Guild Wars 2

So yeah, this is not a complaint or anything but this community has reached a new low by making low level characters and speed running the first personal story to completion to get black lion keys. Delete character and rinse repeat.

Either these players are extremely bored or they are so poor that they can’t spend a few bucks to buy the gems from the cash shop.

Onisuo.8607:

So yeah, this is not a complaint or anything but this community has reached a new low by making low level characters and speed running the first personal story to completion to get black lion keys. Delete character and rinse repeat.

Either these players are extremely bored or they are so poor that they can’t spend a few bucks to buy the gems from the cash shop.

Devs confirmed last year that this is completely ok to do. It’s a matter of choice in how you want to spend your time. Running new toons may not be fun to me or you, but they’re profitable by way of BL Keys.

Does not affect me at all(maybe I should have mentioned that in my post) but I would imagine it affects Anet’s bottom line. If more players use this method I’m sure some adjustments will be made. If not, somewhere down the line it will affect me because Anet will make less money. That’s not something I want to happen.

Onisuo.8607:

(…) but I would imagine it affects Anet’s bottom line. If more players use this method they I’m sure some adjustments will be made. (…).

What about those who chain farm easy dungeons and zerg content for gold to buy gems to buy keys? Its not giving Anet a source of income either.

I never would have imagined someone would complain about BL farmers…

I do this about six times a month and have gotten two weapon tickets. Though I mix it up and make characters of different races and professions so it’s slower than the human warrior run most people do. I like how I get to make a new character every couple days and have actually used a total makeover kit that dropped for me to remake one of my permanent characters and look like an asura I made for farming.

I do support the content of his message, if someone wants to go through all the trouble to avoid buying keys, who are we to criticize.

Black Lion Keys are 125 gems, or $1.56.

If you can farm 3 keys in an hour, that means you are paying yourself $4.68 per hour. Had you instead worked an hour of overtime at a minimum wage job you would have earned $10.88 for your hour and could have purchased those 3 keys with the same amount of time spent (1 hour) and had $6.20 left over to do anything you wanted with.

If people want to farm the keys, it’s really their loss.

This was discussed plenty of time and ANet doesn’t have an issue with farming BLK, so your try to deminish that farm won’t work.

Nabuko Darayon.9645:

This was discussed plenty of time and ANet doesn’t have an issue with farming BLK, so your try to deminish that farm won’t work.

Darn. I guess I better try harder then. I must stop all in-game farming.

How is it a “new” low when people have been doing it pretty much since release?

Burnham.2613:

How is it a “new” low when people have been doing it pretty much since release?

Maybe fewer players were doing it in the past but as of recent, there’s droves of players doing such. Guildmates and friends are all in a craze but I did not know Anet gave the “pass” for this cheesy activity. It’s not a complaint though it just reminds me of one of the cons of free to play games. Supporters carry the load while moochers come up with new ways to eat for free.

I don’t really see the problem or how it could be a new low. As Burnham says it has been part of the game that has been approved by the game since the beginning.

OP, what’s your take on Champ Trains?

To be fair, if you are going to complain about ‘moochers’, then you must complain about anyone and everyone that exchanges (or has ever exchanged) gold for gems. Something the game (developers) touted as a selling point, and positive element of gameplay before it ever released.

I’m not sure how this is a “new low” when this has been going on since kitten near release.

Well, I’ve been lucky enough to get a couple of Total Makeover Kits, an Endless Mystery Tonic, and back in the day I got a Greatsaw Greatsword skin to sell.

So yeah, I will continue while you stay there and preach.

this is really old news tbh. and for the record i rather grind keys than stand in la doing nothing for 5 hours a day.

Onisuo.8607:

Does not affect me at all(maybe I should have mentioned that in my post) but I would imagine it affects Anet’s bottom line. If more players use this method I’m sure some adjustments will be made. If not, somewhere down the line it will affect me because Anet will make less money. That’s not something I want to happen.

