Guild Wars 2

Please remove the Black Lion Key Farm

There has been a ton of commotion about the possible removal of the BLK farm (aka, moving the key to level 20 instead of 10.) Please do so, for the following reasons:

• The key farm takes you out of the game. You literally have to log out every 20 minutes just to do this farm.

• It is extremely repetitive! You are doing the same 15 minutes of content a million times, running the same exact route, and everything. It is horribly boring.

• It is almost 100% a waste of time, as you need to spend 10 hours farming for maybe 1 weapon.

• It inflates the number of Keys in the game by quite a bit.

• It literally forces you to erase progress on a character, use up a character slot, and put effort into this exploit. (Yeah, I would call it an exploit, essentially.)

So now, once we have removed the BLK Farm, that leaves us with a whole hell of a lot less keys, OH NO! WHAT WILL WE DO? Fix the price of keys (yes), or fix the drop rates in the chests (no.)

Please lower the price of Black Lion Keys

Why lower the price of keys instead of fixing the drop rates in the chests? simple!

• You won’t reward those who have stockpiled keys from farming them.

• It is MUCH less work, and if you already think chests are balanced RNG wise, you’re all set!

• It will give a good option for a gold sink & an option to spend money on that isn’t a HUGE waste!

What price should they be?

• 25 keys for 800 gems. This gives a nice package of keys to someone for $10, which is a very reasonable price to pay, say, once a month, to get a weapon skin. This also puts it at just above 100g to get 25 keys, which isn’t bad at all.

• 5 keys for 200 gems, giving you something to spend that 200 gems on after buying a weapon skin for 600.

• 1 key for 50 gems, allowing you to pick a couple up with gold to complete that ticket if you are off a few scraps.

Why do I suggest these prices?

Well lets look at it right now, currently it is 125 for one key, 450 for 5, and 2100 for 25 keys. It takes at least 25 keys (this is lowering for sure, but makes it fairly easy for calculations) to get one weapon ticket from scraps. These weapons sell for 100-50g. So you have to spend 2100 gems just to get the chance at one weapon skin. You sell weapon skins for 600 gems. Thats 1500 more, thats almost $20 extra, just for a chance at a weapon skin. So what should it be? Well, since you can get lucky, we don’t want it super low (we don’t want 30+ keys, which guarantees 1 skin to be 600 gems), but since you can get unlucky, we don’t want it super high (like it is right now, its literally useless to ever buy keys, ever, unless you want to literally flush your money down the toilet). We need a happy medium, where $10 gets you a decent chance at a skin.

Blk farm is not an exploit. Anet staff said so themselves. The other points i have to agree with you. It is repetitive and boring.

People who do key runs are those who got bored zerging or farming gold so they see at as a change of pace. And the thrill of getting tandom items from chest feels nice.

But yeah i support the petition for lowering prices of keys.

There is nothing wrong with the key farm – if people want to spend their game time doing key runs…let them? In any event, let’s say things do change and key runs are no longer feasible. The sensible thing would be to NOT lower key prices in the gem store. The smart thing to do would be to provide an alternative way of obtaining a limited number of keys in game so that there is an alternative to just further inflating gem prices. I’d prefer some sort of resource trading, perhaps capped on a weekly/monthly basis…but would accept getting a key for a few laurels since that is one of the few limiting currencies. They could also increase world drop rates back to launch rates and/or increase the likelihood (or add the ability) of obtaining them from world boss chests/map completion/daily rewards, etc.

Every farm is repetitive; that’s what makes it a farm. Every farm takes you “out of the game” — none of the people who ran the Queensdale farm were “playing” (well, they were, but not in the way suggested in the OP).

So those parts aren’t broken.

As for the price of BL Keys: we know they are an okay price already, because otherwise ANet would have discounted them permanently ages ago. People like playing the lotto for the chance of the big win. They like it enough that they are willing to overpay for the privilege and that turns out to be good for the rest of us, since it leads to more income for the game.

