Guild Wars 2

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.

My God. Do you actually think there is any value in farming BL keys in this way. Seriously?

Onisuo.8607:

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.

So the complaint is that people are playing the game rather than spending money in the gem store?

You do know gems can be bought with gold right? It’s also faster to buy gems with gold by farming players than to farm keys, if you know what I mean.

This topic right here, the definition of gaming fun.

Onisuo.8607:

So yeah, this is not a complaint or anything but

So yeah, when you say something followed by a “but”, you really just negated anything previously written in the sentence. Thus, you really were just complaining.

btw…. some of us buy gems with real money AND key farm too. Because, it’s a thing to do to make some gold. Also, it’s more fun then running a Dunegon or FotM.

If the key prices… Like almost every consumable item on the gem store…. Weren’t so ridiculously over priced (should be 50 gems max for a single key) then people wouldn’t bother key farming.

I have an opinion! There are many like it, but this one is mine.

RNG is a sham. The house always wins. Keys aren’t worth it anymore. I’d rather chain dungeons and stockpile gold to buy new weps for 50ish G when they first come out. Each to thine own.

I tried farming these keys one day and hated it. Since i also hate gambling i would never buy those keys, so i’m however thankfull for everyone who farms keys and puts skins in the TP so that i can buy them

Vol.7601:

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

Some people will always complain about everything. And if you give then 10 bucks they will complain why you haven’t give them 20 or whatever.

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.

You mean… that our time… has value?
and playing this game… cuts the value short… below that of… minimum wage job?

The despair is real.

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!

Quite frankly you aren’t trying hard enough.

I’ve been trying to make the accountant cubicle to copier jump for about two weeks and just can’t do it…not to mention its totally infuriating when Johnson from marketing makes the jump at lunch without breaking a sweat…pretty sure he was simultaneously running sales projections in his head. I swear if the boss doesn’t nerf that jump in the next restructure, I’m going to rage quit for sure.

MokahTGS.7850:

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!

Quite frankly you aren’t trying hard enough.

I’ve been trying to make the accountant cubicle to copier jump for about two weeks and just can’t do it…not to mention its totally infuriating when Johnson from marketing makes the jump at lunch without breaking a sweat…pretty sure he was simultaneously running sales projections in his head. I swear if the boss doesn’t nerf that jump in the next restructure, I’m going to rage quit for sure.

There’s a map glitch getting in the way. If you look up, there’s a texture seam where the fire extiguisher graphic is rendered. Move just slightly left or right of it, and you can make the jump.

noob.

I have my doubts that more people would invest RL money for the gambling boxes if they couldn’t get them for free anymore. Maybe A-Net would have to rethink their BL-box-system then, but we will never know.^^

I recently bought a $25 gem card and spent all but 400 of the 2000 gems on black lion keys trying to get a weapon ticket. I did not get a single ticket. So, now I’m farming for one. We “Key farmers” aren’t hurting anyone or anything.

I would do this a hundred times rather than buying any keys from the gemstore. And occasionally I do, if I’m bored, or find others who want to do the same thing.

Also, the OP is playing the assume game – he assumes that if the BL key farming was removed, people would buy those keys from the gemstore instead. Which I’m sure the majority wouldn’t.

To make this thread useful:

This sounds fun! Does anyone have a good build or race for this? I’d love to get my weapon master achievements while getting a silly key every now and then.

Human, warrior, commoner, (hospital), go!

Traveller.7496:

Human, warrior, commoner, (hospital), go!

actually all of the classes/proffs work, they all take almost exactly the same length of time on the commoner hospital run.

ellesee.8297:

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?

The whole point of my post was that “they are only hurting themselves, so why should anyone care?”

JustTrogdor.7892:

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

It’s not an assumption, it’s an illustration. I myself am salaried.

KarateKid.5648:

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

Maybe no JPs, but we’ve got a killer Dungeon in the basement.

Lord Kuru.3685:

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.

Reducto ad absurdum. 1/10 for effort in crafting that nonsense.

Darkobra.6439:

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!

I think you should reread my post, because you’ve basically just defended my argument while calling it wrong.

ozmaniandevil.6805:

^^ 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.

You got the gist of it, but missed the underlying point which is that I’m not judging, I’m saying “leave them alone since they are only hurting themselves”.

Zenith.6403:

You mean… that our time… has value?
and playing this game… cuts the value short… below that of… minimum wage job?

The despair is real.

The despair was always real, now you are enlightened. Enlightenment is depressing.

Black Lion Keys are not worth the 125 gems that they cost. You normally get a useless booster, useless merchant thing, and maybe some dyes at best.

