Guild Wars 2

mrstealth.6701:

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.

Unless/until you acquire enough items of value to offset the cost of buying the game at which point you pay to unlock the full game and liquidate.

Paulytnz.7619:

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.

I didn’t say you were in favor of it. I was pointing out the math and the time with even the best possible scrap drop rate.

I really hope the drop rate is enough to make up for it. I’m holding out hope that it’s going to be; but as someone else said, with the fact SW mobs and the recent event mobs didn’t drop any regular loot means that an increased rate of keys may mean f—- all. Still — it would be nice for people who hate key farming to possibly get in on the action. Either that, or it’s just going to be more people experiencing the wonderful world of having 3 ticket scraps sitting in your bank for like 6 months.

I’m more here to join the chorus: Key farming doesn’t have as big an impact on the rate of key sales as the abysmal rate of returns on the chests does. I concur with the general assessment that the rate of returns on BL chests is downright painful. I purchased the account jump start for the bag/bank slots; at the sale price, the keys, dyes, and charges were just a nice bonus.

I used 8 of the 10 keys, and got one ticket scrap. Admittedly, that’s low even against my average, but it completely underscored to me why nobody in their right mind wants to buy keys.

Belzebu.3912:

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

They can, yes. I did it a lot shortly after release back in 2012, rerolling several characters because they just didn’t feel right. My thief, for example, was remade 4 times before I finally settled on it. The 3rd one was at lvl 60 before I decided I didn’t like it. People change their minds sometimes, and the way it is now they might miss out on their due rewards just because they decided to reroll a character.

The problem is they wouldn’t be giving new players a key early on, and then new players wouldn’t be trying out opening a chest and maybe deciding to buy more keys to get another chance at the good drops.

mtpelion.4562:

mrstealth.6701:

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.

Unless/until you acquire enough items of value to offset the cost of buying the game at which point you pay to unlock the full game and liquidate.

True on both points. I edited my earlier post after thinking about it a bit more.

Since F2P accounts can buy/sell items on the TP, can they sell their ‘lucky’ skins? Again, I think it would be pointless because of the gold restrictions.

So all in all, a good change for anet’s bottom line without a huge impact to the game world.

Depends on what you are doing, if you are changing just based on aesthetics then you won’t even be level 10 to get the key.
If you are just playing and later you noticed you don’t like your character, then 1 week sounds reasonable.
If you are F2P then you don’t even have an issue, just make a new account.
The amount of new players affected by that change is really small, and even for that small small group it is just an inconvenience.

EDIT: Also, with the old system, an undecided player that made the first PS arc several times was more rewarded than a player that sticked with your character and kept playing, now you’ll get that 1 key and the other characters you keep making that week won’t be rewarded again and again.

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.

They were undermined more by the fact that buying them from gemshop is dumb. You are extremely unlikely to get your money’s worth. Generally it’s way better to buy things directly.

And i bet the key drop rate will still be below precursor levels.

Tapioca.9062:

If Anet want people to buy Black Lions Keys instead of spending time on alternatives, make buying them worthwhile instead of packing the chests full of garbage like boosters or, worse, booster dust.

This.

Paulytnz.7619:

HidingCat.4037:

I have a bunch of characters, once a week really is too drastic. Don’t forget the keys come at chapters 1, 4 and 6. I don’t want to bump into that limit by mistake.

They specifically said the level 10 story only.

No. They said “early personal story rewards”. Which can be 10 only, or 10 and 40, depending on their definition of that word (and we already know they like to use pretty nonstandard definitions).

Gambit.8425:

This nerf is most likely because of F2P

Then they just needed to disable keys for f2p accounts. Like they disabled daily rewards.

Seriously, real cash lottery is probably one of the worst things they can have in gemshop. Yes, it brings money, because there are people that will buy anything, as well as people that are addicted to gambling, but it is something that makes my opinion of the gemshop really low. And the fact that they are now desperately pushing it only makes it even worse.

