Guild Wars 2

Hi all,

I’m sorry if this topic has already came up but it’s annoying me. Why is the chest drop rate so high when the key drop rate is abysmally low? I’ve spoken to (I think) 3 people in game after 80 levels who have had a key drop. That sound logical? Since atm I have at least 60 chests. Look at the TP for chests, nuff said.

Well I think the logical explanation is that you can buy the keys from the gem store.

Well ive never had a key drop , ive had a few from the story missions i think , but i still have over 60 chests lol

MrsAngelD.6971:

Well I think the logical explanation is that you can buy the keys from the gem store.

Yay, sigh.

It doesn’t bother too much, but it is rather annoying a bit. It feels like a money grab when you make something drop in excess, yet the thing you need to open it, is a rare drop. Then they sell the item to open it “conveniently” in the cash shop.

One thing I am glad about though, is that they stack. I have a ton of these in my bank, no sense in selling them as they don’t sell for much, but whenever I do come across a key on the rare chance, I can open one in my bank.

They need to lower the cost of a key, its current price is too much.

Agreed. The chests are a fun novelty, but I’m not going to start getting keys unless they’re for a trivial cost. Maybe if they ran a sale for 50 gems each, I’d pick some up. 25 gems each would probably be my sweet spot where I’d just go for it.

I agree with Bop. If the chests had more interesting items or a larger variety of lesser items, maybe the keys would be worth more. Honestly I just don’t want to pay 150 gems for some animal potions and an Heal Booster.

That’s not to say I don’t get a little excited when I get a key from a quest or 100%ing an area. And there’s always that feeling when you get another key in a chest.

For the record, someone on reddit opened a bunch of chests a while back. In terms of gem value, the chests are actually very generous, the gem store item(s) you get out of the chest are more often than not (always?) more expensive than the key is. The trick is it’s luck of the draw, so you may get, say, 5 Black Lion Traders in a row when you really want Repair Canisters.

Compare to TF2 crates, where the likelihood of getting an expensive item out of most crates is a long shot at best.

Im a level 23 and I have 8 to ten or so black lions and no key drops i also have 4 other characters lower than level ten that all have chests and no keys either increase the key drop rate considerably or make the keys way cheaper! and the tonics should give u attacks otherwise thier pointless!!!

There is nothing of value in those chests anyway. I had 1 keydrop so far and 2 keys from the story and got like 3 keys from opening the chests.

Key is very expensive in term of USD and nothing worth in chest compare to the price of key. You better buy thing you want directly from shop. That’s why nobody want chest and sold for 1-2 copper.

Gw2 shop is really expensive compare to value of items in shop. It’s over priced on everything.

“Word of mouth” going around is, that the drops from the chests are not worth buying the keys for the ‘chance’ at getting good/rare items. So no one has a lot of interest in opening these chests.

I have about 30 just sitting in my bank, and I have gotten a total of 3 keys from story quests/drops. Nothing much of value comes out, and I really have no desire to open more, much less BUY keys.

I’m assuming since these aren’t ‘pay to win’ chests that the items they can contain are limited to gem store items….I beleive this to be where the flaw is with it. Or they need to expand what the chests contain and what the Gem Store offers…

Dungin.2983:

I’m assuming since these aren’t ‘pay to win’ chests that the items they can contain are limited to gem store items….I beleive this to be where the flaw is with it. Or they need to expand what the chests contain and what the Gem Store offers…

Are you sure? From what I know you can get boons/boost for regen, +atk, take less damage, and be faster and it can be used in WvWvW wich is a open PVP, and then we have a pay for advantage here.
Correct me if I’m wrong, I didnt tested yet, but in betas theses boosts was working on WvWvW. If its still then you will face a enemy with like 10% more atk taking 10% less damage and regen him self, is that fair?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Boost
10% atk
10% less dmg
25% speed
Regen

1 hour each.

Had a thread about this in the Player help Player forum before this forum was founded. Currently the contents of the BLCs is not worth the price of the keys. You might get lucky, but mostly it’s more convenient to just buy the stuff you need from the store directly.

I have opened over a dozen chests so far (the chests often seem to have keys inside them). All you ever get is useless crap you cannot even vendor for some coppers. Honestly, I would be happier if they stopped cluttering up the drop lists with these things. Some Jute scraps would be more useful, and sell for something :P

I actually got some useful stuff out of these chests, like Black Lion Salvage Kits (100% chance of salvaging an upgrade), and Transmutation stone that works on all level items. Of course you can buy these in the store, and I agree the gem to key ratio is quite high on the gems part, and I’d never actually buy a key. If I needed a Black Lion Salvage Kit, I’d just buy that with gems, instead of gambling with a key for almost the same price and then getting some useless accountbound tonics that I don’t want.

