Guild Wars 2

I’m curious, with 2.9 MILLION on the BLTC on Dragonbrand, I have to question drop rate, success rate with opening, drop rate of keys?

What am I missing, I mean with so many on the BLTC people aren’t even buying keys are they?

Evon Skyfyre.9673:

I’m curious, with 2.9 MILLION on the BLTC on Dragonbrand, I have to question drop rate, success rate with opening, drop rate of keys?

What am I missing, I mean with so many on the BLTC people aren’t even buying keys are they?

They drop “often”, I’d even say “very often..”. Lots of people are buying keys, check the Fused Ticket discussion..

The price of the chests shows that they are a common drop item. The keys on the other hand are Gem, rare drop, or story reward only. And are not available through BLTC other than by Gems, Story reward, very rare drop. And are account bound.

Also reading “on the BLTC on Dragonbrand”, don’t take this the wrong way but just letting you know in case you didn’t, all servers are connected through the BLTC.

When I get a stack of locked chests, I list them on the TP. Within a few days, they sell. Either people are buying and using keys or they like wasting their money.

Also, as the above poster said, the TP is game-wide, that’s not 2.9 mil on your server, that’s 2.9 across every server. Everyone uses the same TP.

I have stacks of chests by the dozen; keys drop so rare that I get to open about three chests a month if I’m lucky. (and that’s only because there’s a good chance that each chest will have another key in it) I’ve never had anything drop out of a chest worth the cost of a key in gems.

Ok good to know. I have like, 40 in my vault. So not the only one stacking them lol.

I usually delete BLC’s or sell them for their measly couple of copper on the TP. I certainly don’t buy keys for them. If I happen to get a BLK and I don’t have a BLC, they are about one of the cheapest things to buy on the TP.

clay.7849:

I usually delete BLC’s or sell them for their measly couple of copper on the TP. I certainly don’t buy keys for them. If I happen to get a BLK and I don’t have a BLC, they are about one of the cheapest things to buy on the TP.

If I bought a key for every chest drop I have gotten in the last 3 months.. I’d probably of paid for the next expansions worth of content already lol. And thats just me, times that by 100k-1million others doing the same thing and Trump Towers would have “Arenanet” on them. Oh.. one can wish.

I too think it’s a little silly. While the value of the black lion chest stays consistent. (Being the value of the Black lion key.) It does seem a bit absurd to me. What with all the magic and capability within the world, the only way I can open one of these moderately common chests is with a very rare key that disappears.

Much better I think to make keys common and chests rare if one is going to go that route. Why on earth can’t I crack the thing open with a rock, or a meteor as the case may be.

While I do understand the need for the RNG gold sink. I also think it’s implemented sloppily within the Black Lion Chests. My vote would be either to make them as rare as the keys, make the keys the common source, or in the very least make the value of the chest commiserate with the rarity of the key drop.

As it stands, I actually just destroy my black lion chests.. It’s actually less valuable than a discarded scrap of junk. That just doesn’t seem consistent with it’s purpose or presentation to me.

They drop very often. They are full of things normally bought as cheap on the gem store.
- Karma boots
- Makeover kits
- Assorted temp bonuses
- temp trading post and bank access

And sometimes gold.
I’ve gotten over 1g from a single one of them. Once.

Geotherma.2395:

clay.7849:

I usually delete BLC’s or sell them for their measly couple of copper on the TP. I certainly don’t buy keys for them. If I happen to get a BLK and I don’t have a BLC, they are about one of the cheapest things to buy on the TP.

If I bought a key for every chest drop I have gotten in the last 3 months.. I’d probably of paid for the next expansions worth of content already lol. And thats just me, times that by 100k-1million others doing the same thing and Trump Towers would have “Arenanet” on them. Oh.. one can wish.

That made me lol. Good post.

Matt.3284:

As it stands, I actually just destroy my black lion chests.. It’s actually less valuable than a discarded scrap of junk. That just doesn’t seem consistent with it’s purpose or presentation to me.

Why destroy them? You can stack up to 250 in one bank slot and sell them on the TP. Even if you only get 2 copper per a stack is worth 5 silver, if nothing else it helps pay your next waypoint fee or two.

Though they are probably a minority, there are people who buy a lot of keys trying to get the RNG goodies like weapon skins and backpacks. Some individuals can spend $100s trying to get them. So while you may consider the chests worthless, enough people buy keys to make it worthwhile for Anet to sell them.

This is true, mostly I destroy them out of a matter of convenience, and only when my inventory is full. It just happens to be the least valuable piece of loot I have ever gotten. You’re right though, if I happen to get 3 of them before my inventory fills up, it becomes more economical to destroy something else..

I don’t consider the chests worthless, I consider them worth 3 copper. Which seems out of sync with how I might otherwise view finding an unopened chest. Do you really honestly feel that the appropriate value for a treasure chest should be less than a hunk of grawl fur or a shredded garment?

I just stockpile them until the next BLC RNG item is released, then I sell all my chests for double their usual value. (Hey, 7 copper is still more than 3 copper!) I just don’t bother buying them up when they’re cheap because I value my storage space more than that.