Retort:

1. You have to log out of the game. - I’m 100% in the game for the 20 minutes I’m farming 1 key. To be technically accurate, I have to log out to the character select screen….not out of the game. There is no difference than any other player changing characters every 20 minutes…..I’m not even sure WHY this is suppose to be “bad” for the game, Anet or the player?
2. It’s repetitive and boring. -While it’s not untrue, I fail to see how this is of any concern to someone that does not do key farming? At times I enjoy the mindlessness of trying to better my time and I often use different classes / weapon combos to mix it up…..again, why do I need to explain this to someone that obviously does not want to do this activity?
3. It’s a waste of time. -I 100% disagree. I do not do them JUST for the BL weapon skins. There are many items that come out of the BL chests that are not junk (some of them are junk). Also, I have over a dozen unlocked BL weapon skins that didn’t cost me a copper (nor any RL $). So….not a waste of time for me. Besides, why is what I waste my time of importance to YOU?
4. Increases the number of BL keys in the game.. -The keys can’t be sold or traded in any way…..how does the number of them IN the game have ANY effect (besides removing the glut of BL Chests from the game)?
5. Makes you erase a character to do it. -Errr….no. In fact it makes you keep a spare character slot to do it regularly. I would say this has NEVER resulted in a player deleting a character unless they were considering doing so anyway. I’m pretty sure it has resulted in quite a few character slot SALES however. Note that your argument on this one just convinced Anet they want MORE players to do key runs (not shut them down).

None of the above “arguments” are in any way valid as a reason to remove the key runs (tho, this all is likely a moot point as it is likely already in progress).

It’s obvious from the rest of the OPs post they just want a cheaper (or easier) method to obtain the keys…..100% greed motivated post. Lame.

That post… I’m not sure what to say about it, other then how ridiculously subjective it is.

-I log in and out of character selection all the time… Never knew that was immoral or bad for the game…

-You mention 800 gems for 25 keys. That’s currently (a bit over actually) 100g. One of the only ways to make that in game “easily” is to farm and do dungeons. Both are equally repetitive and boring. I assume you’d also like to remove these as well?

-I take 20 minutes to farm a key, and I have a chance to get a ticket or a scrap. I farm 20 minutes elsewhere, and I don’t make much gold at all really. I could do a couple dungeon paths… but realistically speaking that doesn’t wager much gold either. Almost all game-play is not inherently rewarding gold-wise, but only if you get lucky with RNG.

-Ah yes, all that key inflation with my account-bound 5-or-so keys that I get on a daily basis. And of course all of those account-bound rewards from it.

-Why does it matter what we do with our character slots? Do you also think people should be banned from creating 8 different mesmers?
-Oh, sorry, didn’t know putting effort into a farm was against the rules. My bad.
-You’d say it’s an exploit. You. Your opinion. Bias will not convince anyone of your points, and you really shouldn’t use it.

As for the drop of price of keys, I don’t think it’ll matter. There’s no way I’d throw over 100g at keys that will, more often than not, drop bad rewards. I’d rather do a couple farms a day, and see what adds up after time. But that’s the real problem here, the horrible rewards from the chests. There’s no point in buying them most of the time because the chance of getting scraps/tickets is absurdly low.

This thread is hilarious, definitely one of those “Can’t tell if trolling or…..” threads. It’s great how pretty much every point is incorrect or totally pointless.

Hey buddy, tell me how worthless it is after I sell my Perma Hair Kit?

Pretty sure the OP is just baiting.

“It is extremely repetitive! You are doing the same 15 minutes of content a million times, running the same exact route, and everything. It is horribly boring.”

O.o This is exactly what I say about dungeons! I need to make a thread demanding the removal of dungeons!

Astral Projections.7320:

“It is extremely repetitive! You are doing the same 15 minutes of content a million times, running the same exact route, and everything. It is horribly boring.”

O.o This is exactly what I say about dungeons! I need to make a thread demanding the removal of dungeons!

I will gladly support this effort with all my heart…..meet you in the Dungeon Forum!

I agree with the OP’s conclusion though, the prices of BL skins are too low due to key farming. They should correlate to the gem—>gold price which obviously they do not.

The issue isn’t the fact that the key farming is a reliable way of getting keys, its that tickets are driving the key farming, and that full tickets are hard to get via keys.

