Guild Wars 2

Hahahahahhahahahaha. This is funny. People thinking this is a good change.

I feel what they should’ve done is just restrict F2P accounts from obtaining keys via keyfarming (or atleast 1 key – per week). Them doing this to vets is another kick in the teeth, I’m still washing the taste of salt from my mouth after having to pay for the game again to upgrade to HoT (and no i didn’t receive the free character slot Arena-net feels can make up for this). I love the game but each time they scheme like this makes the game more and more of a turnoff.

Great move Anet, now I can quit key farming and buy keys with cash instead.

This news wouldn’t be so bad if there was an update to the BLC drop table. Possibly guarantee 1 ticket scrap and remove all the worthless stuff such as Enchantment Powders.

Cichol.7856:

I feel what they should’ve done is just restrict F2P accounts from obtaining keys via keyfarming (or atleast 1 key – per week). Them doing this to vets is another kick in the teeth, I still feel salty I have to pay for the game twice (and no i didn’t receive the free character slot Arena-net feels can make up for this). I love the game but each time they scheme makes the game more and more of a turnoff.

I really don’t believe f2p is the issue here. I think the sale we just had was them testing the market. When they put up keys for a crazy price even then very few people bought them. They then placed blame on key-farming rather than the BL chests themselves and decided to do something about it. Their fail logic is a bit silly this time. It’s the chests that are the problem, Anet. If the keys were WORTH buying, we would.

runeblade.7514:

Hahahahahhahahahaha. This is funny. People thinking this is a good change.

So what do you think, or you just came to laugh at other people?

Cichol.7856:

Cichol.7856:

I feel what they should’ve done is just restrict F2P accounts from obtaining keys via keyfarming (or atleast 1 key – per week). Them doing this to vets is another kick in the teeth, I still feel salty I have to pay for the game twice (and no i didn’t receive the free character slot Arena-net feels can make up for this). I love the game but each time they scheme makes the game more and more of a turnoff.

I really don’t believe f2p is the issue here. I think the sale we just had was them testing the market. When they put up keys for a crazy price even then very few people bought them. They then placed blame on key-farming rather than the BL chests themselves and decided to do something about it. Their fail logic is a bit silly this time. It’s the chests that are the problem, Anet. If the keys were WORTH buying, we would.

So you know this for a fact then?

CandyHearts.6025:

Anet. . .rather than taking away a way to get them; why don’t you take a look at why no one wants to buy them and fix that.

-I get boosters. And no, I don’t really want them and I don’t know anyone who was happy to open a chest with them and ever said YAY. It was more like “really? screw this”.
-I get minis I already have and can’t do anything with it but throw it away. (And I pay for something I HAVE TO THROW AWAY)
-I get “Teleport to a Friend” because that’s just super useful. (That was sarcasm)
-I get unidentified dyes! (Why are they in there? You know you’ll click it and get a 1 silver dye. RNG in an RNG box. Reaaaaally?)

Unless the price of keys is around 50 gems each or the contents change I wont buy them. I’ll just farm once a week. That’s more worth it imo.

They also need to take a good look at the key drop rates, scrap/ticket rates from chests, the number of scraps to make a ticket, and the ticket cost of the weapons. Right now, it’s an average of 50 keys for a 1-ticket skin and 300 keys for a 5-ticket skin. That’s $60/$300 or 950g/5600g, for a single weapon skin.

With the key farming, the price of a BL weapon skin (the current, 1-ticket ones) was pretty much in-line with gem store weapon skins. Most have been 600 gems, which you can currently buy for 130g. Compared to direct gemstore skins, the 5-ticket weapons are already several times more expensive. With key farming gone, the TP prices are going to jump to insane levels without another viable method.

I really doubt they increased the drop rate enough to make 300 keys an attainable goal. So expect the only way to get a 5-ticket BL skin to be dropping $300 or 5600g on keys. Unless you really want to complete about 900 maps.

As someone that doesn’t keyfarm, this is a positive change. It would be cool to get a key drop every once in awhile.

I guess we need to watch the prices on the market to tell how this will effect be good or bad. I am sure there going to be some jump, more so people buying to re sell or maybe just people removing till they see, but it still be interesting.

Just announced an update in-game, someone commented “I wonder if they are changing the drop-rate on keys, because someone got one?”

I told a newbie in my guild today to do the keyfarming while they can before they fix it…didn’t think it’d get fixed today Meh, surprised it took this long to fix anyway.