I have a few times gotten some good items form those chests, Best I ever got was a green item once, but only gotten that once and most of the time I only get boosts of some sort and the tonics.

The tonics you get for shape change I find totally useless.
It changes your form for 15 minutes to something useless and you cant even attack when shape changed.
I honestly dont see the point of them and would be just as happy if the did not exist.

As for the keys, I have only gotten them from story missions and a few very rare occasions I got them from a chest.
I’m not gonna buy them from the gem store as the items I get from the chests are not worth the price of the keys.

What a predicament…if they up the chest contents…people will say it is a money grab so that the playerbase wastes real dollars on keys…if they dont upgrade the chest contents, no one will buy the keys…this is a no win situation for them. I suppose we all should expect to spend some real money in this game, given that it has no sub fee…I just feel cheap in doing so as all the other games I played (except for diablo 3…and that worked out so well) discouraged using money to buy items.

I think it’s fine as it is. The Gem-shop is expensive, but the chests as they are are fine. They don’t promise an amazing “1%” drop. They don’t give anything outside of something that is useful, but disposable and a toy. It’s best where they are now. The keys could go lower in price, but I’d rather the content in these chests not change.

My biggest problem with chests…tonics.

you just used an expensive key and got this useless tonic you can’t sell or trade and it ends up using up precious inventory space….you don’t want to trash it cause you just used an expensive key….

then the rest of the chest contents are pretty useless in of themselves.

maybe if we could trade the contents on the market…or if they contained useful things…like crafting materials for example.

I don’t know.. I like the tonics. They’re fragile, but I’ve got a lot in stock and they’re fun to just run around with if you won’t be doing much for a bit.

Hopefully gems don’t get more expensive in-game. If they do, then a lot of the Black Lion Trading with gems will be off of my list of things to do.

I don’t know if you guys know this, but the black lion chests can also give a chance at keys. I opened 5 chests in a row from one key. Same thing happened with a friend of mine, he kept getting keys out of his chests

TGSlasher.1458:

I don’t know if you guys know this, but the black lion chests can also give a chance at keys. I opened 5 chests in a row from one key. Same thing happened with a friend of mine, he kept getting keys out of his chests

I’ve had this happen several times. Longest run I had was a three key combo. So, I got 4 chests opened up off of just one key.

That’s only happened to me once, though. Typically, I tend not to be that lucky.

Honestly, though, nothing in any of the chests really interested me to begin with.

I think I’ll just be reiterating what everyone else in this thread has been saying:

The stuff you get out of the chests, is not worth the price of the keys.

I’ve opened about a dozen chests so far, I’ve gotten a lot of tonics (Worthless.), some various boosts (Ranging from ‘meh’ to ‘not bad’), armour repair (only useful for dungeons, but relatively valuable), and some fine transmutation stones (most valuable item of the lot, I’d say.)

Where tonics might actually be worth something (There /is/ a demand for player-altering tonics like this) that demand is artificially killed by making these items soul/account-bound. Making tonics, at the least, available on the market would actually increase their value; I daresay allowing all of it to be traded on the market would increase their value.

Anet really needs to take a page from CCP here. Make these items only available through rare drops or buying them straight from the cash shop. Make it so that the supply of gems is actually a limited commodity – You have to buy gems with IRL money first, and then you can sell gems to other players like any other item on the market.

I was under the impression Anet had an economist working for them on this sort of thing. Has his input just been ignored or something?

Wintermote.3564:

Make it so that the supply of gems is actually a limited commodity – You have to buy gems with IRL money first, and then you can sell gems to other players like any other item on the market.

Are you sure it doesn’t work like this already? I was under the impression that no gems are generated into the market from “thin air”. There just is a large amount of gems sold because you could buy them in beta and they would carry over, but you could not buy gems with gold in beta.

you could buy gems with coin in the beta, from the exchange tab

it’s odd though with the keys, I world have sworn they dropped reasonably often in the betas and in the first few days of launch even but as it stand now I have 26 chests and haven’t seen a single key in days and the last few keys I’ve gotten were rewards from unrepeatable tasks like personal story and map completion

Level 73 and have only received keys from the story, never as a drop.

