Guild Wars 2

Seems the forums break when a topic gets close to 50 replies… =/

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I’ve had a bunch of keys drop, and still have over 70 chests in the bank. They stack, so I don’t really care. They’ll be opened when they’re opened.

Your idea is quite nice though. I won’t buy keys at the moment because it’s a waste (even if I convert game gold). Random stuff is fun if it’s free, I can’t stand the idea of paying for it though. I’m not cut out for gambling :P

The slot at the top-right of my bank is for stacking these chests. They’re worthless to me, because I’m not going to spend real money for keys just to get mostly-useless stuff. I think I’ve unlocked a total of 4-5 fromkeys I’ve gotten as storyline or map completion rewards. Nothing great. And they’re selling for what, 3c on the TP? Clearly everyone thinks they’re just as worthless as I do. So I’ll stockpile them until another key drops for me or Anet changes the nature of the chests.

Arenanet,

The Black Lion Chests are a little bit of a problem, and I fell that they can be rectified so that they dont just stack up and use up bank space.

For their price, the chests do not reliably drop anything of use. For 10$ you get 800 gems, and that is 6-8 keys you can purchase. Each chest gives you 3 tonics, a booster, and a random item. Problem is, these random items are all pretty much useless in the grand scheme, except for the permanent black lion merchant express. That one is genuinely good. Keys can also drop from the chests, but this happens infrequently. So potentially you could open a streak of 10-20 chests from these keys.

Problem is, for this price of 10$, nothing useful comes from this chest. This has disinclined many players from opening them once they figure out the drop table from Guild Wars 2 wiki.

Make the keys cheaper, and I for one would be happy to buy them. Of course there will always be players buying keys, or cook’s outfits, or sunglasses for whatever reason. But in general, the biggest thing people seem to use the Gems for is gold.

Just an idea, time to let the forum have at it.

I totally agree.
To be honest, you should get at least 5x the amount of keys you get now for the gems you pay.

Or… they could actually make Chests worth opening
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Black-Lion-Chest/page/2#post342652

/signed

I have a ridiculous amount of tonics compared to the other stuff I get. I love watching my keys build up after using them to unlock chests but the boosters come and go quickly along with the useless stuff that I also get.

The random pieces of armor get salvaged and I LOVE the BL salvage kits and merchant kits but we need some better stuff added to the loot table.

I agree that the price of a key is a bit too high. I have dozens of chests just sitting in my bank that I have no intention of ever opening because of this (and I’m sure many others do as well). The trade off of whats in the chest to the cost of a key makes the whole idea of the Black Lion Chests not worth it.

If the cost of the keys is not going down, then I would suggest that it could be added in as a rare drop or as a rare reward for map completion. I would also suggest upping whats in the actual chest, possibly some better scaled loot or bulk ingredients.

If there is nothing valuable or worth going after in BLC, then people will not spend the gems (and conversely money to buy gems, or trade gold for gems) to get the keys. There has to be a ‘randomness’ factor from it, but having good things drop from the chests suddenly make it more worthwhile to open.

Examples:

Permanent tools. Have this be the ‘king on the mountain’ situation where these items are account bound’ so that the market cannot get flooded by them. This makes chests highly desired, since noone wants to have to uproot their harvesting to go buy a new set of tools. Also make it so that these tools have a higher chance for extras than Orichalcum tools.

Globs of ecto: Who doesn’t need these at high levels? While yes, these are tradeable, think of the circle potential. If everytime a chest gave ectos, they have 5 ectos, that’s 1 piece of armor or jewellry, or weapon someone can make or 5 of them that can be sold on the market, people will turn around and invest more into BL keys and chests. The more cycle fuels itself.

Chance to get a ‘legendary’ ingredient. I am not talking the legendary itself, but like a Gift of ‘something’ that goes into crafting a legendary.

Gems: Why not? give to some to entice you to buy more gems. WHy not? You apparently want this market to revolve around the gem store, why not incentivcize? 50 Gems everytime you get a chest that drops gems isn’t enough to purchase a key, but get enough and people will flock to the store to buy more keys. Sure, it can be turned into a gold, and people can hoarde these away, but with keys remaining account bound, unless people are buying keys in builk, the chests continue to exceed the keys, and therefore, even if they have a lot of gems, they will have to get keys form somewhere.