Maybe if they put some better things in BLCs people would buy more keys. Just a thought.

mtpelion.4562:

Black Lion Keys are 125 gems, or $1.56.

If you can farm 3 keys in an hour, that means you are paying yourself $4.68 per hour. Had you instead worked an hour of overtime at a minimum wage job you would have earned $10.88 for your hour and could have purchased those 3 keys with the same amount of time spent (1 hour) and had $6.20 left over to do anything you wanted with.

or you could instead have $10.88 to spend on anything you wanted. not everybody who farms bl keys is some poor schmuck irl. why does it matter to you or anybody what people do with their time?

Smooth Penguin.5294:

OP, what’s your take on Champ Trains?

I really don’t have an issue with the champ train because overall it adds more to the game than it takes from it. The earnings are so low that it comes down to luck of the draw anyway. The BLK however is like a shortcut. Imagine if you had a chance to get those 800 gem skins in a chest.

Farming gold via dungeons or champs suffers from diminishing returns and the factor of conversion rates(gold>gem). Aquiring keys that do not suffer from value loss(keys are the same price of gems everyday with the exception of sales) certainly will impact the economy somehow. Especially since the motivation behind this is chance of a token worth upwards of a few hundred gold depending on how you invest.

Yet if Anet does not have a problem with it then there is nothing to talk about here.

mtpelion.4562:

If you can farm 3 keys in an hour, that means you are paying yourself $4.68 per hour. Had you instead worked an hour of overtime at a minimum wage job you would have earned $10.88 for your hour and could have purchased those 3 keys with the same amount of time spent (1 hour) and had $6.20 left over to do anything you wanted with.

I see this come up in other threads about farming. Why do people assume all GW2 players work on an hourly wage?

mtpelion.4562:

Black Lion Keys are 125 gems, or $1.56.

If you can farm 3 keys in an hour, that means you are paying yourself $4.68 per hour. Had you instead worked an hour of overtime at a minimum wage job you would have earned $10.88 for your hour and could have purchased those 3 keys with the same amount of time spent (1 hour) and had $6.20 left over to do anything you wanted with.

If people want to farm the keys, it’s really their loss.

Yah, but there’s not a SINGLE jumping puzzle at work. I know, I’ve looked!

KarateKid.5648:

mtpelion.4562:

Black Lion Keys are 125 gems, or $1.56.

If you can farm 3 keys in an hour, that means you are paying yourself $4.68 per hour. Had you instead worked an hour of overtime at a minimum wage job you would have earned $10.88 for your hour and could have purchased those 3 keys with the same amount of time spent (1 hour) and had $6.20 left over to do anything you wanted with.

If people want to farm the keys, it’s really their loss.

Yah, but there’s not a SINGLE jumping puzzle at work. I know, I’ve looked!

Laugh of the day. Thank you for that. +1

I need spinal blades and don’t feel like running through la over and over. So I decided to do the bl chest farm for the 5 bags and a chance at one of the permanent items to sell on the tp.

Also its like a dollar a key or so for mostly crappy rewards, or have some fun farming for the keys while watching tv in my down time.

Why does this bother you? They’re working for a specific item. They’re putting the time in and getting the keys~ yes it is extremely boring, so boring that I would never want to do it but idc if others do. “Speed Run” is actually quite a chunk of time and effort. It’s the only reliable way to get a BL key and many people don’t feel like spending RL money for something that will 99.999% of the time give them junk with how rare it is to get something good from chest.

To be honest, I haven’t done it a lot, but I have done it. It’s relatively fun way to spend the time, especially if I want to feel uber for a change. With the right character, the right lowbie build, and the right attitude, it makes for a nice time killer. Especially if i don’t feel like paying attention enough to do a dungeon or W3.

Wow, just wow.
We have AFK leechers, cheaters, exploiters, botters, griefers, and you complain because some players actually play the content the way it was meant to be played?
A new low in complaints.

mtpelion.4562:

Black Lion Keys are 125 gems, or $1.56.

