Guild Wars 2

I’ve been spending about 30-40g on gems every week for more than a month now and just dumped another 100g into gems today. All of it I spent on keys to open BLC’s in hopes of getting the permanent version of the Black Lion Trader, which I happen to want more than any vanity item in this game.

The results have been discouraging so far to say the least. I have not yet gotten a perma-trader, merchant, banker or anything of the sort. The only non-common items I’ve gotten so far are a few Halloween skins (only 2 of which are weapon skins, and that’s after converting everything into Mad King chests) and an everlasting tonic that transforms me into a random tree, which is a lot of fun, but not exactly what I dumped hundreds of gold trying to get.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t upset, but I’m not here to vent out my frustration. Having opened over 500 chests, I’ve noticed a number of serious issues with the BLC mechanic in practice, and would like to discuss some of them here:


1. Rare items need a cap on effective Gem price

Before I went into this BLC opening business, I knew the terms, that this was all based on chance, and that I could very possibly not get what I want. I decided to take that risk and in fact did not get what I wanted. This, I can accept.

What bothers me is just how very little I DID get from it, and the spine-chilling thought that the results would have been the same if I used real money instead of gold to buy these keys.

Let’s do a little bit of math here: 500 chests requires about 500 keys to open. There is a chance of getting a key from a chest, so let’s peg that chance at a generous 20%. This means I used about 400 keys to open all of these chests. 5 keys cost 450 gems, so 400 would cost 80 times that amount, which is 36000. 4000 gems cost $50 of cold, hard cash, so 36000 would cost $450.

I hope you can see the problem now. The fact that Gems have a real world price associated with it means that there really does need to be a reasonable cap on the amount Gems you are expected to spend to get something you want. “Better luck next time” really doesn’t cut it from a MORAL perspective when the player has paid $400 and received nothing but boosters, tonics, and inferior tools (I’ll get to this in a bit).

I can’t help but feeling that the current drop rates of rare items from BLCs are simply not fair when put into perspective the “average” amount of real world money players need to spend on keys to be able to get one. Many players probably share this perception, and as long as this perception continues, players will be discouraged to spend money on gems, which is both bad for business on ANet’s side, and bad for players due to the inflating Gold to Gem prices.

By rare item, I mean any time-limited skin or anything permanent, because let’s be honest, those are the only real desirable items from BLC’s. Other games with successful models of key purchasing have desirable items with EVERY key purchase, as in the case of TF2 with unique weapons and hats.

However, this problem takes more than just increasing drop rates to solve. As long as the rare drops are RNG based, there will exist people with bad luck like myself who end up spending hundreds of dollars in real money with practically nothing to show for it.

To put an effective cap on the price of these rare drops, we can introduce a new guaranteed drop in the BLC, let’s call it the Black Lion token for now (we could also just use the Mystery Tonic). Each BLC would drop 1-5 of these tokens, and once you have accumulated enough tokens, you can exchange for the exact item you want from an NPC, where all the rare drops are available for exchange.

This system would retain the luck element (some at ANet would call it “fun”) of the original system, in that there is still a chance to get a rare item from the chests themselves, but ensure players are adequately rewarded for each BLC they open, and progress toward getting the exact item that they want instead of opening chests aimlessly hoping to hit the jackpot, which, as anyone who has opened more than a few hundred BLCs can attest to, is an extremely demoralizing process, and does very little to encourage Key purchasing.

*Apparently there is a 5000 character limit. Continued on next post…

2. Receiving non-stackable/soulbound tools from BLCs

This is one of the most annoying non-droprate related issues with BLC’s for me personally. ANet wants to give players incentive to open Black Lion Chests, yet there is a completely unreasonable inventory space cost to the player for opening them. Black Lion Salvage kits and Black Lion harvesting tools, are some of the most common tools received from opening BLC’s. Every time I get one of them, I let out a small sigh… Because every time this happens I have to say goodbye to a valuable inventory/bank slot, which is one of the most costly assets in the game. Once you get past a certain point in number of chests opened, the only valid option left is to discard them, which I really shouldn’t have to do with something that I spent Gems on.

