Guild Wars 2

Recently, ANet released an account bound Black Lion weapon skin set to attempt to add more “value” to opening Black Lion Treasure Chests. While some people like the looks of the set, the idea seems to have gotten a largely negative response from those that care to comment.

One thing I’ve seen is several variations on “we don’t like spending money to get junk” comments about why people don’t like the chests. So, I want to hear what you would do to make the chests worth buying keys for. After all, it does no good to say “make it better” if they don’t know just what we see as “better”. (The current issue is a possible example of them trying and missing the mark.)

I’ll post my thoughts as well, in a post below. But please, share you ideas, even if they’re totally different from other suggestions.

Make each BLC have one guaranteed scrap.

if you increase the scrap drop rate it reduces the market value for the weapon skins.
However if ANet is willing to accept that then this actually might be a good thing for several reasons.

1) more people will buy keys if it’s a guaranteed scrap per chest
2) if more weapon skins are available at low prices then people will buy more, which will support their prices.
3) if the prices are low enough then more people will be willing to both start and finish up weapon set collections. At this point my guess only a few do compete collections due to the cost of them. This would make BLC collections a viable thing to do as well as expanding wardrobe options.

I would put the bank/merchant/trading post expresses solely in the log in BLTC box and remove them from the BLTC chests.Remove the tome and transmutation charge all together or put like 15-20 of them as what you get.

Then either make everything else more common to receive or come up with something actually useful to put in place. A pile of gold (10-20 gold maybe?), a decent amount of T6 or higher mats. Time gated ascended materials. That kind of thing. Because while I may not want the gold, mats, or ascended materials, I can at least sell them or put them towards things I do want.

I can’t sell the boosters or the expresses and there are plenty of ways to earn tomes than losing the drop from the BLTC chests won’t hurt.

Edit to add: I would be inclined to use leftover gems to purchase keys for Just a Flesh Wound’s idea. I wouldn’t likely buy gems explicitly to buy keys.

It would take the vast majority of items in the BLTC chest being valuable for me to actually buy gems explicitly to buy keys.

If I were to change the system, I’d probably have two different types of chest:

Set One would be the BL chests as we have them now, but only contains the more sought after stuff, like ticket scraps, makeover kits, exclusive dye sets and ofc, the rare chance of a Permanent Contract. But they won’t contain mail carriers, Bank Account Express, TP to a friend etc. The keys are the same as they are now, gems and a bit of luck. Perhaps only have two slots instead of three due to the rise of the value of the goods inside, or perhaps as JAFW says, have three slots but one is always a ticket scrap. Something like that.

Set Two would be a one-slot chest for the stuff you’ve taken out of the set one chest. The keys are more common a drop from mobs, and don’t get bought. So it’s easier to get a Box o’ Fun, a TP to a friend, Mini Pet egg etc. so it doesn’t feel as worthless a drop from the special keys you paid gems for.

That being said, I like buying keys from time to time, to treat myself every so often, so I really don’t mind the system we have now either, to be honest.

My suggestion:

Boosters, tomes, one time access stuff like the bank, repair canister, and merchant, are removed and kept in the shop. Salvage kit, charges, revive orb can all stay since they are still good to use.

Every chest should come with a scrap, with a chance at a full ticket or an additional scrap. If done, Anet can then adjust the scrap to full ticket rate if the prices start to crash. So instead of 10 for one ticket, make it 15, or 20. Its that at least with getting a scrap, the chest doesn’t feel so worthless.

That’s it for me really. Keep the minis, keep the backpack skins, or the random chance for a skin, chance for a key, the super rare stuff, that’s all fine.

I just reallllllly hate it when I open a chest, get “booster”, “Tome”, “canister” and want to scream.

The problem I see people having with the chest isn’t that we don’t know what we’re getting, but that we often get things we don’t care about. It’s been said that if it always contained something we find useful, then the uncertainty wouldn’t be as bad. So, with that in mind, here’s my ideas:

First, gut the drop tables of all “common” and “junk” items. Luck, EXP tomes, boosters, Box of Fun, crafting supplies, and so on. We’ll come back to them later, but pull them from the drop lists.

Second, each chest will have 4 drops. The first will ALWAYS be a ticket scrap. Just a scrap, no chance for a full ticket. The goal there is to make it a promise that 10 keys is the most it will ever take to get a full ticket.

Drops 2-4 will actually be weighted as follows. Slot 2 can drop a common or uncommon item. Slot 3 can drop common, uncommon, or rare. Slot 4 can drop uncommon, rare, or very rare.

Third: Introduce two new currencies from the chests. (Yes, I know we have too many already, sorry.) I’ll refer to them as “Skritt Coin” and “Treasure Tokens”. Both of these will actually appear in different amounts from common to very rare. For example, Skritt Coins might come as 25 for common, 50 for uncommon, 75 for rare, and 100 for very rare. Treasure Tokens will follow the same general idea.

