The problem is, no matter how hard Arenanet tries to balance fractals to provide greater rewards for harder/lengthier fractals , the community will find the few fractals that are easiest to farm/the most rewarding for their time.
This already happens with dungeons, with lengthier paths being mostly abandoned except for fun, due to the reward not scaling enough. Generally people run the easiet 5-10 dailies each day, and it becomes a daily grind.
Arenanet should build a system that dynamically changes the rewards based on regional popularity. For example, if 90% of the fractals completed in the 50-60 range in the past 48 hours is fractal 53, and only 0.1% of fractals completed are fractal 51, fractal 53 would provide significantly greater rewards than 51.
This would be done relatively(each fractal relative to the others in its range percentage wise), so that potential surges in player population/fractal popularity as a whole won’t throw the system off
This means that you’re always encouraged to take on unique adventures. Instead of avoiding fractal 56 because it’s Dredge Fractal with a BS instability, you may try to group together and take it down, because it has 10x the reward of 52, which is Swamp with an easy instability.
And if the reward difference ends up too high, players will run it and bring it back down, until equilibrium is reached. There would be minimums and maximums(to prevent certain fractals becoming worthless, or a borderline impossible fractal from inflating the economy with mats(ie a fractal goes unbeaten for 2 months, you wouldn’t want someone to get 50,000 gold and crash the market because the system got out of hand).
This would really help keep GW2 fresh and exciting. it would keep all content relevant, and encourage players to try out the dozens of fractal combinations available, in addition to rewarding the best of the best.