I have no idea how well the keys sell on the gem store, but every person I’ve ever talked to about Black Lion Chests have stated that they would never buy a key – just not worth the cost. I say get rid of the tonics (or in addition to 2 items + tonics) and instead include an unidentified dye with a RARE chance (instead of a dye) of a random mini pet – I bet you would sell a LOT more keys

I just wanna say that I’m lvl 80, have 180 hours played on my lvl 80 war now, and not once, have I ever, EVER seen a key drop.

I’ve literally only ever gotten one single key, and it was from finishing my starting zone as an achievement. Since then, no other zone I’ve finished has ever given any keys.

Cash grab, imo.

after 44 levels I got 3 keys drop but the chest gave me nothing interessting

I bounce around between multiple characters, but have accrued 7 or 8 keys. Something I’ve noticed is that opening a chest with a key frequently results in the key being returned to me. The keys seem to top out around 4 or 5 uses before finally disappearing. If nothing else, at least you get a lot of mileage out of them.

I agree that the tonics are annoying, though. The only use I’ve found for them is for running through zones and avoiding combat/aggro.

Many games have introduced this abysmally atrocious money grab scheme through god knows how many different box/key schemes.
Wherever it crops up it is universally reviled, but apparently in some cultures (not Western ones) such gambling is a norm and not even thought of.

It should be removed from servers in the West where it is simply not tolerated. I quit Star Wars (a pretty lame PerfectWorld game) when they not only introduced their various boxes, but proceeded to spam the entire server every time some fool got a ‘special ship’ from them. It ruined an already poor game.

I’ve found lots of keys (90% world map completion atm) and I have opened a LOT of chests. For the most part, I always get a tonic that can turn me into an animal for 15 minutes (novelty item). Sometimes I get another key, repair canister, a bank access card, and sometimes I get a booster of some sort (exp boost, healing boost, crafting boost). The only thing that’s always consistent is I get a tonic.

It should also be noted it’s not only gem store items as many believe. There are also many boosters not available in the gem store, as well as the transphormation tonics.

I’ve gotten keys from 2 sources, completing story missions and open up black lion chests.

Ok, I had about 1300 chests…. 1250 of them cost me under 2 gold on the AH. I think I got another 50-54 chests from drops while playing, so that total is a guesstimate.

I bought 5 keys with gems, I got 3 keys as drops, and 1 as a reward. I decided to buy 1 more, with gems I got from gold, to make it an even 10 keys.

I now have 1164(?around that?) chests left. You get a lot of 1 key drops from the chests themselves. Sometimes you get multiple key drops, I didn’t see any myself, but my son got two on one drop and four on another.
The best ‘open a chest and get a key as a reward’ run I had was 27 in a row. The ‘average’ run is more like 4-7 in a row. I think the price on these is just fine for what I have as rewards.

Most of my chests usually have a key in them. Plus keys are often rewards for various quests or drops during them.

I think they should take a page from the Team Fortress school of thought and make keys trade-able and add exceptionally rare items that you can only get from chests like a unique armor skin, mini-pet, or versions of runes that give an awesome aesthetic effect when you have all of them equipped (Rune of Vampirism makes you look like a vampire, etc.)

Nisshoku.3479:

I think they should take a page from the Team Fortress school of thought and make keys trade-able and add exceptionally rare items that you can only get from chests like a unique armor skin, mini-pet, or versions of runes that give an awesome aesthetic effect when you have all of them equipped (Rune of Vampirism makes you look like a vampire, etc.)

No-no-no-NO!

The whole reason I have no problems with the current chest system is that keys aren’t tradeable (making an annoying market for them that tries to cheat you out of them at any chance you get) as well as ensuring that there’s no over-zealous expectation for a drop. I’ve opened many crates from Team Fortress 2 with nothing exceedingly stellar coming out of them. In the end, I feel cheated every time I see it taunt me with a “chance” at getting something extremely special.

Keep the Black Lion Chests as they are.

Freyar.3254:

Nisshoku.3479:

I think they should take a page from the Team Fortress school of thought and make keys trade-able and add exceptionally rare items that you can only get from chests like a unique armor skin, mini-pet, or versions of runes that give an awesome aesthetic effect when you have all of them equipped (Rune of Vampirism makes you look like a vampire, etc.)

No-no-no-NO!

The whole reason I have no problems with the current chest system is that keys aren’t tradeable (making an annoying market for them that tries to cheat you out of them at any chance you get) as well as ensuring that there’s no over-zealous expectation for a drop. I’ve opened many crates from Team Fortress 2 with nothing exceedingly stellar coming out of them. In the end, I feel cheated every time I see it taunt me with a “chance” at getting something extremely special.