Setting aside the usefulness of these items for a moment, consider the regular harvesting tools: The sickle comes in stacks of 50, and axes/picks in stacks of 100. When you take into account the cost of inventory space, the 10/stack BL sickle and 25/stack Axe/Pick becomes by far the inferior good. Black Lion Salvage kits are in a similar situation due to the existence of Mystic Salvage kits that stack up to 250.

To add insult to injury, Black Lion Harvesting tools are SOULBOUND. This compounds with the stacking issue mentioned above, which means if you opened the chests on a single character, those 50 other stacks of tools are only usable on that specific character. So now you have 50 dead inventory slots, which is about 30g worth of space. If you have other characters you use for harvesting high-end materials, tough luck, they won’t be able to even HOLD the tools to save inventory/bank space, let alone use them.

Opening BLCs costs Gems, so it really should not give us an inferior tool that is more costly to store and use than available elsewhere, that is if ANet wants players to bother spending gems doing so. Making all of these items stack to up to 250 each would greatly improve the user-friendliness of BLC’s and thereby their desirability.


Black Lion Chests are a serious point of contention right now. And the issues I discussed above I feel are at the core of the problem. Address them, and many people, including myself, will be happy to spend money on Gems again.


Congratulations on making it to the end of my epic post. =)
Thank you for taking the time to hear what I have to say.

Update: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/After-opening-2-stacks-of-BLCs-some-constructive-feedback/first#post602943

Hmm, I would assume the only reason the rates are so bad is because it can be brought with ingame cash. Had that not been an option and you were only allowed to buy it with real life cash the drop would be more then likely doubled.

Having 2 types of gems. 1 from Gold other from actual money would solve most problems. For spending ACTUAL money you can get a special key that quadruples the chance of receiving great items. Or a Ace card that you can turn into an item of your choice.

The reason for that is both as a thank you for supporting ANet. And as a thank you we hope you enjoy this (insert kitten item that won’t change gameplay but will still make you want to buy more keys with actual money.)

I think this is a well thought out post.

I’m not a fan of gambling, it stinks of other MMOs which have a much poorer rep. Nevertheless, there are players who love to gamble and that is fine with me as long as they are satisfied with their return on what they spent and the items are tradable so that people who don’t want to gamble can buy them either from the Gem store or from the TP. The majority of gamblers are not happy right now.

When I first heard about GW2 a year or so ago, I argued that it would not be good because of the parent company. I was assured that Anet was a US company completely different from Aion and other titles.

In the beginning I thought GW2 was amazing bugs and all. But once the Gem store started operating and with this last fiasco, I lost trust. The outside people brought in to manage the Cash shop do not have the same philosophy as Anet.

I suggest that they either replace them with more customer centric Anet staff or have a frank discussion on how to fix the loss in trust, and explain profit maximization in this company does not mean using the biz practices of less savory MMOs.

NightFire.7563:

Hmm, I would assume the only reason the rates are so bad is because it can be brought with ingame cash. Had that not been an option and you were only allowed to buy it with real life cash the drop would be more then likely doubled.

Having 2 types of gems. 1 from Gold other from actual money would solve most problems. For spending ACTUAL money you can get a special key that quadruples the chance of receiving great items. Or a Ace card that you can turn into an item of your choice.

The reason for that is both as a thank you for supporting ANet. And as a thank you we hope you enjoy this (insert kitten item that won’t change gameplay but will still make you want to buy more keys with actual money.)

I’m afraid that a two gem system would ignite the “rich players get everything! the 1% can’t enjoy the game to its fullest!” nonsense.

What’s fascinating to me is that black lion chests would easily – easily! – be worth cracking if I could sell everything that came out of them on the trading post. The fact that everything is soulbound and account bound is the major limiter on their value, since there are so many dead drops as a result.

Given the number of excess black lion chests out there, that would mean that allowing players to trade their BLC drops is quite literally a million dollar idea.

Ensign.2189:

What’s fascinating to me is that black lion chests would easily – easily! – be worth cracking if I could sell everything that came out of them on the trading post. The fact that everything is soulbound and account bound is the major limiter on their value, since there are so many dead drops as a result.

