Guild Wars 2

Less is more. People might be willing to gamble more if the keys are cheaper. I say:

• Drop keys to 25 gems each, 5 for 100 gems.
• Remove anything that can be bought for gold from a vendor (boost powders, guild discoveries, etc).
• Put similar items together on the same roll. If it comes up, let us choose what we want; i.e. RNG says you get a mini-pet, let us choose between the egg, a SAB mini, one of the birds or whatever else is available. I don’t want duplicates of account-bound mini-pets, nor do I want a pile of consumables that I have a stack of – let me pick a different one.
• Sort out gem store prices in general and make things more tempting. Even during the anniversary sale, I didn’t touch those discounted merchant expresses. Anyone who did needs to learn the value of money (or their time if they converted gold to gems).
• Add more fun items to the chests! Are they the super rare items that everyone wants?No. Will they sit on a giant pile of boosters or be deleted because they’re account-bound unlocks the player already has? No. They’ll be used! Give players a few of them at a time and don’t let all three rolls of a chest be fun items… but put them in there! What should they be? Get creative!

pdavis.8031:

Just for posterity sake: Last year, when they changed how the PS worked with the NPE, people were claiming that the prices of Black lion skins would sky rocket due to the “nerf” of key farming. (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/RIP-keyfarming-merged/first)

From what I can tell, the price of the skins has remained pretty steady, the only major changes are when the item is no longer available.

So I don’t believe that this change will have too much of an effect on prices.
Plus with an increased drop rate in open world, it might actually help drive prices down, as essentially, you are introducing more keys, thus more skins, to the general population, rather then the small handful of key farmers.

That’s because people discovered they could keyfarm as much as before, just with the added cost of crafting to level 10. And skin prices did go up as a result of this new cost.

Honestly you all won’t be happy until the BLTC only gives tickets or scraps and keys are as cheap as Transmutation Charges.

We could go back to the time of Dragon Bash, before tickets were added to the BLTC and sell chests that specifically drop skin tickets. They are slightly cheaper than keys and have half the chance that BLTC have. That’s okay, there are lesser chests that drop from mobs that have 1/20th the odds of getting a ticket as a paid one. Doesn’t that sound better?

Or you could sell tickets directly. 1200 gems each would be a bargain. Of course that means there isn’t a chance, no matter how small, that you could get a ticket for free when a key is handed out as a reward or from a drop or map complete.

CandyHearts.6025:

DaShi.1368:

pdavis.8031:

Just for posterity sake: Last year, when they changed how the PS worked with the NPE, people were claiming that the prices of Black lion skins would sky rocket due to the “nerf” of key farming. (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/RIP-keyfarming-merged/first)

From what I can tell, the price of the skins has remained pretty steady, the only major changes are when the item is no longer available.

So I don’t believe that this change will have too much of an effect on prices.
Plus with an increased drop rate in open world, it might actually help drive prices down, as essentially, you are introducing more keys, thus more skins, to the general population, rather then the small handful of key farmers.

The problem is that some of us have god awful RNG and are lucky to see an exotic a month and rare a week. Getting a key would be a miracle. Key farming was one of the few ways we could keep up with the economy and it wasn’t even that great for it.

Been farming trash mobs to see key drops seeing as people on reddit said they got em that way. 4-5 hours later all I’ve gotten is a headache + 8 BLC.

@ the idea that this wont change the prices. There was still a way to get them in game which is why the prices didn’t render any difference. Now that the keys are actually a rarity now it WILL change things. There aren’t too many people who find it worth it to throw away 150 gems per repair canister. That’s just how it is.

It’s all about supply and demand. And the demand for weapon skins will remain the same while the supply will dwindle because there is no way to EARN the keys at a decent rate anymore.

The change has to be with the boxes if they insist on keeping it this way.

After update hit I spent 8 hrs. testing “the new improved key drop rates” . After killing thousands of mobs of all sorts and levels I ended up with 0 keys and only 4 blc. Today I spent 4 hours just mindlessly killing mobs and got 1 key and 4blc ( hmm well the black lion chests seems to drop more frequently at least-I wonder what that’s about /wink ). 12 hours work for one key! You have better odds in las vegas.

Well fact is that only pre droprate is worse than key droprate. And that is now AFTER the ‘increase’.

Bomber.3872:

Well fact is that only pre droprate is worse than key droprate. And that is now AFTER the ‘increase’.

Can you back up those so called facts?

Bomber.3872:

Well fact is that only pre droprate is worse than key droprate. And that is now AFTER the ‘increase’.

Personally I’ve gotten more key drops than Giant Eyes.

I would like to see one of the two solutions:

• Make 1 scrap guaranteed in every black lion chest, but only if a full ticket isn’t rolled (so the first two slots will roll the loot table normally sans full tickets, but the third slot will only drop ticket scraps or a rare chance for a full ticket).

• Make ticket scraps available in the gem store for 50/180/840 gems for bundles of 1/5/25 scraps. Chests will still have chances of dropping scraps and full tickets to maintain their value.

I won’t buy keys (once did) until they make chest stuff valuable.
I am not interested in wasting (yes, wasting) money on random RNG stuff that is garbage and never get what I want to get.

Would rather buy skins (and I actually buy skins + outfits) than RNG Chests.

I just checked BL SKin prices and most didnt really spike since tuesday.

And if I am not mistaken, Chaos weapons arent available atm for claim tickets, so wether key drops across the player base got buffed or not has very little impact on their prices.

