Guild Wars 2

The reward systems put in place for Fractals of the Mists seems bad. The mundane-mess of the chests, coupled with how the daily rewards and tokens work, make the rewards from FotM feel very out of place and broken. Fractals was meant to reward players for their ability to complete more difficult levels, but it seems to work in opposite: players at higher levels are punished with longer runs and similar quality loot.

First lets talk about the reward systems.

Chest Rewards

I will be comparing level 48 fractals with [Hard Mode] Urgoz’s Warden, an Elite Dungeon from Guild Wars 1 with Zodiac and Urgoz weapons.

In Fractals of the Mists, the chests share the same problem that other dungeon chests face: they are unrewarding and often just give you trash to vendor later on. The difference in FotM is that, at high levels, these chests remain underwhelming with no reward for an increase in difficulty.

In Urgoz, the chests that could be scattered throughout the dungeon, and at the end, were very much rewarding and often fun to open. The major differences between chests in these two games are as follows.

• In Urgoz, locked chests had a fairly good chance to drop an item of Rare value. It was always a joy to open a chest and find a rare inside. FotM has a very small chance of rare or exotic items dropping.

• Futhermore, in Urgoz, there was a chance to drop a random rare skin unique to the dungeon, or other unique skins that were rare and can be sold. In FotM, unique skins do not drop from these chests. On the off chance an exotic drops, it shares a skin with an existing set found fairly commonly in the world, or as a cultural weapon.

• The final chest of Urgoz dropped crafting materials and a Named Weapon that fell in line with the dungeon. You could use the crafting materials to buy Elite (“legendary”) armor. In FotM, the crafting material drops randomly from mobs, and is not used in creating any armor or weapons.

These issues are very much shared with other dungeons in the game, with the only difference possibly being the difficulty level of dungeons. This leaves chests feeling very stale.

Since the patch in January, the loot from the chests in FotM seems to have taken a hit, and is no where as rewarding as pre-Jan levels. This is, however, only based on personal observations, and it is entirely possible that I have just had terrible RNG rolls for two months straight.

Weapon Skin Rewards

While there is a problem with how and when skins drop, FotM is specifically bad at Weapon Skin rewards.

• Unlike in many other games, there is no need/want/pass system to distribute skins to players who need it.

• Unlike with Urgoz in Guild Wars 1, the fractal skins do not drop from the chests of the dungeon, and cannot be traded or sold because they are account bound.

• Unlike in Guild Wars 2, these skins cannot be bought after a significant time spent doing the dungeon because it is no available as a token reward.

• These weapons cannot be crafted, and rely completely on a random roll. This punishes players with an unusable weapon more often than not.

Considering the rarity of the weapons compared to the rarity of Zodiac weapons in Guild Wars 1, it does not make sense to have the weapon be both entirely based on RNG and not available with some kind or recipe using tokens.

I proposed a possible recipe to fix this issue here.

Ascended Gear

Ascended Tier rarity feels incomplete when compared to how other tiers of rarity work.

• You are unable to salvage ascended gear, though you are able to salvage every other type of rarity, including Legendaries.

• Ascended Gear is unavailable through FotM save Rings. This proves problematic, because FotM is the only content in the game where Ascended Gear is required to progress, yet it is absent from being attainable in the place where it is needed.

It is odd that a FotM player is required to participate in outside content for gear relating specifically to where she is required to run that specific gear.
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If no improvements are to be had in the March 26 patch, I very well might be done with this dungeon for sometime. After 3 months of 3+ hours a day inside of it, I am frustrated to no end, with my brains falling out one ear and my patience falling out the other.

This itself is even more frustration, because for these 3 months, I remained persistent and repeatedly ran difficult content, and have not received the proper reward for my effort.

Constantly getting rewards that are subpar or are not proper or usable for your character results in more loathing than feeling content.

This is a problem I hope is fixed or acknowledged, because it has remained for far too long.

edit:tl;dr: Rewards are done in a poor manner, and skins are done in a worst manner.

Fractal weapons are frustrating to acquire and create situations where some players that have run hundreds of 30 or 40 dailies will still not receieve the skin they want, while someone who ran one 20 has the skin they want.

This is an idea to make weapons attainable while keeping them difficult to get while giving you the task of recreating a broken and shattered weapon into one you can use.

The Recipe
In the mystic forge, you should be able to combine 4 items to get the skin you want.

• Weapon Handle Piece – this is an item you should be able to buy from the vendor for Fractal Relics at an expensive cost (2000). This is a universal piece used in all recipes.
• Specific Weapon Piece – this piece determines what weapon comes out of the recipe and can be bought from the vendor for Pristine Fractal Relics for an expensive cost (20). Examples would be something like “Shortbow Arm Fragments” and “Sword Blade Fragments”.
• Shards of Mists Essence – to ensure either 20+ rank or significant runs of <20. Use 3 or (5) shards. (Edit: Instead of Shards, Cores can drop at even higher levels and/or be created with manu shards)
• Globs of Ectoplasm – (10) or 25 or 50

Reasoning
This provides a use for the enormous amount of relics people have accumulated while still keeping the cost very high, requiring many daily runs to complete. The use of shards gives players doing high levels an advantage over lower levels. The globs of ectoplasm are another itemsink for ectos, and adds some cost to the weapon.

With all of the cost in materials, this will lets very determined players get the weapons the want over a few weeks, or be rewarded for already have run hundreds of runs. Less determined players can still work towards this over the course of months.

Other Things That Would Make Us Hate RNG Less
Give salvage results to rings and untransmuted weapon skins.

• Regular rings can salvage into 0-5 ectos and 1-2 Vials of Mists Essence.
• Infused Rings can salvage into 0-5 ectos and 1-2 Globs of Mists Essence.
• Untransmuted Weapon Skins can salvage into 0-5 ectos, 1-2 Shards of Mists Essence, and 1 Weapon Handle Piece.

These things aren’t farmable enough for good ecto farming. Even those with 50 rings won’t result in many ectos being created, likely less than 100 with how RNG works on salvaging. This also helps people get around some RNG by giving them an alternate way to get the mats they need, use unwanted rewards,, and again are not an effective farm that would result in a flood of materials.

(i guess you dont have to give us ectos either, but it would be nice and give unwanted rings greater value)

Even with all this, the difficulty of obtaining a weapon is retained while removing the frustrations that currently exist with the way it is handled right now.

Super Late Edit: As someone on reddit suggested, instead of shards, create Cores of Mist Essence, which can be created with 5 shards or dropped from levels 40+. This encourages doing higher level fractals instead of staying on 20.