Given the number of excess black lion chests out there, that would mean that allowing players to trade their BLC drops is quite literally a million dollar idea.

Definitely a good idea if all you want is to make BLC’s more attractive. However, ANet would effectively be forced to remove a lot of the Black Lion chest drops (boosters, * access express, repair canisters, etc) from the Gem Store because due to the sheer volume of BLC’s out there, the equilibrium prices of these items would be much much lower than their gold equivalent price on the Gem store right now.

From a business perspective I can see why they would want to avoid that situation, as boosters and other tools probably account for quite a bit of their Gem Store revenue.

Kaon.7192:

Ensign.2189:

What’s fascinating to me is that black lion chests would easily – easily! – be worth cracking if I could sell everything that came out of them on the trading post. The fact that everything is soulbound and account bound is the major limiter on their value, since there are so many dead drops as a result.

Given the number of excess black lion chests out there, that would mean that allowing players to trade their BLC drops is quite literally a million dollar idea.

Definitely a good idea if all you want is to make BLC’s more attractive. However, ANet would effectively be forced to remove a lot of the Black Lion chest drops (boosters, * access express, repair canisters, etc) from the Gem Store because due to the sheer volume of BLC’s out there, the equilibrium prices of these items would be much much lower than their gold equivalent price on the Gem store right now.

From a business perspective I can see why they would want to avoid that situation, as boosters and other tools probably account for quite a bit of their Gem Store revenue.

How much do you think they may gain in key sales? I personally will never buy a key for cash/gold/gems/RL$ after hearing about the ridiculous drop rates.

Kaon.7192:

Definitely a good idea if all you want is to make BLC’s more attractive. However, ANet would effectively be forced to remove a lot of the Black Lion chest drops (boosters, * access express, repair canisters, etc) from the Gem Store because due to the sheer volume of BLC’s out there, the equilibrium prices of these items would be much much lower than their gold equivalent price on the Gem store right now.

Gem store prices are really random and nowhere near what many of those items are actually worth. Granted, I don’t have their numbers to look at, but I don’t think it’s a stretch to argue that the money they’re making off of forge stones, black lion kits, XP and karma boosters absolutely dwarfs the money they make off of everything else. It’s not like the prices on these things are anywhere near their revenue maximizing points.

The question they’d have to ask is whether the several million they’d make off of black lion chest at equilibrium (and I’m not exaggerating on that price) is worth the revenue they make off of selling res orbs and black lion sickles.

Or whether they’d be smart and use the market signals from this to adjust their prices – they’d make tons of money selling instant repair canisters at 15-20 gems a pop, for example, but I can’t imagine they are hot items at 70.

sbr.8170:

Kaon.7192:

Ensign.2189:

What’s fascinating to me is that black lion chests would easily – easily! – be worth cracking if I could sell everything that came out of them on the trading post. The fact that everything is soulbound and account bound is the major limiter on their value, since there are so many dead drops as a result.

Given the number of excess black lion chests out there, that would mean that allowing players to trade their BLC drops is quite literally a million dollar idea.

Definitely a good idea if all you want is to make BLC’s more attractive. However, ANet would effectively be forced to remove a lot of the Black Lion chest drops (boosters, * access express, repair canisters, etc) from the Gem Store because due to the sheer volume of BLC’s out there, the equilibrium prices of these items would be much much lower than their gold equivalent price on the Gem store right now.

From a business perspective I can see why they would want to avoid that situation, as boosters and other tools probably account for quite a bit of their Gem Store revenue.

How much do you think they may gain in key sales? I personally will never buy a key for cash/gold/gems/RL$ after hearing about the ridiculous drop rates.

Do you mean gain in key sales from making BLC rewards tradable? If so, my guess is that it probably won’t be enough to offset the loss in sales for everything else.

If you mean from the token system I suggested in the OP, I do believe this will increase their key revenue significantly, without cannibalizing sales for any other item in the Gem Store. A lot of people, like you and me, would be willing to buy keys for gold, or even cash if the price is reasonable, but are discouraged from doing so because of the all or nothing nature (mostly nothing) of the current BLC system, as well as the horrendous drop rates.

sbr.8170:

How much do you think they may gain in key sales? I personally will never buy a key for cash/gold/gems/RL$ after hearing about the ridiculous drop rates.

