Guild Wars 2

…and other useless stuff now in gemstore:

• 1 Speed Booster
• 1 Zephyrite Color Swatch: Red
• 1 Aviator Cap Skin
• 250 Piles of (Silky?) Sand

Which means 67 gems per key if you don’t need anything else, or 53 gems if you need the cap skin. The cheapest option when buying keys in bulk (25x) at the moment is 84 gems (with no extra stuff).

Can be bought once per account.

A nice deal for those who enjoy the gambling chests. Not for me though.

Electro.4173:

A nice deal for those who enjoy the gambling chests. Not for me though.

I have the same outlook on it. If they want me to buy keys, they need to do certain things. First, the sheer amount of black lion chests on the TP needs to drop below 1,000 and their rarity needs to go up. Preferably, it should get to the point where a chest is worth 60 to 100 gold. One way of doing so would be flushing 250 of them and a few various other items (bloodstone dust immediately comes to mind) in the mystic forge for a guaranteed black lion ticket scrap.

Once this is accomplished, that recipe is dropped and every chest would guarantee a black lion ticket scrap as well as at least one highly sought after item. Personally, I would write an algorithm that would make whatever crafting material that has the highest TP gold value the second item. That way, prices would balance themselves out somewhat and chests will always be desired but their gold value will eventually be less than the exchange value of one black lion key.

The other two item slots can be for whatever fluff they feel like sticking in the chest but there would need to be a way to turn them into something useful BY PLAYER STANDARDS! I can’t stress that enough. I have loads of boosters that just take up space because I have more patience than any desire to use them but nothing else to use them for.

Eventually this would equal out the chances of getting a black lion ticket at random with failing 10 times in a row but still having enough scraps to make a full ticket.

I’ll probably pick this up because I could use some of those new boost enchantment powders.

Cakemeister.5792:

I’ll probably pick this up because I could use some of those new boost enchantment powders.

This package has nothing to do with boost enchantment powders unless you are considering the very remote possibility that one (or more) may drop from the 15 chests the keys would open.

If you want the powders then you should probably pick them up on their own as you will be sure to get exactly as many as you want instead of possibly none at all with this package. They would also cost practically nothing (or barely a few gems worth of gold) due to 1 powder costing 10s! No reason to drop 1000 gems on this package for 15 attempts at powders when you can spend 2g 50s and get 25 of them instantly.

I didn’t realize the probability was so low. I thought they dropped like candy.

I figured it had been a while since I did keys and I still have a ton of refund gems from the town clothes mess. So here’s the results from 15 chests:

2 repair canisters (70 gem value)
3 revive orbs (not sure, can’t find in gem store)
2 speed boosters (not in gem store)
2 skill point scrolls (not in gem store)
1 total makeover kit (350 gem value)
3 xp boosters (450 gem value)
5 claim scraps (not in gem store)
6 unidentified dyes (hard to calculate, 200 gems/7-dye pack)
2 armor boosters (not in gem store)
4 transmutation charges (120 gem value)
3 gathering boosters (450 gem value)
2 bank expresses (70 gem value)
3 crafting boosters (450 gem value)
4 TP expresses (200 gem value)
1 hair kit (250 gem value)
1 merchant express (35 gem value)
1 large guild discovery (300 influence) (not sure, I seldom buy influence but it’s gold in game, not gems)
1 strength booster (not in gem store)
1 100 Luck (not in gem store)

Thus well over 1K gems worth of items if I were inclined to buy all those things. I am not. Of those things I would buy on the store at need if none dropped in game, let’s see, the two style kits and the transmutation charges, those are 720 gems in value. Though I do actually use the armor and strength boosters and revive orbs in dungeons, as well as repair kits (less of those now that repairs are free anyway).

I use the expresses when I feel like it, not often. I already know all the non-exclusive dyes (tossed a Hot Pink on the TP from the Red Patch).

I’d say I don’t feel ripped off by what I got.

Donari.5237:

-snip-

Thanks for posting, was interesting to see the actual drops. But it’s still looks like it’s better to get skins from TP than from gambling even with such an offer in mind.

Shame that this was restricted to single sales. The discount on keys would have attracted the gamblers to multiple purchases.