Skritt Coin: This will actually be a meta-currency, that can be exchanged for any other currency in the game, save for gold and karma. While this would allow someone to just unlock a ton of chests and buy something without ever running the associated content, the idea is more that you can use this to make the final leap to something you’re saving up for. A few geodes short for that Mistward Insignia you need for your collection? 10 tokens short of being able to buy that last bit of dungeon armor? Here you go. Note that the currency exchange doesn’t have to be 1:1. Maybe it’s 2:1 for dungeon tokens, 4:1 for geodes, and 10:1 for raid currencies.

Treasure Tokens: These are spent to gain all the stuff we’ve taken out of the chests’ drop tables. This is how you get your tomes, crafting supplies, luck, boosters, and what have you. We then take it a step further and allow people to spend more tokens to get even more things, such as the potions for PvP or WvW track progress. Add a charmable pink poodle to your home instance, or a mini of a jumpy skritt carrying a mug of coffee? They can go here as well

Finally, all of this would only apply to keys purchased with gems. All in-game sources of keys that currently exist would need to be changed to something else, such as “Consortium Lock Picks”, that keep the old drops. (Maybe even replace some of the higher end drops, such as the permanent contracts with two week versions.) Without this change, key farming, even at only once per week, would become too valuable.

Palador.2170:

The problem I see people having with the chest isn’t that we don’t know what we’re getting, but that we often get things we don’t care about. It’s been said that if it always contained something we find useful, then the uncertainty wouldn’t be as bad. So, with that in mind, here’s my ideas:

First, gut the drop tables of all “common” and “junk” items. Luck, EXP tomes, boosters, Box of Fun, crafting supplies, and so on. We’ll come back to them later, but pull them from the drop lists.

Second, each chest will have 4 drops. The first will ALWAYS be a ticket scrap. Just a scrap, no chance for a full ticket. The goal there is to make it a promise that 10 keys is the most it will ever take to get a full ticket.

Drops 2-4 will actually be weighted as follows. Slot 2 can drop a common or uncommon item. Slot 3 can drop common, uncommon, or rare. Slot 4 can drop uncommon, rare, or very rare.

Third: Introduce two new currencies from the chests. (Yes, I know we have too many already, sorry.) I’ll refer to them as “Skritt Coin” and “Treasure Tokens”. Both of these will actually appear in different amounts from common to very rare. For example, Skritt Coins might come as 25 for common, 50 for uncommon, 75 for rare, and 100 for very rare. Treasure Tokens will follow the same general idea.

Skritt Coin: This will actually be a meta-currency, that can be exchanged for any other currency in the game, save for gold and karma. While this would allow someone to just unlock a ton of chests and buy something without ever running the associated content, the idea is more that you can use this to make the final leap to something you’re saving up for. A few geodes short for that Mistward Insignia you need for your collection? 10 tokens short of being able to buy that last bit of dungeon armor? Here you go. Note that the currency exchange doesn’t have to be 1:1. Maybe it’s 2:1 for dungeon tokens, 4:1 for geodes, and 10:1 for raid currencies.

Treasure Tokens: These are spent to gain all the stuff we’ve taken out of the chests’ drop tables. This is how you get your tomes, crafting supplies, luck, boosters, and what have you. We then take it a step further and allow people to spend more tokens to get even more things, such as the potions for PvP or WvW track progress. Add a charmable pink poodle to your home instance, or a mini of a jumpy skritt carrying a mug of coffee? They can go here as well

Finally, all of this would only apply to keys purchased with gems. All in-game sources of keys that currently exist would need to be changed to something else, such as “Consortium Lock Picks”, that keep the old drops. (Maybe even replace some of the higher end drops, such as the permanent contracts with two week versions.) Without this change, key farming, even at only once per week, would become too valuable.

Then I suggest having a secondary chest created if they go with your suggestion. And a new key generated for it that can only be purchased with gems.

That way those who get keys from drops in game (map completion or personal story) still have a shot at the rare items, just not as good of a shot as someone who bought a key for the new chest.

And maybe for a few months at least have a vendor that will exchange like 5 old BLTC chests for the new BLTC chests.

Seera.5916:

Then I suggest having a secondary chest created if they go with your suggestion. And a new key generated for it that can only be purchased with gems.

That way those who get keys from drops in game (map completion or personal story) still have a shot at the rare items, just not as good of a shot as someone who bought a key for the new chest.

And maybe for a few months at least have a vendor that will exchange like 5 old BLTC chests for the new BLTC chests.

Yeah, I considered something like that, but I wasn’t sure if it was a good idea or not. My post was rather long, so I just dropped it.