Now, if you were paid 10$ an hour, you could go do work for an hour, and buy gems to buy about 6 keys.

Doing it in game, it takes me at least, 19-21 minutes for a key run. So I can only get 3 keys an hour. So it’s actually more inefficient to play the game

Why would you spend real money on keys? I’ve opened around 20 chests with story keys, and 0 scraps/weapon tokens.
It’s a total rip off for gamblers.

Nick.6972:

Why would you spend real money on keys? I’ve opened around 20 chests with story keys, and 0 scraps/weapon tokens.
It’s a total rip off for gamblers.

Keys are a giant waste of time/money. They are an even bigger waste of time if you farm them. However, you would buy them because they are going to cost you an hour of your life no matter how you get them, but you can get at least twice as many for that hour of your life if you use cash instead of farming them.

Regardless, people are free to farm or buy them.

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.

Farmed 2 keys..unlocked 2 chests..and BINGO…black lion claiming ticket TROLOLOL?

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.

thats a dangerous slippery slope you’re standing on.
“why play it when i could just buy everything with real money”

for example want Bifrost? but it’ll take you months upon months to get it!
well not if you let your credit card get it for you, it can be yours within a week or two!

£85 = 8000 gems
8000 gems converts to 496g
Bifrost currently costs 1900g
thats 4 lots for a total of £340
minimum wage is £6.31

so for the meagre price of 53 hours Bifrost could be yours!

while alot of us can afford to splash out on everything we could ever want using real money we prefer to be the ones playing the game, not our credit cards.

plus i’ve had fun making an awesome looking, awesomely powerful keyrunning set for my alts, you get some odd looks running around the tutorial zone wearing lv 80 exotics XD
and you get to see if you can break your records,
plus there is a chance for alot of gold if you get lucky

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.

they don’t care. Its just as farming gold for keys. I don’t see the point of this thread or the point of you bothering to put this on the forums.

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.

This farm has been around almost since release and now you “complain” ? I don’t get it.

Some people like the gamble with the BLTC keys and paying up to 10g per key is just not worth it. People rather spend 20minutes to get one key without any RNG.

Also it can be fun to set new personal records.

Astral Projections.7320:

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.

Same here. I buy plenty of gems with cash regularly, but refuse to spend gems on RNG items, except for the occasional dye pack or mini set, when I have some idea of what I’m getting. I do key runs from time to time in the hope to one day get enough tickets to get a fused weapon (mostly a pipe dream at this point).

The point of this post should be about the real problem.

The real problem is how in efficient it is to acquire anything in this game without using the gem shop/tp.

I don’t think it’s a “new low” at all… Some people don’t wanna play RL money for a key to open a chest that would other-wise, on ratio, give them junk.

So, i there be a way to harvest these keys without spending RL money to get them, all the power to these players. Should they farm these key and then open a chest and get something significant, then they can honestly say they didn’t buy it, but earned it.

If they want me to spend more money on the Gem Store, make the Weapon Skin Claim Tickets purchasable there, rather than obtained randomly by chance through the Chests. I would gladly buy the tickets at the same price it costs to get the Keys.

Jaymee.1560:

I don’t think it’s a “new low” at all… Some people don’t wanna play RL money for a key to open a chest that would other-wise, on ratio, give them junk.

In the end it is nothing different from running the same dungeon over and over in other MMOs in the hope of the rare drop of an item you really want to have.

I find it very difficult to fault people for cheesing a workaround to get items that are basically a scam. There is no way BL keys are fairly priced.

I’ve heard a few people in game say this method is quite time consuming..

Time is money, would it be not be far more efficient to just buy the keys if you really want them?

You can also make decent gold from both dungeons and farming in frostgorge.. would it not be quicker to farm the gold to buy gems with to get the keys?

DeadlySynz.3471:

I’ve heard a few people in game say this method is quite time consuming..

Time is money, would it be not be far more efficient to just buy the keys if you really want them?

You can also make decent gold from both dungeons and farming in frostgorge.. would it not be quicker to farm the gold to buy gems with to get the keys?

Maybe people just want to do something different now and then ? After running 10 hours FG Train it is maybe just refreshing doing some key runs instead ?
Then there are people like me that simply hate Dungeons and would do anything else that give profit as long as it is not running Dungeons

Again, if they want us to spend money in the Gem Store, sell the tickets for the weapons there. Really. I will -buy- the tickets. No joke. Sell them at the same rates as the Black Lion Keys. I’d buy -tons- of tickets. I honestly want like, half of the Valentine’s stuff and the Tormented Staff.

Good chance to make money here, Anet. I’m not wasting my time or money buying keys for a -chance- to get this stuff. Make it a guaranteed thing and you’ve got my money.