I did the math with some really conservative assumptions on price point and still got just under a gold per key on the free market, without considering the ultra-rare drops of permanent tonics and permanent bank access. Throwing in holiday drops and bank premiums? You’re looking at a huge demand item.

Bind on acquire on all these utility items is a design decision giving away enormous amounts of money, without question.

Granted, I can’t say with any certainty what the impact of full tradability vs keeping everything account bound would be. I don’t know what the sales volumes are of anything at their current prices, and none of us know the elasticity of any of these things because it hasn’t be tested. It is obvious that several things are badly mispriced, and the binding of gem store only items given as in-game rewards severely cripples their value as rewards.

The question is simply how much closer do you get to revenue maximization by letting prices float through a pseudo-floating mechanism than via badly mispricing those items on the gem store. My major concern would be the damage done to sales of well priced items, like the black lion salvage kit, and not to the badly overpriced ones that I presume are relatively low volume.

Ensign.2189:

Kaon.7192:

Definitely a good idea if all you want is to make BLC’s more attractive. However, ANet would effectively be forced to remove a lot of the Black Lion chest drops (boosters, * access express, repair canisters, etc) from the Gem Store because due to the sheer volume of BLC’s out there, the equilibrium prices of these items would be much much lower than their gold equivalent price on the Gem store right now.

Gem store prices are really random and nowhere near what many of those items are actually worth. Granted, I don’t have their numbers to look at, but I don’t think it’s a stretch to argue that the money they’re making off of forge stones, black lion kits, XP and karma boosters absolutely dwarfs the money they make off of everything else. It’s not like the prices on these things are anywhere near their revenue maximizing points.

The question they’d have to ask is whether the several million they’d make off of black lion chest at equilibrium (and I’m not exaggerating on that price) is worth the revenue they make off of selling res orbs and black lion sickles.

Or whether they’d be smart and use the market signals from this to adjust their prices – they’d make tons of money selling instant repair canisters at 15-20 gems a pop, for example, but I can’t imagine they are hot items at 70.

Yeah, without the actual sales data none of us can be sure of what the situation is with tool sales in the Gem Store. They will probably adjust prices to gauge demand at different prices over time to find a revenue maximizing price point, but I’m sure you can see the importance of maintaining a monopoly over the distribution of these items rather than leaving pricing up to the free market, where they have the risk of being valued as practically worthless, and where much of the revenues don’t go to them but to the sellers.

Many of those items are practically worthless. It’s almost certainly better for them the keep those locked up at high prices, where they can extract money from low information buyers, than watching them go to zero on the trading post.

The big issue at hand is that black lion chests should be a massive, massive money maker for A.Net; and it is almost definitely under-performing because of poor choices of what to hand out and how they hand it out. I could very well be mistaken, but the black lion chest should be an absolutely enormous money maker that could dwarf everything else on the gem store, and anything that would bring it closer to potential should be looked at very seriously.

I absolutely agree with you 100% on all points. I opened about 180 chests myself and have spent in total about $300 in the shop on different things, most of which are keys to open Black Lion chests I’ve collected over the past month. I then converted all the stupid tonics and marginally useful boosters into Mad King Chests which net me another 80 or so chests. What did I get for it?

Basically nothing.

3 skins for classes I don’t really play. Rifle and 2 Shoulders (Medium/Heavy). These are worth about 2g each on the Trading Post.

The rest were useless tonics I can’t fight with, crafting materials for items I won’t use and a bunch more tonics that I can’t fight with. Who the hell wants to spend 15 minutes in a form that all you can do is walk around?

I’ll never spend another cent in the shop because at the end of the day its complete waste of money. Most of my bank slots that I paid RL money for are full of useless crap from the chests. Casinos have better odds than getting something decent from the chests.

Great post, I just hope Anet listens

+1 to op.
I greatly dislike current “luck” system.