I’d like to see more things in the chest that a)do something gameplay wise and b)can’t be bought in the gem store- that increases the incentive to open them.

I like the tonics(Yay! I’m an oooze!), but there doesn’t seem to be any reward for using them, like there was in GW1 (did I miss that somewhere?)

Edited to Add: I like the idea of chests having a change to drop gems, or a niftyrare crafting ingredient like ectos

Yes, having the chest grant some materials would be awesome like 20x Bolts of Wool or something like that. Or 1x octo.

As it stands, I only open the chests once I find a key. And the first thing I do upon opening a chest is to destroy the useless tonics. Lol.

I usually sell the dumb chest on the TP last I checked they were selling for 3-4 copper each or just destroy them considering I personally feel the chance of getting the permanent Black Lion Merchant Express is pretty useless when there’s a vendor around almost every corner and me spending real currency on gems is just not ever going to happen.

I might convert gold to gems for keys if the key price was more in tune with the reward.

I like the idea of having a chance for rare materials.

@Seras
Sounds about right.

I had 2 keys as rewards yesterday from map clears. I was clearing them for the T-Stones which I find useful. The keys… not so much.
I opened the two chests and got… tonics (which I instantly destroyed), an armor buff and a strength buff.

Needless, I wasn’t pleased to not get my T-stones.

And back on topic: I like the idea of having some kind of use or function to these chests. I’m sitting at around 90 of the things in my bank. The ideas in the OP are pretty good.

I would enjoy upgrading BLC’s...

I get a ket drop maybe once every 1000 kills or from map clearing/story mode quests. Also, it seems like the droprate has gone up. I used to get a chest every so many 100 mobs.. Or like 2-3 times a map.

Just did a 70-80 map last night and got like 7-8. o.-

@Sin.8174, chest drops are not the problem, they drop of mobs pretty frequently, the issue I have is that keys don’t drop of the mobs at any ratio, only as rewards for completing a map or a reward from a story mission including the ability to obtain another key in a chest. When these chests were opened in Beta they contained some nice items including a mini pet. now the only way of obtaining a mini pet is to buy them from the cash shop as far as I’m aware.

The original statement from the Devs is that all items in the cash shop are obtainable in-game, and that statement is completely untrue. Now people playing during the Beta were supporting Anet about the items in the cash shop and specificly about the chests, when videos were going about to prove to the nay sayers that keys drop and the chests have items containing those that are available in the cash shop, from my point of view this is considered miss-selling, and that’s exactly what Anet have done indirectly.

Curious..

So far the idea is getting a lot of support, but what would you think if dungeons had “Mystic Forges” in them as well.. and each one was better at producing certain things than others?

Like if you wanted to make a “dye pack chest” ~ but wanted more “ghostly” colors, thus would use the mystic forge in AC..

Or if you wanted more “Fiery” (red) colors, so you would use the forge in the “Legions” dungeon. *(forgot it’s name).

good idea?… bad idea?

I don’t how valuable my feedback is because I’m not the intended market for the cash shop, I despise most of the content inside of it and I only want to spend gems on account upgrades which are guarantee purchases and worthwhile (like character slots). Items like transmutation stones (especially the harder to get fine stones) are an evil I can live with, although I’ve noticed that while they can drop in the game (along with mystic forge stones) they are far and away insanely rare. I have done every daily, completed over half the map and opened over a dozen chests and I’ve never gotten a single fine stone and only two mystic forge stones (not enough for the salvage kit recpie). I get loads and loads of garbage boosters and tonics which almost fill a toon up with items I don’t really want and I know I have no chance of getting the items worth getting out of these chests. It’s frustrating trying to get fine stones (a friend of mine who has played far less than me and completed less of the map has 16 fine stones) or anything of value without spending gems, and while it’s tempting to try to get them from chests, they are completely unreliable and absurdly expensive.

I’d be fine with cosmetic items (like town clothes and the limited armour skins offered in the store) being found in the chests but I still despise the idea of gambling for anything desirable. It’s such a greedy and dirty way to exploit your customers, especially when the drop rates are what they are. At least if the town clothes were added as possibly drops, while still being offered in the store, players could gamble away if they like or pay a flat sum and buy the item outright. It makes the chests more valuable, only offers cosmetic value, doesn’t exploit people with gambling (because they have a normal route to the contents – just like permanent services should be offered for a purchase price instead of a gamble) and the chests become a little bit more fun. What about the box of fun? Can that drop from them? There are a lot of items in the store, only the garbage seems to come from chests.

