The problem that even the POTENTIAL payoff doesnt justify the “buy in” price. It’s roughly 16g for one key, or 125 gems. You should at least have a FAIR chance of getting something of value, rather than getting screwed.
It all depends on your opinion of what’s “valuable”. I pop chests for BL ticket scraps. Buying stuff of the BL Weapon Vendor and then selling on the TP produces far more gold than I invested.
The real answer is don’t buy them. They’re not a rip off because they’re absolutely not necessary. If you want to spend money gambling, you make the assumption that you’re going to lose. It really is that simple.
By making it so that everyone wants needs to buy them, Anet would be doing a disservice to people who don’t want to.
As it is, plenty of people do buy them.
Problem is some skins costing 900g alone, far more than a precursor itself and it only gets worse. Imagine paying 900+ gold for a skin, that’s outrageous when that can go down as 80% of the cost to make a legendary yourself that is ascended, with infusion slots and can switch stats at will.
Something needs to give with making black lion claim tickets more accessible.
I’m looking at the Dreamthistle Staff skin for my ranger. I had gotten all the relevant dreamthistle skins for my ranger when the skins only cost 1 ticket, but now they announce a druid specialization, and I find out there’s only 5 skins on trading post and the lowest is 800 godkitten ed gold.
Assuming that in 2-3 hours of playtime I make about 15 gold AT BEST doing the activities I like, not just farming, that means I’d be looking at nearly two months of farming just for one skin.
Limited and special means limited and special. The price doesn’t need to come down or the means to acquire them change. If everyone can afford a Ferrari, then owning a Ferrari becomes meaningless. Limited availability skins grants uniqueness. It would be nice to own my own Gulfstream G550 but I don’t so I’m forced to fly knee sucking coach on Delta. Now if you acquire keys and happen to assemble enough tickets to get the skin you always wanted, great. Or if you have the gold to buy the skin off the TP, great (it’s likely cheaper in gold unless your keys are free).
But don’t complain that the limited/special skin is too limited/special because you can’t get it cheap.
What a laughable remark. The value of having a ferrari is not its rarity, that’s how sheep think.
The value is in the craftsmanship and mechanical capabilities of a car.
Dreamthistle skins are not rare. I got 7 of them in the event for cheap. It’s when they retired them that they became stupidly expensive.
Please don’t act as if you don’t have a dog in this fight. It’s clearly obvious you’re one of those people who makes their earning from buying said skins and holding on to them to sell later.
BLC keys = gambling with no promise you will get what you want. Anyone remember the SouthSun Supply Crates? If you don’t support such things cast your vote against them buy not buying them. It is that simple. Then again, it seems plenty of people do like to gamble so I’m not sure how much good it will do. Every vote counts though.
I wouldn’t say a waste. Unless you are hoping to get something specific. I’ve bought a few keys with some left over gems, and used the ones that drop. I’ve gotten some ticket scraps, and a full ticket once. But the boosters are cool and helpful. The bank access, repair canisters, and merchant express items have been very helpful.
Maybe it’s just me though. I certainly wouldn’t dump a bunch of money on them in hopes of getting that super rare item. Thats just not intelligent.
“You know what the chain of command is?
It’s the chain I beat you with until you
recognize my command!”
The real answer is don’t buy them. They’re not a rip off because they’re absolutely not necessary. If you want to spend money gambling, you make the assumption that you’re going to lose. It really is that simple.
By making it so that everyone wants needs to buy them, Anet would be doing a disservice to people who don’t want to.
As it is, plenty of people do buy them.
Problem is some skins costing 900g alone, far more than a precursor itself and it only gets worse. Imagine paying 900+ gold for a skin, that’s outrageous when that can go down as 80% of the cost to make a legendary yourself that is ascended, with infusion slots and can switch stats at will.
Something needs to give with making black lion claim tickets more accessible.
I’m looking at the Dreamthistle Staff skin for my ranger. I had gotten all the relevant dreamthistle skins for my ranger when the skins only cost 1 ticket, but now they announce a druid specialization, and I find out there’s only 5 skins on trading post and the lowest is 800 godkitten ed gold.