Or offer smexy new outfits to offset any profit loss ^_^ Though to be honest it’s kinda hard topping the noble count and wedding dress outfits. Of course making the male equivalent of new outfits super kewl. I think a new plate outfit with a shimmery cloth skirt for girls (yes it’ll be a practical yet still beautiful armor set that’s classy, elegant, modest, yet can still see the form nicely) and for guys a plated robe like Obi-Wan with a metal chestplate…or something. Doesn’t have to be those things specifically but along the same aesthetic.

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.

Thank you for this. Getting tired of people throwing out how it’s all about f2p when they don’t even know the restrictions prevent them from doing the thing they think is the cause.

Belzebu.3912:

Depends on what you are doing, if you are changing just based on aesthetics then you won’t even be level 10 to get the key.
If you are just playing and later you noticed you don’t like your character, then 1 week sounds reasonable.
If you are F2P then you don’t even have an issue, just make a new account.
The amount of new players affected by that change is really small, and even for that small small group it is just an inconvenience.

EDIT: Also, with the old system, an undecided player that made the first PS arc several times was more rewarded than a player that sticked with your character and kept playing, now you’ll get that 1 key and the other characters you keep making that week won’t be rewarded again and again.

You’re right, of course, but I wanted to sugar coat my idea of putting another nail in the coffin that is key farmers by adding the ‘new player’ clause. My usual blatant self isn’t very much liked by ArenaNet so I thought they might like this wording more.

I never did any key farming before, but I think I’ll be doing that once a week key now.

Note for weekly days: I’m guessing the Key drop from level 10 story resets with other things that reset weekly (like the gold cap on mail or guild bank withdrawal). I forget what day it is but I think it’s Sunday?

seabhac.5346:

mtpelion.4562:

mrstealth.6701:

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.

Unless/until you acquire enough items of value to offset the cost of buying the game at which point you pay to unlock the full game and liquidate.

True on both points. I edited my earlier post after thinking about it a bit more.

Since F2P accounts can buy/sell items on the TP, can they sell their ‘lucky’ skins? Again, I think it would be pointless because of the gold restrictions.

So all in all, a good change for anet’s bottom line without a huge impact to the game world.

Free to play accounts cannot buy/sell any of the black lion skins nor precursor. They can only buy and sell from a very small list that contains a couple of gear from each tier. I might be wrong but think the Primordus set are the most expensive one they have access to.

Rarely farmed keys before but now since update I will possibly add in a weekly rotation.

Kind miss the fact its gone but will have to see the drop rate of keys over the coming weeks, as personally I’ve had one key drop from a trash mob in sparkfly with around 3k hours (at the time).

azyume.6321:

seabhac.5346:

mtpelion.4562:

mrstealth.6701:

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.

Unless/until you acquire enough items of value to offset the cost of buying the game at which point you pay to unlock the full game and liquidate.

True on both points. I edited my earlier post after thinking about it a bit more.

Since F2P accounts can buy/sell items on the TP, can they sell their ‘lucky’ skins? Again, I think it would be pointless because of the gold restrictions.

So all in all, a good change for anet’s bottom line without a huge impact to the game world.

Free to play accounts cannot buy/sell any of the black lion skins nor precursor. They can only buy and sell from a very small list that contains a couple of gear from each tier. I might be wrong but think the Primordus set are the most expensive one they have access to.

If you got a lucky drop (one of the contracts) or tons of skins saved up on your multiple free accounts, you could then pay to convert them into real accounts and sell the lucky expensive things.

RMT gold sellers could potentially use this tactic, which is probably part of the reason why the 1 per week restriction was added.

Oh I see your approach

I think that Anet never imagined that the PS reward would end being farmable, and now if they changed it too harshly players would get too mad, so they just capped a lot the farm, but it still works.

Your change would be awesome if it were implemented since the beginning, but now the rage would be unbearable.

Angus.5961:

I never did any key farming before, but I think I’ll be doing that once a week key now.

LOL…I think more people will be farming it once a week now that they are aware, whereas before it was only a handfull of people doing it. I think it might have created an opposite effect on what Anet intended.

seabhac.5346:

So all in all, a good change for anet’s bottom line without a huge impact to the game world.

It probably won’t help Anet’s profits any, because most people still won’t be wasting their cash/gold on keys. All they’ve done is make the only source of new weapon skins an overpriced mess that no one will bother with. The only reason those skins actually exist in the game/TP is because we’ve had a semi-reasonable/viable way to obtain them ingame.