To echo what some above posters said, even though prices of BL drops have increased, they’re pretty much where they were 2 months ago.

http://i.imgur.com/t7kf6qc.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/UoMZvzf.jpg

leftyboy.9358:

CandyHearts.6025:

DaShi.1368:

pdavis.8031:

Just for posterity sake: Last year, when they changed how the PS worked with the NPE, people were claiming that the prices of Black lion skins would sky rocket due to the “nerf” of key farming. (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/RIP-keyfarming-merged/first)

From what I can tell, the price of the skins has remained pretty steady, the only major changes are when the item is no longer available.

So I don’t believe that this change will have too much of an effect on prices.
Plus with an increased drop rate in open world, it might actually help drive prices down, as essentially, you are introducing more keys, thus more skins, to the general population, rather then the small handful of key farmers.

The problem is that some of us have god awful RNG and are lucky to see an exotic a month and rare a week. Getting a key would be a miracle. Key farming was one of the few ways we could keep up with the economy and it wasn’t even that great for it.

Been farming trash mobs to see key drops seeing as people on reddit said they got em that way. 4-5 hours later all I’ve gotten is a headache + 8 BLC.

@ the idea that this wont change the prices. There was still a way to get them in game which is why the prices didn’t render any difference. Now that the keys are actually a rarity now it WILL change things. There aren’t too many people who find it worth it to throw away 150 gems per repair canister. That’s just how it is.

It’s all about supply and demand. And the demand for weapon skins will remain the same while the supply will dwindle because there is no way to EARN the keys at a decent rate anymore.

The change has to be with the boxes if they insist on keeping it this way.

After update hit I spent 8 hrs. testing “the new improved key drop rates” . After killing thousands of mobs of all sorts and levels I ended up with 0 keys and only 4 blc. Today I spent 4 hours just mindlessly killing mobs and got 1 key and 4blc ( hmm well the black lion chests seems to drop more frequently at least-I wonder what that’s about /wink ). 12 hours work for one key! You have better odds in las vegas.

Grats on the key! This is great news!

Just a flesh wound.3589:

pdavis.8031:

Just for posterity sake: Last year, when they changed how the PS worked with the NPE, people were claiming that the prices of Black lion skins would sky rocket due to the “nerf” of key farming. (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/RIP-keyfarming-merged/first)

From what I can tell, the price of the skins has remained pretty steady, the only major changes are when the item is no longer available.

So I don’t believe that this change will have too much of an effect on prices.
Plus with an increased drop rate in open world, it might actually help drive prices down, as essentially, you are introducing more keys, thus more skins, to the general population, rather then the small handful of key farmers.

I’m not so sure the previous change actually affected key farming that much. With crafting to level, writs and tomes, the people who wanted to key farm continued. They just had to make some small changes to their routine. The only ones it discouraged were those to whom key running wasn’t something they did routinely. I know the change didn’t slow me down once I changed how I got to level 10. I could do one a week, one a day or several a day, as I pleased. And sometimes I did 2 or 3 a day. If I wanted to grind, I could get a skin a month, or less

This however is a completely different kettle of fish. No matter what I do, I can only do one a week. If I do my one a week, it will take me 7-8 months to get one skin. (Assuming 30 keys to get 10 scraps).

It’s the difference between key farmers doing enough key runs to get up to 12 skins to sell a year, to 1 or 2 a year. That’s quite a nerf. If it’s key farmers that were supplying a noticeable quantity of the skins then there won’t be as many from key farming.

The previous change mention didn’t really have much of an impact on key farming. I agree. However, the sentiments in that thread were the same as they are here. That due to the change, the prices would skyrocket and become unavailable to most players. (Which didn’t really happen).

I maintain that even though you can only farm 1 key a week, by increasing the open world drop rate, you open up the pool of available keys to a lot more players (potentially the whole player base) then just key farmers, or those making new characters, which I think we can agree was a small minority of the players. Thus, if more players have access to more keys, then you are increasing the amount of scraps and tickets available, which in turn increases the amount of skins available, and thus reduces prices.

Lord Kuru.3685:

pdavis.8031:

Just for posterity sake: Last year, when they changed how the PS worked with the NPE, people were claiming that the prices of Black lion skins would sky rocket due to the “nerf” of key farming. (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/RIP-keyfarming-merged/first)

From what I can tell, the price of the skins has remained pretty steady, the only major changes are when the item is no longer available.

So I don’t believe that this change will have too much of an effect on prices.
Plus with an increased drop rate in open world, it might actually help drive prices down, as essentially, you are introducing more keys, thus more skins, to the general population, rather then the small handful of key farmers.

That’s because people discovered they could keyfarm as much as before, just with the added cost of crafting to level 10. And skin prices did go up as a result of this new cost.

Prices did go up yes, but not so much as predicted in the thread I linked. Overall, though those prices have remained fairly steady with few peaks and dips.

Regardless of everyones predictions it’s pretty obvious the one thing that is sound is how we feel that the BLC is not worth it nor enjoyable. It doesn’t matter who I ask. The keys are too expensive for the contents of the box. It’s time to reevaluate the box on top of the key prices.

The keys should be around 50 gems.

(Sorry if I keep bumping this thread with things I’ve already said. I just want to make sure at some point this gets noticed. Thank you all to have kept posting. <3)

Glad to re-bump. :P

I get that they don’t want keys going too cheap, since people would just gold→gem them too often. I’d say start the lowest bundle at 2 keys for 100 gems, or if the wanted to keep their “uneven gems” exploitation, 3 keys for 150 gems. The minimum buy-in doesn’t change, but the value triples.

Rauderi.8706:

Glad to re-bump. :P

I get that they don’t want keys going too cheap, since people would just gold->gem them too often. I’d say start the lowest bundle at 2 keys for 100 gems, or if the wanted to keep their “uneven gems” exploitation, 3 keys for 150 gems. The minimum buy-in doesn’t change, but the value triples.