Assuming that in 2-3 hours of playtime I make about 15 gold AT BEST doing the activities I like, not just farming, that means I’d be looking at nearly two months of farming just for one skin.
Limited and special means limited and special. The price doesn’t need to come down or the means to acquire them change. If everyone can afford a Ferrari, then owning a Ferrari becomes meaningless. Limited availability skins grants uniqueness. It would be nice to own my own Gulfstream G550 but I don’t so I’m forced to fly knee sucking coach on Delta. Now if you acquire keys and happen to assemble enough tickets to get the skin you always wanted, great. Or if you have the gold to buy the skin off the TP, great (it’s likely cheaper in gold unless your keys are free).
But don’t complain that the limited/special skin is too limited/special because you can’t get it cheap.
What a laughable remark. The value of having a ferrari is not its rarity, that’s how sheep think.
The value is in the craftsmanship and mechanical capabilities of a car.
Dreamthistle skins are not rare. I got 7 of them in the event for cheap. It’s when they retired them that they became stupidly expensive.
Please don’t act as if you don’t have a dog in this fight. It’s clearly obvious you’re one of those people who makes their earning from buying said skins and holding on to them to sell later.
Actually I don’t. I think I sold one of the glowing ones. Personally none of those skins excite me. I might have open 100 chests in 2 1/2 years and a moderate fraction of those were before tickets.
If you have bothered to read my previous posts here the point of the chests is to hand out a sample of gem store items and as long as what you find is of similar gem value as a 125 gem key, whether it’s useful to you or not, then it’s not gambling. That is what you are buying. As long as you think that they should have tickets or contracts that you can sell for big bucks, then you aren’t buying them for their intended purpose.
It’s as if you are buying box after box of chocolates simply because there’s a chance to win a $100K. They aren’t selling you a chance for $100K, they are selling you chocolates.
It’s simple, if you don’t want gem shop “junk” as you call it, don’t buy keys.
The real answer is don’t buy them. They’re not a rip off because they’re absolutely not necessary. If you want to spend money gambling, you make the assumption that you’re going to lose. It really is that simple.
By making it so that everyone wants needs to buy them, Anet would be doing a disservice to people who don’t want to.
As it is, plenty of people do buy them.
Problem is some skins costing 900g alone, far more than a precursor itself and it only gets worse. Imagine paying 900+ gold for a skin, that’s outrageous when that can go down as 80% of the cost to make a legendary yourself that is ascended, with infusion slots and can switch stats at will.
Something needs to give with making black lion claim tickets more accessible.
I’m looking at the Dreamthistle Staff skin for my ranger. I had gotten all the relevant dreamthistle skins for my ranger when the skins only cost 1 ticket, but now they announce a druid specialization, and I find out there’s only 5 skins on trading post and the lowest is 800 godkitten ed gold.
Assuming that in 2-3 hours of playtime I make about 15 gold AT BEST doing the activities I like, not just farming, that means I’d be looking at nearly two months of farming just for one skin.
Limited and special means limited and special. The price doesn’t need to come down or the means to acquire them change. If everyone can afford a Ferrari, then owning a Ferrari becomes meaningless. Limited availability skins grants uniqueness. It would be nice to own my own Gulfstream G550 but I don’t so I’m forced to fly knee sucking coach on Delta. Now if you acquire keys and happen to assemble enough tickets to get the skin you always wanted, great. Or if you have the gold to buy the skin off the TP, great (it’s likely cheaper in gold unless your keys are free).
But don’t complain that the limited/special skin is too limited/special because you can’t get it cheap.
What a laughable remark. The value of having a ferrari is not its rarity, that’s how sheep think.
The value is in the craftsmanship and mechanical capabilities of a car.
Dreamthistle skins are not rare. I got 7 of them in the event for cheap. It’s when they retired them that they became stupidly expensive.
Please don’t act as if you don’t have a dog in this fight. It’s clearly obvious you’re one of those people who makes their earning from buying said skins and holding on to them to sell later.
