Guild Wars 2

Has there been a severe ninja nerf to the drop rate of these or perhaps a posted change that I missed?

I’m getting up around 50 locked chests now and haven’t seen a Key in weeks. In my earlier levels I recall running across a key every few days or so at least and usually that 1 key turned into 5 or so as many chests also held a key (btw, could that possibly be more counter intuitive? Who locks the key to their locked container IN THE CONTAINER?!?)

Anyway, you get the point. Literal weeks have hence rolled by since I last opened one of these chests. Is there one type of mob or event with better chances for one to drop that I’ve over looked perhaps?

Anyone else experiencing the same or am I just having an extraordinary run of bad luck? JEEBUS! What’s up here Anet?

I have 40-50 chests in storage (I toss one out of every three just to free up inventory space sometimes) and I have only ever gotten 4 keys from lvl 1-80.

Support Anet and buy some keys with real money or use in game currency to exchange for gems and buy keys that way. You can get a lot of keys for $10.

Keys are meant to be purchased off the Gem store… at nearly $2 each. It is a COMPLETE waste of money. You can get rare items now, but it’s like the mystic forge… you might drop hundreds of real $$ on keys and get zip or you could get a permanent BLTC merchant on your first key. Way too random and way to expensive… Key’s should be maybe 25 cents each, but it appears Anet wants to make a lot of nothing instead of a smaller amount of something.

I got about a dozen of keys until I think 1 week or so ago. Then never one.
I think they nerfed the drop rate to almost impossible, or perhaps removed the chance altogethe?

It’s very intentional that you get about 20 chests* per 1 key* in the course of your normal gameplay. Very, very, very intentional.

If you’d like to justify buying some keys on the gem store, however, consider subscription games. 15 bucks a month, right?

If you drop 15 bucks a month on gems, that’s quite a lot of keys. You ultimately don’t HAVE to, but the entire point of making the chests a common drop is to encourage you to buy keys off the gem store.

Finally, you can exchange gold for gems and buy keys with those, but if we’re talking say 1 gold* for, oh, three keys* or so, it’s probably not worth it.

* - Numbers are largely arbitrary and meant to create a general example, rather than for accuracy.

To be honest, it feels like drop rates for everything have been lowered across the board. Either that or my luck went from “average” to absolutely terrible. I get fewer badges in PvP for doing the same things, 0 keys, very few yellows on random mobs around Orr, nothing higher than green from event chests (well, this has always been that way), put 4 items into mystic forge, get 1 of them back, or their equivalent…

I had significantly more success doing all of these things (except the chest) up until recently. I don’t know if drop rates are something they micromanage when stuff starts flooding the market or what, but at any rate, it’s getting old. I don’t need freebies, but one or two lucky breaks would be nice now and then.

As it is, the only profitable thing for me to do is flip items on the TP. At least for time invested, I feel like i’m getting some benefit.

I like the game but games generally have some sort of reward mechanism in place.

To be honest i get the feeling, that they ninja nerfed everything with the latest patch again. Before the patch i had way more rare drops than after the Patch.

I got a key from a lvl 2 moa in the norn starting area yesterday on my main, i think the keys only drop in starting areas, since i have only seen them there while leveling and getting the daily. 10,000 loots in Orr 0 keys.. 1 shot a moa bird get a key.. lol

I’ve never had a key drop for me. The only time I’ve gotten them was for map completion or story reward. One time I opened a chest with a key that opened a chest with another key that opened with a third key. That’s never happened again. I just stack them up in my bank. I’m not that worried about opening them. What you get inside isn’t that exciting. The tonics are fun but not worth paying actual money for. If I ever get rich with game currency I might spend it for gems for keys to open them. But other than that, they can just stack up in my bank.

60 odd chests in my bank and already sold a bunch, only ever got a key as a reward have never had one drop, also would never buy any from the store as the chests are very likely to give me something useless.

Has there ever been another MMO that has been a greater in-game money sink than GW2?

I personally would rather buy the salvage kits or level 80 transmutation stones directly, rather than gamble with the chests. Gambling with the RNG is too much like dice, and dice and I don’t get along (DnD game, rolled 9 1’s on a d20 in a row, GM banned me from rolling my own dice for the rest of the campaign).