That’s great! As long as we can see them at a price that is tempting. I myself really only care soooo much about this because I see people so upset about the changes. I want everyone Anet and players alike to feel as if they are getting what is best out of the circumstance when it comes to BLC / Keys.

This would be a lot easier to figure out if Anet could communicate their reasoning behind the sudden changes. It’s almost like grasping at straws trying to find a fix that could suit the players while never knowing what would exactly fly right according to Anet.

Wanze.8410:

A few farmers will get less keys per week and the whole player base gets more from random drops, i dont see how this will impact bl skin prices in a bad way.

You seriously believe that they have increased the drop rates that massively? Remember, currently they are almost non-existent. And this was changed to push people towards buying keys.

I see it as being likely closer to “farmers will get less keys per week, and some players will get 1 more per year”.

Wanze.8410:

I dont think they did this change for financial reasons, otherwise they wouldnt have buffed the droprate from random mobs.

I remember them buffing it once before. Since that time i have gotten maybe one open world key drop (to a total of around 4-5 total since the launch).

Even a big increase of near zero is still near zero.

pdavis.8031:

Just for posterity sake: Last year, when they changed how the PS worked with the NPE, people were claiming that the prices of Black lion skins would sky rocket due to the “nerf” of key farming. (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/RIP-keyfarming-merged/first)

From what I can tell, the price of the skins has remained pretty steady, the only major changes are when the item is no longer available.

They increased scraps drop rates from boxes at about the same time. Farmers were able to farm less keys per hour, but on the whole amount of tickets gained remained the same or even better. This is unlikely to be a case here.

Astralporing.1957:

Wanze.8410:

A few farmers will get less keys per week and the whole player base gets more from random drops, i dont see how this will impact bl skin prices in a bad way.

You seriously believe that they have increased the drop rates that massively? Remember, currently they are almost non-existent. And this was changed to push people towards buying keys.

I see it as being likely closer to “farmers will get less keys per week, and some players will get 1 more per year”.

I already answered that question before in this topic, so I will ask you instead:

Do you think that the amount of keys that were farmed by a few players is significant compared to the overall amount of keys that drop for the whole player base now (including the once per week from farmers) and those keys bought from the gem store?

aocypher.9172:

To echo what some above posters said, even though prices of BL drops have increased, they’re pretty much where they were 2 months ago.

http://i.imgur.com/t7kf6qc.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/UoMZvzf.jpg

That’s because the skins currently on the TP are stock from when keyfarming was possible, once that stock is depleted we’ll see what people want to charge for skins when they can only acquire them through gems and the occasional key drop.

Nobody’s going to sell a 1-ticket skin for 100g when it cost them $20~$30/200~500 gold to buy the keys necessary to get that ticket. It’s very likely the reason why skin prices are as low as they are now is because sellers were able to reliably mitigate the cost of acquiring skins – which was the keyfarm.

Wanze.8410:

Astralporing.1957:

Wanze.8410:

A few farmers will get less keys per week and the whole player base gets more from random drops, i dont see how this will impact bl skin prices in a bad way.

You seriously believe that they have increased the drop rates that massively? Remember, currently they are almost non-existent. And this was changed to push people towards buying keys.

I see it as being likely closer to “farmers will get less keys per week, and some players will get 1 more per year”.

I already answered that question before in this topic, so I will ask you instead:

Do you think that the amount of keys that were farmed by a few players is significant compared to the overall amount of keys that drop for the whole player base now (including the once per week from farmers) and those keys bought from the gem store?

I think it was significant in that it put a downward pressure on prices, out of proportion to their numbers. Since a key farmer gets the skin “for free” he can price it lower than someone who buys the keys with real money or gold. If people are buying keys and it cost them a couple hundred gold or more to get the skin, either they are not going to sell it but instead keep it for themselves or they are going to remember how much it cost them and price it accordingly. Without key farmers to undercut with “free skins,” I’m expecting the prices to rise. It may take a month or two as people have tickets sittings the inventory, but I’m expecting we’ve seen the end of 100 gold skins.

We’ll have to see how it plays out over the next few months. Unless the keys drop at a truly high rate I know I’m going to hold on to any tickets I get until I get the price I will now want since they are now harder to get and therefore more valuable.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

We’ll have to see how it plays out over the next few months.

Yes. Let’s wait to see if there’s an actual problem before trying to solve it. Things might be a lot better …or a lot worse… depending on how ANet altered the open-world drop rate for keys and on how many keys were actually generated by key farmers in the pre-nerf days.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

We’ll have to see how it plays out over the next few months.

Yes. Let’s wait to see if there’s an actual problem before trying to solve it. Things might be a lot better …or a lot worse… depending on how ANet altered the open-world drop rate for keys and on how many keys were actually generated by key farmers in the pre-nerf days.

^^

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

We’ll have to see how it plays out over the next few months.

Yes. Let’s wait to see if there’s an actual problem before trying to solve it. Things might be a lot better …or a lot worse… depending on how ANet altered the open-world drop rate for keys and on how many keys were actually generated by key farmers in the pre-nerf days.

Well, I can only speak for myself but it is a problem for me. Unless the keys drop in the open world at a rate that I would normally farm them, it will now take me up to 8 months to get a skin either for myself or to sell (assuming that the chests have a a 30% chance to have a scrap). Since I normally farmed skins for both myself and to sell at a regular rate, this is a significant nerf to how I play and how I get the newest shinies. By extension it is a significant nerf to all who farmed keys. I don’t need time to pass to see that, regardless of how it it turns out for the game as a whole.