Sancturay: " If the keys are so badly sold you have to address the issue why"

For me the cost to reward ratio isn’t worth it. You get ticket scraps (people hate scraps of anything I remember leather straps gathering in Burning Crusade zones) sometimes and it’s mostly tonics and boosters or consumable bank expresses. Which sometimes come in handy I’ll admit, and I liked getting a couple of total makeover kits (one from a dropped key from a wolf in Blazeridge Steppes ) and a hair kit so there were some good drops but it feels too much like a gamble.

thewaterguy.4796:

Honestly I think its a good change, presuming Arena-net have properly balanced key drop rates all this means is the same amount of keys will be in existence, they will just be spread out among players alot more, and overall that’s a very good thing, I can actually now get keys doing content that is fun

Of course that is a big IF since we don’t know the details on the drop rates, like how often and where

Key farmers can earn 2 to 3 keys per hour. For simple numbers, suppose 1% of the active players are doing this at any given time. That would equate to .02 to .03 keys generated per hour per active player.

With the new restriction, this rate would fall to near 0. To compensate this fully, active players would need to start getting .02 to .03 keys per hour (which equates to 1 key for every 33 to 50 hours of gameplay).

I seriously doubt they’ll boost the BLK drop rate that much.

Is it indicated in some way? As in, do I need to remember if I did anything story-related this week (especially if completing story on two alts) or will it tell you “This story instance won’t drop normal rewards because you’ve leveled up too many characters”?

Out of curiosity, has anyone ever gotten a key from a player kill in WvW? I’ve only gotten maybe 2-3 from mob kills in PvE, but the drop rate was (is?) so low that I never expected to ever get one in WvW…

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Seems like an awesome change to me. Key farming was never intended, keys are supposed to be a major contribution to their gem store sales, but were being significantly undermined by key farming.

Hopefully with the restrictions in place they can increase the drop rates in the chests now so people will buy keys again.

Why do players hope a company sucks micro transaction dollars from players? Is the game buy to play or free to premium in your mind.

Thanks for nothing. Unless they’re planning on giving me several keys from drops every week, this is just another change that ensures that I can’t acquire decent rewards through hard work. Removing streams of revenue for players without providing good alternatives is only gonna make them want to play the game less.

CandyHearts.6025:

Cichol.7856:

I feel what they should’ve done is just restrict F2P accounts from obtaining keys via keyfarming (or atleast 1 key – per week). Them doing this to vets is another kick in the teeth, I still feel salty I have to pay for the game twice (and no i didn’t receive the free character slot Arena-net feels can make up for this). I love the game but each time they scheme makes the game more and more of a turnoff.

I really don’t believe f2p is the issue here. I think the sale we just had was them testing the market. When they put up keys for a crazy price even then very few people bought them. They then placed blame on key-farming rather than the BL chests themselves and decided to do something about it. Their fail logic is a bit silly this time. It’s the chests that are the problem, Anet. If the keys were WORTH buying, we would.

Free to play comes in and they change a 3 year old drop rate? Of course they’re connected.

Night.2759:

Out of curiosity, has anyone ever gotten a key from a player kill in WvW? I’ve only gotten maybe 2-3 from mob kills in PvE, but the drop rate was (is?) so low that I never expected to ever get one in WvW…

Actually I think I did a couple of weeks ago. What made it even sweeter was that it was from a thief. It was just so satisfying. “Hah! I stole that thief’s key, how ironic!”.

That was actually my 3rd key drop in the last 3 years so I correct my earlier statement where I said I have only had 2.

Having been speaking about todays change to this in map chat people have been telling me the first few weeks of the game they were getting keys very often. As in every 2-3 days. I don’t ever recall seeing them drop at all within this 2 weeks and I played a LOT. Am I being trolled or were some people really this lucky?

mrstealth.6701:

CandyHearts.6025:

Anet. . .rather than taking away a way to get them; why don’t you take a look at why no one wants to buy them and fix that.

-I get boosters. And no, I don’t really want them and I don’t know anyone who was happy to open a chest with them and ever said YAY. It was more like “really? screw this”.
-I get minis I already have and can’t do anything with it but throw it away. (And I pay for something I HAVE TO THROW AWAY)
-I get “Teleport to a Friend” because that’s just super useful. (That was sarcasm)
-I get unidentified dyes! (Why are they in there? You know you’ll click it and get a 1 silver dye. RNG in an RNG box. Reaaaaally?)

