Guild Wars 2

Opened 21 boxes, and no Elemental Sword was discovered.
Bug? It must be! /s

Opeth The Great.9251:

Opened 21 boxes, and no Elemental Sword was discovered.
Bug? It must be! /s

It’s a rare drop. Even if the drop rate was 5%, there’s less than a 2/3 chance that you’d get one from opening 21 boxes. (i.e. 1 in 3 people opening that many chests wouldn’t get one)

I’m sorry you didn’t have better luck.

https://www.engadget.com/2010/01/13/drop-chance-probability/ has a great explanation of how this all works, how you can make some reasonable statements about “likely to have obtained”, but never have any assurance of obtaining a random item … and also a calculator where you can plug in numbers to figure out your approximate chance of having gotten what you wanted.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Opeth The Great.9251:

Opened 21 boxes, and no Elemental Sword was discovered.
Bug? It must be! /s

It’s a rare drop. Even if the drop rate was 5%, there’s less than a 2/3 chance that you’d get one from opening 21 boxes. (i.e. 1 in 3 people opening that many chests wouldn’t get one)

I’m sorry you didn’t have better luck.

It’s an uncommon drop when previewed on the BL chest screen?

I opened 50 boxes and got it 8 times…granted, it shouldn’t even be uncommon in the box given that they didn’t add it to the gemstore separately

Randulf.7614:

It’s an uncommon drop when previewed on the BL chest screen?

Right. I was using ‘rare’ in the original sense of ‘unusual’, rather than using the technically accurate ‘uncommon’, which is why I also included some numbers.

Anecdotal evidence suggests the drop rate is probably around 1 chance in 50, regardless of whether that’s rarer than uncommon or less rare than rare.

ANet is inconsistent in its use of its jargon to indicate the likelihood of something happening. I admit I have trouble keeping track of which term is used when. (Similarly, and off topic, I can’t remember which size at Starbucks is the biggest, since that company uses three words that all mean big or “a lot”)

I got the sword in 25 keys. Well, less than 25, it dropped somewhere in the middle of all the double clicking. I’d much rather have gotten the Infinirarium Glider when I dropped 25 keys in hopes of that one, or the celestial rooster mini. Didn’t get either of those, did get the ghostly glider.

So in my limited anecdotal experience, 25 keys has a reasonable but far from guaranteed chance to get the random item of the season.

I got it after 2. I feel unusually lucky now!

Time for a Lotto ticket!!!

I opened 322 black loin chest and got the sword 13 times. (Used it the first time so i would get keys the next time it would drop) I didn’t get any nodes or any contracts. However someone else i know rolled 100 keys and didn’t get it to drop. So buy a lot and roll that dice of luck.

As always, do this at your own risk people.

I just opened 60 chest and didn’t get one.

Lambent.6375:

As always, do this at your on risk people.

I just opened 60 chest and didn’t get one.

:(

Maybe I just got really lucky, but I got it on my second key since the day the sword has been added in the chest drop. I don’t buy keys too, I only grab them via map rewards and I was filling maps on this character I have.

I opened 104 black lion chest and still no sword skin. Kinda jaded right now at this RNG isn’t fun like this.

i really hope they womt come in like 3 months or a year and sell it for 500 gems….

zealex.9410:

i really hope they womt come in like 3 months or a year and sell it for 500 gems….

Have they been known to do that with past items like this?

I don’t pay attention to most updates nowadays.

129 keys no sword sigh idk anymore i guess my account is cursed

Bought another 25 so 154 all up no sword LMAO srsly worst luck NA

My friend bought 100 keys got it twice. So the rng really just is rng.

Why would you open boxes, affirming this shoddy business practice?

Pure RNG, buddy. Someone in reddit spent $150.00 no luck, someone spent $100.00 and got it. I heard some spent 11 keys, while I spent 40 to get it.

Got it on my third try. Don’t even like the skin. Well, life goes on.

RNG is RNG.

First you need to get a 4th slot from a BLTC, say that’s 1 in 10 chance. Then you need to roll on the uncommon table, say that’s 2 in 3 chance. Then lets be generous and say there’s a 1 in 2 chance to get the skin from the uncommon table. All together that’s 1 in 30. With 25 chests, there’s a 1 in 2.7 chance of not getting it. With 100 chests there’s a 1 in 30 chance of not getting one. That’s simply the math talking.

This has been true since collectible cards introduced foil back limited edition. How many kids end up with a lot of stale bubblegum trying to get that one player’s card?

Lambent.6375:

zealex.9410:

i really hope they womt come in like 3 months or a year and sell it for 500 gems….

Have they been known to do that with past items like this?