I was also thinking of doing it the other way around, and have the new chests be called something like “Black Lion Supply Crate”, and let it be what works like the current chests. That way, the “Black Lion Treasure Chest” is still going to be the one that holds the actual treasures.

Or maybe just do away with needing a chest for the in-game keys? Replace them with a “Supply Requisition Form” or something similar, that you turn in to get a loot crate that you can open.

They need to have an actual value. Not just the lucky big wins, but being worth the gems (in terms of both gold and real money values) they cost. Drop the price, improve the average rewards, remove trash rewards, make them even cheaper in bulk, some form of guaranteed reward of worth… there’s plenty of ways.

However, even if Anet did all of those things, I probably wouldn’t be a buyer. I do not like to gamble. I do not want to gamble at all. So by hiding exclusive, non-tradeable items inside of these chests, they’re just annoying me. As someone who’s put decent chunk of money into gems, sometimes even to convert to gold and buy other black lion weapons, it’s just losing them a sale. I’m not saying that my money is the deciding factor for success, but it seems like a pretty strange business strategy to not let a customer buy something they want for the usual price.

Make the chest a giant physically manifested chest in Lion’s Arch, and have it play animations of it ejecting loot whenever a player opens it… so people can see when you open the chest.

Make the things that duplicate permanent items tradeable or otherwise give them decent value for people who have the permanent items.

I’m going to add, increase the drop rate of the permanent access items. Having the permanent bank access is such a major QoL feature for me that I feel ANet should make these things more common and affordable. The current prices are way too high and supply is too low for such a useful item.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I’m going to add, increase the drop rate of the permanent access items. Having the permanent bank access is such a major QoL feature for me that I feel ANet should make these things more common and affordable. The current prices are way too high and supply is too low for such a useful item.

I counter with that if more people bought the chests, that increases the odds of supply on the market, lowering the price then.

First things first, make the chests worthwhile to buy

Serophous.9085:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I’m going to add, increase the drop rate of the permanent access items. Having the permanent bank access is such a major QoL feature for me that I feel ANet should make these things more common and affordable. The current prices are way too high and supply is too low for such a useful item.

I counter with that if more people bought the chests, that increases the odds of supply on the market, lowering the price then.

First things first, make the chests worthwhile to buy

Maybe.

I’ve done literally hundreds of key runs, possibly a thousand or more over the years. I’ve never gotten even one of those things. The drop rate is so low that the tables in wiki list them as zero% as not enough people get them to get an accurate percentage. Which suggests that even if more chests were being opened, they wouldn’t be dropping often enough to bring prices down to a reasonable number. Not with demand as high as it is pushing the prices up.

There really is a lot of chaff in the boxes, regardless of key price. And three shots at something decent when the loot tables are full of garbage just isn’t an appealing idea.

But the question is what would get me to buy? A lot of Palador’s suggestions above are pretty well thought out as a starting point.

The guaranteed ticket scrap is pretty much mandatory, if this RNG stuff is going to continue. No change in the number of tickets required (unless keys drop dramatically in price).

Black Lion currency
I’m not keen on it being used to extend into other game rewards, but I do think being able to cash in unwanted things for Black Lion credit would do well. Any account bound drop from the chest could be sold back to build up credit to buy things like boosters, keys, and ticket scraps (at a ratio that favors the house, of course). There could be Black Lion credit tokens from other events in game. So maybe an event sometimes gives 1 token, where a booster sells for 20, something like that. In that context, imagine having a (random?) Permanent Contract as one of the buyable rewards.

As Palador suggested, separate loot tables with increasingly better drops. (Or even a gem-buyer reward track? Increase the loot find for cash buyers?) And nothing on those loot tables should be attainable any other way in game. Maybe a rare score of tradeable Ascended materials, but those junk bags of T4/T5 mats needs to be ejected. We can get those for laurels.

I like all of the above ideas, each in their own way…but lets take a step back for a moment and consider the purposes/functions of the chests as they stand:

(i) A source of income for Anet. Small (relatively) but steady, up to the point sales of keys drop below a point they have clearly set as one of their business model targets.

(ii) A gold/gem sink. Removing (or more accurately ‘redeploying’) gold within the economy through conversion to gems and purchase of keys. I use the term ‘gold sink’ to also represent that such conversions reduce the amount of gold purchasers have available to buy other TP items (eventually affecting TP prices to a degree) and pay associated TP taxes. Also acts as a ‘gem sink’ when converted gems are spent on keys and removed from the economy.

(iii) Entertainment value. Like it or don’t some players enjoy the ‘thrill’ of the unknown and the excitement of seeing what exactly is in a particular box of ‘crackerjack’. Buyers remorse may well kick in here…and I agree gambling more than you can comfortably afford to lose is a VERY dark road to walk.

So..where exactly could things go from there?