A chance at a full ticket is around 40-50 keys, where as scraps to get a ticket are around 1 per 4 or 5 keys. The reason why key farmers are farming is because of the huge potential to pay off with small runs, that 1 ticket reward means a 50-75 gold payout.

I suggest a counter-intuitive approach, decrease the scrap to ticket conversion cost and remove the ticket proc all together. By decreasing the required scrap to ticket cost down to 5 and removing full tickets from chests, key farmers will need to commit to farming in order to benefit from their steady flow of keys. People who get that very rare key drop from mobs will get the same chances at a ticket as they did before, but may have to spend more keys than before for a full ticket. People who pay with gems for keys will have more average tickets per batch of keys that they buy. Key farmers will not benefit from being extremely lucky – but will be required to get 5 scraps before their efforts pay off.

In the short term it stiffs the players who don’t do key farming, but it helps in the long run to limit outliers caused by RNG.

Reducing gem to key cost is a good way to get more people to buy keys, but it will also reduce the value of tickets accordingly.

It’s not an exploit, the key farmer plays the way he wants within the rules.

It seems to me, you want to be the only one making gold using gemstore bought keys.
Or, your way of playing the game is the right way and everyone else is wrong.

I have to echo what others have said. This in no way constitutes as an exploit. It simply uses the legitimate game process to achieve a desired outcome (like leveling, buying gems, etc.). No bug is being exploited. No coding is being changed. No third party software is being used. Ergo, no exploit. Have you ever heard the expression, “use the test to take the test”? That’s what key farmers are doing. They are using the game to play the game. Every action taken by the key farmer is completely “legal” within the rules of the game, EULA, and ToS.

ArenaNet built GW2 on the concept that you had two options to obtain anything in the gem store. You could either use real money, or you could use time. That was the selling feature when they introduced the business model for GW2. The key farmer is simply picking the latter to obtain the keys while others may pick the former. Neither option is wrong.

As to the prices of skins being driven down, that is the nature of economics. That does not mean anything wrong is happening. It simply means you’ll have to find a new cash cow.

As supply increases and demand decreases, prices fall. Economics 101.

Just introduce a cooling off period for deleting a character.

That way players will buy gems to increase character slots or wait out the cooling off period.

Still, what are you wanting to accomplish with this? How is the key farm hurting everyone’s game-play? I have not seen a reasonable example in the thread yet explaining this. From time to time, they may join in on one of the two events that hit the farm when doing their first heart; other than that, they just run by you when as they get to the next instance point. The price on ticket weapons remain fairly reasonable as well because they are the main ones supplying them in the BLTC while the demand stays fairly high. If anything they(the key farmers) deserve a thank you for the service to the community that they provide.

^ right but if many people do key farms, then the price of items from BLC will be low.

It hurt people who acquire the keys through normal game play, or spend real life money. And It might also hurts Anet profit, since less people are willing to buy black lion keys with real life money.

That being said, it hurts people who want to buy say black lion weapon through in game gold.

Or the items would just be more reasonably priced. Still, without the numbers from key sales versus keys farmed, the argument is irrelevant. Either way, keys are only one item out of many that are on the gem market. If they were to cut out the key farm completely, how much of an impact would you expect that would have on key sales?

So what you rather have not spend their time in-game doing what they want and like to do and just not play Guild Wars 2 at all?

That’s going to rake the money in for Anet, alright!

kittenintoopiv.2083:

Please remove the Black Lion Key Farm

There has been a ton of commotion about the possible removal of the BLK farm (aka, moving the key to level 20 instead of 10.) Please do so, for the following reasons:

• The key farm takes you out of the game. You literally have to log out every 20 minutes just to do this farm.

Relogging to other characters does also take me out of the game.
DELETE ALL TOONS NAUUU

kittenintoopiv.2083:

• It is extremely repetitive! You are doing the same 15 minutes of content a million times, running the same exact route, and everything. It is horribly boring.

Gold grinding says hello. Do you do dungeons every day? I do to get some gold. And it’s repetitive. Just like key farming. Maybe the devs should fix the way of acquiring gold first before they fix the way of acquiring keys.

kittenintoopiv.2083:

• It is almost 100% a waste of time, as you need to spend 10 hours farming for maybe 1 weapon.