Actually I don’t. I think I sold one of the glowing ones. Personally none of those skins excite me. I might have open 100 chests in 2 1/2 years and a moderate fraction of those were before tickets.
If you have bothered to read my previous posts here the point of the chests is to hand out a sample of gem store items and as long as what you find is of similar gem value as a 125 gem key, whether it’s useful to you or not, then it’s not gambling. That is what you are buying. As long as you think that they should have tickets or contracts that you can sell for big bucks, then you aren’t buying them for their intended purpose.
It’s as if you are buying box after box of chocolates simply because there’s a chance to win a $100K. They aren’t selling you a chance for $100K, they are selling you chocolates.
It’s simple, if you don’t want gem shop “junk” as you call it, don’t buy keys.
I didn’t buy anything on the gem store. I’d never waste my money on a RNG box. What I advocated for is more reliable access to claim tickets from chests.
Rewarding people via luck instead of effort/skill is garbage design.
But claim tickets are RNG. If you don’t want RNG then advocate direct purchase of skins. The thing is though that to make up lost revenues of keys to ANet the cost of those skins in gems will be astronomical, 5-10K gems a piece at least.
The real answer is don’t buy them. They’re not a rip off because they’re absolutely not necessary. If you want to spend money gambling, you make the assumption that you’re going to lose. It really is that simple.
By making it so that everyone wants needs to buy them, Anet would be doing a disservice to people who don’t want to.
As it is, plenty of people do buy them.
Problem is some skins costing 900g alone, far more than a precursor itself and it only gets worse. Imagine paying 900+ gold for a skin, that’s outrageous when that can go down as 80% of the cost to make a legendary yourself that is ascended, with infusion slots and can switch stats at will.
Something needs to give with making black lion claim tickets more accessible.
I’m looking at the Dreamthistle Staff skin for my ranger. I had gotten all the relevant dreamthistle skins for my ranger when the skins only cost 1 ticket, but now they announce a druid specialization, and I find out there’s only 5 skins on trading post and the lowest is 800 godkitten ed gold.
Assuming that in 2-3 hours of playtime I make about 15 gold AT BEST doing the activities I like, not just farming, that means I’d be looking at nearly two months of farming just for one skin.
But you can’t get those skins from black lion chests now. It’s not relevant that they were once available. When they were available they were worth 90 gold. Retired skins always go up in price.
I feel like the drop rates are from when things from chests were trade-able and the drop rates were really low. They’re not anymore and should be adjusted.
Huh?
What was in the chest before that was tradable that no longer is?
I think he is referring to those permanent things (perma hairstyle kit, perma bank access etc).
Dear A-net: Please nerf rock. Paper is fine
~Sincerely, Scissors
The real answer is don’t buy them. They’re not a rip off because they’re absolutely not necessary. If you want to spend money gambling, you make the assumption that you’re going to lose. It really is that simple.
By making it so that everyone wants needs to buy them, Anet would be doing a disservice to people who don’t want to.
As it is, plenty of people do buy them.
Problem is some skins costing 900g alone, far more than a precursor itself and it only gets worse. Imagine paying 900+ gold for a skin, that’s outrageous when that can go down as 80% of the cost to make a legendary yourself that is ascended, with infusion slots and can switch stats at will.
Something needs to give with making black lion claim tickets more accessible.
I’m looking at the Dreamthistle Staff skin for my ranger. I had gotten all the relevant dreamthistle skins for my ranger when the skins only cost 1 ticket, but now they announce a druid specialization, and I find out there’s only 5 skins on trading post and the lowest is 800 godkitten ed gold.
Assuming that in 2-3 hours of playtime I make about 15 gold AT BEST doing the activities I like, not just farming, that means I’d be looking at nearly two months of farming just for one skin.
If you want it bad enough, you will get it, if you don’t want it bad enough you’ll just forget about it. If you want it bad enough you’ll speed run dungeons and get it in a month or so, if not you’ll keep playing and get it in a couple of months or not at all. Games don’t always have to be about instant gratification, work a little bit for your goal. The Dreamthistle stuff is only as pricey as it is because of simple supply and demand, same as all the SAB stuff (which, by the way, aren’t in BLCs).