I do wonder how many keys ANet sells each day though. People are still buying BLCs, so they must be consumed somehow.

Personally, I’d like it if Dailies and Monthlies awarded 1 Black Lion Key and 10 Black Lion Keys respectively. However, I think that would probably cripple sales of boosters or other items on the gem store, so I can’t see it happening.

Zaxares.5419:

I do wonder how many keys ANet sells each day though. People are still buying BLCs, so they must be consumed somehow.

Generally speaking, the kind of people who spend major cash trying to get the RNG skins and items from the chests are not people who come here to talk about it. Suffice it to say that based on real-world lottery ticket sales, a relatively small number of people spend a huge amount of money on them. Enough that Anet is not going to motivated to hand out more keys for free than they already do.

Imagine you own a convenience store. Eight customers come in over the course of an hour, and each one buys dozens of lottery tickets at $1 each. Later two customers come in and both say something like “you know if you put those lottery tickets on sale at 10 for $1 I’d buy a few. You should think about it because you can make some money that way.”

What would you think of their offer? You just made hundreds of dollars from a variety of customers, and two people won’t spend money unless you give them a huge discount. Is it worth it to do that?

They are wortless and should not be blue rarity. Something is telling me they are linked to MF, since i get more of these useless chests (i have 500 + of them) when i use MF gear.

tolunart.2095:

Zaxares.5419:

I do wonder how many keys ANet sells each day though. People are still buying BLCs, so they must be consumed somehow.

Generally speaking, the kind of people who spend major cash trying to get the RNG skins and items from the chests are not people who come here to talk about it. Suffice it to say that based on real-world lottery ticket sales, a relatively small number of people spend a huge amount of money on them. Enough that Anet is not going to motivated to hand out more keys for free than they already do.

As an aside, because it made me think of it. I once downloaded and played a real Pay to Win game on my iPhone because it got good reviews.

I never spent money on the game and didn’t play for long, but during my time playing, there was a person who you could mathematically determine spent at least $2,000 at a very minimum to achieve they things they did.

Needless to say, most people were shocked and appalled and it made me realize that people will pay stupid amounts of money for fairly dumb reasons.

clay.7849:

tolunart.2095:

Zaxares.5419:

I do wonder how many keys ANet sells each day though. People are still buying BLCs, so they must be consumed somehow.

Generally speaking, the kind of people who spend major cash trying to get the RNG skins and items from the chests are not people who come here to talk about it. Suffice it to say that based on real-world lottery ticket sales, a relatively small number of people spend a huge amount of money on them. Enough that Anet is not going to motivated to hand out more keys for free than they already do.

As an aside, because it made me think of it. I once downloaded and played a real Pay to Win game on my iPhone because it got good reviews.

I never spent money on the game and didn’t play for long, but during my time playing, there was a person who you could mathematically determine spent at least $2,000 at a very minimum to achieve they things they did.

Needless to say, most people were shocked and appalled and it made me realize that people will pay stupid amounts of money for fairly dumb reasons.

Well, there is that one Chinese MMO called Perfect World, where you can get two Cash Shop only pets that are the two best pets for the pet class in the game. You needed 9999 items to get them and you had to buy boxes on the cash shop that was giving 10 to 50 of the items needed randomly .

clay.7849:

Needless to say, most people were shocked and appalled and it made me realize that people will pay stupid amounts of money for fairly dumb reasons.

Farmville. It’s essentially a study in manipulating human behavior while getting rich in the process.

When the game first started, I had gone through about 70 chests and got crap out of them. Now I have over 200 chests and about 37 keys and could care less about them. I don’t care what Anet puts in them. The chances of getting something good are so low that they are worthless.

The biggest problem with all this, is BLC being one of the most visible things of the gem store in the game. New players see them being worth 3c, and will conclude the gem store in it’s entirety is worthless (which is partly the case).

Arena.net has to nerf drop rate of chests and vastly increase the value of goods therein, until the chests are worth at least a silver on the store. It just makes the gem store look bad which isn’t good for the game at all.

marnick.4305:

The biggest problem with all this, is BLC being one of the most visible things of the gem store in the game. New players see them being worth 3c, and will conclude the gem store in it’s entirety is worthless (which is partly the case).

Arena.net has to nerf drop rate of chests and vastly increase the value of goods therein, until the chests are worth at least a silver on the store. It just makes the gem store look bad which isn’t good for the game at all.

That’s like saying George Washington was a terrible president because his face is on the $1 bill. I don’t think it really matters.

In fact they probably like it that way because the chests are one of the most common non-equipment drops in the game. If they were harder to come by then it wouldn’t encourage people to buy keys as often.

I did some thinking and came up with this. If they had uber armor or weapons in the BLT chests , people would buy more keys and the game would be truly pay to win. They probably started out having better rewards. But since pay to win unbalances the game, they changed them. And now are stuck with them as is.

Too bad we can’t drop them in then wild like you could in GW1. IT’d be fun to make a trash heap of them lol, even if just for screenshots