. They took too much of my time for only poor loot. Starting was fan, I liked the idea of challenge. But right now it’s more like banging your head against a wall. It’s unbelievable buggy. Funding people is a pain and there are always rage quits, DC issues and etc. I like progression, but progression based on luck is not progression, it’s BS.

I’m done with fractals. Good job, anet, you did well.