If you can farm 3 keys in an hour, that means you are paying yourself $4.68 per hour. Had you instead worked an hour of overtime at a minimum wage job you would have earned $10.88 for your hour and could have purchased those 3 keys with the same amount of time spent (1 hour) and had $6.20 left over to do anything you wanted with.

If people want to farm the keys, it’s really their loss.

Following this terrible argument, you may as well get a minimum wage job and buy all your legendary weapons on payday, then quit the game.

a new low, I don´t know, I´d rate starting a “oh, does not concern me, but anet should sure get them” thread here and being overly concerned with the way how other people – yeah, those “moochers” who leech of your precious gem purchases – play way lower on the dubious mindset list.

Onisuo.8607:

So yeah, this is not a complaint or anything but this community has reached a new low by making low level characters and speed running the first personal story to completion to get black lion keys. Delete character and rinse repeat.

Either these players are extremely bored or they are so poor that they can’t spend a few bucks to buy the gems from the cash shop.

You are aware that weapon skin tickets from Black Lion Chests are randomly awarded, right? You are aware that it costs significantly mroe than “a few bucks” to get these weapon skins, right? Evidently you aren’t. But you wouldn’t be the first person around here to say something foolish in a rush to chastise those with whom you disagree.

They’ve been around for a looong time.

Besides, they also make things easier on people who buy gems to convert to gold in order to buy black lion chest skins, instead of gambling with the chest

The primary thing key farmers are going for now are black lion tickets, in turn they help bring down the price of black lion skins on the tp, making it easier for people to purchase them with gold. <——- Of course, none of that is fact, that’s just my own opinion of the benefits key farmers bring.

But thanks for this thread, probably reminded anet of this, and they are going to nerf it soon. :o

Onisuo.8607:

Does not affect me at all(maybe I should have mentioned that in my post) but I would imagine it affects Anet’s bottom line. If more players use this method I’m sure some adjustments will be made. If not, somewhere down the line it will affect me because Anet will make less money. That’s not something I want to happen.

Perhaps ArenaNet would sell more if they didn’t resort to shameful tactics for weapon skin scraps?

Onisuo.8607:

Does not affect me at all(maybe I should have mentioned that in my post) but I would imagine it affects Anet’s bottom line. If more players use this method I’m sure some adjustments will be made. If not, somewhere down the line it will affect me because Anet will make less money. That’s not something I want to happen.

It’s just that it is an horridly boring activity to do, most of players rather go farm QD for a couple of weeks to get the money to simply buy skins sold in TP, so that’s not much of a problem in any way. I kinda admire their courage to repeat a blasted tutorial 10-20 times just for these keys :S I refuse to even make myself some PvP only new char until they give me a chance to skip that -.-

mtpelion.4562:

Black Lion Keys are 125 gems, or $1.56.

If you can farm 3 keys in an hour, that means you are paying yourself $4.68 per hour. Had you instead worked an hour of overtime at a minimum wage job you would have earned $10.88 for your hour and could have purchased those 3 keys with the same amount of time spent (1 hour) and had $6.20 left over to do anything you wanted with.

If people want to farm the keys, it’s really their loss.

I’m going to keep this short because you’re really not going to read ALL the reasons your post is wrong.

Real money can be spent on other games, electricity, food, shelter, clothes, you get the idea.

Now if I was to waste it on a RNG game to save myself an hour of my own personal time, I now have less money for the exact same strength booster I’ve just got for absolutely FREE!

You’re taking “time is money” too far to the point you’re not understanding the entire expression.

Onisuo.8607:

Does not affect me at all(maybe I should have mentioned that in my post) but I would imagine it affects Anet’s bottom line. If more players use this method I’m sure some adjustments will be made. If not, somewhere down the line it will affect me because Anet will make less money. That’s not something I want to happen.

Actually, it is probably earning some extra cash for ANet.