I still think the idea of increasing their value (or maintaining their current value as an exclusive and holy grail gamble to get permanent portable services) is harmful to the game and they should either be returned to their original harmless status or kept the same. They have to remain in a completely optional and benign status in the game, people who won’t buy the keys or open them need to be on the same level as those who do (ie stop giving players permanent portable services for gambling). Adding anything more valuable to them would just hurt the game.

I wish they would make it so that keys dropped instead of the chests. I would sell the keys in an instant, but I keep the chest on the off chance I get keys. >.>

guarantee UNID dye and a transmutation stone, end of story.

When I loot a Black Lion Chest I feel happy for a few seconds. Then I remember that I’ve never gotten anything cool out of one and how hard it is to find keys and I try to forget about it.

A nice solution would be better loot and finding more keys in the world, but maybe it’s too late at this point. If loot suddenly improved, people who’d opened chests last week might feel cheated. If keys suddenly started dropping, people who bought keys with gems last week might feel cheated.

If they want to solve the problem of the worthless BLC, I think they might have to add a new chest to loot and new keys to open them.

I’ve found maybe 3 keys total on my trek to 80 on my first character,(i’m talking actual drops, not the rewards from map completions, I have like 90 chests in my bank) I’m in the second to last zone. They need to up the drop rate on the keys or add a recipe where you can make them. Hell they should’ve had a bunch of different kind of chests with different keys, each chest having a chance of dropping something from that specific level of items.

I’d guess that they are aware of how well the keys are or are not selling and will adjust it if necessary. I like the change they made to tonics – now I just have to stock one kind and not every single one in my bank (I’m a hoarder, I need help). I would just be happy with cheaper keys. Every once in a while I think I want to buy some, then look at the price again and think, nah. Not worth it. I also really like the idea of a chance for crafting mats. They don’t even have to be super high end. But if they do this and put butter in the loot table, I may have to cut myself.

Bogartan.2756:

When I loot a Black Lion Chest I feel happy for a few seconds. Then I remember that I’ve never gotten anything cool out of one and how hard it is to find keys and I try to forget about it.

A nice solution would be better loot and finding more keys in the world, but maybe it’s too late at this point. If loot suddenly improved, people who’d opened chests last week might feel cheated. If keys suddenly started dropping, people who bought keys with gems last week might feel cheated.

If they want to solve the problem of the worthless BLC, I think they might have to add a new chest to loot and new keys to open them.

This. Or let folks know in advance there is a change coming. I think they should drop very very good loot to drive excitement. Maybe something exotic or a special legendary or some such. The chests lack the main element of gambling which is the chance at a large reward. Even if it was a 1 in a million chance to get a legendary tons of people would buy keys to have a shot at that 1 drop.

Who wants to spend RL cash for a chance of a green drop and a booster? Not I.

I got maybe 3 or so keys drop from mobs when I was lvl20, 30-ish. Nothing after 60.

If you are doing anything else with your gold, like repairing, re-skilling, WvW (blueprints, repairs, upgrades), increasing storage, you really have zero incentive to open these chests.

The gambling analogy is pretty true, though it’s less like a Vegas slot machine and more like one of those claw machines, where you get useless junk.

I’ll be saving my chests until they give you 5 keys for 125 gems instead of 1. I mean really, it’s far better to buy the specific booster you want and just miss out on looking like a pig for 5 minutes.

Hmm, not overly fond of other topics getting fused with mine ~ but at least people have somewhat stayed on topic

@Shaaba
lol.. totally agree with ya on the “butter” thing.. though, honestly.. I wouldn’t want ANY crafting mats added to the chests ~ based off how many useless ones there are currently.

Unless ofcourse we’re talking about 40+ Omnomberries or something.

Keep in mind that BLC can never drop in-game rewards such as crafting materials or weapons, that would be pay-to-win and severely annoy the player base. There are plenty of cool stuff that wouldn’t violate this rule, though, such as:

• Unique weapon/armor skins, similar to how the HoM ones work
• Town clothing, miniatures and other items already available on the store
• An achievement/title for opening chests, similar to the Lucky/Unlucky one in GW1
• “Eternal” Tonics, rarer tonics with boss and major NPCs skins

And so on. I’m sure Anet has already thought of many of those.