Guild Wars 2

Most notably, Team Fortress 2. During Halloween, winter, and summer, they add holiday specific crate drops to the game for a limited time. These crates have a 100% chance of containing an item introduced in the holiday update, but they require a special key bought off the store to open.

Now, I know what people might say. In order to do that, the players would have to go around on a massive murdering spree in order to get the crates, right? Well, that is one way, yes. It keeps a large RNG element if that is what ANet is going for, and it prevents the game from getting too saturated with the new items too quickly. But it also leaves a better taste in the mouths of the players when they know they will be guaranteed the skin. It is a win-win. ANet keeps their RNG element and the key profits from having special chests, while players are guaranteed to get a skin. If ANet is so worried about the mass profits they will make from people mass purchasing keys right now, well first I would say that their priorities need to be changed, and also that all they would need to do is raise the price for the special keys.

Another idea would be to allow any old chest to contain the items, but make it so you need a special holiday key for it to give you any holiday items. Again, the chance to get one of said items should be 100% while using the key. It will encourage people to buy tons of keys, and give ANet a justifiable reason to up the prices on them. The real problem I see with this solution though is that some people will get up in arms about how everyone and their grandmother has the new items.

These are only a couple ways I came up with that I thought I would share with the community, and hopefully, ArenaNet. If you have any ideas, feel free to add them, but realize this; the more detailed it is and the more you think about how the pros and cons weigh eachother out, the more helpful your suggestion could be.

It’s a good comparison. Also, the crates are sometimes provided to the player for free — one of them, anyway — to encourage them to buy a holiday-specific key. Plus, TF2 crates ALWAYS cough up a relevant holiday item, so the market is usually awash in unwanted items you can trade for if you didn’t get the one you were looking for.

In TF2 terms, this event is more like the only item being available is an Unusual Hat (2% chance) and all other items in the crate being the same junk available year round. That makes them pure unobtanium for all but the most lucky and the richest, with others left in the cold.

It’s a player-unfriendly way to design your reward table. I guess it’s more rewarding for the company, but only in the sense that they can milk the gullible / rich / desperate even harder while others call it a scam and avoid the entire thing.

This would’ve been a better idea, they could’ve even made the items account bound when opened with that key.

Using the regular key should still give you the small chance that is currently beeing used of getting one of those items and those items should then be tradeable.

Everyone would get what they want.

Yea. It’s gambling and avoid it like the plague. All ‘random’ things in the gem store are a form of gambling and I’ll not be purchasing any of those items either. I’d love to support this fantastic game, but I don’t gamble. Just a personal thing, not trying to tell others what to do with their money.

I would go about it in a rather simple way:

first: set out 3 categories of items inside

1. rare: these are the current ones: skins that are as hard to get as legendaries
They are COMBAT gear skins, and weapons of course

2. ‘rather rare’: these look a bit like more common gear, but are still inspired by the theme somewhat. these you’ll find on plenty of people.
These are like the current town gear skins

3. silly, consumable and all over the place: transforms, candy, flying effects, whatever…

During the event, cash shop sells things in this fashion:

a) If you buy 5 chests (or keys…) you are guaranteed one item of category 2, the ‘rather rare’ town clothing pieces.

b) Each chest can contain another of these rather rare category 2 items.
let’s say a 1/10 chance.
They may not contain them at all, your only guarantee is the 5 chest bonus above.

c) on top of that each chest has a 1/100 chance to contain the category 1, the extremely rare ones.
This way the weapon and combat gear skins remain elusive and hard to get.

d) every chest ALWAYS contains a bunch of the sillyness of category 3.
As well as normal chest items any BLC has of course.

Everybody wins here:

Giving people a small consolation prize is always a winning strategy for ‘feel good’ business doing.

The chances of getting fun town clothing is quite good.

You always get something if you spend at least 5 chests.
No one can complain about lottery or gambling.

The rare items remain just that: extremely rare and special. But at least the way to get them is more fun than opening box after box that contains nothing of the event at all.

Nice idea I admit. I think it it too little too late tho. They have burned what was left of the population that was supporting Anet. It will take a long time to recover from this I think.