It takes approximately 40 boxes to produce enough scraps for one ticket. That would put the new weapons at over $60 each. And older 5 ticket weapon would come it at more than $300 to purchase the keys. Very few players are going to spend that kind of money. BUT a key farmer IS likely to buy keys when he has only one or two more scraps to go to save a little time, keys he otherwise would not have bought at all. Many of these key farmers are, in fact, contributing cash to the gem store, not just farming.

Key farming is one of the few rewarding farmable things you can do without a party in this game. My personal record is 17 minutes from character creation to key award using only starter gear and sw/wh warrior.

I used to do the same thing during the 1st SAB and made decent money selling rare skins and saved money from having to buy rare skins just using the account bound skins. Since they patched SAB in the 2nd version its probably frowned upon internally by anet(or maybe just nc) but having active looking starter zones is probably worth the loss of income as it gives legitimate new players an idea of what an active zone looks like.

….y is this a thread? because “other ppl do something i dont approve of so they must be stopped” or because YOU are the bored one….

I haven’t read the the whole thread so I hope I’m not repeating this but these people make it easier for YOU to get those skins from the trading post. If they weren’t doing this those skins would be worth thousands of gold because the cost to get a full ticket by buying black lion keys outweighs the cost of just buying gold from gems by thousands. You should be thankful to say the least.

Cush.4063:

I haven’t read the the whole thread so I hope I’m not repeating this but these people make it easier for YOU to get those skins from the trading post. If they weren’t doing this those skins would be worth thousands of gold because the cost to get a full ticket by buying black lion keys outweighs the cost of just buying gold from gems by thousands. You should be thankful to say the least.

I like your point of view but what happens when/if the tradeable items from the chests become so low in value that they become just commodities?

Onisuo.8607:

I like your point of view but what happens when/if the tradeable items from the chests become so low in value that they become just commodities?

There are very few tradable items from chests and they are pretty rare. I think backpack sets, minis, and dyes if you get a dye pack.

Look at this list:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Black_Lion_Chest_

Most items from BLCs cannot be traded. The ones that can be are very rare to extremely rare. So I don’t see how key farmers could be a problem.

However, if you are so concerned about the issue as you seem to be by your posts, feel free to buy and gift me some BLKs. There is a gift option. Send me some and I’ll make sure to stop back in this thread and let everyone know you did. I’ll also post the results from my open chests.

Well I guess everyone has their own reasons for doing so, for me it’s a form of protest I don’t agree with their lottery keys. If more players would act as I do for keys instead of acting like a bunch of sheep and buying keys then maybe eventually they would change the drop rate.

To OP, let Anet’s accountants worry about their bottom line. This, in no way, affects you or any other player negatively.

Hybarf Tics.2048:

Well I guess everyone has their own reasons for doing so, for me it’s a form of protest I don’t agree with their lottery keys. If more players would act as I do for keys instead of acting like a bunch of sheep and buying keys then maybe eventually they would change the drop rate.

It’s a form of protest for me also. I want the weapon skins and I would be willing to pay if I could buy them outright in the gem store for a reasonable cost. But I am not willing to reward ANet with money for putting things in gamble boxes. To me, making a form of gambling for real money like that feels almost unethical. So, I do key runs and get the weapon skins I want that way.

In addition there is the cost. To get enough scraps for one ticket would be about $40 to $50 USD, and sometimes it’s much more, I’m not willing to pay that much and I’m not willing to put money into a gamble box for it.

As has been stated, this has been true for a very long time. It is extremely generous of ANet to allow it to continue. If you’ve got an axe to grind with ANet then farm keys to “get back at them” if that makes you feel better. If you’re happy with ANet then buy some gems with cash and purchase the keys off the cash shop to help support ANet and GW2. Enjoy either way!

I buy 10 to 20 dollars worth of gems each month. I’m happy to do that to buy DIRECTLY the things I want. But I do key runs because I disapprove of gambling using real money.

The people that do this method of farming do it for 2 reasons, maybe 3.