Unless the price of keys is around 50 gems each or the contents change I wont buy them. I’ll just farm once a week. That’s more worth it imo.

They also need to take a good look at the key drop rates, scrap/ticket rates from chests, the number of scraps to make a ticket, and the ticket cost of the weapons. Right now, it’s an average of 50 keys for a 1-ticket skin and 300 keys for a 5-ticket skin. That’s $60/$300 or 950g/5600g, for a single weapon skin.

With the key farming, the price of a BL weapon skin (the current, 1-ticket ones) was pretty much in-line with gem store weapon skins. Most have been 600 gems, which you can currently buy for 130g. Compared to direct gemstore skins, the 5-ticket weapons are already several times more expensive. With key farming gone, the TP prices are going to jump to insane levels without another viable method.

I really doubt they increased the drop rate enough to make 300 keys an attainable goal. So expect the only way to get a 5-ticket BL skin to be dropping $300 or 5600g on keys. Unless you really want to complete about 900 maps.

I completely agree. There is so much wrong with the way BL tickets and scraps work it’s horrible. When I first started I thought a ticket was 4-5 scraps and I found that reasonable and I got some keys and tried my luck. Went to turn after months later and I was shocked to find I still needed 6 more. Eesh.

Lotto boxes was done very right by Smite (sorry to be a bit off topic). If felt rewarding to invest in their lotto boxes because you could only get each item once (everything is perma and only skins for things). So eventually after you bought enough boxes you WOULD result in what you wanted regardless of RNGesus hating ya. LOL

This. . . you’re at it for months. and months. For boosters that you don’t even need because the last 20 BL chest gave you enough boosters to last a lifetime >.>’’

Anyway back on the right subject fully . . . if the drop rate is great I will end my complaints and start farming. But if we find that they are just slightly less scarce. . . I just have to keep shaking my head.

Starting to feel like Anets new motto is “Another day, another disappointment”. xD

Aidenwolf.5964:

CandyHearts.6025:

Cichol.7856:

I feel what they should’ve done is just restrict F2P accounts from obtaining keys via keyfarming (or atleast 1 key – per week). Them doing this to vets is another kick in the teeth, I still feel salty I have to pay for the game twice (and no i didn’t receive the free character slot Arena-net feels can make up for this). I love the game but each time they scheme makes the game more and more of a turnoff.

I really don’t believe f2p is the issue here. I think the sale we just had was them testing the market. When they put up keys for a crazy price even then very few people bought them. They then placed blame on key-farming rather than the BL chests themselves and decided to do something about it. Their fail logic is a bit silly this time. It’s the chests that are the problem, Anet. If the keys were WORTH buying, we would.

Free to play comes in and they change a 3 year old drop rate? Of course they’re connected.

How would it have anything to do with f2p when they can’t do anything but purchase the weapons? It’s not like they can affect the market. And if anet cared about people getting keys easily they wouldn’t of kept it that way for 3 years. It wouldn’t be just to SPITE f2p. I am fully firm on it having to do with the sale. Logically it’s the only thing sound.

I never keyfarm and never will, so I don’t really have an opinion on it.

But what I always wondered, why do people put so much effort into something that is almost guaranteed to reward you with random junk? I mean, you’ve seen what’s in those chests lol. You gotta have an empty character slot, powerlevel with tomes or crafts and then play through all the story steps, most likely for a booster, a dye and a common mini…and then repeat it. I’d go nuts. I would’ve lost my love for GW2 in a week like that. For the cool BL stuff like hair kits etc, isn’t it far easier to farm some mats, sell and convert? I mean, look at the low level mats prices, find like 10 level 20-30ish trees and you basically got 1g. :P

For me the change sounds like a good thing. Apart from story steps, I usually get my own keys by zone completions, and recently I often seem to get a key at the end.

As pointed out, the key drop chance is incredibly low. Even if is increased, in my opinion, there won’t be any impact at all unless it is a really nice boost.

In my 8k+ of game play, I’ve got 3 keys from drop and 2 keys from map completion. On the other hand, I get roughly 10 bl chests per week.

Restraining the keys on personal story will deal partially with the key farmers but will throw a burden on the other players as side effect.
As pointed out, hope it is very explicit in-game that you won’t receive the full reward for completing the first chapter of personal story and need to wait for x days/minutes for it or to continue at your own risk.