As for the OP:
The stuff in the BLC aren’t useless, you just don’t put any value to them. I don’t mind the boosters since they can give me extra run speed and more magic find/karma gained (especially with the powder to convert the boosters to other ones).
Just because you wasted money on keys trying to get a ticket doesn’t mean the items in the chest are useless.
Advice for you…..just buy the skins off the TP if that is what you want, you’ll save lots of money.
I kinda of agree. I spent 66 gold to trade for gems & get BL keys so i could fetch me 2 tickets & grab me a skin worth 90 gold at the Market. I got zip out of all my chest. So basically no tickets, no skin & out of 66 gold with lots of junk. kinda sad. :/
Good good, help push that gold to gem ratio down, haha.
Actually by buying gems with gold he raised the rate, not push it down.
…that makes zero sense at all. Why would the rate rise when gold is leaving the game?
I kinda of agree. I spent 66 gold to trade for gems & get BL keys so i could fetch me 2 tickets & grab me a skin worth 90 gold at the Market. I got zip out of all my chest. So basically no tickets, no skin & out of 66 gold with lots of junk. kinda sad. :/
Good good, help push that gold to gem ratio down, haha.
Actually by buying gems with gold he raised the rate, not push it down.
…that makes zero sense at all. Why would the rate rise when gold is leaving the game?
I’d take a look at how the gem < – > gold process works. Or you can just observe what happens when new, desirable items appear in the gem store.
I kinda of agree. I spent 66 gold to trade for gems & get BL keys so i could fetch me 2 tickets & grab me a skin worth 90 gold at the Market. I got zip out of all my chest. So basically no tickets, no skin & out of 66 gold with lots of junk. kinda sad. :/
Good good, help push that gold to gem ratio down, haha.
Actually by buying gems with gold he raised the rate, not push it down.
…that makes zero sense at all. Why would the rate rise when gold is leaving the game?
There is a gold sink but most of the gold is being transferred from a player who bought gems with real money and who sold the gems to another player for that players gold (It’s an indirect sale, both the gems and gold go into a pool and are pulled from that pool by sellers and buyers. The computer calculates a rate according to how many gems and gold are in the pool and sets the prices). So the bulk of it is a transfer from one player to another.
Because the player buying gems is getting the gems from a limited pool, that means the gems in the pool become more scarce and the price for them goes up.
I kinda of agree. I spent 66 gold to trade for gems & get BL keys so i could fetch me 2 tickets & grab me a skin worth 90 gold at the Market. I got zip out of all my chest. So basically no tickets, no skin & out of 66 gold with lots of junk. kinda sad. :/
Good good, help push that gold to gem ratio down, haha.
Actually by buying gems with gold he raised the rate, not push it down.
…that makes zero sense at all. Why would the rate rise when gold is leaving the game?
The exchange works by having two internal caches, one for gold and one for gems. At all times these are “worth” the same. By buying gems with gold you are putting in gold while taking out gems. The exchange doesn’t create gold and gems out of thin air.
Lets demonstrate with a simplified example.
Lets say there is 1000 gold and 10000 gems in the exchange for an internal rate of 10g per 100 gems. Now buying 100 gems will leave the exchange with 1010 gold and 9900 gems. That sets the rate as 10.20 gold per 100 gems. Buy another 100 gems and we have 1020.20 gold and 9800 gems with a new ration of 10.41 gold per 100 gems.
The more players buy gems with gold than with cash, the rate goes up. When something popular comes along or returns, BANG, spike in the exchange rate as players cash in their gold to get that item for “free”. The rate can recover because players with cash see the inflated rate and buy gems to get gold, more gold than they would before the spike. This adds gems back into the exchange and removes gold so the ratio between gold and gems goes the other way and the rate goes down.
The real answer is don’t buy them. They’re not a rip off because they’re absolutely not necessary. If you want to spend money gambling, you make the assumption that you’re going to lose. It really is that simple.
By making it so that everyone wants needs to buy them, Anet would be doing a disservice to people who don’t want to.
