Guild Wars 2

TJgalon.5012:

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.”

I stand corrected, but the increased drop rate of the chests is insignificant. I’m hoping the key drop rate is significant.

SRoode.7318:

TJgalon.5012:

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.”

I stand corrected, but the increased drop rate of the chests is insignificant. I’m hoping the key drop rate is significant.

There’s always a reason why increase %s aren’t added to patches and The “where” and “how”.

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

Every day, they are making the game better and better!!!

Don’t worry though, you know they’re reading the forums to see how this is going over.

But I liked the cat and baby lion minis that went on sale and lots of people wanted the jungle explorer outfit and bagslot expansions.

Agree that the event was terrible, no loot, no experience for lower leveled players (who should have been used anyway due to cheaper waypoint costs) and the mechanics of it encouraged tag and run rather than sticking it to the end. Then we’d have to deal with overscaled mobs, and overscaled teagarifs and trolls aren’t fun.

As for number 3 those players were exploiting, and it’s surprising how long the key farm thing lasted. I knew they’d eventually do so. I never got around to doing it myself though

Other highlights from the patch notes include:

-Laurel vendors now sell 1 hour of the new Item Booster, replacing the Laureate Magic Find Booster.
-Laurel vendors now sell 1 hour of the new Experience Booster, replacing the Laureate Experience Booster

So no more stacking that extra Laureate booster, ‘cause it doesn’t exist.

curls up in corner This patch was less of a patch and more of a dressed-up kick in the spleen.

DragonflyDusk.6582:

Other highlights from the patch notes include:

-Laurel vendors now sell 1 hour of the new Item Booster, replacing the Laureate Magic Find Booster.
-Laurel vendors now sell 1 hour of the new Experience Booster, replacing the Laureate Experience Booster

So no more stacking that extra Laureate booster, ‘cause it doesn’t exist.

curls up in corner This patch was less of a patch and more of a dressed-up kick in the spleen.

for 450 gems you can purchase a spleen guard.

CandyHearts.6025:

DragonflyDusk.6582:

Other highlights from the patch notes include:

-Laurel vendors now sell 1 hour of the new Item Booster, replacing the Laureate Magic Find Booster.
-Laurel vendors now sell 1 hour of the new Experience Booster, replacing the Laureate Experience Booster

So no more stacking that extra Laureate booster, ‘cause it doesn’t exist.

curls up in corner This patch was less of a patch and more of a dressed-up kick in the spleen.

for 450 gems you can purchase a spleen guard.

You mean if I buy keys I can gamble for one, right?

DragonflyDusk.6582:

Other highlights from the patch notes include:

-Laurel vendors now sell 1 hour of the new Item Booster, replacing the Laureate Magic Find Booster.
-Laurel vendors now sell 1 hour of the new Experience Booster, replacing the Laureate Experience Booster

So no more stacking that extra Laureate booster, ‘cause it doesn’t exist.

curls up in corner This patch was less of a patch and more of a dressed-up kick in the spleen.

Ouch! Sounds like a terrible change

When Anet ment the “no grind philosophy” they really forced us this time with one key per week lol

DragonflyDusk.6582:

CandyHearts.6025:

DragonflyDusk.6582:

Other highlights from the patch notes include:

-Laurel vendors now sell 1 hour of the new Item Booster, replacing the Laureate Magic Find Booster.
-Laurel vendors now sell 1 hour of the new Experience Booster, replacing the Laureate Experience Booster

So no more stacking that extra Laureate booster, ‘cause it doesn’t exist.

curls up in corner This patch was less of a patch and more of a dressed-up kick in the spleen.

for 450 gems you can purchase a spleen guard.

You mean if I buy keys I can gamble for one, right?

No you have to buy keys for 150 gems for a chance to activate the protection of the spleen guard.

xD

Agemnon.4608:

As for number 3 those players were exploiting, and it’s surprising how long the key farm thing lasted. I knew they’d eventually do so. I never got around to doing it myself though

For me, the only thing that made the Black Lion Keys justifiable to farm was that the results from the chests were RNG. Paying real money for RNG is just ridiculous.

That said, I only farmed the keys a few times (usually when bored or wanted a skin on sale ) because it gets tedious really fast. I hold no ill will to those who could bare doing it over and over again. In fact, I appreciate it because it kept the price of Black Lion skins at reasonable levels.

DaShi.1368:

Agemnon.4608:

As for number 3 those players were exploiting, and it’s surprising how long the key farm thing lasted. I knew they’d eventually do so. I never got around to doing it myself though

For me, the only thing that made the Black Lion Keys justifiable to farm was that the results from the chests were RNG. Paying real money for RNG is just ridiculous.