In close to 400 hours of playtime, I have pulled two keys as drops. One from a skelk in a jumping puzzle, and one from a bandit in Brisban Wildlands. The rest came from 100% completion of maps (about 60% stones/40% keys), the 4-5 you get in your storyline, and a few that popped out as the shop item in an opened chest.

I’ve gotten 1 key as a drop and I’ve played since headstart.

I’ve never seen a key drop and I’m nearing 500 hours. I didn’t even knew mobs drops them. All I knew was they are from lowbie map completions.

I thought you guys had a pretty good handle on balancing it between the financial haves and have nots, for the first couple weeks at least. If this is a case of ninja nerfing for the sake of just plain ‘ol profit then that’s one thing. It’s the model you guys chose over monthly subs and I understand that you’ll have to tweak things to make sure you pay the bills and come out ahead from quarter to quarter.

Be careful though if it starts to become increasingly more apparent that the “haves” are reaping a very noticeable benefit over the “have nots” by way of access to items, and so content, power in PvP, etc. I’ve just recently seen in a thread posted elsewhere in these forums that illegitimate gold, at the current rate, is about 80% cheaper than legit gold purchased by way of gems through the Trading Post. If the relative “have nots” feel they must start forking out cash to keep pace with the “haves”, a certain portion (and I’d guess a noticeable one being that we can assume they already consider your prices for gems more than they can / want to pay) aren’t gonna feel too bad about purchasing the illegitimate gold at a rate of 5 / 1 over the legit option to feel like they are keeping on the competitive edge. And that would just pave the way for more problems, stacked higher, and magnified to top it off.

Like someone else already said too, these chests – as just one example, are a complete roll of the dice much like the forge. Difference between the chests and the forge though? The forge just ate up some of my leisure time in coming up with those 4 items. If I have to start buying gems for these keys though? That’s REAL money out of my pocket. Just the same though, I could spend $100 for nadda and the guy next to me could spend $1 for a legendary precursor (Exaggerated to make the point).

Like I said, it’s understood the mechanic by which your model turns a profit. If the next guy could raise the amount of keys on hand by using his credit card that’s one thing and it gives us a choice at least. If the next guy can get keys on a whim though while I can’t get even ONE, that’s an entirely different circumstance. That becomes a case of straight up selling content, point blank. No money, no gems, NO KEY. Even if the “have nots” availability becomes 1/100 it still leaves us with the same general game as 0/100. 0/100 is by definition a DIFFERENT game from the game being played by the people engaging in micro transactions (and again I point out, whether legit micro transactions or illegit., it’s a different game).

Well, that’s all assuming ninja nerfs and, admittedly, assumptions I can’t prove so take it for what it’s worth. It’s just my 2 copper, consider it or don’t Devs. Doesn’t put a key in my pocket tonight either way though.

P.S The in-game economy here being SEVERELY out of whack contributes a lot here to your profits (or lack there of as well). A LOT of items are still sold for less than you’d make at a vendor (after considering the “tax”). Having a craft is pretty much STRICTLY an expense with NO return. Anyone can harvest ANY material, sell it on the TP for far more than what it’s a component of, buy the end product and STILL end up profiting in coin. BOTS are wrecking this games economy like I’ve never before seen. I am literally starting to see bands of half a dozen or more running the same circle for literal days despite people reporting the kitten out of em. This is a whole ‘nother topic that’s already got dozens of threads going though. By far seems to be the weakest link in you guy’s monetary chain here that’s eating up your profits. Tacking your losses on to the honest players seems like a poor answer if that’s what’s going on here.

I’ve gotten a ton of keys just as drops, rewards, or from chests that I open (I once had a streak of 1 key turning into 10 keys). Of course not at the same rate that I get the chests (must have about 45 of them in the bank at this point). But I have no intention of paying RL money for more keys so in the bank they will stay.

To be honest i get the feeling, that they ninja nerfed everything with the latest patch again. Before the patch i had way more rare drops than after the Patch.

I was commenting to a friend the other day that it seems like I get far less dye than I used to. It used to be I’d easily get anywhere from 1 to 4 dye drops during a few hours of play. Now I’m getting 1 maybe every other session, and sometimes not even then.

I personally would rather buy the salvage kits or level 80 transmutation stones directly, rather than gamble with the chests. Gambling with the RNG is too much like dice, and dice and I don’t get along (DnD game, rolled 9 1’s on a d20 in a row, GM banned me from rolling my own dice for the rest of the campaign).