So has anyone ran that story a second time yet? I’m curious what the reward is after you get your key for the week.

Aidenwolf.5964:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Seems like an awesome change to me. Key farming was never intended, keys are supposed to be a major contribution to their gem store sales, but were being significantly undermined by key farming.

Hopefully with the restrictions in place they can increase the drop rates in the chests now so people will buy keys again.

Why do players hope a company sucks micro transaction dollars from players? Is the game buy to play or free to premium in your mind.

I don’t care what they put in the stupid chests, I’m not spending money (real or virtual) on crappy RNG boxes.

I could at least defend this (somewhat) when the keys were attainable ingame in a semi-reasonable manner. But now it’s just not acceptable for nearly every weapon skin added to the game since release to essentially be exclusive to the gem store keys.

so much gamble in this game… black lion chests… dyes… mystic forge… brakktun globs… I think anet has stock in vegas… they keep pushing us to gamble to get us addicted i think…

Wow, Anet… really? So I suppose this means you are taking all of the crap (boosters, dust, bird minis, etc.) out of the BLC and actually making the drop rate of BLKs tangible? I have bought the keys in the past- until I realized they were a complete waste of money.

And going hand in hand with this “increased” key drop rate, I sincerely hope we will see a lot less of this silly notion of mobs dropping NO LOOT! Honestly… what kind of game has mobs with no loot?! Are you trying to suck all the fun out of this game?

CandyHearts.6025:

Aidenwolf.5964:

CandyHearts.6025:

Cichol.7856:

I feel what they should’ve done is just restrict F2P accounts from obtaining keys via keyfarming (or atleast 1 key – per week). Them doing this to vets is another kick in the teeth, I still feel salty I have to pay for the game twice (and no i didn’t receive the free character slot Arena-net feels can make up for this). I love the game but each time they scheme makes the game more and more of a turnoff.

I really don’t believe f2p is the issue here. I think the sale we just had was them testing the market. When they put up keys for a crazy price even then very few people bought them. They then placed blame on key-farming rather than the BL chests themselves and decided to do something about it. Their fail logic is a bit silly this time. It’s the chests that are the problem, Anet. If the keys were WORTH buying, we would.

Free to play comes in and they change a 3 year old drop rate? Of course they’re connected.

How would it have anything to do with f2p when they can’t do anything but purchase the weapons? It’s not like they can affect the market. And if anet cared about people getting keys easily they wouldn’t of kept it that way for 3 years. It wouldn’t be just to SPITE f2p. I am fully firm on it having to do with the sale. Logically it’s the only thing sound.

Free accounts can farm keys
Free accounts can buy skins
Free accounts can mail those skins
A hub account (paid) can sell them

This is how

I wonder if this planned nerf had something to do with a lack of character slot sales?

Powerjuergen.2790:

Fun is different for everyone. Leveling a character to 10 and than doing the story for a key was quite relaxing and ended with the chance to get something nice after playing about 80 minutes, although most of the times the result was not that exiting. But it was this little kick to have a least the chance to get something nice! What was the problem for Anet? …

I agree with this. Making a key farmer and leveling to 10 helped that alt-itch I’d get, without the commitment of outfitting another L80. If I decided I really liked that key farmer, Anet would sell another character slot. Well, you’ve just put a big spoiler on a chunk of my fun, Anet.

I would never use real money to buy keys, only to wind up disappointed with nasty XP boosts I don’t use that fill up my bank space. I’ll play the game to eventually earn the rewards I want, but I’m not going to throw away cash for uncertain rewards.

Anet just keeps nerfing the ways that players use to attain rewards, forcing them to play ’Anet’s way’, and increasing RNG rewards— or removing them completely! That doesn’t work for me. I’m very disappointed in this change.

Aidenwolf.5964:

CandyHearts.6025:

Aidenwolf.5964:

CandyHearts.6025:

Cichol.7856:

I feel what they should’ve done is just restrict F2P accounts from obtaining keys via keyfarming (or atleast 1 key – per week). Them doing this to vets is another kick in the teeth, I still feel salty I have to pay for the game twice (and no i didn’t receive the free character slot Arena-net feels can make up for this). I love the game but each time they scheme makes the game more and more of a turnoff.

I really don’t believe f2p is the issue here. I think the sale we just had was them testing the market. When they put up keys for a crazy price even then very few people bought them. They then placed blame on key-farming rather than the BL chests themselves and decided to do something about it. Their fail logic is a bit silly this time. It’s the chests that are the problem, Anet. If the keys were WORTH buying, we would.