(i) New chest types. Account bound to keep gold out of the economy due to an inability to trade contents. For Anet basically the same level of income as now through key sales, for players the chance of a lucky hit on a desirable item and the chance of new content as suggested above. Tighter control over the amount of gems in the pool…as less conversions to gold to buy chest contents from TP.

(ii) Same chests, reworked content. Same sales value for Anet and same amount of gold/gems removed through conversions either way. New or reworked content means increased or maintained trading levels and associated TP taxes and would lead to more reductions in the gem pool. This absolutely depends on the reworked content being desirable to the majority of the playerbase.

(iii) No chests. As suggested above, rework sign in rewards to cover the less desirable chest contents, but remember this is subjective as some players actually desire tomes/boosts/services items for alts/new characters – and make pretty regular use of them. New or existing more desirable chest items are added to the gemstore for outright purchase and the market establishes a new balance around what’s left of ‘old’ stocks sitting in player inventories/banks.

So what about tickets/scraps?

I like and fully support the suggestion that chests, ‘old’ or ‘new’ contain a guaranteed scrap and a chance at a full ticket. Discussed this with my own Guild and a couple hundred players agree they like this idea – drop in (on?) the Jade Sea I know compared to the overall playerbase, but I think it would be interesting for other Guilds to poll their members and/or for Anet to poll the playerbase generally since polls seem to be ‘flavor of the month’.

This would beyond doubt lead to increased key sales, as a whole lot of players would be likely to go for the full skin collections. But this would over time fall off as collections were completed, particular sets were not popular enough – and of course as the playerbase size inevitably shifts. Anet has the metrics, their call on that option can only be based on those.

I kind of like the idea of a giant central LA chest too…and the idea of the Consortium maybe setting up in competition to Black Lion right in its newly rebuilt backyard (which they constructed remember) has many interesting possibilities, as does the idea of the Xunli Chest making some kind of return as a source of ‘reward’ content – lorewise, who knows exactly what Mr Gnashblade has tucked away in those vaults or what the Consortium may have snuck into some of those prefabs?

Those are my thoughts/suggestions folks, popcorn and salt are on standby…go!

Breeze

As I have said before and as alot of people have said just have at least 1 confirmed scrap with the chance to get more. Maybe reduce the amount of scraps needed to make a ticket because some of the better weapons cost about 5 tickets which even with this confirms idea would mea buying 50 keys for a single weapons so maybe also have he option to just buy the weapons outright.

Buying all the weapons outright would naturally cost more but it is another way to earn money from us plus they would get some definite sales.

I know this sound crazy but how about they get rid of the ticket scrap BUT make the actual ticket have the same droprate as the scrap???

I mean seriously, think of this from a realistic viewpoint, getting a scrap is literally getting a piece of a ticket like you need 4 more ticket scraps to form the ticket like a cinema tickets? Who the heck would take in a ticket like that in real life???

I am one of the few that just like to open the BLC, just for the surprise.
However, lately, the surprise has been not so enjoyable.
In fact, not really surprised anymore by the drops, more in the range of disappointment.
I would not really want to see a change in the system, per say.
But the items that could be removed, in my opinion:
Boosters
Tomes – sitting on almost 1200 of them, I have 27 toons, don’t really foresee needing more.
Bank access
Merchant in the box
trading post express
box of fun
mystery tonics (or make them sellable)
mail carriers
account bound mini’s (or at least develop a system if you got one, you won’t get more)

Almost everything else, that I have gotten as drops, I use or sell.

Oregon.5673:

account bound mini’s .

This is one of the most annoying drops once you have it.

Renkencen.6127:

I know this sound crazy but how about they get rid of the ticket scrap BUT make the actual ticket have the same droprate as the scrap???

I mean seriously, think of this from a realistic viewpoint, getting a scrap is literally getting a piece of a ticket like you need 4 more ticket scraps to form the ticket like a cinema tickets? Who the heck would take in a ticket like that in real life???

Currently I’m finding the drop rate of scraps to be averaging to about one every 3 chests or so. Putting tickets at a drop rate of one ever 3 chests (on average) is probably too high. One scrap per would mean one ticket every 10 chests which sounds about right.

Remove them from the game. Offer black lion tickets as gem store purchases. Stop relying on predatory and willfully value obfuscating microtransactions to exploit whales and in stead offer more fair up front values and pricing information to encourage more users to make smaller individual purchases rather than subsidizing the majority at the expense of the minority.

Change ingame key rewards/drops to scraps.

Display real currency amounts alongside all gem prices in your region’s currency.

Basically, adopt an ethical microtransaction model. Like GW1.

