Guild Wars 2

Just opened one, found an XP booster, 3 mystery tonics and a Box o’fun… Really? Is that it? Chest keys are an increasingly rare drop, and if I buy keys at the gem store I expect more than this!
Each chest I opened for the past 6 weeks contained a Box o’fun… Am I the only one to find this item totally useless?
Just think back 8 or 10 months ago… when you opened a BL chest you always found several useful boosters… so what happened?

The key farming was the main reason for the drop rates of the chests to get nerfed.
I haven’t gotten a Box o Fun out of a chest yet, but its possible. There’s alot of useless junk in them though. (I’m looking at you Bag of Coins)

There’s still good stuff in them, but its a gamble. Always be aware of that.

Chests were always a Whitman sampler of minor items at the Gem shop. They tried to spice them up with skins and have only garnered negative opinions.

Talonblaze.3175:

The key farming was the main reason for the drop rates of the chests to get nerfed.
I haven’t gotten a Box o Fun out of a chest yet, but its possible. There’s alot of useless junk in them though. (I’m looking at you Bag of Coins)

There’s still good stuff in them, but its a gamble. Always be aware of that.

lol, I got a heavy bag of coins with 8c in it once. I guess BLTC has a different definition of heavy than I do.

The price of BL Keys will be predicated almost entirely on the rare chances of the Good Stuff™ such as skins and permanent use items. The rest are essentially boobie prizes, albeit arguably useful ones in most cases. On the other hand, when one considers what you’d end up with by spending $5 a day on lottery tickets (i.e. a minor workout tearing up and throwing worthless tickets)…it’s not entirely unfair, and a lot of people do that without batting any eye.

Now, when you find a BL Key out in the wild, at the odds equivalent to scoring a 100,000:1 shot at the race track it should end up being something really momentous. But it isn’t. I’ve found 1 BL Key in the last couple months, and I play every day. Aside from the brief, “OMG! WTF!” of actually seeing one show up, I knew when I used it it’d be a suitably contrary “Meh!” moment. And I was right. Again.

Having said all that jibber-jabber, look on the bright side: you can farm up keys and open chests for a grand total of $0, if you care to. Granted, all that time spent still exchanges in-game gains in open world play for a single key, but the option is there, which is better than I can say for similar situations in other MMOs.

Is the Black Lion chest a joke?

Yes.

/12 charrs

BLKey run guide here; https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Fastest-Possible-BL-Key-Run-22m

I agree the rewards are usually nothing noteworthy, in about 30 chests I’ve opened I got maybe 1 black lion ticket scrap, the rest just useless transform tonics and a few bags of coins.

And the price? Since you can obtain a key in 20 minutes think they are way overpriced on the gem store. 125 gems for 1x, which is almost 4 gold.. most people don’t make 4 gold in 20 minutes so they are more likely to do a black lion key run than to buy them from the gem store, am I wrong?

Given this information arena net really should re-evaluate the value of these in order to make them more attractive to the gem store.

Some people don’t care to spends 100’s/1000’s dollars/euro’s on games cash shop ‘chance based stuff’, they just want the best/coolest stuff. If some people wanna do that on BL chests, so be it. They fund Anet, while Anet is not really forcing other players to buy gems, and even give them the option to buy gems with gold for the really interesting stuff (bank/inventory space etc).

they should at least have a “at least one rare material/item” chance, i find the BL chest nothing more then a money grabbing scheme for the weak minded but sure, go and spend time and money on them.

sorudo.9054:

they should at least have a “at least one rare material/item” chance, i find the BL chest nothing more then a money grabbing scheme for the weak minded but sure, go and spend time and money on them.

No. Then it becomes the dreaded “pay to win” if anything beyond a short term buff, convenience or cosmetic item ever comes out of a chest.

I see them as some kind of strange donation lottery system where the lottery reward isn’t that big, i’ve bought some but I enjoy the game and kinda did it as throwing money at Anet, the reward vs cost is slightly insane, I did get a greatsaw skin a long time ago(halloween event) though and just sold it for 250g the other day so I guess I won the donation lottery. I guess the ultimate win right now is the permanent hair stylist, listed for 2500gold with an offer over 1000, only been 1 for a long time I think.

It wasn’t a “lottery” until they started to stick tickets into them for skins.

The chests aren’t really the problem, as I see it, it was the change to near absolute lack of keys as drops. It pushes people to farm the personal story with temp characters (which is hardly desired), or people to buy them with gems and get royally kitten ed off at the tiny chances for anything most people consider good.

IMO, they should just change the drop rate of keys back to something rare (and actually rare, not just called rare), but still common enough that a regular player can actually remember the last time they found one.

But as is always mentioned time and again in these sorts of thread, they will never make a change as long as people continue to buy them and those who make assessments behind the scenes find the revenue outweighs the bad vibes (and whatever actions follow from them) the whole routine generates from the player base.

Define rare then Kruhljak. 1%? 10%? With nearly 40 possible items in a chest with the most common being in the 20-25% range then what do you consider to be rare then since most items are under a 5% chance as it is?

Vashoom.8512:

BLKey run guide here; https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Fastest-Possible-BL-Key-Run-22m

And the price? Since you can obtain a key in 20 minutes think they are way overpriced on the gem store. 125 gems for 1x, which is almost 4 gold.. most people don’t make 4 gold in 20 minutes so they are more likely to do a black lion key run than to buy them from the gem store, am I wrong?

Almost 4 gold? Last I checked you could buy only 20 gems per 1 gold, and the rate seems to have stabilized in that range. So the question is can you steadily farm up 6g per 22 min (key run) currently?

Valdemas.4960:

So the question is can you steadily farm up 6g per 22 min (key run) currently?

No. The only way you’re getting that much is with expensive drops.

I think you are calculating incorrectly. See prices @ http://www.gw2spidy.com/
100 gems = 3 g 14 s 36 .
So, 314.36 (silver) x 1.25 (125 gems) = 3g 92s 95c. Where does 6 gold come from?

But yes, the point remains, most people unless very lucky or TP experts, cannot make this much money in 20 minutes or less, so it’s more profitable to do key runs than to buy from the gem store.

Spidy is out of sinch on gem price for the longest while. Just get online and in the “buy gems” tab enter 1 gold to see the real conversion rate. Which hangs at ~20 gem per 1 gold.

Spidy’s gem page has been broken for a long time now. Try this one.

http://www.guildwarstrade.com/gems

It’s 4g93s per 100 gems as I post this so 6.17g rounded up.