They might as well just put the weapon skins into the gemstore for 25,000 gems each, with a 4000 gem “introductory price”, because that’s what it costs(at average scrap drop rates) to get them.

I See No Tomorrow.7302:

Note for weekly days: I’m guessing the Key drop from level 10 story resets with other things that reset weekly (like the gold cap on mail or guild bank withdrawal). I forget what day it is but I think it’s Sunday?

Good question. I was thinking it was based on the game knowing that your last key from that was 7 days ago. But it’s most likely at a weekly reset.

From the support page:
For the purposes of this limit, a week begins at 12:01 AM UTC each Sunday (5:01 PM PDT/4:01 PM PST Saturday)

mtpelion.4562:

azyume.6321:

seabhac.5346:

mtpelion.4562:

mrstealth.6701:

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.

Unless/until you acquire enough items of value to offset the cost of buying the game at which point you pay to unlock the full game and liquidate.

True on both points. I edited my earlier post after thinking about it a bit more.

Since F2P accounts can buy/sell items on the TP, can they sell their ‘lucky’ skins? Again, I think it would be pointless because of the gold restrictions.

So all in all, a good change for anet’s bottom line without a huge impact to the game world.

Free to play accounts cannot buy/sell any of the black lion skins nor precursor. They can only buy and sell from a very small list that contains a couple of gear from each tier. I might be wrong but think the Primordus set are the most expensive one they have access to.

If you got a lucky drop (one of the contracts) or tons of skins saved up on your multiple free accounts, you could then pay to convert them into real accounts and sell the lucky expensive things.

RMT gold sellers could potentially use this tactic, which is probably part of the reason why the 1 per week restriction was added.

If this was really about f2p account abuse, they would (most likely) have just removed the key drops for free accounts. That fixes the potential issue, and doesn’t impact paid accounts in any way.

This was a targeted hit to key farming.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I See No Tomorrow.7302:

Note for weekly days: I’m guessing the Key drop from level 10 story resets with other things that reset weekly (like the gold cap on mail or guild bank withdrawal). I forget what day it is but I think it’s Sunday?

Good question. I was thinking it was based on the game knowing that your last key from that was 7 days ago. But it’s most likely at a weekly reset.

I’m thinking it might be effective after the update. Like if you just did it yesterday, than you can do one tonight after the dl. Or am I wrong?

mrstealth.6701:

mtpelion.4562:

azyume.6321:

seabhac.5346:

mtpelion.4562:

mrstealth.6701:

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.

Unless/until you acquire enough items of value to offset the cost of buying the game at which point you pay to unlock the full game and liquidate.

True on both points. I edited my earlier post after thinking about it a bit more.

Since F2P accounts can buy/sell items on the TP, can they sell their ‘lucky’ skins? Again, I think it would be pointless because of the gold restrictions.

So all in all, a good change for anet’s bottom line without a huge impact to the game world.

Free to play accounts cannot buy/sell any of the black lion skins nor precursor. They can only buy and sell from a very small list that contains a couple of gear from each tier. I might be wrong but think the Primordus set are the most expensive one they have access to.

If you got a lucky drop (one of the contracts) or tons of skins saved up on your multiple free accounts, you could then pay to convert them into real accounts and sell the lucky expensive things.

RMT gold sellers could potentially use this tactic, which is probably part of the reason why the 1 per week restriction was added.

If this was really about f2p account abuse, they would (most likely) have just removed the key drops for free accounts. That fixes that potential issue with a more simple fix, and doesn’t impact paid accounts in any way.

This was a targeted hit to key farming.

Which is why I said “part of the reason”.

I’m sure they also didn’t like the fact that the players who really wanted keys weren’t buying them.

azyume.6321:

seabhac.5346:

mtpelion.4562:

mrstealth.6701:

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.

Unless/until you acquire enough items of value to offset the cost of buying the game at which point you pay to unlock the full game and liquidate.

True on both points. I edited my earlier post after thinking about it a bit more.