Additionally; if it’s gamble, bets should be 20 cents not 112,5 cents. We love slot machines since they have quick cycle and high “winning” chance – and low bets. Naturally majority keeps playing so they lose in the end. BLTC chests? Abysmal winning chance with huge bets – no winning nor fun at all! I still belive cheaper keys (or gems) would bring more to Anet’s table. Were tokens added, it’d be way less immoral as well. Someone could say even “fair”.

2 kinds of gems however, like someone pointed out, would cause some rage between haves and have-nots.

Save yourself the agony and TP or destroy every BLC you get. You’ll sleep better at night.

Black Lion keys certainly aren’t worth the money. It’s really annoying to get a key and all you get is some random booster, a daft tonic, and some crafting tools. If I paid real cash for diamonds those keys are going to cost around £1 a time (UK sterling). No way would I consider paying that for what is in those chests. I don’t even want to buy them with diamonds bought in game for gold. I am really hoping that ANet will listen, and either reduce the cost of the diamonds and or keys, and also increase the usefulness of stuff you get in the chests. Making gathering tools account bound rather than soulbound would be a start, plus making them more stackable.

As things stand at the moment, I am not tempted to spend any real cash for diamonds, considering the cost which is high, and the lack of value in the stuff you get for those diamonds. Selling cheaper would probably net more revenue in the long run.

They could easily fix this in game with a little bit of work. Take all keys out of the game as random drops and replace them with lockpicks. Lockpicks would be programmed to give you the current drop ratio/reward which I think all agree is poor. Keys would only be available from the store and when used would give a far higher drop ratio of skins/exotics/uniques/ectos etc or anything worth the expensive out lay on these over priced keys. just my thoughts. It wouldn’t be pay to win as anyone can buy keys with gold converted to gems. Everyone has the option to buy them.

kateuk.7538:

Black Lion keys certainly aren’t worth the money. It’s really annoying to get a key and all you get is some random booster, a daft tonic, and some crafting tools. If I paid real cash for diamonds those keys are going to cost around £1 a time (UK sterling). No way would I consider paying that for what is in those chests. I don’t even want to buy them with diamonds bought in game for gold. I am really hoping that ANet will listen, and either reduce the cost of the diamonds and or keys, and also increase the usefulness of stuff you get in the chests. Making gathering tools account bound rather than soulbound would be a start, plus making them more stackable.

As things stand at the moment, I am not tempted to spend any real cash for diamonds, considering the cost which is high, and the lack of value in the stuff you get for those diamonds. Selling cheaper would probably net more revenue in the long run.

tooslow.7801:

Save yourself the agony and TP or destroy every BLC you get. You’ll sleep better at night.

I reached that conclusion after I opened the first BLC I got. And I’m glad I did it with a dropped key, I’d feel really dumb if I’d done it with a key I actually paid for.

i wonder if the devs read these things and laugh

In GW1 at least a lot of useless stuff could be used towards a title like sweet tooth. Obviously some would consider the sweet tooth title was also useless. So, even if this was relative, and some said it was ALL a waste of time, that is not the point. As some one said above, if the odds for receiving returns are better for casino gambling then people will continue to feel ripped off and avoid the chests. When it comes to these chests, I do feel ripped off. The tonics for me are a complete waste of time, money and effort, though if the odds were better at receiving something of worth then i would put effort into opening chests.

Please put the appearance change items in BLC so i can retire, from my trading career and begin my adventuring career a wealthy Tyrian, thank you.

Before I opened my first BLC I looked online at what I could possible get and from that point on I put them straight on the TP to be sold for a few copper. I’d rather get the 3-5 copper then waste time / gold buying keys when I already know the chests only drop crap.

OP I just want to let you know that you handled this much more calmly that I would after what you did. Kudos and props to you spelling out the deficiencies with the BLC.

The tools are so poorly utilized they are basically destroyed upon receipt. They take up valuable space and they simply are short pointless stacks.

I had been driving the other day and thought that what would make some of this stuff worthwhile is being able to sell it on the TP. This would then at least allow people to get some value out of the randomness that is the the Black Lion Chest. However I realized it would then knick the sales on some of the items they have on their gem store so I doubt we will see it.