9088 hours played since the early release and hours in beta. 2 key drops, one precursor drop, if you want to call it that. It was venom, and only worth 20g at the time. I’ve not seen anyone I know loot a key yet either.

What this takes away is the ability to concentrate scraps onto a single account quickly for a full ticket, even if the rate of keys dropped onto the population remains the same overall. Full tickets aren’t an issue but scraps will be spread about not amounting to as many full tickets in the same period of time.

Although doubtful, I hope that they reply to this or at least acknowledge these concerns because they are very legitimate. I think many valid things have already been brought up so I would have much to add. I would like to say because of the current RNG skew I have never use real $ to buy BL keys at full price. When they are on sale, I’ll buy some but I still have not received anything stellar in 3 yrs. Just not worth it Anet unless the RNG is better or keys cost less. Just my two coppers.

On the flip side of things, I think the slot machine feel of things does provide them ample sales. People do like their gambling.

I buy a lot of keys and I think they are mostly fine. I don’t like that some of the rewards are single use and you can get them more than once, but otherwise, they are fine.

An gamble box not supposed to to give you a guaranteed 1:1 value in every box – they can’t do that and still offer things like permanent contracts.

Nearly everything in the BL Chests is on the TP or the gem shop – the exceptions are minor (exclusive minis, etc). If you don’t think the keys are a good value, then don’t buy them.

Also, I’m glad they nerfed the key farm. A lot of people are saying they did it to force you to buy keys. Nobody can force you to do that and you’re missing the point.

What they did was strengthen the value proposition of BL Key items (mostly BL skins) for people who buy the keys with gems (which, at some point, were bought with real money)

Having hundreds or more likely, thousands of people farming keys on a regular basis creates an abundance of BL skins on the TP and makes the skins less rare and less attractive and, by extension, makes buying BL Keys less attractive.

It’s a luxury product, not a necessity and the chests don’t even contain account upgrades.

Ultimately, Anet had to nerf the key farm because it’s basically time based arbitrage that adds nothing to their bottom line:

In a key farm, you spend time (20 minutes? 30?) trying to get the key as fast as you can. These keys were meant as a reward to encourage character development and progress and to let people sample their product.

In lots of 5, BL keys will cost you about 18-20g each.

Can you consistently earn 18 gold in the amount of time it takes you to do a key run?

Few, if any players can do that consistently. (traders/flippers excluded)

So the key run was a way to acquire a premium gem shop item in less time than it took to earn the gold to buy it.

There is a secondary problem which may be the primary driver of this change: When you go and make the 18 gold in the game and use it to buy gems, what you’re doing is trading your in game time to another player for the gems they bought with real money. Your gold is the incentive for them to use their credit card or go buy a gem card.

When you do a key run, you don’t help drive gem sales, but you do benefit by acquiring gem shop products. This distorts the gold/gem exchange rate and it distorts the value of gold and the value of items like permanent contracts and BL skins.

I doubt we will ever know how many people were doing it and how often, but it’s evident by this change that it was becoming a problem and as someone on the other side of the market equation, I am pleased.

The Black Lion Coxes are complete garbage. There’s nothing more disheartening than getting a key after completing a map only to get a trio of kittykat kitty kat katty kitty boosters or equivalent tripe.

I just don’t want anything in them that’s purchasable in the game world. The booster transmuting powder and Guild thing…. And absolutely nothing that binds on pick up. No more pets and mail carriers we already have- or if we do let them go to the market or mystic forge.

Those two changes/rules are not a lot to ask for. (sigh)

ScribeTheMad.7614:

Yeah but with the point of driving people to buy instead of farm do you really think they’re going to increase the drop rate by any noticable amount?

And think about the math, I’ve had two keys drop in 3 years.
They could increase that by 100% to 6 keys in 3 years and it’s still just 2 keys a year.
At 1000% increase to 33 keys in 3 years we’re still talking an average of less than once a month, and that might be a decent drop rate.

That math is so so terrible.

100% increase would be 4 keys in 3 years.
1000% would be 40 keys in 3 years.

Lets face it 40 keys in 3 years is still only 1 ticket + 3 scraps.

OR

Pay 31€88 to get that 1 ticket skin

Fair …

CandyHearts.6025:

Dikeido.8436:

StrangerDanger.3496:

Solution: Keys for completing raids, create spvp reward where you grind for a key would operate just the same as normal gear boxes and progress bars only the last reward is a key. Do the same as in spvp only have it in wvw (hell add in all the gear/crafing boxes with the same progress mechanic as spvp)

Keys that you would be able to get per week: 3 (if you grind spvp,wvw, and do a raid which imo is a good way to keep all aspects of the game very active even if your not a huge pvper/pve’er)

more keys you can actually farm, more boxes you open, the more BLT’s and fragments you get. no need to adjust drop rates.

And no please don’t remove tomb of knowledge. those things are probably the most valuable thing I get in game right now given I’m new and saving them for a quick revenant progression.

NO I disagree with this idea over 9000×. Why should key be limited to only those that can RAID/PVP. What about the young, the elderly or the handicap and others who either can’t or choose not to PVP/Raid. Why can’t we have both the key farming be revert back plus the world drop increase.

Because that’s too much and Anet would feel like they are bleeding keys.

How so, do you know something that the rest of us don’t know ?
1. No one except Anet know the percentage of people who actually farm keys.
2. No one except Anet know the increase percentage of the new drop rate.
For 3 years going 4 Anet has turn a blind eye to key farming but now they nerf it to the ground and their justification is OH we increase the drop rate.