Since F2P accounts can buy/sell items on the TP, can they sell their ‘lucky’ skins? Again, I think it would be pointless because of the gold restrictions.

So all in all, a good change for anet’s bottom line without a huge impact to the game world.

Free to play accounts cannot buy/sell any of the black lion skins nor precursor. They can only buy and sell from a very small list that contains a couple of gear from each tier. I might be wrong but think the Primordus set are the most expensive one they have access to.

Ah, OK – thanks for clearing that up!

I just hope the increased key drop rate is ‘noticeable’

Shen Slayer.3058:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I See No Tomorrow.7302:

Note for weekly days: I’m guessing the Key drop from level 10 story resets with other things that reset weekly (like the gold cap on mail or guild bank withdrawal). I forget what day it is but I think it’s Sunday?

Good question. I was thinking it was based on the game knowing that your last key from that was 7 days ago. But it’s most likely at a weekly reset.

I’m thinking it might be effective after the update. Like if you just did it yesterday, than you can do one tonight after the dl. Or am I wrong?

I did one yesterday and one today. My guess is the game didn’t see the one from yesterday since the once a week rule wasn’t in place at that time.

It might be a game reset

From the support page about the gold cap:
For the purposes of this limit [the gold cap], a week begins at 12:01 AM UTC each Sunday (5:01 PM PDT/4:01 PM PST Saturday)

People thinking this was a good or a needed change will get hit in the face once the BL weapon skins basically disappear from the TP, with only a few being sold for precursor prices.

Yes some may find the farm boring and unrewarding, but the same goes for any other farm be it FGS/Orr champs, the Silverwastes, or anything else. I’d rather repeat a short routine for an rng thrill at its end, than zombierun around a map for hours.

The worst part is that there is simply no alternative way to get BL skins now. If you wanted a skin really badly, you could have just buy some gems, turn them into gold, and buy it off the TP. Now, you’ll have to gamble using your money, not just time. Well, yea, sure.

They should have just made the kitten tickets a gemstore item sold for idk 500gems/piece, remove them from the chests, and just alter the chest to drop something else, useful to the player, not the TP. All the other permanent contracts and home instance nodes could as well just have been made either gemstore items or acc bound and have their drops increased. Therefore there would not really be a need for a farm, ANet would get their money, and players their stuff.

Tl;dr A sad decision in the long run.

I’ve had maybe 2 keys drop for me near launch, and that was it. Hearing that rate being increased in light of this change doesn’t fill me with any kind of hopeful expectation.

Never bought keys and probably never will. Sad, because maybe I wouldn’t mind dropping actual money on kitten rng chests from time to time if they were actually worth opening (like I do with Dota 2 chests).

But I guess I’ll have to settle for the joy of having to put up with this on top of the ticket scrap lottery.

mtpelion.4562:

mrstealth.6701:

mtpelion.4562:

azyume.6321:

seabhac.5346:

mtpelion.4562:

mrstealth.6701:

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.

Unless/until you acquire enough items of value to offset the cost of buying the game at which point you pay to unlock the full game and liquidate.

True on both points. I edited my earlier post after thinking about it a bit more.

Since F2P accounts can buy/sell items on the TP, can they sell their ‘lucky’ skins? Again, I think it would be pointless because of the gold restrictions.

So all in all, a good change for anet’s bottom line without a huge impact to the game world.

Free to play accounts cannot buy/sell any of the black lion skins nor precursor. They can only buy and sell from a very small list that contains a couple of gear from each tier. I might be wrong but think the Primordus set are the most expensive one they have access to.

If you got a lucky drop (one of the contracts) or tons of skins saved up on your multiple free accounts, you could then pay to convert them into real accounts and sell the lucky expensive things.

RMT gold sellers could potentially use this tactic, which is probably part of the reason why the 1 per week restriction was added.

If this was really about f2p account abuse, they would (most likely) have just removed the key drops for free accounts. That fixes that potential issue with a more simple fix, and doesn’t impact paid accounts in any way.

This was a targeted hit to key farming.

Which is why I said “part of the reason”.

I’m sure they also didn’t like the fact that the players who really wanted keys weren’t buying them.