Free to play comes in and they change a 3 year old drop rate? Of course they’re connected.

How would it have anything to do with f2p when they can’t do anything but purchase the weapons? It’s not like they can affect the market. And if anet cared about people getting keys easily they wouldn’t of kept it that way for 3 years. It wouldn’t be just to SPITE f2p. I am fully firm on it having to do with the sale. Logically it’s the only thing sound.

Free accounts can farm keys
Free accounts can buy skins
Free accounts can mail those skins
A hub account (paid) can sell them

This is how

Free accounts can’t send items in the mail.

Aidenwolf.5964:

CandyHearts.6025:

Aidenwolf.5964:

CandyHearts.6025:

Cichol.7856:

I feel what they should’ve done is just restrict F2P accounts from obtaining keys via keyfarming (or atleast 1 key – per week). Them doing this to vets is another kick in the teeth, I still feel salty I have to pay for the game twice (and no i didn’t receive the free character slot Arena-net feels can make up for this). I love the game but each time they scheme makes the game more and more of a turnoff.

I really don’t believe f2p is the issue here. I think the sale we just had was them testing the market. When they put up keys for a crazy price even then very few people bought them. They then placed blame on key-farming rather than the BL chests themselves and decided to do something about it. Their fail logic is a bit silly this time. It’s the chests that are the problem, Anet. If the keys were WORTH buying, we would.

Free to play comes in and they change a 3 year old drop rate? Of course they’re connected.

How would it have anything to do with f2p when they can’t do anything but purchase the weapons? It’s not like they can affect the market. And if anet cared about people getting keys easily they wouldn’t of kept it that way for 3 years. It wouldn’t be just to SPITE f2p. I am fully firm on it having to do with the sale. Logically it’s the only thing sound.

Free accounts can farm keys
Free accounts can buy skins
Free accounts can mail those skins

A hub account (paid) can sell them

This is how

F2p can not mail out items or gold or use a guild bank to transfer.

CorrynnStarr.7942:

so much gamble in this game… black lion chests… dyes… mystic forge… brakktun globs… I think anet has stock in vegas… they keep pushing us to gamble to get us addicted i think…

I actually thought there were laws in many states to stop gambling/underage gambling, even if it is under some “rng disguise”.

Gaebriel.3754:

I never keyfarm and never will, so I don’t really have an opinion on it.

But what I always wondered, why do people put so much effort into something that is almost guaranteed to reward you with random junk? I mean, you’ve seen what’s in those chests lol. You gotta have an empty character slot, powerlevel with tomes or crafts and then play through all the story steps, most likely for a booster, a dye and a common mini…and then repeat it. I’d go nuts. I would’ve lost my love for GW2 in a week like that. For the cool BL stuff like hair kits etc, isn’t it far easier to farm some mats, sell and convert? I mean, look at the low level mats prices, find like 10 level 20-30ish trees and you basically got 1g. :P

For me the change sounds like a good thing. Apart from story steps, I usually get my own keys by zone completions, and recently I often seem to get a key at the end.

I would farm keys when I was bored or just too tired to focus on anything else. I would never do more than 1-2 in any 1 sitting and would usually only do 1.

To me it was kind of like buying one of those scratch and win tickets. A quick thrill where you expect to get nothing of value but there is a chance that you could get something nice.

Over the years from doing many map completes on all my alts and farming keys I must have opened up I would guess maybe 200-ish chests. From that I have had maybe 3-4 tickets worth of scraps and the odd full ticket here and there. A perm Tonic, maybe a few minis and other things such as makeover kits that I would never have bought off the Gemstore but they have their uses I now see.

You are right you get a lot of boosters and for the most part they were useless. I say “were” because now that there is a way to convert them into whatever booster you want they can have a good use. Example I turn mine into gathering boosters and have my alts sitting in Orr at the trees. So I get Foxfires, extra Ori, Ancient as well as Omnoms and Peppers out of them. Selling these on the TP I should think would cover the cost of the silver from the converting.

Apart from that the HP regen Booster for the combat version can come in handy in WvW.

Oh also I still have 80-ish repair canisters and maybe 30 odd Revive orbs, they have their uses as well. Orbs for Fractals and Solo Jp’s if you make a terrible mistake lol.