I’d probably come up with another more valued chest type, charge either real money instead of gems or make them way more expensive to buy. Throw one in the monthly reward as well to tease. They’d have to ditch the junk from them though…

New skins for the UI , that creates an effect just like the Guardians blue flames on your Spell Bar , or decorate a Silver dragon around your bar .
Or creates effects (flower-tree branches) when you heal , or messages like DOMINATOR when you kill streak .

Or every 10 min , out of PvP and Raids > creepy-funny face from the Devs OR Gifs (small videos , made in front of the Blue Schreens)(dressed as clown or a delicious male-curvy Chang e with glasses) . Or their photos when they wheres kids delived by the wind and getting slapped on the schreen , and let the community to do the guesting-side-project game on the forums

Or they show up and yell ’’POWERRRRRR’’ when the enable Haste or 6 stacks of Might , while they head is tiltied up like they are having an ectasy feeling .
Or they yell ‘’GET HIM’’ and flex their muscles (or lack of them) just like the actor from Transformers .
Or they try to do ‘’100 punch at the air , when you enable haste and you attack .
Or they Economy guys , will show up and start removing 1 gold for each step you make while yelling ’’I AM A NAUGHTY TAX-COLLECTOR’’ , or give you for each step you take backwords while saying ‘’Un-Tax’’

Or Randomly small fast paced animals (squirrels) , that will show up at the edge of the schreen and must click them for rewards . Or they will nod you to follow leading you to an somewhere (while the transision from your schreen to ingame , by breaking the glass …rito plz )
. Or those cute animals does something cute like licking the schreen or smashing their face or wearing french maid costume while trying to pick up the broom

Edit: or those animals that will leap in the game , will start a event ,where other ppl can join and get 35-60% (based on RNG) of the rewards that you normaly get.
Half the events started are personal (you get only loot) , and the other half are for all the community

Just like Extra Credits that did video in the past , about an older game where the was a chest of something that could be bought from some ppl and every1 could loot the candies (dont hate much =dont remember much)

You can apparently get Black Lion skins from them circumventing the need for tickets already so that’s cool (I got a Chaos Mace the other day ^_^ ) so I’d definitely keep that in. I don’t think I’d add anything per se (not that I can think of immediately anyway other than maybe 10 or 20 of a single T6 mat like Powerful Blood) but rather take away the tomes, most boosters except for heroic (and buff it by a couple hours), teleport to a friends, and large crafting bags.

I know this sound crazy but how about they get rid of the ticket scrap BUT make the actual ticket have the same droprate as the scrap???

Not a good idea because skin prices would crash, and they’re already low enough as it is.

Each chest should contain
-one random miniature from the current set.
-one random dye
-one ticket scrap
-one store item (repair can, merchant, tp merch, teleport to friend)

Period

Woof.8246:

New skins for the UI , that creates an effect just like the Guardians blue flames on your Spell Bar , or decorate a Silver dragon around your bar .
Or creates effects (flower-tree branches) when you heal , or messages like DOMINATOR when you kill streak .
Or creepy-funny face from the Devs (dressed as clown or a delicious male-curvy Chang e with glasses) . Or their photos when they wheres kids , and let the community to do the guesting-side-project game on the forums

Or Randomly small fast paced animals (squirrels) , that will show up at the edge of the schreen and must click them for rewards . Or they will nod you to follow leading you to an somewhere (while the transision from your schreen to ingame , by breaking the glass …rito plz )

I hope to NEVER see ANY of these included in GW2.

Or create a new type of key that can only be found in the gem store, that when interacted with the existing BLC, grants a much (MUCH) higher rate of getting something nice.

I would fix them by deleting them. For the life of me I can’t understand why anyone would want to gamble on virtual garbage with real money, and I think it’s underhanded and predatory sales practice. Every time Anet pushes things into the chests I roll my eyes and once more resolve never to spend spend real money on their fleece shop until they shape up and start showing some respect for their customers.

The minimum they need to do is make scraps a guarunteed drop. Then at least keys become a de-facto skin buying method. At that point you may as well just add the skins to the store and skip the key/opening step, but that’s what it would take for me to even consider it.

Lol. IMHO, the BLC is the in-game equivalent of winning the lottery. You put some money in, and pray to the Six Gods you get something kittening fancy.

- Remove tomes

- Remove luck

- Remove material bags

- Remove account bound minis, instead add a ticket to allow people to trade for the mini they desire, account bound or otherwise

- Carriers; do the same as minis

- Dye packs – make sure they don’t drop junk dyes, doesn’t have to be rare ones 100% but at least give better dyes on average instead of regularly getting sub 1g worth of dyes

- Make scraps RNG from 1-4 scraps instead of just always 1.

It’ll never happen, but what I’d like to see is keys cease to exist, and BL chests removed from the drop lists and instead sold via the Cash Shop. That way they will only afflict those who choose to buy them and no-one will ever have to contemd with having a loot drop from a mob held hostage until you pay up, which is aggravating to the point of incoherent rage on it’s own without adding the insult to injury of finally opening the box and finding it’s full of worthless crap.