That said, I only farmed the keys a few times (usually when bored or wanted a skin on sale ) because it gets tedious really fast. I hold no ill will to those who could bare doing it over and over again. In fact, I appreciate it because it kept the price of Black Lion skins at reasonable levels.

See, I almost never key farmed, and if I did it was for maybe a week, then I wouldn’t do it again till halfway through the year. It is completely the prices of the Black Lion skins that has me freaking out about this. I’m not interested in turning this in to my second job, so if those keys dont have a significant, realistic drop increase, I’m going to pretty much say adios to anymore BL skins. And I never really had that many to begin with.

CandyHearts.6025:

DragonflyDusk.6582:

You mean if I buy keys I can gamble for one, right?

No you have to buy keys for 150 gems for a chance to activate the protection of the spleen guard.

xD

“Activate Spleen Guard!”

It’s Not Very Effective…

Man that 45 char title limit is a kitten.

I’ve been making and running warrior characters thru to “Setting the Stage” in order to get the racial chest armor skin reward and a Vigil skin reward for free, with the bonus of getting 2 black lion chest keys for my efforts. I did one or two this weekend, possibly Monday. I had my final character I wanted to do it with ready to go, and then the patch dropped.

Does the patch count runs completed before the patch for this week, or am I safe to do the final run with this final character now and still get a BL key?

And to confirm, is the reset for the BL key reward on Friday at the same time as the WvW/week reset?

Thank you.

DaShi.1368:

Agemnon.4608:

As for number 3 those players were exploiting, and it’s surprising how long the key farm thing lasted. I knew they’d eventually do so. I never got around to doing it myself though

For me, the only thing that made the Black Lion Keys justifiable to farm was that the results from the chests were RNG. Paying real money for RNG is just ridiculous.

That said, I only farmed the keys a few times (usually when bored or wanted a skin on sale ) because it gets tedious really fast. I hold no ill will to those who could bare doing it over and over again. In fact, I appreciate it because it kept the price of Black Lion skins at reasonable levels.

Agree that paying for RNG is ridiculous but it’s the intended purpose of the keys. I hold no ill will over the players either but the farming, as reasonable as it was to do, is technically an exploit.

Agemnon.4608:

As for number 3 those players were exploiting, and it’s surprising how long the key farm thing lasted. I knew they’d eventually do so. I never got around to doing it myself though

Actually, Anet stated (multiple times) that they were fine with the key farming. And even commented that they didn’t want to kill it when they made the NPE changes, and locked the first story chapter until level 10.

This is a complete 180 on a position Anet has confirmed, and reconfirmed a few times over the last three years.

DragonflyDusk.6582:

DaShi.1368:

Agemnon.4608:

As for number 3 those players were exploiting, and it’s surprising how long the key farm thing lasted. I knew they’d eventually do so. I never got around to doing it myself though

For me, the only thing that made the Black Lion Keys justifiable to farm was that the results from the chests were RNG. Paying real money for RNG is just ridiculous.

That said, I only farmed the keys a few times (usually when bored or wanted a skin on sale ) because it gets tedious really fast. I hold no ill will to those who could bare doing it over and over again. In fact, I appreciate it because it kept the price of Black Lion skins at reasonable levels.

See, I almost never key farmed, and if I did it was for maybe a week, then I wouldn’t do it again till halfway through the year. It is completely the prices of the Black Lion skins that has me freaking out about this. I’m not interested in turning this in to my second job, so if those keys dont have a significant, realistic drop increase, I’m going to pretty much say adios to anymore BL skins. And I never really had that many to begin with.

CandyHearts.6025:

DragonflyDusk.6582:

You mean if I buy keys I can gamble for one, right?

No you have to buy keys for 150 gems for a chance to activate the protection of the spleen guard.

xD

“Activate Spleen Guard!”

It’s Not Very Effective…

XD! LOOL

Others have completed key runs this week before today, and received a key for a run after the patch. (The information was right in the big key run thread.)

No idea when the reset is; a week from the last time you do it, or at a certain time each week.

Good luck.

mrstealth.6701:

Agemnon.4608:

As for number 3 those players were exploiting, and it’s surprising how long the key farm thing lasted. I knew they’d eventually do so. I never got around to doing it myself though

Actually, Anet stated (multiple times) that they were fine with the key farming. And even commented that they didn’t want to kill it when they made the NPE changes, and locked the first story chapter until level 10.

This is a complete 180 on a position Anet has confirmed, and reconfirmed a few times over the last three years.