Yeah, I’d be more interested in buying keys to open chests, but there is just too much stuff that comes out of them that I really don’t care about. If there’s anything I’d really like to get from a chest, I’m much better off just spending the gems to get it rather than getting a key and rolling a roulette wheel and ending up with junk.

I played 100+ hours in the betas, and more since launch day, and only have had 2 key drops total. Story rewards not counting.

Well I’ve been extremely lucky with black lion chest drops… however the keys seem not to wanna drop.

I’ve got a staggering 400+ black lion chests but my good luck no keys to use on them.
Quite unwilling to buy key’s for al them chests as well seeing as it would cost me a small fortune in real life money.

I’ll probably just put them on BLTC to get rid of the junk…

Although the keys are rare, I like the Black Lion chests. They’ve given me a chance to get hold of items that I would otherwise not have (or reluctantly) bought from the Gem store. The most useful is definately the Black Lion Salvage Kit; I don’t know how I’d get by without it. I’ve managed to accumulate around 75 (2-3 kits) uses without paying a coin or gem, which I think will tie me over for a while.

when I got keys for free I got them for map completion. nothing else. Feel lucky we have a way to get them at all for free. other games milk such keys exclusively for cash alone with no other way to attain them, and yet drop boxes SO much they are almost a nuisance drop. This game has a comfortable balance I think thus far. if your wanting more keys you may have to grind a few new characters in the lowbe areas lev 20 – 40 maps to get a few keys for free. I did notice that the drop ratio of MORE keys inside the chests does seem to have dropped a bit. I was previously able to get a key and open around 3 maybe 4 chests, because inside was another key for a few more openings… Thats seems to happen less now… 1 key now seems to only be worth 1 chest. if you get an extra key back your on a lucky streak IMHO.

I’ll admit I keep those BL Chests and just pool them up if I happen to receive a key, OR if keys go on sale or something one day. but I highly doubt people will open them all ever… I doubt they were REALLY meant to be such an item that every one was to be opened one day. I’m sure they would LOVE it if you did, but in reality that would cost anyone a small fortune.

Statistical anomalies – such as the poster above rolling nine 1s in a row, or the Daily Number coming up 1-2-3 or somesuch – happen occasionally, but don’t mean anything. They don’t manipulate the rate of key drops in an effort to get you to spend cash, and for every person who has never gotten a key from a drop there’s someone like me. I don’t even have 100% map completion and I’ve gotten at least four keys from drops that I remember, and several more from opening chests. I’ve probably opened a dozen without ever buying a single gem.

I’ve also gotten more dyes in the last week than ever before. I’ve had several rare dyes show up, a couple worth 20-30-odd silver though nothing that sells for gold yet. If someone has an unlucky streak, someone else gets lucky.

But people will see what they expect to see. If you think RNG is cheating you, then you will look for evidence that it is, and find it. Not because it is there, but because that is how you interpret the data.

I have over 120 chests now in the bank from drops and had one key actually drop from a mob in around 500 hours played, I had a few keys from personal story+ map completion but the drop rate from mobs is very low.

I have 117 Black Lion Chests sitting in the bank. That’s been acquired over the course of over 450 hours played, with all keys found being used to unlock chests along the way.

The extreme rarity of keys from game play actually have de-incentivized me from buying any keys in the cash shop. I haven’t opened enough chests to establish any sort of habit for using the contents. The contents are so rare that they have become relics taking up bank space, waiting for some day when I “really need them”, rather than something I want to use, then, when they run out, I want to get more of.

The stack of 117 chests just makes it plainly obvious the kind of game they are playing with the chests. They don’t want to let me open half the chests I find for free, they want me to open maybe 5% for free. So, I look at those chests, calculate the cost of opening them, vs. the value of the content inside, which due to rarity I actually don’t use at all and just have to laugh at the absurdity of it all.

IMO, they not only have shot themselves in the foot, they have blown the metaphorical leg right off. They don’t give players enough of a taste of what’s in the chests for free for them to want to pay gems, (via cash or gold exchange), to open them. You want people to get in the habit of using those buffs, so they want to keep using them and when they run out, they are willing to pay to get more.

They would probably have sold ten times as many keys in the shop if they had matched the availability of keys in game so that, statistically, most people would have opened half the chests they had found for free.