After the debacle of the halloween and in general my feelings on the BLC I will no longer ever buy a key again. When one drops great I will open a chest and have no expectations of worth coming from it. In the mean time they go onto the TP and sell for the few copper they are worth.

400 chests or so opened so far, i got 2 bank tabs full of blacklion tools 14 stacks of blacklion salvage kits 200+ repair canisters 300+ transmuation stones + tons all the other garbage

None of which ill ever use… I keep buying keys because gold is so easy to make but even then what the hell am i supposed to do with all this garbage. The worst thing is that mad king chest, they want me to use the only usefull item coming from chests guaranteed… fail

I agree with the OP.

I opened… 100 or 150 Chests already which I paid with real money, and really, I was just expecting something “great”. Any of the permanent stuff.

But after opening this many chests I noticed the chances are barely non-existent, so I stopped buying keys.

I won’t discuss ANet’s strategy on Gems, but yeah, if you make something REALLY hard to get, people won’t bother trying. If you make it too easy, it also loses value.
Right now, BLTC falls in the “too hard” category, so I (and probably others) won’t bother opening them again.

What should REALLY bug you is that a newbie that just opens one single chest can get the permanent merchant.

I like this game. But the lottery element is waaaaaay too much.

After opening another 125gold worth of chests i eneded up doing quite well yesterday with getting a few high value skins!

definatly not making a profit but im still pleased to say it did give me a “luck” streak…

I want the permanent trade post npc, the rate must be quite low…

this is a very well thought out post and i agree with everything Kaon said, i would really like to hear a response from Arenanet about this post because there is some very valid concerns in here

Wow you have completely described my two problems with the gem store. Apart from costumes needing their own storage, only the black lion chests feel bad. And you nailed the two problems I had with them. I am a bit of a problematic gambler, and spent $60 primarily on keys from chests during this holiday. I have a deathly pauldron to show for it (an item that is currently worth about 300 gems or so in gold). The pauldron is heavy armor, of which none of my characters can wear.

I got absolutely nothing of value out of the black lion chests and it severely dampened my enthusiasm for the game. They are a neat idea, but the reward for opening a chest needs to have the value of somebody who spent actual money on it.

Oh and now I have 15 or so harvesting tools all soulbound to my character that I have to hold onto until I find a good use for them.

An update:

I just dumped another 80g on keys today, and opened over 100 chests. As you can imagine, by now I have VERY low expectations when I open these chests (I still do it since it’s the only way to “progress” toward getting my perma-trader, and there is very little else in the game I’m compelled to work towards at the moment). These low expectations mean I don’t get disappointed as much when things don’t turn out as I’d like them to when dumping huge sums of gold into keys. This is great since I have never once gotten the result I had hoped for (perma-trader), or anything even remotely close (perma-merchant, banker) with the exception of the everlasting tree tonic I got a few weeks ago, which was, thanks to my low expectations, a very pleasant surprise for me.

The results of today’s chest opening session, however, made me realize that my expectations just weren’t low enough. 100+ BLC’s plus the mad king chests made from the resulting mystery tonics and boosters got me 3 shoulder skins in total. If those were all I got, this session would be business as usual, and I’d have been able to shrug it off like the past half dozen similar sessions. Instead, this is what I got in addition to my 3 shoulder skins: http://imgur.com/CYEvy

That’s right. A second Endless Mystery Tonic. The exact same one that turns me into trees. They managed to ruin the only bright spot in my pitch-black chest opening career… Having a second one of these is literally more useless than even the countless black lion salvage kits and harvesting tools that I’ve complained about in my opening post, because it’s not even consumable, let alone tradable. I would hope that eventually they might allow me to trade in this for something of similar rarity, but judging from ANet’s complete lack of response on any BLC related thread since the Mad King Chest announcement, I seriously doubt this would happen anytime soon.

It would really have taken a lot to make me give up on getting my trader, but this has done it. I’ve spent enough gold on BLCs to have been able to build any legendary I wanted in the game, and only have 2 (!) account bound mystery tonics to show for it. Until ANet at least shows some interest in improving the situation, BLC’s no longer exist as far as I’m concerned.

