Despite what the folks at Anet think, key farming had nothing to do with the lacking sales of Black Lion Keys.
The reason that key sales are low, is because the contents of the chests suck.
Why on earth would a sane person spend, on average, 560 gold buying the 20 keys that it would require to get 10 ticket scraps, so they could buy a skin that sells on the TP for 80 gold?
It certainly can’t be because they want all the awesome useless boosters and trash items that make up 90% or more of the chests contents… because nobody wants or needs an armor booster, or a teleport to friend 1 time use gadget… or any of the other ridiculously worthless items stare at you from the chest you instantly regret opening 95% of the time.
It seems odd that Anet expects people to buy Keys for 28 gold, to open chests that 99% of the time, or more, have contents worth less then 3 gold.
It is not really a gamble, it’s a sink.
Just because 1 chest in 1,000,000, if that, drops a hair contract isn’t really enough to justify spending 28 gold for a key knowing, with near certainty, that what you will get out of the chest can be purchased outright for less then 3 gold, but more often, you wouldn’t spend ANYTHING buying those contents, because you wouldn’t want them.
The number of useless filler items is ridiculous.
But now, since the ability for people to “farm” keys, has been completely removed, despite the requirement being added that the farmer progress to level 10 before starting the story quests, the price of the BL skins on the trading post is gonna skyrocket.
People used to be able to farm a few keys here and there, and eventually they had enough scraps to buy a skin, and they would toss it on the TP, competition from other key farmers kept the prices pretty low on the 1 ticket skins, but now, since the only way to get those skins is by paying the average price of 560 gold for those 20 keys… or buying the gems with about 30 bucks in cash, the skins on the TP are going to coincide with with these costs…
I doubt people will spend 560 gold to buy a skin and then sell it on the TP for 80 gold, or spend 30 dollars on a skin that they can then sell for 80 gold, when that same 30 bucks in gems converted to gold would give them roughly 350.
I am thinking that the death of key farming is not going to have the effect that Anet envisioned, I think interest in the black lion chests will fall even lower, and as the price of the skins soar out of the range of the average player, interest in those skins will take a dive too. Which will further perpetuate the declining interest in purchasing Black Lion keys.
The contents of the chests are mostly worthless to most players, and at 30 or 40 minutes and the cost of leveling the character to level 10, those key farmers can EASILY make more gold doing other things in the same amount of time, so it won’t thwart their accumulation of wealth, at all, nor will it increase the sales of Black Lion Keys, about the only thing that I can tell that it HAS accomplished is to take away a little farm that a handful of people enjoyed doing on occasion when they were bored of all the other content they have done to death for the past 3 years.
It won’t stop people from farming, they will just go and farm something else, and will refuse to buy black lion keys out of spite.
Maybe the answer is to make the average chest contents worth closer to the 28 gold it costs to open them, or lower the price of the keys to a point where it is closer in value to the contents of the average chest.
I know I will miss my handful of key runs I did each week, for me it wasn’t JUST about getting the keys to open the crappy chests, I enjoyed trying to streamline the run, see if I could beat my previous best time, etc. It was a cool little solo game with a fun little reward at the end.
Hopefully I can find something else that will enjoy to a similar extent.
Anyways
/rant