Now, most players just see the chests as trash and no one is going to spend cash to open up chests they feel are trash.

Treize.7026:

To be honest, it feels like drop rates for everything have been lowered across the board. Either that or my luck went from “average” to absolutely terrible. I get fewer badges in PvP for doing the same things, 0 keys, very few yellows on random mobs around Orr, nothing higher than green from event chests (well, this has always been that way), put 4 items into mystic forge, get 1 of them back, or their equivalent…

I had significantly more success doing all of these things (except the chest) up until recently. I don’t know if drop rates are something they micromanage when stuff starts flooding the market or what, but at any rate, it’s getting old. I don’t need freebies, but one or two lucky breaks would be nice now and then.

As it is, the only profitable thing for me to do is flip items on the TP. At least for time invested, I feel like i’m getting some benefit.

I like the game but games generally have some sort of reward mechanism in place.

This is how I feel, I mean, there’s streaks of bad luck.. then there’s no luck ar all. I have no luck at all.

Corian.4068:

It’s very intentional that you get about 20 chests* per 1 key* in the course of your normal gameplay. Very, very, very intentional.

If you’d like to justify buying some keys on the gem store, however, consider subscription games. 15 bucks a month, right?

If you drop 15 bucks a month on gems, that’s quite a lot of keys. You ultimately don’t HAVE to, but the entire point of making the chests a common drop is to encourage you to buy keys off the gem store.

Finally, you can exchange gold for gems and buy keys with those, but if we’re talking say 1 gold* for, oh, three keys* or so, it’s probably not worth it.

• - Numbers are largely arbitrary and meant to create a general example, rather than for accuracy.

Wrong and wrong again.

The first wrong – you do not get approx 1 key for every 20 chests. You get a few keys at very low level and then they stop dropping (or that is the experience of everyone in our guild).

The second wrong – 15 bucks a month doesn’t buy you a lot of keys, it buys you a few, like 15ish – I average 5-10 chests a day so in order to keep up with the number of chests I get I would need to spend around $300 per month at the top end and $150 per month at the bottom end – that is a lot of money especially when you get junk out of the chests.

And just so you can confirm the math:

2x(5 keys@450 gems) = 900 Gems ($10 = 800 gems but rounding it up to be nice to 900)

30x $10 = $300 This would allow me to open all chests if I average 10 chests per day – half of that if I only average 5 chests a day is $150 per month. Many of us have many hundreds of chests which will never be opened.

I’ve gotten hundreds of chests and two keys as a drop, my second one was tonight my first one a few weeks ago, they are very rare, and the chests are too dam common, this needs balancing out more.

Talking about it isn’t going to change anything. If they’re not selling black lion keys, they’ll adjust the price. Simple as that. I for sure won’t be buying any more after trying out fifteen or so, the items from the chests aren’t worth that kind of money to me. However, for all I know, they could be selling tens of thousands of the things daily, as other players like those items more or have more disposable income, changing the relative value to them. If that was the case, I wouldn’t expect to see the price change.

BLCs are a mixed bag to say the least, but not worth it…if there was something worthwhile inside instead of endless transformation potions, maybe. Like a chance for a fine transmutation stone or something?

Keys should be bought to support the game, that makes sense.

What does not make sense is the price of the keys. They are not worth it, so people are not buying them, so we have a huge supply of chests which are sold for a few copper on the TP and no demand to cause people to buy the chests or the keys.

I’d be interested to see the figures behind the cash shop look – to see what sold well and what didn’t (after the first couple of weeks of uninformed buying).

It’s true that keys should be bought to maintan the game servers, however I’m finding them pretty expensive. I’d really like to buy more of them in a single pack, like 10-15
Suggestion #1: in addition to 5 keys bundle make 10 or 15 keys bundle. Ofc cheaper per single keay again, like 800 gems for 10 keys or 1200 gems for 15 keys

The game itself provides extremely little amount of keys, many people are that unlucky that they can’t even find out how many kinds of rewards they can get from those chest. I know we can also rarely get them from daily achievements, but it still requieres us to be insanely lucky
Suggestion #2: add a guaranteed key to monthly achievement reward
Suggestion #3: increase droprate for special monsters in open world:
Veterans – slight increase, 10-20%
Champions – 100% (make those long events worth anything, give us double chance to drop a key here)
Epic monsters – 200% (they spawn pretty rarely, triple chance sounds decently, as there’s always a gear chest)

I dont know anyone who buys keys regularly. The worth of the chests reflect directly on their price on the trading post
2 copper, 8 i think is the max ive seen them

Anet could make a lot of money off these if they really spent a couple seconds and thought about it.