Donari.5237:

I figured it had been a while since I did keys and I still have a ton of refund gems from the town clothes mess. So here’s the results from 15 chests:

2 repair canisters (70 gem value)
3 revive orbs (not sure, can’t find in gem store)
2 speed boosters (not in gem store)
2 skill point scrolls (not in gem store)
1 total makeover kit (350 gem value)
3 xp boosters (450 gem value)
5 claim scraps (not in gem store)
6 unidentified dyes (hard to calculate, 200 gems/7-dye pack)
2 armor boosters (not in gem store)
4 transmutation charges (120 gem value)
3 gathering boosters (450 gem value)
2 bank expresses (70 gem value)
3 crafting boosters (450 gem value)
4 TP expresses (200 gem value)
1 hair kit (250 gem value)
1 merchant express (35 gem value)
1 large guild discovery (300 influence) (not sure, I seldom buy influence but it’s gold in game, not gems)
1 strength booster (not in gem store)
1 100 Luck (not in gem store)

Thus well over 1K gems worth of items if I were inclined to buy all those things. I am not. Of those things I would buy on the store at need if none dropped in game, let’s see, the two style kits and the transmutation charges, those are 720 gems in value. Though I do actually use the armor and strength boosters and revive orbs in dungeons, as well as repair kits (less of those now that repairs are free anyway).

I use the expresses when I feel like it, not often. I already know all the non-exclusive dyes (tossed a Hot Pink on the TP from the Red Patch).

I’d say I don’t feel ripped off by what I got.

I wouldn’t feel “ripped off”, but I think this is where Anet’s monetization guru’s making a lot of assumptions. There are so few things in that list to which I attribute value/actual usefulness… highest on the list above was the Guild Discovery, but as stated, that can be bought for gold.

In the store, the only things I find compelling to buy are the various account slot and storage upgrades. Those have actual value to me. The keys fall behind that because I am a bit of a gambler. The rest of the aesthetic stuff I think of as those little trinkets you get from a grocery store coin-op vending machine.

I suspect the contents of the chests are being decided based upon gem value, not actual demand by the majority of players. Which is kind of funny, given Anet sets the gem prices for those items… kind of a “valuation echo chamber” where Anet thinks the chests are actually valuable because they said they are

Crossplay.2067:

Electro.4173:

A nice deal for those who enjoy the gambling chests. Not for me though.

I have the same outlook on it. If they want me to buy keys, they need to do certain things. First, the sheer amount of black lion chests on the TP needs to drop below 1,000 and their rarity needs to go up. Preferably, it should get to the point where a chest is worth 60 to 100 gold. One way of doing so would be flushing 250 of them and a few various other items (bloodstone dust immediately comes to mind) in the mystic forge for a guaranteed black lion ticket scrap.

Once this is accomplished, that recipe is dropped and every chest would guarantee a black lion ticket scrap as well as at least one highly sought after item. Personally, I would write an algorithm that would make whatever crafting material that has the highest TP gold value the second item. That way, prices would balance themselves out somewhat and chests will always be desired but their gold value will eventually be less than the exchange value of one black lion key.

The other two item slots can be for whatever fluff they feel like sticking in the chest but there would need to be a way to turn them into something useful BY PLAYER STANDARDS! I can’t stress that enough. I have loads of boosters that just take up space because I have more patience than any desire to use them but nothing else to use them for.

Eventually this would equal out the chances of getting a black lion ticket at random with failing 10 times in a row but still having enough scraps to make a full ticket.

The ticket scraps I can see (although Anet could probably show that such an idea would lead to them losing value over time with skin→gold→gem conversion – I don’t know if that’s a valid concern or not).

Crafting materials I’d LIKE, but eventually it’d lead to arguments like “…people are crafting using the proceeds from black lion chests, ergo p2W!” Anet has drawn a line in the sand on the gem store being used to make your character more powerful, so I think that’d be a hard sell.

I considered this but I own the cap already and don’t want or need a second one. Regardless of a good deal on keys having that cap a second time annoys me for some reason. lol

Also I already miss that bonus you were getting in chests the last few months.