So in summary: it was just a fun thing to do when too tired/bored to do anything else and over time the rewards can all add up. Oh and on another note my last 4 chests opened have all given me scraps and 1 of them was even a double scrap drop or another key with a scrap. So the scrap drop rate is not as low as some people may think.

tbh I don’t mind the change although I feel a little bit sorry for key farmers….

but then
dear ArenaNet please please please – give me an npc merchant that would take from me all of those boosters I’ll never use anyway and give me sth usefull in exchange……
[ticket scraps maybe? :P]

thisisit.6954:

CorrynnStarr.7942:

so much gamble in this game… black lion chests… dyes… mystic forge… brakktun globs… I think anet has stock in vegas… they keep pushing us to gamble to get us addicted i think…

I actually thought there were laws in many states to stop gambling/underage gambling, even if it is under some “rng disguise”.

I think the reasoning is that it’s technically not gambling since there is no chance of loss. Just a chance of getting a really crappy prize.

TJgalon.5012:

runeblade.7514:

Hahahahahhahahahaha. This is funny. People thinking this is a good change.

So what do you think, or you just came to laugh at other people?

Because players hate RNG, but support this RNG over 100% loot.

Its funny.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Aidenwolf.5964:

CandyHearts.6025:

Aidenwolf.5964:

CandyHearts.6025:

Cichol.7856:

I feel what they should’ve done is just restrict F2P accounts from obtaining keys via keyfarming (or atleast 1 key – per week). Them doing this to vets is another kick in the teeth, I still feel salty I have to pay for the game twice (and no i didn’t receive the free character slot Arena-net feels can make up for this). I love the game but each time they scheme makes the game more and more of a turnoff.

I really don’t believe f2p is the issue here. I think the sale we just had was them testing the market. When they put up keys for a crazy price even then very few people bought them. They then placed blame on key-farming rather than the BL chests themselves and decided to do something about it. Their fail logic is a bit silly this time. It’s the chests that are the problem, Anet. If the keys were WORTH buying, we would.

Free to play comes in and they change a 3 year old drop rate? Of course they’re connected.

How would it have anything to do with f2p when they can’t do anything but purchase the weapons? It’s not like they can affect the market. And if anet cared about people getting keys easily they wouldn’t of kept it that way for 3 years. It wouldn’t be just to SPITE f2p. I am fully firm on it having to do with the sale. Logically it’s the only thing sound.

Free accounts can farm keys
Free accounts can buy skins
Free accounts can mail those skins

A hub account (paid) can sell them

This is how

F2p can not mail out items or gold or use a guild bank to transfer.

Hmm then it’s just a slap in the face to paid accounts, fair play Flesh

Paulytnz.7619:

Gaebriel.3754:

I never keyfarm and never will, so I don’t really have an opinion on it.

But what I always wondered, why do people put so much effort into something that is almost guaranteed to reward you with random junk? I mean, you’ve seen what’s in those chests lol. You gotta have an empty character slot, powerlevel with tomes or crafts and then play through all the story steps, most likely for a booster, a dye and a common mini…and then repeat it. I’d go nuts. I would’ve lost my love for GW2 in a week like that. For the cool BL stuff like hair kits etc, isn’t it far easier to farm some mats, sell and convert? I mean, look at the low level mats prices, find like 10 level 20-30ish trees and you basically got 1g. :P

For me the change sounds like a good thing. Apart from story steps, I usually get my own keys by zone completions, and recently I often seem to get a key at the end.

I would farm keys when I was bored or just too tired to focus on anything else. I would never do more than 1-2 in any 1 sitting and would usually only do 1.

To me it was kind of like buying one of those scratch and win tickets. A quick thrill where you expect to get nothing of value but there is a chance that you could get something nice.

Over the years from doing many map completes on all my alts and farming keys I must have opened up I would guess maybe 200-ish chests. From that I have had maybe 3-4 tickets worth of scraps and the odd full ticket here and there. A perm Tonic, maybe a few minis and other things such as makeover kits that I would never have bought off the Gemstore but they have their uses I now see.

You are right you get a lot of boosters and for the most part they were useless. I say “were” because now that there is a way to convert them into whatever booster you want they can have a good use. Example I turn mine into gathering boosters and have my alts sitting in Orr at the trees. So I get Foxfires, extra Ori, Ancient as well as Omnoms and Peppers out of them. Selling these on the TP I should think would cover the cost of the silver from the converting.

Apart from that the HP regen Booster for the combat version can come in handy in WvW.