Dikeido.8436:

CandyHearts.6025:

Dikeido.8436:

StrangerDanger.3496:

Solution: Keys for completing raids, create spvp reward where you grind for a key would operate just the same as normal gear boxes and progress bars only the last reward is a key. Do the same as in spvp only have it in wvw (hell add in all the gear/crafing boxes with the same progress mechanic as spvp)

Keys that you would be able to get per week: 3 (if you grind spvp,wvw, and do a raid which imo is a good way to keep all aspects of the game very active even if your not a huge pvper/pve’er)

more keys you can actually farm, more boxes you open, the more BLT’s and fragments you get. no need to adjust drop rates.

And no please don’t remove tomb of knowledge. those things are probably the most valuable thing I get in game right now given I’m new and saving them for a quick revenant progression.

NO I disagree with this idea over 9000×. Why should key be limited to only those that can RAID/PVP. What about the young, the elderly or the handicap and others who either can’t or choose not to PVP/Raid. Why can’t we have both the key farming be revert back plus the world drop increase.

Because that’s too much and Anet would feel like they are bleeding keys.

How so, do you know something that the rest of us don’t know ?
1. No one except Anet know the percentage of people who actually farm keys.
2. No one except Anet know the increase percentage of the new drop rate.
For 3 years going 4 Anet has turn a blind eye to key farming but now they nerf it to the ground and their justification is OH we increase the drop rate.

The fact that you can farm a key in far less time than it takes to farm the gold to buy a key is all anyone needs to know that a nerf was inevitable.

Fact: you can still farm keys by farming gold.
Fact: you can still get keys without spending real money
Fact: It’s not going to be as fast.

It was a shortcut. You can still get keys, but if you want them in quantity, you have to get them the way people get everything else in the game.

Dreamslayer.7659:

Dikeido.8436:

CandyHearts.6025:

Dikeido.8436:

StrangerDanger.3496:

Solution: Keys for completing raids, create spvp reward where you grind for a key would operate just the same as normal gear boxes and progress bars only the last reward is a key. Do the same as in spvp only have it in wvw (hell add in all the gear/crafing boxes with the same progress mechanic as spvp)

Keys that you would be able to get per week: 3 (if you grind spvp,wvw, and do a raid which imo is a good way to keep all aspects of the game very active even if your not a huge pvper/pve’er)

more keys you can actually farm, more boxes you open, the more BLT’s and fragments you get. no need to adjust drop rates.

And no please don’t remove tomb of knowledge. those things are probably the most valuable thing I get in game right now given I’m new and saving them for a quick revenant progression.

NO I disagree with this idea over 9000×. Why should key be limited to only those that can RAID/PVP. What about the young, the elderly or the handicap and others who either can’t or choose not to PVP/Raid. Why can’t we have both the key farming be revert back plus the world drop increase.

Because that’s too much and Anet would feel like they are bleeding keys.

How so, do you know something that the rest of us don’t know ?
1. No one except Anet know the percentage of people who actually farm keys.
2. No one except Anet know the increase percentage of the new drop rate.
For 3 years going 4 Anet has turn a blind eye to key farming but now they nerf it to the ground and their justification is OH we increase the drop rate.

The fact that you can farm a key in far less time than it takes to farm the gold to buy a key is all anyone needs to know that a nerf was inevitable.

Fact: you can still farm keys by farming gold.
Fact: you can still get keys without spending real money
Fact: It’s not going to be as fast.

It was a shortcut. You can still get keys, but if you want them in quantity, you have to get them the way people get everything else in the game.

Yea lol! I don’t want anymore infraction points so I try to write as nice as possible:

On September 18th 2013 the gold to gem ratio was ~ 4G/100gems. Based on fact argumentation, the time needed to farm a key was WAY longer than to just farm the gold. So with your argument a buff was/is inevitable. It was a shortcut and anet had to decrease the gems/key or increase the keys gained per keyfarm.

I think someone can find the kitten in this argumentation?

Wanze.8410:

Astralporing.1957:

Wanze.8410:

A few farmers will get less keys per week and the whole player base gets more from random drops, i dont see how this will impact bl skin prices in a bad way.

You seriously believe that they have increased the drop rates that massively? Remember, currently they are almost non-existent. And this was changed to push people towards buying keys.

I see it as being likely closer to “farmers will get less keys per week, and some players will get 1 more per year”.

I already answered that question before in this topic, so I will ask you instead:

Do you think that the amount of keys that were farmed by a few players is significant compared to the overall amount of keys that drop for the whole player base now (including the once per week from farmers) and those keys bought from the gem store?

I don’t know, but i can guess.

I’m certain that it is significant compared to open world drops of keys. Not only significant, but significantly greater. I’m also pretty certain, that if the main source of black lion skins were chests opened by gemshop-bought keys, then the pricing on those chests would be much greater.
And only those two methods (farming and gemshop) produce enough keys on a person to generate tickets in significant numbers to affect skin supply (as you need a whole ticket or several to buy a skin from BL vendor. That’s what, 30 keys on average? Or more? Those are not numbers a single person can get from normal gameplay – doing all maps and whole personal on a single character will likely not give you even close to that amount).

I am also mildly certain, that if the amount of keys from that source wasn’t significant, then Anet would have continued to ignore it.

The only way they’ll make changes to key prices is if people stopped buying them.

I agree though…I’d actually buy some keys if they were 1) cheaper and 2) dropped stuff I can use. Instant repair canister and revive orbs are not worth me spending ANYTHING on keys…whether real cash or exchanged gold.