That’s not the fault of key farming.

kittenintoopiv.2083:

• It inflates the number of Keys in the game by quite a bit.

Gold farming inflates the amount of gold in the game. Everything gets more expensive.
REMOVE GOLD NAUUUU

kittenintoopiv.2083:

• It literally forces you to erase progress on a character, use up a character slot, and put effort into this exploit. (Yeah, I would call it an exploit, essentially.)

It’s not an exploit.

That’s not to say that I’m completely against removing key farming.
I just hate people trying to sustain their opinion with flawed facts.

Key farming isn’t optimal but neither is the acquisition of weapon skins locked behind the BLCs. There should be a way of – slowly – acquiring them simply through playing the game. Ther should be an option to get them quicker through gems.

I just wish keys would drop off monsters again. I haven’t gotten a key off of a kill in almost 2 years now. Back at launch I got 2 a day some times. That was when chests also dropped like candy and I got over 100 of them. I still have 90-some because keys are so rare. As much as I’d like to, I just can’t justify paying cash for gems or even gold since I’m not awesome at making it because I’m probably just going to end up with nothing but rubbish boosters.

Keys should just be rare drops, just like dyes should. I think the game has just taken a very bad turn by locking everything in the Gem Store (I already made a thread on that here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/The-Gem-Store-It-has-contaminated-GW2/page/3#post4369483)

If keys started dropping from monsters, even if they were a rare drop, there would be less reason to do the key farm. People would just continue playing the game again. Also, lower the price of keys along with it. The chance of getting something good from the BLC’s is unfairly low, so the least they could do is make the keys really cheap.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Keys should just be rare drops, just like dyes should. I think the game has just taken a very bad turn by locking everything in the Gem Store (I already made a thread on that here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/The-Gem-Store-It-has-contaminated-GW2/page/3#post4369483)

If keys started dropping from monsters, even if they were a rare drop, there would be less reason to do the key farm. People would just continue playing the game again. Also, lower the price of keys along with it. The chance of getting something good from the BLC’s is unfairly low, so the least they could do is make the keys really cheap.

They do drop from monsters. I’ve gotten 2 from killing mobs

Not only are keys an extremely rare drop but what is normally in them, except for scraps, is not highly valued. If it weren’t for scraps I doubt there would be many key runners.

Imo keys are too high priced for what they contain. If it takes ~ 50 keys to get a ticket then the average price for a weapon skin with real money is $52€. Imo $52 is way too expensive for one skin in a game designed around getting and displaying skins. The most I would want to pay for a gem store skin is $10.

For those saying buy the skins with gold, converting gold to buy one skin with gems will be over 500 gold at current prices. For those saying, buy it from the trading post for ~100 gold, with the loss of key farming my expectations are that the prices of weapon skins will be a lot higher because of loss of supply from these farmers.

I wouldn’t say put an end to it.
Nor do I like the rumored delays to it.
I am one of those hated, mindless farmers.
You know why I do it?
To pass my time while my wife’s at work.
Because I’m absolutely awful at PvP.
And most of the WvW commanders that are on when I am find me good nothing more than a distraction, as I screwed up my ability points and I’m no good at any one particular thing except repairing.
It’s a good mindless fast farm, that I can enjoy doing, and also not lose several hours to.
Sure, I could hop on a train in Kessex, Frostgorge, or Cursed Shore, but that leads to me going “One more kill, one more kill, Maybe this champ will drop something worth the last 2 hours of my time.” While my housework sits undone.
With key farming, alright. 20 – 25 minutes and back to cleaning for an hour. Then another 20 – 25 minutes and back to cleaning.
Also, I love when I open my chests and get dyes.
Sure I secretly hope for a permanent contract. And I love when I complete a ticket. But I love opening unidentified dyes, and dye packs. It’s more fun and rewarding than tossing weapons in the forge.

Taygus.4571:

They do drop from monsters. I’ve gotten 2 from killing mobs

They do? I have been playing since launch, and have never seen a key drop from a monster.