Oh also I still have 80-ish repair canisters and maybe 30 odd Revive orbs, they have their uses as well. Orbs for Fractals and Solo Jp’s if you make a terrible mistake lol.

So in summary: it was just a fun thing to do when too tired/bored to do anything else and over time the rewards can all add up. Oh and on another note my last 4 chests opened have all given me scraps and 1 of them was even a double scrap drop or another key with a scrap. So the scrap drop rate is not as low as some people may think.

If the drop rate of scraps is one every other chest (which I doubt) and assuming no bad RNG, it will take 20 weeks to get one ticket, or 5 months. If the drop rate is lower, then the time to get one ticket quickly increases.

CandyHearts.6025:

Cichol.7856:

I feel what they should’ve done is just restrict F2P accounts from obtaining keys via keyfarming (or atleast 1 key – per week). Them doing this to vets is another kick in the teeth, I still feel salty I have to pay for the game twice (and no i didn’t receive the free character slot Arena-net feels can make up for this). I love the game but each time they scheme makes the game more and more of a turnoff.

I really don’t believe f2p is the issue here. I think the sale we just had was them testing the market. When they put up keys for a crazy price even then very few people bought them. They then placed blame on key-farming rather than the BL chests themselves and decided to do something about it. Their fail logic is a bit silly this time. It’s the chests that are the problem, Anet. If the keys were WORTH buying, we would.

Keys will never be worth it; the economic phenomenon that occurs is that keys will be bought whenever they are worth it, and then the gold->gem exchange pushes the price up until it isn’t worth it anymore (and then gamblers push the price that bit more). What the drop rate of tickets and whatnot does affect is the price of BL skins on the trading post, and how the gem exchange reflects the demand for tickets.

ANet probably loves the value of gems going high as it places better value on buying gems with real money for either the gem store or exchanging for gold.

Players get really upset when skins reach certain prices. With key farming dead, let’s see how high prices go.

Aidenwolf.5964:

Hmm then it’s just a slap in the face to paid accounts, fair play Flesh

Why? F2P account can’t be created to farm gold, they are restricted. What is the slap in the face?

I’d love to hear from a Dev what the drop rate is now for keys.
I definitely don’t need more chests, they drop all the time.
for the few years I’ve played with a lot of time under my characters belt played, I’ve never seen keys drop except from personal stories and map completion.
So going to reserve judgement on the drop rate for now too.

As for the key farming, meh..never really did it, tried it once and found it boring.

but I can see skins sky rocket in price on the trade post.
when they actually make decent looking skins that is.

I’ve always said that key farming was an emergent style of game play that was only allowed because they wanted to give the new player a taste of the opening BLTCs and they couldn’t figure out how to do that and shut down key farming.

Well it looks as if they got enough data metrics to set a restriction that shouldn’t impact the vast majority of new players while closing down the farm.

I would also not be surprised to find that key farming, to farm for ticket skins, was also a RMT source of income and that a relatively small pool of players were generating the majority of skins for sale on the market.

I remember when keys dropped frequently in the world as well as keys dropping frequently from BLTCs so you could chain open several chests. Hopefully the improved world drop rate will hearken back to those days.

I too saw this change coming and also wondered why it didn’t happen sooner.

Although, I would have to question the effectiveness of this restriction on keys generated through F2P accounts. A F2P account can be deleted each time a key is farmed, thereby circumventing the weekly restriction. What this restriction will cause is an increase in F2P account generation and deletion. I can’t imagine what that database churn will look like!

Edit: But, since everything derived from a BL chest is account-bound, it serves no purpose to delete accounts to circumvent the restriction, unless you get lucky and earn a full BL ticket to purchase a skin costing only one full ticket.

This recent patch is obviously an attempt to cull key farming, but it kind of screws over the new players. How about instead of punishing the legitimate players, you punish the actual key farmers. I propose an alternative: remove the periodic BL key rewards from personal story until the very end. Then, when you give the player their Pact Token to get those weapons in Caer Aval, you also give them 5 BL keys for completing the story. Alternatively you can have the weapon NPC at Caer Aval offer 5 BL keys for the Pact Token. This way key farmers would have to level a character to 80 and complete the story before they even have a chance to get their keys. This would provide more incentive for new players to finish the story. This is how you get your player base to play: provide incentives to finish something they started. I know, 5 BL keys is probably going to eat a lot into your profits, but it’s just an idea.