Bomber.3872:

Dreamslayer.7659:

Dikeido.8436:

CandyHearts.6025:

Dikeido.8436:

StrangerDanger.3496:

Solution: Keys for completing raids, create spvp reward where you grind for a key would operate just the same as normal gear boxes and progress bars only the last reward is a key. Do the same as in spvp only have it in wvw (hell add in all the gear/crafing boxes with the same progress mechanic as spvp)

Keys that you would be able to get per week: 3 (if you grind spvp,wvw, and do a raid which imo is a good way to keep all aspects of the game very active even if your not a huge pvper/pve’er)

more keys you can actually farm, more boxes you open, the more BLT’s and fragments you get. no need to adjust drop rates.

And no please don’t remove tomb of knowledge. those things are probably the most valuable thing I get in game right now given I’m new and saving them for a quick revenant progression.

NO I disagree with this idea over 9000×. Why should key be limited to only those that can RAID/PVP. What about the young, the elderly or the handicap and others who either can’t or choose not to PVP/Raid. Why can’t we have both the key farming be revert back plus the world drop increase.

Because that’s too much and Anet would feel like they are bleeding keys.

How so, do you know something that the rest of us don’t know ?
1. No one except Anet know the percentage of people who actually farm keys.
2. No one except Anet know the increase percentage of the new drop rate.
For 3 years going 4 Anet has turn a blind eye to key farming but now they nerf it to the ground and their justification is OH we increase the drop rate.

The fact that you can farm a key in far less time than it takes to farm the gold to buy a key is all anyone needs to know that a nerf was inevitable.

Fact: you can still farm keys by farming gold.
Fact: you can still get keys without spending real money
Fact: It’s not going to be as fast.

It was a shortcut. You can still get keys, but if you want them in quantity, you have to get them the way people get everything else in the game.

Yea lol! I don’t want anymore infraction points so I try to write as nice as possible:

On September 18th 2013 the gold to gem ratio was ~ 4G/100gems. Based on fact argumentation, the time needed to farm a key was WAY longer than to just farm the gold. So with your argument a buff was/is inevitable. It was a shortcut and anet had to decrease the gems/key or increase the keys gained per keyfarm.

I think someone can find the kitten in this argumentation?

It was 4.83g for 100 gems on 18th of Sep 2013, so you´re 20% off and it took way more time to farm that amount of gold those days, compared to now.

skigorn.7910:

The only way they’ll make changes to key prices is if people stopped buying them.

I agree though…I’d actually buy some keys if they were 1) cheaper and 2) dropped stuff I can use. Instant repair canister and revive orbs are not worth me spending ANYTHING on keys…whether real cash or exchanged gold.

Agreed!

I found the keys worth a purchase during the anniversary sale because I knew I’d get about my moneys worth.

I see 150 for 1 key and I figure. . . butterfly wings will be coming. Dragonfly wings. New minis. And there are plenty of skin sets I haven’t gotten yet. All show me exactly what I am getting for my money and it’s a positive feeling from gem purchase to skin purchase. The lotto box on the other hand. Even when I farmed I resulted no tables left to flip. Just horrid results.

Bomber.3872:

Yea lol! I don’t want anymore infraction points so I try to write as nice as possible:

On September 18th 2013 the gold to gem ratio was ~ 4G/100gems. Based on fact argumentation, the time needed to farm a key was WAY longer than to just farm the gold. So with your argument a buff was/is inevitable. It was a shortcut and anet had to decrease the gems/key or increase the keys gained per keyfarm.

I think someone can find the kitten in this argumentation?

As someone else mentioned, it was a bit more than that and gold was a lot harder to earn back then.

Either way, your argument presupposes that you have some kind of right to cheap, fast or easy keys.

You don’t.

They exist to be a source of revenue.

Whatever the price was or is, if you farm gold and exchange gold for gems, you are contributing the the process of funding Anet.

When you (ie: “anyone”) run 6 keys per day for weeks on end, you don’t and in fact, a good argument can be made that you’re hurting the ability of Anet to generate revenue by flooding the market with BL skins and reducing the incentive for other players to purchase keys.

There are three stake holders here:

1. Anet – they need revenue so they provide items in the gem shop.

2. Player customers – they consume gem shop items (keys) and pay for them with gems (money) or gold (which becomes gems which were bought with money)

3. Key farmers – who want BL Keys, but contribute nothing to other players or to the revenue stream that supports this game.

As a business, Anet can be expected to take action to support their revenue stream – this means providing desirable content to buy and making sure that this content has value for the people who buy it.

If key farmers could not sell BL skins on the TP, would they still do it? I don’t know the answer, but it seems unlikely. Revenue from BL Skins is likely the primary payoff and benefit from farming keys.

If players don’t see that these skin sales are lowering the value of the skins that key purchasers acquire, then they don’t understand basic economics.

Sure the nerf is acutely bad for key farmers, but what they were doing was systematically depressing BL Skin prices and sapping the motivation for other customers to buy the keys.

It will be interesting to watch the way skin prices trend over the next few months.

Dreamslayer.7659:

3. Key farmers – who want BL Keys, but contribute nothing to other players or to the revenue stream that supports this game.

Actually, they did contribute something. They lowered BL skin prices, which made them available to other players. Let’s face it, at 3k+ gold (the reasonable gold price if skins were coming from bought keys), not many people would be able to afford them on tp.

Dreamslayer.7659:

Sure the nerf is acutely bad for key farmers, but what they were doing was systematically depressing BL Skin prices and sapping the motivation for other customers to buy the keys.

First is good. Second… well, you seem to think that these skins should be worth more than legendaries. I don’t agree.

Astralporing.1957:

Let’s face it, at 3k+ gold (the reasonable gold price if skins were coming from bought keys), not many people would be able to afford them on tp.

Not sure how you got that figure but im pretty certain that it does not consider the value of everything else you get from chests, apart from scraps and tickets.

