Guild Wars 2

“Guild Wars 2 isn’t one of those games that masquerades as free-to-play but is really designed so that you can’t get far without having to buy lots of microtransactions. We recognize that customers paid $60 for the game and they have the right to play the full game. So the microtransactions we offer are non-essential additions to the game and convenience services for players who want to trade money for time.”
-Mike O’Brien

Hehe, its all optional ^^

Geotherma.2395:

“Guild Wars 2 isn’t one of those games that masquerades as free-to-play but is really designed so that you can’t get far without having to buy lots of microtransactions. We recognize that customers paid $60 for the game and they have the right to play the full game. So the microtransactions we offer are non-essential additions to the game and convenience services for players who want to trade money for time.”
-Mike O’Brien

Hehe, its all optional ^^

Yea, I haven’t run into anything on the black lion store that wasn’t optional, so that’s one of the few quotes from O’Brien that seems to still hold true.

That said, though, even though I love optional stuff like fluff items I can’t see myself buying any more black lion keys. The reward is so skewed in comparison to the risk it isn’t even funny. You have a better chance of winning the powerball than seeing one of those endless tonics. After enough keys, you start to feel like you’re not just wasting the money of the keys, but the time it takes to open each chest. :-P

Carrot and stick requires at least a carrot shaving once in a while… they don’t even give us that with those chests anymore.

Tolmos.8395:

Geotherma.2395:

“Guild Wars 2 isn’t one of those games that masquerades as free-to-play but is really designed so that you can’t get far without having to buy lots of microtransactions. We recognize that customers paid $60 for the game and they have the right to play the full game. So the microtransactions we offer are non-essential additions to the game and convenience services for players who want to trade money for time.”
-Mike O’Brien

Hehe, its all optional ^^

Yea, I haven’t run into anything on the black lion store that wasn’t optional, so that’s one of the few quotes from O’Brien that seems to still hold true.

Yes it is very true that buying black lion keys is an expensive optional luxury. It’s just a shame that this is this case since the permanent contracts are very desirable items. I would actually rather have a permanent self-style hair kit over any legendary heh.

Not worth it at all

Flax.4980:

Tolmos.8395:

Geotherma.2395:

“Guild Wars 2 isn’t one of those games that masquerades as free-to-play but is really designed so that you can’t get far without having to buy lots of microtransactions. We recognize that customers paid $60 for the game and they have the right to play the full game. So the microtransactions we offer are non-essential additions to the game and convenience services for players who want to trade money for time.”
-Mike O’Brien

Hehe, its all optional ^^

Yea, I haven’t run into anything on the black lion store that wasn’t optional, so that’s one of the few quotes from O’Brien that seems to still hold true.

Yes it is very true that buying black lion keys is an expensive optional luxury. It’s just a shame that this is this case since the permanent contracts are very desirable items. I would actually rather have a permanent self-style hair kit over any legendary heh.

Maybe if we ask really really nice, possibly with clothing optional, they will put perma into an event. I’m scared to say put on gem store as they promised never to allow gem store to give players unfair advantage. But for $1200 USD you too can own every permanent convenience item :P

No…but I do have quite a collection of chests.

I just received another 7 chests in the past two weeks – not even one key!

This ratio is way biased.

ANet why don’t you improve this?

Death Reincarnated.3570:

I just received another 7 chests in the past two weeks – not even one key!

This ratio is way biased.

ANet why don’t you improve this?

Cause the chest rewards are also on the gem store ^^; and the gem transactions are what fund content.

Geotherma.2395:

Death Reincarnated.3570:

I just received another 7 chests in the past two weeks – not even one key!

This ratio is way biased.

ANet why don’t you improve this?

Cause the chest rewards are also on the gem store ^^; and the gem transactions are what fund content.

sarcasm or ignoring the points intentionally?

I tried it for a while. Im specifically interested in the Armor booster, Speed Booster and Damage booster. They seem to have a lower drop rate in BL chests though to the point where its not worth it.

oh you mean that blue chest i destroy as soon as i see it in my inventory? how can you open something that does not exist?

Hellkaiser.6025:

Geotherma.2395:

Death Reincarnated.3570:

I just received another 7 chests in the past two weeks – not even one key!

This ratio is way biased.

ANet why don’t you improve this?

Cause the chest rewards are also on the gem store ^^; and the gem transactions are what fund content.

sarcasm or ignoring the points intentionally?