BLC’s are a joke and after reading all these new replies it has really driven home the fact that I will never spend another cent in the ANet store. The lack of response to this issue makes it even worse.

What do you expect them to respond with? Honestly it’s been a cash cow for them and they will just continue to try to figure out new ways to squeeze the milk from them.

Just don’t buy keys that’s the end of the story.

There is nothing they can say on it so the best course of action they can take is a non reply.

The BLC’s dont make any sense to me. ArenaNet’s main promise was that you could not pay to win. Increasing the chance of something useful like a permanent skin or banker/trader is absolutely in no way pay to win, but would certainly get more people buy gems (with real money). It’s really mind boggling that this hasn’t been implemented yet. In it’s current state, there is no reason to buy a black lion key.

To me the underlying bad joke is soulbound items. Especially when the mystic forge(ry) gives a soulbound staff to a ranger. Maybe that has been fixed, but I remember I got something like that the first time, and almost decided never to repeat.
At least in GW1, if you had an item customized to your character, you could salvage it or sell it for the runes. Some of this stuff can’t be sold, can’t be salvaged, and is practically unusable. But hey, at least liquid karma stacks, better than you can say for BL salvage kits- why can’t I combine a 25 and a 5 to make a 30? It’s just pixels and math, not some quantum leap.
The chests are fun to think about, until you open them. Again, in GW1 if you got boost like objects your guild leader could dole them out as party favors. Mine just sit in the bank next to the tonics collecting dust.
At least at some point make them throwable so you could hurt baddies or help allies. I think random acts of boostiness might be kinda fun.

I think that this is one of the most reasonable posts on the BLC problem that I’ve read. I’m not that bothered personally by the idea that BLCs are gambling, but I am sympathetic to those who are.

I think that there are two excellent suggestions in the original post. I really like the idea of Black Lion Tokens — something that can be saved up to purchase high end items. Most games have moved toward a combination of token and RNG system for loot systems, and it seems logical that something like Black Lion Chests would benefit from similar treatment.

The other issue is the Black Lion Tool issue. These absolutely should be account bound and should stack MUCH higher than they do. I think an argument can be made for the salvage kits stacking as well. My gf has a substantial number of keys saved up from just playing the game and she doesn’t even want to open chests simply because she knows that it will wreck her inventory.

read all of the OP post and I have made the same observations. I paid some money to get bank tabs and keys for Halloween (a gift to myself) I really wanted some permanent stuff but got nothing of use at all (love my mystic forge conduit)

I root for the token system, I don’t know if the BLC are making Anet money right now but I would galdly buy more gems/keys if I was sure I would eventually get to my target.

Or at least let us Mystic forge our BLC items to get some of the permanent stuff (like X bank access to get a permanent one) like it’s the case with the mystic forge conduit.

There very certainly should be a trade in mechanic for something worthwhile. Since each chest already includes three tonics and most people don’t use them with any frequency, adding a trade in mechanic for Tonics would make the most sense.

Or, alternatively, no more tonics, add three BLC tokens per chest and make tonics available as part of the trade in options at one token per tonic, with more desirable items, or course, costing a good number of tokens.

It probably makes too much sense for them to implement, but you definitely have the right idea and it would go a long way towards making BLC keys worth the purchase.

Arenanet could earn a fortune, if they would sell those permanent bank/merchant access items for 100€ of gems each.

I dunno man… Reading all the “I opened 300G worth of chests…” and “well I just dropped 500G on chests…” threads and replies to threads like this and I don’t see why ANet should change ANYTHING. I mean, they’re obviously raking it in from a certain percentage of the base. Look at it this way: everyone playing dropped $60 at minimum just to play, just like a single-player game. However, unlike a standard SP game, ANet has to pay to maintain the servers, as well as to develop a stream of new content. All this costs money. Lots and lots of money. So long as people are effectively paying hundreds if not thousands of real dollars on such an efficient revenue generator then they’d literally be idiots to stop, and the rest of us (the people who just have fun, you know, PLAYING) benefit greatly. Once people stop buying then perhaps there will be a change but…

I see it as a matter of morality and sustainability.