Astralporing.1957:

Actually, they did contribute something. They lowered BL skin prices, which made them available to other players. Let’s face it, at 3k+ gold (the reasonable gold price if skins were coming from bought keys), not many people would be able to afford them on tp.

Very roughly it’s 20 keys per ticket which means a 5 ticket skin would cost roughly 8,400 gems or 1,700-1,800 gold. Adjusting for tax and fees that’s roughly 2,100 gold to break even. The question then is how much profit are you hoping for vs how much the market is willing to pay.

Astralporing.1957:

Dreamslayer.7659:

3. Key farmers – who want BL Keys, but contribute nothing to other players or to the revenue stream that supports this game.

Actually, they did contribute something. They lowered BL skin prices, which made them available to other players. Let’s face it, at 3k+ gold (the reasonable gold price if skins were coming from bought keys), not many people would be able to afford them on tp.

Dreamslayer.7659:

Sure the nerf is acutely bad for key farmers, but what they were doing was systematically depressing BL Skin prices and sapping the motivation for other customers to buy the keys.

First is good. Second… well, you seem to think that these skins should be worth more than legendaries. I don’t agree.

You know what else lowered prices on the TP? Bots. Sure, it sounds great to pay lower prices, until you have to sell your items for lower prices. While you may want to see lower BL Skin prices, that outcome actually undermines the the business model because it makes BL Keys less appealing to paying customers.

You’re also failing to account for the market response to increased prices on BL Skins: more people decide that it’s worth it to buy keys.

If skins hit the TP at 100-125g instead of 65-85g, it’s likely that more players would be willing to purchase keys. The overall price of skins may go up, but it should eventually reach an equilibrium point.

Behellagh.1468:

Astralporing.1957:

Actually, they did contribute something. They lowered BL skin prices, which made them available to other players. Let’s face it, at 3k+ gold (the reasonable gold price if skins were coming from bought keys), not many people would be able to afford them on tp.

Very roughly it’s 20 keys per ticket which means a 5 ticket skin would cost roughly 8,400 gems or 1,700-1,800 gold. Adjusting for tax and fees that’s roughly 2,100 gold to break even. The question then is how much profit are you hoping for vs how much the market is willing to pay.

Don’t confuse value with cost. Whether you get 3 tickets from 5 keys or 1 ticket from 25 keys, the value of a BL skin will be determined by it’s desirability and rarity.

The other thing to keep in mind, as mentioned by another poster, is that the chests also drop items of reasonable utility and have a small chance to drop extremely valuable permanent contracts. It’s not a strict gems to keys to skins conversion. If you want certainty, buy the skin you want off the TP.

Dreamslayer.7659:

Behellagh.1468:

Astralporing.1957:

Actually, they did contribute something. They lowered BL skin prices, which made them available to other players. Let’s face it, at 3k+ gold (the reasonable gold price if skins were coming from bought keys), not many people would be able to afford them on tp.

Very roughly it’s 20 keys per ticket which means a 5 ticket skin would cost roughly 8,400 gems or 1,700-1,800 gold. Adjusting for tax and fees that’s roughly 2,100 gold to break even. The question then is how much profit are you hoping for vs how much the market is willing to pay.

Don’t confuse value with cost. Whether you get 3 tickets from 5 keys or 1 ticket from 25 keys, the value of a BL skin will be determined by it’s desirability and rarity.

The other thing to keep in mind, as mentioned by another poster, is that the chests also drop items of reasonable utility and have a small chance to drop extremely valuable permanent contracts. It’s not a strict gems to keys to skins conversion. If you want certainty, buy the skin you want off the TP.

And that’s been my point but constantly shouted down that keys are ONLY good for getting tickets and not the so called “junk” BLCs also drop. And I am talking about actual cost. Of course the price the market is willing to accept is based entirely on desirability and the rate of supply.

Behellagh.1468:

Dreamslayer.7659:

Behellagh.1468:

Astralporing.1957:

Actually, they did contribute something. They lowered BL skin prices, which made them available to other players. Let’s face it, at 3k+ gold (the reasonable gold price if skins were coming from bought keys), not many people would be able to afford them on tp.

Very roughly it’s 20 keys per ticket which means a 5 ticket skin would cost roughly 8,400 gems or 1,700-1,800 gold. Adjusting for tax and fees that’s roughly 2,100 gold to break even. The question then is how much profit are you hoping for vs how much the market is willing to pay.

Don’t confuse value with cost. Whether you get 3 tickets from 5 keys or 1 ticket from 25 keys, the value of a BL skin will be determined by it’s desirability and rarity.

The other thing to keep in mind, as mentioned by another poster, is that the chests also drop items of reasonable utility and have a small chance to drop extremely valuable permanent contracts. It’s not a strict gems to keys to skins conversion. If you want certainty, buy the skin you want off the TP.

And that’s been my point but constantly shouted down that keys are ONLY good for getting tickets and not the so called “junk” BLCs also drop. And I am talking about actual cost. Of course the price the market is willing to accept is based entirely on desirability and the rate of supply.

Maybe because it’s possible that different people value different things and the people who are saying it’s junk and not worth buying are saying that because for them, it’s junk and not worth buying. If I value something at zero, I don’t care if the store prices it $1 or $10. As far as I’m concerned, the value is $0.

Value and price are not the same thing. A store can price things at what price they want. That does not mean that each person will value it for that amount.

Behellagh.1468:

Dreamslayer.7659:

Behellagh.1468:

Astralporing.1957:

Actually, they did contribute something. They lowered BL skin prices, which made them available to other players. Let’s face it, at 3k+ gold (the reasonable gold price if skins were coming from bought keys), not many people would be able to afford them on tp.