Maybe they thought it was taking out two birds with one stone, but I don’t see it working out the way they want. Of all the people I know that have farmed keys, none of them are going to buy them.

My prediction is a negligible increase in key sales (if any at all) and BL weapon skins sky-rocketing to absurd prices. Future BL weapon skins will be a rare site, because so few are willing to pay the price. And that’s just the people that can actually afford to buy one.

Keneth.6490:

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.

You certainly can’t please everybody, and there’s (hopefully) a price point that people would refuse to pay from either side of the system because the effort is too extreme (I’m looking at you, Neopets paintbrushes).
However, among GW2 players, there are some that just have to get literally everything. We occasionally see this whenever a new item from the gem store comes out.

Black Lion Chest Keys from the early personal story rewards have been limited to one per week accountwide.
So i was having a discussion with my friend, the word early. You guy think that only mean the level 10 reward only?

I buy keys now and then, and have been relatively ‘lucky’ with getting scraps and whole tickets from them. In fact, the scraps/ticket luck I’ve had has offset the ‘no precursor drop since headstart’ luck!

That said, it will be interesting to see how much the BL skin prices change after this latest ‘key’ nerf.

There may have been a way for illegal RMT/gold sellers to potentially have abused the former system. Suppose they had large teams of players doing this:

- Use free accounts to farm keys and unlock black lion chests to get black lion scraps/tickets and other valuable items (endless hairstyle kits, rare dyes, rare minis, etc).
- When a free account reaches critical mass (RMT value of items exceeds cost of an account plus overhead), pay real money to unlock that account.
- Transfer items to hub account which handles the illegal item selling. Items get sold for more real money that it costs to unlock a single account.
- Unlocked account is now a burner that can be used for various additional purposes such as goldbot spamming, etc. Eventually it probably gets banned.
- Repeat

Doing this would allow the illegal sellers to earn real money, while any buyers would shoulder the risk of losing the items or possibly getting banned. Meanwhile, the update to limit black lion tickets to once per week would effectively kill this method for RMT/gold sellers since it will now be far to slow of a method to employ.

If ANet needed to tackle a free account RMT issue here, that’s good, but it would be nice to get some more info on why they nerfed key farming like they did. Without more details, it just seems rather spiteful to keyfarmers in general.

Kalendraf.9521:

There may have been a way for illegal RMT/gold sellers to potentially have abused the former system. Suppose they had large teams of players doing this:

- Use free accounts to farm keys and unlock black lion chests to get black lion scraps/tickets and other valuable items (endless hairstyle kits, rare dyes, rare minis, etc).
- When a free account reaches critical mass (RMT value of items exceeds cost of an account plus overhead), pay real money to unlock that account.
- Transfer items to hub account which handles the illegal item selling. Items get sold for more real money that it costs to unlock a single account.
- Unlocked account is now a burner that can be used for various additional purposes such as goldbot spamming, etc. Eventually it probably gets banned.
- Repeat

Doing this would allow the illegal sellers to earn real money, while any buyers would shoulder the risk of losing the items or possibly getting banned. Meanwhile, the update to limit black lion tickets to once per week would effectively kill this method for RMT/gold sellers since it will now be far to slow of a method to employ.

If ANet needed to tackle a free account RMT issue here, that’s good, but it would be nice to get some more info on why they nerfed key farming like they did. Without more details, it just seems rather spiteful to keyfarmers in general.

Then just block F2P accounts from acquiring keys.

I’m not a fan of this change. As someone that occasionally farms keys, I don’t like having the option of when I farm taken away from me. With my altoholism, running the story once a week, it will be the end of the year before I use all my birthday scrolls.
For more active farmers, this is terrible. For altoholics this is terrible, especially if you level them all at the same time. It’s basically time-gating the story for some people.
I get it, ANet wants people to spend money in the gem store, and sometimes when the keys go on sale I buy them, but please start to make the rewards worth it. Fewer boosters, if I wanted those there are others sources for them. Unbound minis would also be a nice change, since duplicates are pretty useless.
I really want to know the drop rate of the keys now. Since head start I’ve had less than a handful of keys drop, 3-4 at most. That’s less than 1 per 1000 hours played. And while that’s still worse than my precursor drop rate, it’s still not suitable for anyone.
Suggestions: really raise the drop rate, give us something useful to do with birthday scrolls(that doesn’t involve times or spirit shards), fewer booster related items in the chests, unbind blc minis, and also raise the ticket scraps in the chests.