Remove tomes if knowledge from the chests. I opened one the other day with a key I got from a pvp reward track, and got TWO of them. Three slots in the chest and 2 tomes. I, like most players have an excess of these, and don’t want them in the BL chests.

How would I redesign Black Lion Chests?

Simple, this I’d do with them:

Items that I would completely remove from the Loot Table

- Transmutation Charges
- Tomes of Knowledge
- Trade Post Express
- Bank Access Express
- Merchant Express
- Revive Orb
- Medium Crafting Bag
- Large Crafting Bag
- Heavy Crafting Bag
- Black Lion Salvage Kit
- All Backpack Sets
- All Miniatures from Season 1/2
- All PvP Stronghold Hero Skins
- All Permanent Finishers
- All Endless Mystery Tonics
- All Instance Nodes
- All Boosters

OS basically and remove all the garbage from the BLC’s that shouldnt be coming from thse RNG items – stuff, that should be more or less somethign earnable, that should be able to be received as reward, or should get turned after some time into ingame rewards, after it has been for a while in the BLCs first.

Anet needs to stop with this eternal recycling of content that should turn into ingame rewards after some time, because they sit anyways always at the longer lever and can add at anytime whenever needed new content to the BLC to replace older things that have been slowly turned into ingame rewards.

Then on the other side, there are items in the BLc, that you absolutely don’t want to see ever gettign from, because they hare basically useless junk, waste items that have been put into the BLC only with the reason to massively artificially reduce your chance to absurd low chances that you might get something really good and valuable or somethign that is really useful for the player.

How would I change the removed items, what would I do with them:

*Transmutation Charges: *
You obtain already more than enough of them through PvP and WvW, so much of them, that you never ever need to buy any of them from the Gemstore.
Anet should completely remove this crap out of the game, its a fail concept ,that brings them anyways no money at all, if they flood so massively the game with them due to WvW/PvP Reward Tracks giving them… and people also dont change their complete looks constantly all the time. people once they fidn their most beloved looks most likely will never change at all anything and dont use any Transmutation Charges at all – as said, these consumeables are a total fail concept and hsould get completely removed out of the whole game.
Let us simply change our looks for free whenever we want however we want.
There exist much better ways to generate money from gemstore items, than this, especially when you flood the game at the same time with tons of the consumeables whats just pointless from a gemstore viewpoint seen, as it simply defeats the purpose of the Gemstore, if you then let people get the items for free basically everywhere in the game.

Express Items
merge them three all together into a new item called “Express Service Summon” that once clicked lets you decide what kind of Express Service of Choice you want to call, either Merchant, Bank or Trade Post and sell this Item in the Gemstore as a permanent Service Item with infinite uses for say 1500 Gems and remove the the permanent contract items for the same mechanics. people which have any of these contracts will get them destroyed and receive as return 500 Gems per contract that they own.
So if someone hsould own all 3 contracts, then that player will basically be able tu turn them into the ESS, this will reduce item spam down from 3 items down to just 1 item that you need to have in your inventory best put then into one of your eventually owned shared inventory slots

Tomes of Knowledge
Simply remove these items out of the game and turn them into accountbound “Instant Level UP charges” that you receive for every say 10 Levels that you make with a Character at max Level, then you obtain a Level Up Charge for your accoutn.
the Reward Systems that have rewarded earlier towmes would get changed out to Level Up Charges.
If you obtain a Level Up Charge for your account, you would be able to consume them on any of your accounts characters, that still isn’t Level 80 just by clicking a button in the Hero Screen that would let you consume as many Level Up Charges as your account owns as you want by clicking on arrows that let you increase or decrease the amount of charges that you want to consume and a butto which lets you consume the charges on click on it lastly.
Why this change? Simple, to reduce the needless iventory spam of this game as much as possible. Not every god darn crap needs to be an inventory item!!
Anet needs to realize this finally and reduce items that could be changed into mechanics into such functions, instead of clutting our invetories full with every single crap that must not be always an inventory item at all to make it work, when you could work also with buttons to click on and automatics more that don’t require something to be in the inventory at all. Yes, that would mean working on the UI..but that are QoL improvements that are important and hsould have been done already a long time ago instead of using always the lazy way up flooding is with more and more inventory items, unless this is absolutely intended to force us this way mildly slowly to buy more inventory and chest space from the gemstore naturally…. until someone will reach sooner or later the point, where you need to buy new chara slots or even new accounts to get more space ….we all know that you are passively after this anet, why else would you spam us so full with so much junk loot and other crap… that no one wants – EVER

Revive Orb
Shouldn’t exist at all. if you are dead, then you are dead. End of Story