Very roughly it’s 20 keys per ticket which means a 5 ticket skin would cost roughly 8,400 gems or 1,700-1,800 gold. Adjusting for tax and fees that’s roughly 2,100 gold to break even. The question then is how much profit are you hoping for vs how much the market is willing to pay.

Don’t confuse value with cost. Whether you get 3 tickets from 5 keys or 1 ticket from 25 keys, the value of a BL skin will be determined by it’s desirability and rarity.

The other thing to keep in mind, as mentioned by another poster, is that the chests also drop items of reasonable utility and have a small chance to drop extremely valuable permanent contracts. It’s not a strict gems to keys to skins conversion. If you want certainty, buy the skin you want off the TP.

And that’s been my point but constantly shouted down that keys are ONLY good for getting tickets and not the so called “junk” BLCs also drop. And I am talking about actual cost. Of course the price the market is willing to accept is based entirely on desirability and the rate of supply.

You have it the other way around. It’s not the keys are only good for getting tickets, it’s that keys are the only way to get tickets.

If someone was gambling for experience boosters and didn’t care about skins at all, then scraps would be “junk” to them, but nobody does that because boosters can be purchased directly from the gem store. The cost of acquiring boosters is fixed, thus when this theoretical person gets a scrap instead of a booster from a BL chest, they don’t complain because the scrap did not arbitrarily raise the cost of acquiring boosters.

That’s not true for ticket scraps. If you want a full ticket, almost every non-ticket scrap generated by the chest only serves to increase the cost of acquiring a ticket, there is no way to mitigate this (not any more) and no fixed-priced alternative (TP prices are dictated by supply and demand, but supply is dictated by potential profit to produce, people will not produce things that cost more to make than to sell). Thus when a person who wants tickets gets a booster, they complain because that booster just forced them to spend more to try to gamble for another scrap.

To use an analogy, say you enter a raffle and are hoping to win a blender that isn’t sold anywhere, but every raffle ticket you buy wins you a gallon of hemorrhoid cream that you can buy anywhere instead; would you consider the hemorrhoid cream junk given you (presumably) don’t need it, but aren’t allowed to sell or even give it away? Would your opinion of it change if you wind up having to spend five times more getting this blender than if you just bought an equivalent model because the raffle odds were skewed to produce this result?

Clearly hemorrhoid cream has value, so you wouldn’t have any room to complain as you gently caress your exclusive blender while lounging next to a swimming pool full of hemorrhoid cream, right?

(Oh, and the raffle’s grand prize is a trip to hawaii, the blender is just another consolation prize)

I love how everyone assumes people key farm to sell to make money. Personally, of my key farms, I think I’ve sold maybe 2 or 3 skins, and that was because I was more desperate for gold at the time than I had desire for said skin. The amount of people who farmed to sell could barely make the skins affordable to the average casual player, and that in itself is not fair.

Also, on the making money part. Go check spidy. Ecto prices have barely changed since the beginning of the game, they’ve varied from 20-50s each. Farming 4g for a ticket back then was easy. It took me 15 ectos. Now I it’s at least 75 ectos. That is not economic increase. It wasn’t harder to farm money back then, it was simply harder to save and build it up because everyone needed everything. Now they release garbage on the gemstore that’s generally hardly worth paying for, the recent sale shot gem value through the roof, and probably made them tons of money. But instead of holding logical sales and introducing items, let’s make it more difficult for the average Joe to go get a skin they may want. Because, lets face it, how often does anything beyond a booster, a tome, a transmute and some other bound garbage drop from a key, along with my stack of boosters, that make a key even worth it? Nothing. This will not increase sales, it’s horrible business and it will only deter people from spending money on a game that continually makes spending actual cash on it less and less desirable.

I used to spend $50 a month on the game getting various items from the gem store, account upgrades, stuff that made sense. Now they sell garbage skins, packages of deals that are in no way deals, stupid skins, and now want to increase the cost of a key that, for about 99% of the time, drops garbage?

This is not good business.

Also, as a side note. I’ve been doing map completion in preparation for HoT. Key drop rate from completion was claimed to be around 30%. I’ve completed the entire map on 4 characters now and received 4 keys. given there are, I believe, 25 maps that keys are possibly dropped on, and I’ve now completed 100 maps, that’s a 4% drop rate. And I’ve not seen a key drop yet, and still only heard of 2 people getting them as drops. I’m now completing on my 5th straight character, completed 7 maps, and all have been transmute stones. What am I going to transmute? This new fancy skin I just didn’t get?

I pay for items on the gemstore that hold merit. I buy character slots, bag slots, collection storage upgrades, stuff that actually add to my account. If I wanted to pay real money to gamble on a nearly zero-sum scenario, I’d go to the casino and play slot machines.

Beyond that, in the 4, almost 5 map completions I’ve done, and the fewer keys I’ve received than before, the zero dropped keys I’ve had, I’m actually seeing fewer black lion chest drops than before as well.

There was no increase. And I’m seeing fewer and fewer rare drops than ever before.

If anet wants to truly make money, give the customers what they want, what they ask for, what they BEG for, yet continually ignore. The account bump? I have hundreds of transmutes because of map completion giving me those instead of keys, so no value, 20 account bound dyes? I have every natural dye unlocked, what good is a dye I cannot sell? Experience boosters??? Come on, I already have a stack of those. So 800 gems for 5 black lion keys. That’s what you get. The jump start? The bag slot? it’s 50 gems cheaper and all you get is extra boosters, and with the increase in gem prices, it’s not a deal.

Get real folks, this isn’t a money grubbing top player game, it’s a horizontal progression game. If you want people to actually spend money, again, give us what we want and what we ask for. Stop selling us boosters and garbage and start selling us stuff we actually continually ask for!