I would love to see the daily grant at least a bonus key, with a chance for better rewards. I think this would greatly help in general.

I have never had a key drop off a mob or world chest.

I have had a couple of keys come out of the black lion chest, and gotten them from map completes. I wish I could get at least 1 key every map complete.

Maybe they should sell keys that expire instead of one time use. For example, you buy a key for $10 that lasts 30 days with unlimited uses.

I think there has been, along with a buff to the drop rate of the chests. I saw 1 or 2 keys in week 1, since then 0. Yet now chests are dropping more than yellows for me (and about as regular as green).

Esturk.2183:

Maybe they should sell keys that expire instead of one time use. For example, you buy a key for $10 that lasts 30 days with unlimited uses.

heh, can you imagine the surge in TP sales & the price of chests if that were announced?

Jestunhi.7429:

Esturk.2183:

Maybe they should sell keys that expire instead of one time use. For example, you buy a key for $10 that lasts 30 days with unlimited uses.

heh, can you imagine the surge in TP sales & the price of chests if that were announced?

Hey, it would be a great way for newbies to get gold early in the game.

500+ hours and 2 lvl 80’s I have never seen a key drop, there is only 3 ways to obtain a key outside of the cash shop:

- Reward for map completion
– Reward from a story mission
– As an item from opening a Black Lion Chest.

Keys did drop from mobs in Beta, but Anet for some apparent reason removed this in the released version. People claiming to have keys drop from mobs are telling porkies. They also removed better rewards from the chests, personally I thought the Beta was misleading in regards to the chests, and made a lot of people supporting Anet in regards to these chests against the nay sayers look stupid.

Though have to say in addition that Anet made a lot of claims in their Manifesto and during the year leading to the release of GW2 that have not lived up to the claims they originally claimed during interviews, pre-release events and promotional media.

The issue with BL Keys / Chests is the cost to value ratio is just not there. I’m ok with keys being a super rare drop off mobs…but you know what? The Chests should also be super rare and contain OMG awesome stuff for as much as they charge for keys (yeah yeah gold for gems but there are better things to spend hard to earn gold on than keys to open up mostly junk.) Honestly, keys should be no more than 50 gems each / 200 gems for 5 – THEN people would actually see value in the keys. I have > 150 chests in my account bank and have ZERO intention of ever buying keys at the current price.

I don’t care, honestly. I never use any of the power ups those chests provide, and spam the tonics just to get rid of them. The main reason I spent gold on a second bank tab was because I didn’t want to use the boosters, but also didn’t want to trash them because that seems like a waste. So currently, I couldn’t care less about BLCs.

Cod Eye.1632:

Keys did drop from mobs in Beta, but Anet for some apparent reason removed this in the released version. People claiming to have keys drop from mobs are telling porkies.

Sorry to tell you porkies, but I got a drop two days ago in Orr on my warrior from a normal mob. Whether you believe me or not is up to you.

I have gotten more keys from story than anything else. Working on map completion I have over 100 locked chests… and locked they will remain. Maybe I’ll sell them on the Trading Post. Candidly… I’m not going to waste cash opening them- the buff are largely unwanted or better spent when I’m 80 and to maximize their worth… only in niche situations.

I agree they should be cheaper OR get rid of tonics. If I knew there was only a 2% chance of a tonic per chest… I’d be a lot more intersted.

I have about 215 chests sitting in my vault. I’ve looted ~5 keys over the life of my character. Even in Orr.

One just the other day.

The easiest way to get keys as far as I know without buying them on the gem store is to make and play a character to the level 10 storyline, rinse and repeat.

Lol ya those tonics really are the bane of the locked chests.

I have gotten 5 keys. Some from drops and some from 100% area completed.

Last month I have gotten zErO Keys from drops or area 100% completed.

Ive pick up 6 keys along the way and brought 5 from the store and out of them I then got 8 more within the chest themselves. So out of 19 chest I got a bunch of junk .

i got a key today from getting my dailies done…..

I don’t find anything in the chests to be useful anyway.