Diverse Crafting Bags
These thigns should be more of common LOOT in the general game, than such garbage like thorns and gazillion of other useless grey items.
Remove the tons of bag loot items this game has and replace them more with these loot bags that reward you with all materials specificly of various tiers.
Place them for example more into the Map Reward Tablees. Replace the Map Exploration Material rewards with lots of these bags, that give you materials of all sorts, not just only materials of on single thing, this way would become also explorign the maps a bit more rewarding on the long run, especialyl the high end maps when you get from explorign them lots of tier6 bags to reduce the grind for crafting lagendaries that require from all materials 250 units, whats ridiculous already in itself, when a number like 100 would have been already more than enough

Black Lion Salvage Pack
Put in two different forms of this item back, remove the old version with 25 units, insert a new “Improved Black Lion Salvage Pack” that has 250 units and add a version of it that is infinite that is basically called the “Karma-fed Black Lion Salvag -O-Matic”

Back Packs
Reimplement them as one item, that lets you choose a Back Pack Skin of Choice.
Offering them all as single items is just again such a lousy try of arteficially reducing massively the chances of obtainign something good from the BLC by simply increasign the amount of items you can get and thus decreasing basically for everythign else the chance that you can get it. Minimalism is the way of how the BLC needs to be design, not not Maximalism just to artificiaulyl decrease every items drop chances into abyssal lows.

Season 1/2 Miniatures
Should get all removed and be sold after some time for Laurels, Gold and Globs of Ectoplasm, stuff like Miniature Mai Trin, Miniature Kasmeer/Marjory and Caithe, they all have nothing in my opinion to search anymore in the BLC, and should get replaced with new Miniatures or something else for a change, like permanent gathering tools/wign skins or glidr skins for an example out, while that old stuff becomes new ingame rewards either or new sinks for laurels/ectos and gold slowly over time, like they made already alot of the season 1 items receiveable through laurels later.
They need to continue with this…

Stronghold Skins
These items should not be BLC items, these all should be ingame rewards for specificly playing STRONGHOLD, so that players also have some kind of incentive at all to play Stronghold..
They added this great different PvP mode, and instantly began to lack with support with it by giving it no real own unique rewards..its so typical of anet… by giving stuff that could have been its own unique rewards that make sense as loot into the game by the BLC – just makes no sense…. These skins should be PvP reward tracks that progress only from playing Stronghold… stronghold is also something, that needs to get separated a bit more from the normal PvP, its somethign that could grow into somethign much bigger and better, if Anet would continue to improve and expand it instead of ignoring it since its introduction.

Permanent Finishers
Should be turned all into unique one time PvP/WvW reward tracks after some time they have been in the BLC/gemstore, splitting this way up the usage of the finishers also per mode, means if you have unlocked it via PvP, you cant use the finisher in WvW, unless you have unlocked it there via reward track too.
People which own these already before the tracks have been added, will have them done then already directly on both sides and receive as a little compesantion for the missed general track rewards some PvP/WvW track potions with that you can boost your tracks forward.

Endless mystery tonics
These should become just craftable, receiveable through Mystic Forge after some time

Instance Nodes
These should become after some time ingame rewards from PvE like for receiving certain amounts of achievement Points, or for doing some specific achievements that have to do with gathering or your personal instance, should this ever get improved into something like player Housing with its own achievement category maybe.

Boosters
Should get turned into “Blessings” that you can gain for spending Karma at Shrines.
This stuff is a fail concept for the gemstore as like transmutation stones.. seriously, whos so dumb to buy these things from the Gemstore, when you get them every so often free from other sources of the game???

Theres tons of better thigns with that anet can make mony, than from such tiny useless crap like transmutations, boosters, or consumeable express items and revive orbs, junk, that nobody ever wants to receive from BLC, because they are jut wasted garbage, thats only there to artificially reduce your chances to obtain somethign really good and useful from the BLc, that is helpful or valuable so you can make some good gold if you can sell it to an other player, like for example the permanent hairdress contract or the Dye Kits that can give you some valuable dyes to sell.
————

Then I woudl make following changes as well:

Reduce the chance, that BLC chests can drop in half
Remove the chance that keys can drop and replace the drop with “Broken Parts of a Key”, that work similar to the Black Lion Scrap system, have a much higher drop chance, but its required to collect first 4 broken key parts to fix them to get 1 Black Lion Key that can be used to open a chest.