I was surprised when I got one from a drop a month or so ago. It is infrequent, at least for me, to see a key drop in the open world like that.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Taygus.4571:

They do drop from monsters. I’ve gotten 2 from killing mobs

They do? I have been playing since launch, and have never seen a key drop from a monster.

I got one in a loot bag in WvW a month ago. o__o

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Taygus.4571:

They do drop from monsters. I’ve gotten 2 from killing mobs

They do? I have been playing since launch, and have never seen a key drop from a monster.

I’ve gotten at least 2. I got one from a hyena in Fields of Ruin a few months back and one from a skill point challenge mob in Metrica a long time ago.

Those drop rates must be insanely low.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Those drop rates must be insanely low.

Low enough that I’ve got a bet with my fiancee on whether we find a key or a precursor first. I bet on the precursor, since I’ve at least seen people get them during large events (Tequatl, Scarlet’s invasions, etc.,) Never seen someone claim to find a key before, at least not outside of this thread. Personally, I’d love to see them added to champ boxes or world boss chests, even if only at the same rate as rares/exotics.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Taygus.4571:

They do drop from monsters. I’ve gotten 2 from killing mobs

They do? I have been playing since launch, and have never seen a key drop from a monster.

I got one from a mob while mapping orr. (actually ended up with a key from the map completion too XD..)
And long before that, I was farming mobs in southsun for bloods and I got a key.

They are a very very rare drop.
mind, I’d say less rare than a pre :P

Ah well.. I needed one last ticket scrap to get a BL Chaos skin.. so I did the key farming yesterday for few hours and it’s actually not a bad way to pass time. I did get the last scrap and got the gs skin to put in the bank. It’s currently @ 100 g I think so I feel that it was worth while.

I sort of found it relaxing. Played some techno music while I was doing the runs. Wish I had known about this sooner since I am sure it will get nerfed in features patch.

layzoe.6035:

Ah well.. I needed one last ticket scrap to get a BL Chaos skin.. so I did the key farming yesterday for few hours and it’s actually not a bad way to pass time. I did get the last scrap and got the gs skin to put in the bank. It’s currently @ 100 g I think so I feel that it was worth while.

I sort of found it relaxing. Played some techno music while I was doing the runs. Wish I had known about this sooner since I am sure it will get nerfed in features patch.

Pretty much exactly what I do, sometimes I even listen to an audio-book. I find it relaxing honestly.

Kysin.6349:

Pretty much exactly what I do, sometimes I even listen to an audio-book. I find it relaxing honestly.

Surprisingly yes, once I figured out everything.. it was easy peasy and nice break from other tasks. Did you really get the perm hair changer? So jelly!

Key farmers are the real MVP’s.

Does the Perm hair kit still drop from the BL chest? How do we know when it’s possible for it to drop?

As someone who loves to change char hairs every 2-3 weeks, having something like that would help me so much :/ Currently I longingly look at my characters with different hairstyles only on the change screen, then have to cancel out

I’m beginning to think that they have increased the drop rate for Black Lion Keys in open world content.

I haven’t had a key drop since launch, but last month I had 2 drop and my sister had 1 drop.

Minami Kaori.2548:

Does the Perm hair kit still drop from the BL chest? How do we know when it’s possible for it to drop?

As someone who loves to change char hairs every 2-3 weeks, having something like that would help me so much :/ Currently I longingly look at my characters with different hairstyles only on the change screen, then have to cancel out

It’s nit meant to still drop.

But I’ve gotten quite a few one use hair kits from bl chests, which is more than enough…I’d give them away if I could :P.

For the record… I now owe my fiancee $100.

kitten ed Tamini dropping keys…

Minami Kaori.2548:

Does the Perm hair kit still drop from the BL chest? How do we know when it’s possible for it to drop?

As someone who loves to change char hairs every 2-3 weeks, having something like that would help me so much :/ Currently I longingly look at my characters with different hairstyles only on the change screen, then have to cancel out

I think I spent the most on the hair style kits :/ I even put it on alts who I ended up deleting so gems down the flush. I didn’t even know about the total make up kits till recently O.O