The key farm for me isn’t an issue, don’t really want the chest drop rate increased though get too much worthless junk in game as it is. The chests are worthless and even if you get a key they give useless rubbish just storage filling garbage. Maybe that’s the point fill your storage with worthless junk so you buy more storage.

@Jester,

Chest drop was not increased. Key drop (supposedly) was.

SRoode.7318:

@Jester,

Chest drop was not increased. Key drop (supposedly) was.

“Increased the drop rate of Black Lion Chests and Black Lion Chest Keys throughout the world.”

SRoode.7318:

@Jester,

Chest drop was not increased. Key drop (supposedly) was.

Wrong.
“Increased the drop rate of Black Lion Chests and Black Lion Chest Keys throughout the world.”

Zera Allimatti.2541:

This recent patch is obviously an attempt to cull key farming, but it kind of screws over the new players.

Since we don’t know why ANet decided at this late date to nerf the keyfarm, it’s hard to offer an alternative that fits the situation.

• Some have suggested it’s to sell more gems. I discount that theory, since people already spent plenty on keys.
• Some suggested it’s to prevent free accounts from farming. This seems even less likely since (a) free accounts can’t transfer wealth and (b) this has never been the most profitable of farms by anyone’s measure, i.e. why nerf this one and not any of the other faster-wealth-acquisition methods out there.
• Some have suggested it’s to drive up the price of BL weapon skins. I also discount this theory, since they could just as easily have nerfed the ticket/scrap drop rate.
• We do know that ANet claims to have increased the open-world drop rate for keys. If they now drop as frequently as exotics, then likely we’ll see around the same number of keys in game, but better distributed — instead of keyfarmers getting all the wealth, they’ll be sharing it with anyone who kills a lot of foes.

tl;dr we’ll have to wait to see how the market for BL drops is affected and whether the open world rate is enough to compensate across the community. Until then, we’re just making some uninformed guesses about what’s going on.

Well it may be true that Key farming was not originally an intended function, but they did make it an accepted practice when they made changes to key farming and stated themselves that the intention was not to ruin key farming.

I personally bought character slots simply to farm keys. I would really like a refund for those 5 slots that are useless to me now.

Oh and yeah in the time I have played from the start of the game I have gotten like 2 key drops. Anet really wants us to all quit playing. And new players, make sure you don’t level more than one character per week in personal story or you are screwing yourself.

Paulytnz.7619:

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.

Ah whoops I must have worded that badly then, since I’ve actually been quite lucky with those scraps myself! I’ve often had chests with two in them. I meant that apart from the scraps, I don’t find the chests’ other contents worth the effort of repeated farming the keys. Since from my experience, zone completions or alt character story steps (I like leveling characters :P) get me those things at a slow but steady rate already.

If I remember correctly I own five BL weapons and have three tickets in my bank. Once I’ve bought a 20-pack of keys just for giggles and excitement, and to convince myself it wasn’t worth it haha. Then I bought the 5-pack for 100 gems last week. The rest of my keys has basically been from from personal story and most often map completion. I remember a key dropping for me twice, since the start. Of course both chests contained nothing haha, one of them was before the scraps even existed. :P

Now as an altoholic I do have quite some characters (whenever I have gold I convert, I’ve amassed 26 over the years haha), so that might help me in my case, since I have characters at all levels of the game. Though I’m not a super hardcore player, so I guess my way of earning keys is way too slow for some. But for me, zone completion while leveling has definitely been the most enjoyable way to obtain those scraps.

Zhou.3605:

Well it may be true that Key farming was not originally an intended function, but they did make it an accepted practice when they made changes to key farming and stated themselves that the intention was not to ruin key farming.

I personally bought character slots simply to farm keys. I would really like a refund for those 5 slots that are useless to me now.

Oh and yeah in the time I have played from the start of the game I have gotten like 2 key drops. Anet really wants us to all quit playing. And new players, make sure you don’t level more than one character per week in personal story or you are screwing yourself.