Yes, they are raking in a lot of money from people spending on keys right now, but at the current state, spending money on keys will likely get you nothing desirable and too much of everything else when storage space is at a premium. A business that is purely interested in profits will have no problem with charging a player as much money as possible and giving nothing in return, and will likely only start making changes once players smarten up and stop spending money.

I’d like to think that ANet has the decency to act differently and proactively provide a better product to the players before they are forced to do so from reduced sales, but I’m beginning to think their hands are likely tied when it comes to the BLC issue by higher-up NCSoft execs.

For the record, I have no problem with spending money to support development for games that I love. I’ve frequently contributed hundreds of dollars to kickstarters and have regularly spent hundreds of dollars on cash shop items for games that offer worthwhile products, but I’ve had to find out the hard way that Black Lion Keys are not worthwhile products.

I proposed the token system for chests to place a hard limit to the number of chests you need buy to get a specific super rare item a long time ago but it fell on deaf ears. General consensus was that that won’t do that because they get to sell more chests to gamblers and fools this way.

Remember the cash shop is overseen by a former Nexon manager, I wouldn’t expect the slightest care or quarter given. Nexon got where it is thanks to RNG cash shops.

Kaon.7192:

I see it as a matter of morality and sustainability.

I don’t understand the “morality” argument at all… The drop rate for good items from BLCs is well known (read as: it’s basically a lottery ticket), and they’re in NO WAY mandatory for anyone to play and experience all the game content, and people are obviously still buying them, so… (((scratches head))). Of course, I’ve only bought maybe half a dozen scratch-off lottery tickets in my entire life, and don’t understand why people do THAT either, so…

The thing that really REALLY gets me is why ANYONE would spend that much money on ANY sort of in-game item. Even if a BLC had a chance to drop a magic flying unicorn/pegasus that ran on rainbows and crapped gold, which gave a blanket +100% increase in all weapons and skill bonuses, I wouldn’t drop $300, $400, or more on trying to get one. Hell, even if the drop rate was 100% for that much money I wouldn’t buy one, let alone the marginal quality-of-life improvements offered (on-demand banker? really?).

ImagoX.4718:

Kaon.7192:

I see it as a matter of morality and sustainability.

I don’t understand the “morality” argument at all… The drop rate for good items from BLCs is well known (read as: it’s basically a lottery ticket), and they’re in NO WAY mandatory for anyone to play and experience all the game content, and people are obviously still buying them, so… (((scratches head))). Of course, I’ve only bought maybe half a dozen scratch-off lottery tickets in my entire life, and don’t understand why people do THAT either, so…

The thing that really REALLY gets me is why ANYONE would spend that much money on ANY sort of in-game item. Even if a BLC had a chance to drop a magic flying unicorn/pegasus that ran on rainbows and crapped gold, which gave a blanket +100% increase in all weapons and skill bonuses, I wouldn’t drop $300, $400, or more on trying to get one. Hell, even if the drop rate was 100% for that much money I wouldn’t buy one, let alone the marginal quality-of-life improvements offered (on-demand banker? really?).

Morality of business practices on ANet’s part is what I meant. You seem to be looking at it from the other side. Please read over my post again with this in mind.

It’s not always just about the in-game advantage. I want to support ANet’s development of the game with my money and get a bit of extra convenience in-game that in no way affects other players’ enjoyment of the game. Is it too much to ask for if I would like to get a fair chance at getting the convenience item that I want out of the process instead of a lottery that too often results in complete junk?

“I just dumped another 80g on keys today”

Stop! Stop doing it!

Seriously: you’ve created an entire thread about how much this is a terrible idea and why there are so many things wrong with it and yet you vote “status quo” with your wallet another 100 times. The only way these chests will change is if people do not buy them. Coming to the forums and complaining – and then buying 100 more – just completely shot your arguments in the foot.

everyone just post your chests on the TP, and help also by not buying them on the TP. a mass flood of un-bought black lion chests might send a message.