If you drop tons of keys why would anyone buy the keys or items off the gem store.. idk what else to say.. This seems pretty obvious.

No, never!! I never spend gold or gems on anything RNG reliant. Too much of a gamble for too small of a chance of reward. The whole RNG system for this stuff is just not transparent enough for my taste. Even lottery tickets tell you what the odds of winning are.

Leamas.5803:

No, never!! I never spend gold or gems on anything RNG reliant. Too much of a gamble for too small of a chance of reward. The whole RNG system for this stuff is just not transparent enough for my taste. Even lottery tickets tell you what the odds of winning are.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Black_Lion_Chest/Drop_rate

:P

Geotherma.2395:

Leamas.5803:

No, never!! I never spend gold or gems on anything RNG reliant. Too much of a gamble for too small of a chance of reward. The whole RNG system for this stuff is just not transparent enough for my taste. Even lottery tickets tell you what the odds of winning are.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Black_Lion_Chest/Drop_rate

:P

Neat. Thanks. I’d like to see a sampling of 10000, but neat none the less to see what drops the most. Even more of a reason to not buy keys.

Gestankfaust.4216:

Blacklight.2871:

Paulytnz.7619:

Tamaki Revolution.3548:

I bought a few sets of 5 (Gold —-> Gems) during the different holiday events. They’re just not worth it. Now I just roll a Warrior to level 7 and do the level 10 personal quest if I’m bored and want to “gamble” :P

Yup this is what I do to farm keys. It takes me 30-40 mins and you ALWAYS get a key at the end. Btw if you choose human and middle class storyline you shouldn’t need to lvl up to lvl 7 to do this. I easily farm keys this way beating the lvl 10 quest at lvl 4. Give it a try you just might save yourself some time and get more keys faster.

Oh btw I use guardian instead of warrior but I’m sure you can do this with any class, I used to do it with ranger and it was fine.

Which quest is that for human/middle class?

The common storyline (middle one). Although, they all work ok. Just faster to do the common. If on the lvl 8 part (you choose to defend the orphanage or the hospital) you find that one is killin you too often, switch up. Neither takes longer, but the situation and where the enemies are is different.

I don’t usually have a problem dying at all as I premade a set of “power” gear and weapon so I kill pretty fast. Note: you can add gems to the gear too and it will NOT turn soulbound like the warning says it will. So you can use this set of weapmon/Armour for ALL future chars you make for these key runs (I guess I should mention I bought deluxe so I also get the benefit of golem banker to get this set as soon as I can within the first mini instance). I choose hospital over orphanage because I had a bad experience doing the other before I made this gear lol.

I prefer the middle class storyline because all quests pretty much are in Divinity Reach, only 2 parts you have to leave the city for pretty much. I just rush the quests, and don’t bother levelling up or anything. Oh and heres another tip (albeit very minor): When you have to go to the bandihaunt Caves for the medicine, grab some cow feed on the way from the farm and use the skill 1 for speed boosts to the cave. Apart from that I teleport everywhere to speed up the run and I Always come out of a run with +8 silver so you don’t lose too much.

Leamas.5803:

Geotherma.2395:

Leamas.5803:

No, never!! I never spend gold or gems on anything RNG reliant. Too much of a gamble for too small of a chance of reward. The whole RNG system for this stuff is just not transparent enough for my taste. Even lottery tickets tell you what the odds of winning are.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Black_Lion_Chest/Drop_rate

:P

Neat. Thanks. I’d like to see a sampling of 10000, but neat none the less to see what drops the most. Even more of a reason to not buy keys.

I get a lot of guild influenece items, boosters and coin bags. One coin bag gave me 80 silver once! O.O The guild influence items can be between 15 points and 300 in my experiance. Really the only bad items I get are things like the 1 use bank/TP access and boosters/tonics. Pretty much everything else has a good use. Examples – BLTC salvage kits for getting ectos and repair canisters/revive orbs are great for fractals.

TBH I would buy keys if only they were cheaper, but for me I would expect that price to be something like 5 keys for 100 Gems. Anet would never go that low tho lol.

Nope I wouldn’t buy keys, I used the ones that dropped from leveling and had fun with the tonics, but tbh if I could sell them on the TP I would.

Did buy keys a couple of times, but felt it wasn’t really worth it.