Liewec.2896:

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.

thats a dangerous slippery slope you’re standing on.
“why play it when i could just buy everything with real money”

for example want Bifrost? but it’ll take you months upon months to get it!
well not if you let your credit card get it for you, it can be yours within a week or two!

£85 = 8000 gems
8000 gems converts to 496g
Bifrost currently costs 1900g
thats 4 lots for a total of £340
minimum wage is £6.31

so for the meagre price of 53 hours Bifrost could be yours!

while alot of us can afford to splash out on everything we could ever want using real money we prefer to be the ones playing the game, not our credit cards.

plus i’ve had fun making an awesome looking, awesomely powerful keyrunning set for my alts, you get some odd looks running around the tutorial zone wearing lv 80 exotics XD
and you get to see if you can break your records,
plus there is a chance for alot of gold if you get lucky

Easier now than 9 months ago when 8000 gems converted to 180g when Bifrost was 2200g. And where are you getting Bifrost for only 1800g? It’s currently 2700g.

At the current exchange rate, with 125 gems you could either buy a black lion key or exchange them all for 8 gold. The contents of a black lion chest that you can trade are worth less than 4 gold on average. Unless you really want the random booster and trading post pickup, you are throwing a ton of money away every time you open a chest.

Of course, if you are chest running at 20 minutes per key, you’re making upwards of 10 gold an hour, plus getting some random boosters that occasionally are worth something.

Without the key run, the new weapon skins released via the black lion chest would be incredibly expensive – if you actually want to buy one with gems they’re around $50 each, randomness not withstanding. The key farmers are the only thing that keeps them at a reasonable price point.

It’s really hard too see that they’d make more money otherwise – keys will always be a suckers bet without sweeping changes, and while they might make more from informed demand with changes, it is hard to see how they could do that without cutting into their sucker revenue.

But BLTC ARE GEM STORE SAMPLERS!!! They aren’t in game treasure chests. It’s a crate that fell off one of Evon’s transport wagons. They cost at most 125 GEMS!! The gem exchange cost is immaterial. Do you get 125 gems worth of gem store items out of it on average? That’s the question. Not just items you would buy and use but total gem worth of those items?

That fact that they’ve felt forced to tossed tickets and scraps in the chests indicate that to the bulk of players, we don’t care about boosters or bank/merchant/mf in a can. They are trying to sell us a grab bag of items we mostly don’t give a kitten about. Sure one bag has keys to a new car but that’s so rare it’s pointless to expect to get one much less multiples in the few bags we do get.

DeadlySynz.3471:

I’ve heard a few people in game say this method is quite time consuming..

Time is money, would it be not be far more efficient to just buy the keys if you really want them?

You can also make decent gold from both dungeons and farming in frostgorge.. would it not be quicker to farm the gold to buy gems with to get the keys?

Yes, it would be far quicker for me to buy them directly with either gems or converted gold for gems. However, I disagree with the sale of black lion keys for gems on principle.

Behellagh.1468:

But BLTC ARE GEM STORE SAMPLERS!!! They aren’t in game treasure chests. It’s a crate that fell off one of Evon’s transport wagons. They cost at most 125 GEMS!! The gem exchange cost is immaterial. Do you get 125 gems worth of gem store items out of it on average? That’s the question. Not just items you would buy and use but total gem worth of those items?

That fact that they’ve felt forced to tossed tickets and scraps in the chests indicate that to the bulk of players, we don’t care about boosters or bank/merchant/mf in a can. They are trying to sell us a grab bag of items we mostly don’t give a kitten about. Sure one bag has keys to a new car but that’s so rare it’s pointless to expect to get one much less multiples in the few bags we do get.

Can’t disagree with this. Just sell us the keys to the new car. I’d be willing to pay 2000 Gems for a Permanent Hair Style Change thing. I’d be willing to pay 125 Gems for one Black Lion Ticket, or 400 Gems for 5 of them. I’m not willing to pay for a -chance- at these things. I don’t like gambling. Some people do. Leave the stuff in the Chests for them to gamble at to their hearts content, but make the stuff available to the rest of us.

Seriously, A.net. Not joking here. Let me buy the weapon claim tickets, and I will. Keep them in chests, and you get nothing out of me. You’re losing out here.

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.

Just wanted to point out that not everyone lives in US or any other country with fairly high income standards. And GW2 prices are uniform for everyone. I know people who work on full time shifts for less than $4.68 per hour and minimum wage job around here is around $3.1 per hour and that is pre-tax. So for some farming such keys might be actually a good time investment (if you can call playing games a good time investment that is). And that does not even count kids with technically $0 income.