Keep the Black Lion Chests as they are.

Hate to say it but it works.

In All Points Bulletin Reloaded they sell Joker Boxes. These drop a rare item only available in the box, usually a special gun that can be traded, sells for millions on the open market, and for the most part better than any other gun in that weapons category (but only by a tiny amount).

People buy boxes all the time. They spend 200-300 dollars trying to get that weapon because they either can’t control their gambling or can easily afford to waste money like that on their hobby. But it does not matter because the company is making money off customers willing and often times happy to spend it. This in turn gives all of us (well not for APB) more game development.

I personally do not like to gamble because I have horrible luck. I would rather spend 200 dollars on the item than gamble on it 1 dollar at a time.

If ANet put in a special armor skin only available in the BLCs, made that skin tradable, and made it extremely rare, their sales in keys would grow exponentially.

And considering we are only talking about skins and not items with stats, I’m perfectly fine with that. Especially given that keys are also given as mission rewards and rare drops.

An important feature for something like this is that the super rare item has to be tradable on the open market, that increases the items value as people will try and get the skins just to sell them.

illgot.1056:

Hate to say it but it works.

Doesn’t mean I have to approve it and support a move to that kind of design. It’s just plain abusive of the customer base and not fair to those who would rather just pay outright for the item.

In All Points Bulletin Reloaded they sell Joker Boxes. These drop a rare item only available in the box, usually a special gun that can be traded, sells for millions on the open market, and for the most part better than any other gun in that weapons category (but only by a tiny amount).

People buy boxes all the time. They spend 200-300 dollars trying to get that weapon because they either can’t control their gambling or can easily afford to waste money like that on their hobby. But it does not matter because the company is making money off customers willing and often times happy to spend it. This in turn gives all of us (well not for APB) more game development.

I left All Points Bulletin: Reloaded because of it’s shift to tactics like this. I was an extremely active member of the community since the old Realtime Worlds’ CBTs oh-so-long ago. I loved All Points Bulletin despite it’s flaws, but G1’s exploitation of the customer base just put me off to the point where I just can’t support them anymore.

It’s not fun when you’re told there’s a chance to get a super-awesome-ultra-box-only item, only to never have it show up. This is essentially gambling, with no cash payout, and no oversight from any “Gaming Commission” to ensure that it’s all done with fair play.

I personally do not like to gamble because I have horrible luck. I would rather spend 200 dollars on the item than gamble on it 1 dollar at a time.

If ANet put in a special armor skin only available in the BLCs, made that skin tradable, and made it extremely rare, their sales in keys would grow exponentially.

And considering we are only talking about skins and not items with stats, I’m perfectly fine with that. Especially given that keys are also given as mission rewards and rare drops.

An important feature for something like this is that the super rare item has to be tradable on the open market, that increases the items value as people will try and get the skins just to sell them.

Just because ArenaNet can make more money by shifting how the Black Lion Chests are handled doesn’t mean they should. Remember, ArenaNet is a company that STOPPED sales of their client to keep things stable with strong comments about how fun is first. I don’t disagree that revenue is vital to keep it up and running, but it can’t come at the cost of cheapening the game out with a Team Fortress 2 or All Points Bulletin: Reloaded roulette system.

I like cosmetics. If something is only available through a super-rare drop that means I’d have to push $200 in chance-keys to get it, then my relationship with ArenaNet would be damaged to the extreme.

Here’s the solution, either:

-change them into better versions of the white goodie bags you get from killing mobs that you can open without a key or

-if they are going to require a key to open, make the items in the chests more worthwhile like fine or rarer crafting materials or other good stuff

lazykoala.3809:

Here’s the solution, either:

-change them into better versions of the white goodie bags you get from killing mobs that you can open without a key

This won’t happen since it would eliminate an avenue for recurring revenue.

-if they are going to require a key to open, make the items in the chests more worthwhile like fine or rarer crafting materials or other good stuff

Making things more valuable out of the chests shifts the game towards a pay-to-win scenario. You can argue all you want that it won’t, but the fact of the matter is when rarer materials become available via these chests, it becomes a de-facto method for acquiring these things.

Will end-products end up being account bound? If not, how do you prevent people from buying into the economy while also getting a direct crafting boon?

If the chests aren’t good enough for you, leave ‘em. You don’t have to spend the money, and this call to make them “oh my [deity] awesome” only makes me lose faith that the people arguing for better drops know what they’re actually suggesting.

1. Add 0-3 ectoplasm as a chest drop.
2. ???
3. Profit.