I don’t pay attention to most updates nowadays.

well not with ingame items, but before hot was anounced that would include base game they did many sales on the base game and many ppl bought that. When the anounce was made there was an uproar in the forums and reddit and they refund everyone who made the purchase. I expect nothing less than them to give the sword for free to whoever bought keys for the sword.

I had 13 keys saved from a few months and used them…no sword.
I bought 25 keys, got 1 on box 7 and another on box 11 or so. One thing to remind everyone, if you get an Account skin like this, bind it immediately. This way if you get that skin again it will give 2 keys instead.

moonstarmac.4603:

I had 13 keys saved from a few months and used them…no sword.
I bought 25 keys, got 1 on box 7 and another on box 11 or so. One thing to remind everyone, if you get an Account skin like this, bind it immediately. This way if you get that skin again it will give 2 keys instead.

I believe it is supposed to give you two keys anyway, so you might wanna write to support about that one, and ask them for the extra keys. (The skin is account bound on acquire, not resellable, right? I assume so, but didn’t check. That rule only applies to account bound on acquire things.)

I spent 150 keys on trying to get this sword…no kittening sword….

Grrr. I really wish the Account Log-in would give a warning when posting. Anyway…

Used 6 keys; no sword. Que sera.

I’m not sure why I want the sword, I don’t think any of my characters use a sword. Lol.

I believe it was PT Barnum that said, “there’s one born every minute.”

Silent The Gray.3091:

The lack of logic behind this is appalling. Having an ACCOUNT BOUND skin in a black lion chest which you can only get by paying real money? What is the next low you guys will stoop to? This is seriously the most ridiculous thing I’ve seen from you guys so far. If you are trying to irritate your player base this is a great way to do it. If you are going to go through this effort why not just allow us to by the skin for 500 gems or something instead of low-blowing us?

They’ve been trying to slowly numb us to this for ages. People first complained when they put in some account bound stuff like the LS3 map scrolls (bitterfrost vantage) etc but people were defending ANet saying it’s just a thing that doesn’t give any advantage or looks!

Then they snuck in a glider, outfit and skin for Wintersday and people complained but were drowned out because the candle staff skin was pretty common (even by bad RNG standards) and the outfit was also on the gemstore.

They’ve been pretty much trying to be more and more aggressive in their account bound RNG stuff in BL chests and I’ve had it, not buying anymore keys ever.

Silent The Gray.3091:

The lack of logic behind this is appalling. Having an ACCOUNT BOUND skin in a black lion chest which you can only get by paying real money? What is the next low you guys will stoop to? This is seriously the most ridiculous thing I’ve seen from you guys so far. If you are trying to irritate your player base this is a great way to do it. If you are going to go through this effort why not just allow us to by the skin for 500 gems or something instead of low-blowing us?

First, you can get the chests without paying real money. The drop randomly for completing maps and from the personal story (as well as a few other situations). You can’t get hundreds at a time; you can certainly get enough to get the unlock, if lucky.

Second, to make the item rare, as seems to be intended, they’d have to sell it for closer to 3000-4200 gems, not just 500.

Some people don’t like it when skins are available easily to those willing to blow their paycheck. Some don’t like it if “cool” skins are too popular. Some don’t like it if stuff is too easily obtained. Some don’t like to grind. This method provides an alternative method of acquisition.

And finally, there’s a school of thought which suggests that a few skins don’t need to be offered to everyone. The idea is that we should learn we can’t get everything, so we can be more selective (and better enjoy) what we do get.

I doubt any of us would like a game where random unlocks from BL chests was the only system for distributing nostalgia skins. Fortunately, some GW1 skins are available via other methods.

I’m not asking anyone to be a fan of ANet’s choice here (I’m not, for example). I would just like people to understand what that choice was.

For $20 you can buy 17 keys, for $35 you can buy 32 keys. The question for ANet is what the percentage of players purchasing X keys NOT get the seasonal exclusive uncommon item. With that they can determine the odds for that item. If they want a 50% chance on 17 keys, the overall odds should be 1 in 25, which isn’t bad for something that’s an “uncommon” drop.

And that brings us to the problem of what players think what “uncommon” means and how many tries should give a player a high confidence (95% change) of getting an item. Both of these are likely considerably higher and fewer than reality.

The other side is ANet recognizing that not all uncommon items, or ever rare and super rare, are equally desirable. That gating an exclusive event skin behind an RNG paywall (gold or cash) upsets the player base if they choose to participate and don’t get it or choose not to participate at all for reasons.

Behellagh.1468:

For $20 you can buy 17 keys, for $35 you can buy 32 keys. The question for ANet is what the percentage of players purchasing X keys NOT get the seasonal exclusive uncommon item. With that they can determine the odds for that item. If they want a 50% chance on 17 keys, the overall odds should be 1 in 25, which isn’t bad for something that’s an “uncommon” drop.