Ensign.2189:

At the current exchange rate, with 125 gems you could either buy a black lion key or exchange them all for 8 gold. The contents of a black lion chest that you can trade are worth less than 4 gold on average. Unless you really want the random booster and trading post pickup, you are throwing a ton of money away every time you open a chest.

This is so true. Every time I do buy keys (and I have, even though I know it’s gambling), I regret it. I always, always think after “well it would have made more sense to buy gems, trade them for gold, and buy the skin off the TP”. This is what I’m trying to remind myself of all the time. To make it easier, I delete any BL chests I get as drops. I try to only purchase gems for “actual” items now, like a specific armor skin set or boosters, or whatever, and use in game gold on the TP for those special weapon skins. However, just a note that if you want to do the same, buy the skin right away, as they’re cheapest when they first come out and are still 1 ticket each. Once they cost 3 or more tickets the price on the TP will skyrocket.

I have amazing luck with blc I can’t think of when I don’t get a full ticket or enough scraps. But other parts of the game hate me. I have spent equal gold/ gems on blc as I did to buy my precursor.

I think it’s a new low when threads like this start popping up…

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.

Some people don’t like spending money on DLC and have rules like me but I appreciate that other people are doing this because they are funding Guild Wars.

As a ex farmer (now I’m trying to not farm but progress in other things) I like farms like these, they are diversify content, I think this is the only reasonable solo farm in this game and I hope there will be more solo farming places like gauntlet, I had a blast farming Duncan(if this what he was called).

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 that is a good thing. It shows them that there are many people who are not willing to pay gems.

And the money they get with gems.. well imo that goes not help you to get a better game, it helps you getting more cash-shop stuff content that is based on the idea “how do we get people to buy gems”. Not good for the quality of the game at all.

And really, farming keys is just as boring as grinding gold and that is now exactly one of those problem with cash-shop focus. Getting your items becomes this sort of boring content. So you just helped to proof why a cash-shop focus results in boring content.

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.

The fact that you compare this game to a job really says it all. And that has everything to do with that cash-shop focus.

I never farmed those keys, but I have to say what I got from that chests so far is REALLY underwhelming. I think the TP-Price of those chests tells the story quite well.

When I get a key as random drop I open the chest (got 1 or 2 in my entire playtime since release) I once bought the key 5-pack in the store when gems were still priced at 30s per 100. And of course I obtained some by doing personal story.
What I got so far ….. boosters.

So I cant find any reason to invest time in order to acquire those keys.

Onisuo.8607:

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?

There’s an equilibrium that will be reached. There are people doing this because it’s profitable, currently slightly more profitable than most other things in the game. As soon as this becomes less profitable than champ trains, these people will go back to doing champ trains. When key farming becomes more profitable than champ trains they will go back to that. An equilibrium will be reached, and the easy ways to farm will become about equal in value. However since you must do key farming over a longer term to get that value key farming will always be slightly more profitable than champ trains, so we may already be at the equilibrium.

Onisuo.8607:

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.

Well problem was that this game was released as B2P game. Now gem buyers helped turn this game into some cash-shop focus game (or are you name it F2P game) with all the negative stuff that come with it.. you know like not having those items in the world but in a cash-shop or behind a boring grind.

You might see the buyers as supporters but to me they are more destroyers. You want to support, buy an expansion. There might have been one if they did not get enough gem-sales.

I used to be one of those that frowned upon this practice when I first heard of it. Then came a time I really liked a weapon skin and shelled out money for a stack of keys only to get 4 scraps I couldn’t exchange and an abundance of items I have no use of like Glory Boosters, Crafting Boosters or my absolute favorite, the useless Killstreak Booster. And that was back in the day when the ever common scrolls of knowledge and essences of luck weren’t in the loot table.

I simply cannot justify the cost of 35euro worth of gems for 4 scraps. At that rate a skin would round up to 100euro and that’s absurd. So I’d much rather casually run a disposable character now every other day for a month and get the 1 in 5-7 lucky chest that yields a scrap. That way I can always keep a claim ticket in bank in anticipation of new skins and have fun and enjoy the game in the process. I don’t farm to sell skins, it’s solely to keep all my characters geared to my liking.

I support the game, I’ve spent hundreds of euro on the gemstore to this day, but I refuse to pay for items that have a big chance of resulting in something of no value. I’d much rather they handled more weapon skins like the Kasmeer Staff, Marjory Dagger & Axe, for sale directly in gem store, or as others suggested, with a way to purchase tickets directly OR make the scraps a guaranteed drop in every chest so they’re worth buying.