As it is, plenty of people do buy them.
Problem is some skins costing 900g alone, far more than a precursor itself and it only gets worse. Imagine paying 900+ gold for a skin, that’s outrageous when that can go down as 80% of the cost to make a legendary yourself that is ascended, with infusion slots and can switch stats at will.
Something needs to give with making black lion claim tickets more accessible.
I’m looking at the Dreamthistle Staff skin for my ranger. I had gotten all the relevant dreamthistle skins for my ranger when the skins only cost 1 ticket, but now they announce a druid specialization, and I find out there’s only 5 skins on trading post and the lowest is 800 godkitten ed gold.
Assuming that in 2-3 hours of playtime I make about 15 gold AT BEST doing the activities I like, not just farming, that means I’d be looking at nearly two months of farming just for one skin.
If you want it bad enough, you will get it, if you don’t want it bad enough you’ll just forget about it. If you want it bad enough you’ll speed run dungeons and get it in a month or so, if not you’ll keep playing and get it in a couple of months or not at all. Games don’t always have to be about instant gratification, work a little bit for your goal. The Dreamthistle stuff is only as pricey as it is because of simple supply and demand, same as all the SAB stuff (which, by the way, aren’t in BLCs).
As for the OP:
The stuff in the BLC aren’t useless, you just don’t put any value to them. I don’t mind the boosters since they can give me extra run speed and more magic find/karma gained (especially with the powder to convert the boosters to other ones).
Just because you wasted money on keys trying to get a ticket doesn’t mean the items in the chest are useless.
Advice for you…..just buy the skins off the TP if that is what you want, you’ll save lots of money.
Why do you keep talking to me as if I bought keys. Do you even read?
And games ARE about gratification. If I wanted to work for months for something, I’d do it in real life.
I know some people here are hamsters that love their little hamster wheels, but it’s a fact of opportunity cost. I can either blow 800-900g (which you won’t get in a month, I don’t know where you get that deranged idea unless you play the TP or farm for 4+ hours frequently).
I mean, in the 2-3 months it would take me to grind that gold, the skins themselves could be gone from the TP or so few would remain from the initial price that the price would keep rising.
A mere skin costing more than a legendary is absurd.
The chests are not necessary. I keep 5 or so in my bank at any time and destroy the rest. Occasionally I get a Black Lion Key while just kitten ing about and I view it as a fun little treat from the grab bag. I wouldn’t dream of spending money on chests. Why? There are so many other wonderful little items in the store that I can spend my gems on.
While I don’t necessarily agree with the OP’s sentiments (though I consider boosters useless trash that I hoard anyways), it can be extremely annoying when you want a particular weapon skin, but the ONLY means by which they are available is by gambling.
In contrast, armor skins and outfits can simply be bought for a flat price from the gem store, whereas the weapon skins (some of which are really just reskins of existing weapons) will have a variable cost for each individual depending on what the chests decide to reward them with.
I agree with you that most Blc drop garbage these days but I don’t think they need to improve the DR on them either..
As someone who has opened hundreds of black lion chests since the game launched I do not think the DR needs to be improved at all
it would be nice however if it was possible to get account upgrades from Blc as very rare drops..
at least bank tabs, bag slots and crafting mat storage.. although these would need to be tradeable items on the TP then..
If whatever is you wanted dropped commonly the market value on those said items would be cheap and you would be complaining that there is nothing valuable in the chest.
Why do people not understand that scarcity and high demand is what makes items have a high price in MMOs. Thats why there is an RNG function… you have to gamble for scarce items becuase labor and quality of materials doesnt exist in MMOs.
Would love to see more of the items in the chests become trade-able or even have some way to combine ‘x’ amount of the soul bound ones into a trade-able one. Or even be able to stack the Black Lin Salvage kits would be a major plus. I understand why they make them soul bound since its the drug dealer methodology but would be very nice. Love the new home instance items in the chests, game needs more rare items like those though I concur having them as ultra rare drops from high end bosses would also be a plus for those that don’t play the chest game/gamble.