Take a deep breath. Their are many many ways to profit from extra character slots if you are not using them.

Zhou.3605:

I personally bought character slots simply to farm keys. I would really like a refund for those 5 slots that are useless to me now.

Dare I even ask why someone needs 5 slots for keyfarming?

AFAIK, it should only take 1 character slot to handle this.

After you had to level to lvl 10 it was more efficient for me and my friends to level 5 and then do 5 runs together, rather than be tied down to leveling them as we went and waiting for each other to be ready.

MashMash.1645:

Zhou.3605:

Well it may be true that Key farming was not originally an intended function, but they did make it an accepted practice when they made changes to key farming and stated themselves that the intention was not to ruin key farming.

I personally bought character slots simply to farm keys. I would really like a refund for those 5 slots that are useless to me now.

Oh and yeah in the time I have played from the start of the game I have gotten like 2 key drops. Anet really wants us to all quit playing. And new players, make sure you don’t level more than one character per week in personal story or you are screwing yourself.

Take a deep breath. Their are many many ways to profit from extra character slots if you are not using them.

I already submitted the ticket for a refund. I full well expect them to refuse, but their system changed, and they have made refunds in the past based on changes they made to their system. At this point they are wasting my $50.

Zhou.3605:

MashMash.1645:

Zhou.3605:

Well it may be true that Key farming was not originally an intended function, but they did make it an accepted practice when they made changes to key farming and stated themselves that the intention was not to ruin key farming.

I personally bought character slots simply to farm keys. I would really like a refund for those 5 slots that are useless to me now.

Oh and yeah in the time I have played from the start of the game I have gotten like 2 key drops. Anet really wants us to all quit playing. And new players, make sure you don’t level more than one character per week in personal story or you are screwing yourself.

Take a deep breath. Their are many many ways to profit from extra character slots if you are not using them.

I already submitted the ticket for a refund. I full well expect them to refuse, but their system changed, and they have made refunds in the past based on changes they made to their system. At this point they are wasting my $50.

Sine you probably won’t get a refund, get them to level 21 and park them at a chest. You’ll get level 20 gear to salvage or sell and the occasional silver doubloon.

I hope the minuscule increase in keys sales makes you happy, Arenanet, because the inevitable skyrocket of BL skin prices is going to give many of us something very different from happy.

Unless, you know, we actually get keys as reasonable drops now, but I wouldn’t hold my breath for that.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Zhou.3605:

MashMash.1645:

Zhou.3605:

Well it may be true that Key farming was not originally an intended function, but they did make it an accepted practice when they made changes to key farming and stated themselves that the intention was not to ruin key farming.

I personally bought character slots simply to farm keys. I would really like a refund for those 5 slots that are useless to me now.

Oh and yeah in the time I have played from the start of the game I have gotten like 2 key drops. Anet really wants us to all quit playing. And new players, make sure you don’t level more than one character per week in personal story or you are screwing yourself.

Take a deep breath. Their are many many ways to profit from extra character slots if you are not using them.

I already submitted the ticket for a refund. I full well expect them to refuse, but their system changed, and they have made refunds in the past based on changes they made to their system. At this point they are wasting my $50.

Sine you probably won’t get a refund, get them to level 21 and park them at a chest. You’ll get level 20 gear to salvage or sell and the occasional silver doubloon.

In b4 -characters can only open JP chests 1 time a week. XP

Let’s see:

1. Have an anniversary sale for the items no one really wanted anyway.

2. Add horrible event, and not only admit it’s horrible but say that you won’t fix it.

3. Take away a popular farm and leave players at the mercy of RNG. And expect them to pay real cash for it!

Yup, this is Anet in promotion mode. lol

DaShi.1368:

Let’s see:

1. Have an anniversary sale for the items no one really wanted anyway.

2. Add horrible event, and not only admit it’s horrible but say that you won’t fix it.

3. Take away a popular farm and leave players at the mercy of RNG. And expect them to pay real cash for it!

Yup, this is Anet in promotion mode. lol

So with you on this. At least we got a break on Monday from disappointment, right?