1 – It can be a nice break from the game and give you something different to do other than farm those mats for your legendary or whatever which can get tiring after a while. I also think of this as the same thing as when you go and buy a scratch ticket for a chance at a prize. There’s a good chance you are wasting your time/cash but there is also a chance you can earn something out of it worth that effort and at the end of it all either way it’s a quick thrill.

2 – The BLTC keys are not expensive when you look at their price at a glance. But when you look at your bank and see almost 2 complete stacks of keys just from general play (this is how many I have) and do the math on what it would cost to buy all of those keys you may think twice about buying them. Add to this it is a risky investment because of the RNG behind it all and if you don’t get a good item it can be junk (boosters/tonics pretty much). So yes you may want to farm these.

3 – The fact that any new weapon skin is pretty much ALWAYS tied to these chests/keys and that it is RNG (again see above 2 for this reason) you will see people try and play for those items without spending/risking money.

I used to farm BLTC keys myself and was probably one of the 1st people to do it. I also sent Anet a support ticket not long after the game came out asking if it was exploiting or not because I was worried it could affect the game in a negative way and gave them fair warning that other people will come to see and do it also in time. They replied back that it was perfectly fine. I still have their response saved somewhere too.

I have to admit there has been changes made atleast 2 times since then and I think they have taken the key farming into mind with both of these changes. I don’t farm keys anymore because I find it boring and rather spend my time outside of this game now when I’m bored in general within it. I am not sure if they have removed entirely the guild point rewards but I can tell you I am in a 2 person guild and have been pretty much since the start of this game with a friend from another game. Through my key farming I pretty much managed to open up the full banks due to my key farming and completing the story on my 8 chars. I think they have nerfed the guild point things in one of those patches obviously to help safeguard selling regular bank upgrade items in the future, which I think is a smart thing to do and I would have done the same.

So again I say they are aware people farm these things and they are probably putting in place things to safeguard things that could seriously be impacted from it all.

Lastly I want to say why I spent time rather than cash on BLTC keys. It wasn’t only the amount of cash (hundreds of dollars, maybe thousands by now) that I would have to spend to open all of those chests and the fact that I would probably get no where near my monies worth back for the cash spent. It’s also due to the fact that I do not support their method of bringing in new weapon/armour skins behind a lottery/gamble type system via RNG such as these keys/chests. I have spent hundreds of dollars in this game on other things that I felt were worth it. 6 or so extra chars, all bag slots opened up for 8 of my total chars, all bank tabs purchased initially (still need to buy a few more since the last update to that), 2 upgrades to the gathering resource upgrades, the krytan armour set, all unlimited gathering tools thus far, Deluxe set right at the start of the game; my list probably goes on and on tbh. My point is, those of us who do spend real cash in this game can be offended at some of the things they sell and how they sell them and as such will not SUPPORT those ways and will NOT purchase into them, hoping that they change how that is done in the future.

Summary, I am an ex key farmer who has no issues with others who do it but I don’t anymore due to the bordom of it all. I am also one that spends REAL cash in the game that has no issues with people who farm keys. So please OP, do not try and make this a case of “us” against “them”. That being those who spends rl cash vs those who don’t (those poor people as you call them).

mtpelion.4562:

Black Lion Keys are 125 gems, or $1.56.

If you can farm 3 keys in an hour, that means you are paying yourself $4.68 per hour. Had you instead worked an hour of overtime at a minimum wage job you would have earned $10.88 for your hour and could have purchased those 3 keys with the same amount of time spent (1 hour) and had $6.20 left over to do anything you wanted with.

If people want to farm the keys, it’s really their loss.

^^ This. I make a lot more that $10.88 per hour. And I have precious little spare time, so when I want to PLAY my GAME, I want to spend my time having fun, not doing another job. Personally, I’d much rather spend some money on gems than do the farm thing. However, if people enjoy it, who am I to judge? I doubt it affects ANet’s bottom line at all, because they still have plenty of people who do spend a lot of real life cash on gems. Leave peeps alone to do whatever they want as long as it’s not affecting your game play.