And that brings us to the problem of what players think what “uncommon” means and how many tries should give a player a high confidence (95% change) of getting an item.

The other side is ANet recognizing that not all uncommon items, or ever rare and super rare, are equally desirable. That gating an exclusive event skin behind an RNG paywall (gold or cash) upsets the player base if they choose to participate and don’t get it or choose not to participate at all for reasons.

Oh sure, they use ‘uncommon’ and ‘rare’ interchangeably, with ‘rare’ items dropping more commonly than some uncommon ones. It’s impossible for anyone to intuit what it all means, without collecting a lot of data. And sure, I also agree that they aren’t being wise about limiting the risk of players who are willing to spend real life cash.

That’s why I’m not a fan of their implementation of RNG, even though I agree with the idea that it’s more fun if there are some skins I cannot acquire, some that I can get for free by chance, and even that some stuff is locked in a chest that needs a gem shop key.

Plus, they invented the BL ticket scrap system to deal with exactly this issue, so it’s hard to understand why they went ahead and brought it back. They could have offered it for a lot of tickets or even (as I’ve suggested in another thread), added a “Nostalgia Weapon Ticket” system — same as BL ticket/scraps, just applies to a narrow set of skins.

So I’m not a fan of how they released the Elemental Sword (although I’m not that bothered by it either, even though it’s a great skin and I wish I could get it). All the same, some of the criticism is overblown or, at best, misunderstands what ANet is doing.

I disagree with your notion that rare and super-rare items drop more frequently than uncommon. The BLTC is clearly delineated and I’m put gold on it that the worse drop rate for the uncommon items is better then the best drop rate of rare. Same is true when comparing rare with super rare.

Well, there’s not a lot of Drop Research entries recorded, but…

Looks like with what was recorded, there were some Rare items that dropped more often than Uncommon. Of course, with such little data, it’s probably not very accurate.

Behellagh.1468:

I disagree with your notion that rare and super-rare items drop more frequently than uncommon. The BLTC is clearly delineated and I’m put gold on it that the worse drop rate for the uncommon items is better then the best drop rate of rare. Same is true when comparing rare with super rare.

You misunderstood my notion. I’m saying in general, ANet uses the terms indiscriminately. Some things that have a rarity of ‘rare’ drop more frequently than things that are of lesser “rarity.” Some RNG containers have an identical item appearing in the preview at several levels of “drop rates”.

My point is that it’s very confusing. Without actual numbers (which are hard to come by), it’s hard to have any real intuition about what ANet means by ‘uncommon’ or ‘rare’ or ‘super rare’.

So let me rephrase my notion:

• The main value in grouping drops by ‘frequency’ is to help set expectations.
• Nothing about BLTC drop frequency is clear. There’s no sense of whether things in the ‘rare’ list are equal in drop rates or how much ‘rarer’ they are than ‘uncommon’
• As a result, stuff doesn’t drop as often as most players expect.

That’s a bad thing for ANet, since the very notion of cash shop RNG items is controversial.

My suggestion: use different jargon for “frequency” from the terms used for item rarity, salvaging, etc. Use some approximate odds or at least relative odds.

Alternatively, they can keep doing what they are doing and a lot of players will continue to be up in arms about new skins, which makes them less shiny for everyone.

I’m a huge fan of literally publishing the drop rates for everything. It’s a thing over in WoW and, y’know, it really didn’t hurt people trying to get that super-rare item. Oh, yeah, that “farm this every day / week for that rare drop” thing … so much a thing.

If they published the rates for the chests, it’s unlikely (based on, eg, real money gambling experience with the same sort of disclosure) to change the amount they earn through the chests.

SlippyCheeze.5483:

If they published the rates for the chests, it’s unlikely (based on, eg, real money gambling experience with the same sort of disclosure) to change the amount they earn through the chests.

Definitely unlikely to hurt sales (might even increase it). Everyone knows the house odds on roulette make it worse than playing blackjack badly, but it doesn’t stop people from parting with their paycheck at the spinning wheel.

It might even alleviate some of the specific complaints we see about loot distribution.

Always good for a chuckle when someone complains on the forum that the RNG boxes didn’t give them what they wanted. I’m sure there is a saying about this……. About a person and there money.

SlippyCheeze.5483:

https://www.engadget.com/2010/01/13/drop-chance-probability/ has a great explanation of how this all works, how you can make some reasonable statements about “likely to have obtained”, but never have any assurance of obtaining a random item … and also a calculator where you can plug in numbers to figure out your approximate chance of having gotten what you wanted.

Ironically, I made something similar on the wiki around the same date.

I’d guess the drop rate to be under 3%.