Obtaining keyes needs to become more common, because when its more common to get keys, while the drops of the chests get rarer, the value of the chests will rise, especialyl also when first all that garbage from them has been removed, so thast you cactualyl can get more oftenly something good from them.
Casuals won’t be punished by this change, because everbody will be able to work more steadily towards getting keys then.
the Gemsdtore Price for keys should then get reduced from 125 down to 100 Gems, basically 25 gems per Broken Key Piece.
Complete Keys are still not sellable via TP, but Brokenm Key Pieces should be sellable via TP, same as much as like Black Lion Ticket Scraps should become sellable and receive higher chances to get dropped from the chests as loot, while complete tickets get removed from the loot table.
Compelte Tickets should be used instead as ingame rewards for gettign certainn achievements or, getting certain amounts of AP, should be part of say monthly unique PvP/WvW reward tracks that you can do only once a month, so that these kind of playrs have also a way to earn complete tickets.

simple sdaid, with these changes should become the black lion weapons a bit more accessible. There are already too many of these skins, which are totally out of stock or have such insane prices, because theres only like 1-2 left and stock and people naturally exploit this to become instant rich if they find someone thats also rich enough to buy thes skins from tp, which these skins are also something, that peoel should be able to earn ingame somehow and not something, that you can get only as supr rich player or through super RNG luck.

Simply said, I’d turn the BLC into a function, that lets benefit alot mor players from its improvements, than letting it be something, from that only ultra rich players can profitate from only via TP and change it into a feature, that reminds much lesser of an asian grinder gambling game aka Las Vegas 2.0 and change it mor into a feature, that simply offers for given times unique rewards via RNG, where chances are good to obtain something good also and not 99,9% of all times mostly junk only, so that the player is incentivized to maybe buy more keys to get quickr more chances of obtaining somethign actually good, what in return will ensure again, that the now much rarer made BLC’s will become also alot more valuable, so more demand for them is there, while the supply gets significantly reduced by reduced drop chances and enabling players to work more steadily on keys so that they can use up the chests and thus reduce the supply.

In return for makign access easier for the BLC due to easier making of keys, will the number of items you receive from BLC be reduced then also down from 3 items to just 2 items only. That will ensure also that the items you get from the BLC wil lstay more valuable by reducing the amont of items you get from opening the BLCs down to 2 items. Therefore again will get the drop chances adjusted slightly.

thats my long list of many little changes based on the various items and mechanics about the BLC that I would do.

PS: also a little change I’d do is, that all kinds of account bound items that get unlocked for the acokitten once you have them, like Miniatures, will get removed from the loot table for you, once you have them, so that they won’t further reduce artificially the drop chances for you to obtain somethign that you could need better, than to receive again a miniature, that you already own and that you can’t sell.
Same goes for the dyes, if you should own already all dyes of a certain category, that item should no longer be for you under your BLC loot table as possibility to drop.

Whoa, Orpheal.. that’s quite a good list of changes and I am not even mad about any of them.

They actually make a lot more sense, then other things I have heard, since they greatly incorporate the game and the store and try to balance the feeling of reward much more than the current system is doing.

I would add for the BLC Weapons one thing, though: Don’t introduce weapons that enemies wield
If I see an enemy wield the ley line weapons for example and they are special enemies then I prefer them to drop these items, instead of getting them via Evon Gnashblade and his shady dealing with the enemy.
It just helps the imersion a lot more.

Remove the gambling aspect in favor of selling desirable products directly.

Ashen.2907:

Remove the gambling aspect in favor of selling desirable products directly.

I don’t mind the gambling.

If people want to gamble, let them.

I have a problem with the fact that it is the only way to get those items.

If, for example, the whole gem-store was in the BLC and people would be able to get some costly items cheaper thanks to their investment , it would be a lot fairer, since people could decide how they would approach their desired item.

Go for the dice, or go straight to your wallet.

Now I am not proposing them to do that. It was just an idea. Still, I would always use my money for something I am guaranteed to get (like a wapon skin box in the gem-store, for a reasonable price… which isn’t 10€, thank you very much), instead of a chance to get something.

Jaken.6801:

Ashen.2907:

Remove the gambling aspect in favor of selling desirable products directly.

I don’t mind the gambling.

If people want to gamble, let them.

I have a problem with the fact that it is the only way to get those items.

If, for example, the whole gem-store was in the BLC and people would be able to get some costly items cheaper thanks to their investment , it would be a lot fairer, since people could decide how they would approach their desired item.

Go for the dice, or go straight to your wallet.

Now I am not proposing them to do that. It was just an idea. Still, I would always use my money for something I am guaranteed to get (like a wapon skin box in the gem-store, for a reasonable price… which isn’t 10€, thank you very much), instead of a chance to get something.

Fair enough.

Add a non gambling option that does not feed the gambling inclinations of others then.

I am not fond of encouraging gambling in games aimed at, in part, children. If an adult decides to participate, develop a habit, or even an addiction to gambling, more power to them. Adults should be allowed to make such decisions for themself. I just dont care for attempting to rope children into the behavior any more than I care for past efforts to advertise smoking to minors.