The cool part about mysterious tonics is you can mystic forge them into exactly which transform you want. My favorite so far is the Floater Tonic When I’ve purchased a large amount of keys I do notice that i get more than my “gems” worth. Which is always nice, and the free total makeover was a plus ^^

Paulytnz.7619:

I get a lot of guild influenece items, boosters and coin bags. One coin bag gave me 80 silver once! O.O

As impressive as that is, keys are actually more expensive than that at current exchange rates, aren’t they? Which really only proves the point you made later on.

I’d say to drop the current cost of keys by half or three quarters. 450 gems only buying 5 keys is a laugh; 10 or 20 is much more reasonable.

I always got them ingame, quickly realized like every other player that it’s far from worth it to buy them.

Just like many others my bank is filled with chests but no keys.
They should lower the price of these things, remove the chest drop in Pve and just add an opened chest to the store.

Key were a terrible purchase since the beginning of the game. Sadly, it took the Halloween event for a lot of people to realize just how horrid the odds really are. Fortunately, most people aren’t foolish enough to fall for that again.

No, the contents are garbage. Only things worth the risk would be the permanent contracts but the odds of getting one of them … Well the odds for them are not even on the wiki they are that small.
I think Halloween all but killed off the demand for keys. If anyone still buys them after that debacle, well. What is they say about a fool and their money ?

In the beginning, a lot of keys dropped in many different places as rewards—I used these at that time.

Since then, I have bought a single key “just to see”… And everyone in here is right—there is just simply no point. The rewards are worthless—and that’s when you get something you might actually use! e.g. Revive orb.

Time to fix this, Anet.

Never. Too expensive and too little benefits from opening a chest.

I once opened 5 chests with 1 key because every next chest contained key.

Still, imo, it’s not worth it.

I bought a few when I first started playing, before I knew better. I quickly learned it wasn’t worth it.

No. “Buying keys to open chests with random rewards with a slim chance of getting anything even remotely good” is probably one of the worst ways I can think of to spend money. It’s gambling, but with the odds stacked astronomically against you.

I usually get more items than I could have buy buying directly. It could be luck but then again “expensive” is relative to each person ^^ I have the money, don’t mind the lottery heh

Disturbing news…

“Be aware that every time someone buys a black lion key, a unicorn has its horn cut off. They are used to make the rainbows that emanate from the chests and an overall sense of hope for the buyer.” – The Queensdale ‘trolls up!’ troll.

He also said that ‘The Darkness’ (Tim Curry) purchased majority shares in NCSoft and was really pushing for this rainbow idea.. though I’m not sure I trust the troll as he put 12 stacks of bleeding on me right after he told me.
Regardless, history has a way of repeating itself, and Tom Cruise is obviously no longer fit to protect the unicorns, and humanity by extension.

PLEASE Arenanet, stop the slaying of these beautiful creatures. You don’t need rainbows, misleading advertising, and angry/disappointed/unsatisfied customers to make a profit.
Quality content doesn’t need to be dressed up and made to be epic. It already is.
Save the unicorns, replace the Black Lion Chest with something similar, but has no rainbows… and maybe put in things that are useful more often. I know the manufacturing cost of quality digital items is rather high, but I feel confident that the increase in company profit would make this a viable option.

Or you can continue down this dark path.. ultimately dooming the human race to lives of despair and anguish in a tainted existence via the extinction of unicorns.

We all know that ‘The Darkness’ has a larger agenda, and I implore all concerned individuals to help protect this endangered species… by sending me your in-game gold that you would have spent on black lion keys, for the price of a cup of coffee a day, we can put a stop to this!

On a side note, I would like to have a mini Bruce Campbell available in the gem shop.
I would buy that. (With donations)

We should farm Skritt. They seem to be the only enemy that drops them.

Yumiko Ishida.3769:

We should farm Skritt. They seem to be the only enemy that drops them.

I got 2 in Orr, can’t remember which mob since it was during an event. Had to do a double take when I seen them in my inventory lol

I had a few ideas if anyone wanted to check them out:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Black-Lion-Chest-Key-Improvement/first#post1478317

Valandil Dragonhart.2371:

… the stuff that’s offered in the cash shop right now is aimed at the unsuspecting teenager and the occasional girl-gamer. Anyway, enough hyperbole and digression from the OP.

May I have a little bit of clarification on this comment about “occasional girl-gamer[s]”?

Also I’d like to add to the thread’s discussion about black lion chest keys. I’m pretty happy that the chests don’t offer great rewards. The way it works now, I don’t feel pressured to buy anything in the cash shop, which is how I feel a cash shop should be.