I definitely agree with adding tiered encryption boxes, but they added tiered rewards in the dailies (each grouping of fractals gives a different tier of chest). Unfortunately those cannot include gear, but I think getting gear from fractals that isn’t an ascended ring is a pipe dream.
That said, it’s way easier to make money from crafting infusions now and since more people are doing fractals there’s a lot of opportunity there. Anet has shifted loot from fractals to raids and gold from dungeons to fractals (albeit you have to work a little harder for it but I’m not opposed to that).
I honestly think the only real change I would make is to add a tiny chance of an ascended box to an encryption box, no need to even be as high as it was previously. That way you still get similar rewards but since you open way more fractal encryption boxes and they are farmable it would prevent undue abuse of the system.
like I said in the post though, the “tiered rewards” in the daily boxes are just more of the spammed rewards, not actually better rewards, and there is currently not much difference above level 51. In fact, though its a relatively small sample size so far, [KING]’s data and the experience of my own guild (10-15 people running multiple dailies every day) show ascended chests are basically non-existent like you said, but other than that the difference between a 51+ and a 21-50 chest is 1 key and 5 +1s and, no noticeable difference in drop chance (based on kings data its actually a decrease currently).
I wasnt sure if I worded the chests from encryptions well enough. What I meant was, say for instance, there was supposed to be 1% chance from a mid 70s for an ascended weapon and a mid 70 mid length fractal gave 5 encryption boxes. This would mean that the chance of getting 1 weapon chest from opening 5 boxes would be 1%, not 1% each.
I saw a post about a week back where a guy said he opened 1000 encryption boxes and listed what he received. I’ll try and find it so I can link it, but ascended items are nowhere on the list (though it was net gold positive). That said, he did not list the value or items he received from doing enough fractals to get those 1000, so I think that you would make much more gold if you actually did enough fractals for it.
That said, I don’t think fractals should be primarily for gold, I think they should be for challenging content and some gear upgrades. Ascended rings drop but at the moment that’s it, and I think you and I are on the same page about adding a tiny chance for ascended armor to the encryption boxes but just stated it differently.
In terms of when that should be the case, I think is should be absolutely minuscule (less than .5%) for fractal encryptions obtained under fractal level 50, and a larger but still tiny chance for boxes acquired over level 50 so that people who cannot complete fractals at higher levels are not penalized but those who do are rewarded.
However, for best results I think that the daily chests should carry ascended loot chances rather than encryption boxes because encryptions are farmable and therefore abusable. If the daily chests were updated to include a chance at ascended gear, I think the chances should start at 3% and work their way up to 10% or so from the chest given from completing fractals 75-100. I have no numbers to support the ones I provided, only my feelings, but I think starting there would be a good way to reward the fractal content without flooding the GW2 economy with easily procured ascended items. I want ascended items to be accessible to everyone but have players who do harder challenges to be rewarded better.
What are your thoughts?
There’s nothing wrong with having a good spread.