I don’t know, maybe I’ve gone soft, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to give the new players the shaft like this. Don’t let the actions of a few key farming drones be punitive to the rest of the players.

Bob F It.5701:

ANet probably loves the value of gems going high as it places better value on buying gems with real money for either the gem store or exchanging for gold.

I don’t see that working in practice. People who want something from the gem store but aren’t willing to pay real money for it have already decided that it’s not worth the price they’re asking for it. If the gem prices get too high, their opinion won’t suddenly change with regards to real money, they’ll just decide that it’s not worth any kind of money and move along.

How does it hurt new players?
You think regular players creates a new character and complete the Personal Story more than once per week?

seabhac.5346:

I too saw this change coming and also wondered why it didn’t happen sooner.

Although, I would have to question the effectiveness of this restriction on keys generated through F2P accounts. A F2P account can be deleted each time a key is farmed, thereby circumventing the weekly restriction. What this restriction will cause is an increase in F2P account generation and deletion. I can’t imagine what that database churn will look like!

The weapon skin/gold would be stuck on the free account, as they have no way to transfer them to another account. So doing that would be pointless.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Paulytnz.7619:

Gaebriel.3754:

I never keyfarm and never will, so I don’t really have an opinion on it.

But what I always wondered, why do people put so much effort into something that is almost guaranteed to reward you with random junk? I mean, you’ve seen what’s in those chests lol. You gotta have an empty character slot, powerlevel with tomes or crafts and then play through all the story steps, most likely for a booster, a dye and a common mini…and then repeat it. I’d go nuts. I would’ve lost my love for GW2 in a week like that. For the cool BL stuff like hair kits etc, isn’t it far easier to farm some mats, sell and convert? I mean, look at the low level mats prices, find like 10 level 20-30ish trees and you basically got 1g. :P

For me the change sounds like a good thing. Apart from story steps, I usually get my own keys by zone completions, and recently I often seem to get a key at the end.

I would farm keys when I was bored or just too tired to focus on anything else. I would never do more than 1-2 in any 1 sitting and would usually only do 1.

To me it was kind of like buying one of those scratch and win tickets. A quick thrill where you expect to get nothing of value but there is a chance that you could get something nice.

Over the years from doing many map completes on all my alts and farming keys I must have opened up I would guess maybe 200-ish chests. From that I have had maybe 3-4 tickets worth of scraps and the odd full ticket here and there. A perm Tonic, maybe a few minis and other things such as makeover kits that I would never have bought off the Gemstore but they have their uses I now see.

You are right you get a lot of boosters and for the most part they were useless. I say “were” because now that there is a way to convert them into whatever booster you want they can have a good use. Example I turn mine into gathering boosters and have my alts sitting in Orr at the trees. So I get Foxfires, extra Ori, Ancient as well as Omnoms and Peppers out of them. Selling these on the TP I should think would cover the cost of the silver from the converting.

Apart from that the HP regen Booster for the combat version can come in handy in WvW.

Oh also I still have 80-ish repair canisters and maybe 30 odd Revive orbs, they have their uses as well. Orbs for Fractals and Solo Jp’s if you make a terrible mistake lol.

So in summary: it was just a fun thing to do when too tired/bored to do anything else and over time the rewards can all add up. Oh and on another note my last 4 chests opened have all given me scraps and 1 of them was even a double scrap drop or another key with a scrap. So the scrap drop rate is not as low as some people may think.

If the drop rate of scraps is one every other chest (which I doubt) and assuming no bad RNG, it will take 20 weeks to get one ticket, or 5 months. If the drop rate is lower, then the time to get one ticket quickly increases.

I never said you would get a ticket every chest or second chest. I said I was lucky enough in my last 4 opened chests to actually get that many. The person I quoted made it sound like the scraps were rare drops or super rare, in my experience they are not.

You also seem to think that I am for this change, show me where I said I was please.

With my old key farm, I could easily farm enough keys each month to get one skin to then sell on the trading post. If I continue with the new once a week key farm, then that will be maybe 2 tickets a year, or even one (and some scraps) if unlucky. From up to 12 a year to 1 to 2 a year is quite a nerf in the numbers of skins people like me brought to the trading post so that non key farmers could buy them without doing the work themselves or buying keys.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Players get really upset when skins reach certain prices. With key farming dead, let’s see how high prices go.

Blame the resellers. You know, people who buy stuff not to actually use it but to resell it at a profit.