And they wont comment about it of course. There is one thing I hate and that’s when there’s a problem gaming companies go into hiding and refuse to give reasons. I could almost be fine with the changes if I understood them going night and day on the issue.

They prob should have just placed the key at a higher level instead of creating more inconsistancys in the game (yes I am aware there are other keys are higher levels too).

“Man, that last Mordrem event sure was grindy! Why are you forcing me to grind?!”

“Oh no, they nerfed key farming! How will I grind for keys now?! ANET Y U NO LET ME GRIND!?”

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.

If key’s were supposed to be a major gem store sink, then they should have made them worth it. The reason so many people key farmed is that spending 20+ gold per key buying from the store just wasn’t worth it for what you normally see in return. Spending 20-25 min on a farm had more value as it at least could be seen as an investment.

I’ll be Interested to see what the “increased chances of dropped keys in the world” actually means. As of yesterday, the chances were absolutely abysmal. Hence the key farm.

Even if as many keys drop as were rewarded through key-farming, the price of BL Skins will still rise, I think. Distributing the keys, and thus the scraps obtained through those keys among a wider population means fewer people have enough scraps (at a time) to purchase the 1 ticket skins.

It may, on the other hand, encourage more players to keep playing, so to amass the 50 scraps then needed to purchase a skin (from the BL Trader). /shrug

CETheLucid.3964:

“Man, that last Mordrem event sure was grindy! Why are you forcing me to grind?!”

“Oh no, they nerfed key farming! How will I grind for keys now?! ANET Y U NO LET ME GRIND!?”

Actually, Key-framing SAVED me from grinding, because other people do it for the scraps, the prices of BL skins stayed lower and more affordable. But keep ignoring context.

Unless they only limited level 10 rewards then this is potentially hurting legitimate players as it is telling them they can do up to level 39 one week then up to 59 the next week or they sacrifice two keys just to complete that story. As that is the only real reward from Personal Story that is a wee bit bullcrap. Now add in that they state nothing of if it will also effect LS2 Tangled Paths ability to get a key and you have a wonderful mess. All this is if you are only running one character through the story, no imagine people that have 8 soon to be 9 with the revnant and some not even having story completed once or others like me that have 13 and an empty slot. I have only completed the story twice, and that was going to be my next charge after mapping all my characters, well guess that idea was a bust. I wouldn’t care if I had to wait a week per a character but 3 weeks per a character just to complete story and not be robbed of rewards is bullcrap.

I generally farm a few keys a week, doing it while watching a sporting event on TV or something. This kind of stinks, but now I’ll probably just start a character and do maps and PS through 80, then delete and repeat. If they actually did increase the key drop rate significantly, this could be a pretty good change unless you farm tons of keys per week currently.

I think you have it backwards. I think this issue was caused by new players, not by existing ones. This is also a bad move since existing players probably already bring in more gem store sales already then new players since older players might be more vested into the game so its actually the older players being penalized already.

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.

Once HOT hits Silver Doubloons should plummet so take advantage of this while you can. I assume they will plummet as they will be easily earned on the maps via events and such.

I did one yesterday and then one after the patch so you should be able to do one also.

They didn’t say the reset time but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the same time as the gold cap per account reset. That would be an easy way for the game to handle it.

(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)

Could of annoying things about this is:

• ANet will not tell us the reason behind this change since it is more than likely multi-faceted and there are a number of reasons
• This was a rather fun activity to do with guildmates after a night of pvp which now probably will be stopped

You never want to introduce “unfun” in your games, makes people move on and we do have a lot of new games coming out in the upcoming months.

What they should do is drop the requirement for the BL skins to 1 ticket regardless of skins. This would make paying for the keys a bit more palatable.

I am sitting here wondering at the logic behind limiting how many Black Lion Chest Keys we can get per week. I could see a limit per day but per week? Seriously?

Let me give you an example. I have a character that started the level 60 Claw Island storyline last night. Today I made a new character and leveled her a bit. I got the level 10 rewards on her, including a key. Now, because of this new “fix” if I finish my first characters storyline and save Claw Island I will be denied one of her rewards, the key, because now I can only get one key per week.

So basically I have a character sitting with her storyline half finished and if I want to get all of the rewards that she is supposed to get I have to wait until next week to finish it. Guess what, maybe I don’t want to wait a week, maybe just maybe I would like to finish it now but now I can’t. Did I remember to say thank you for messing up my week?

I have just one question.

Who is the uninformed person that works at Anet that thought this was a good idea and fair thing to do? They have to be uninformed because I don’t see anyone that has this communities best interests at heart doing this.

Once per day I could see, once a week is unneccessary.

CandyHearts.6025:

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

Might as well get rid of jp’s then.

It’s sort of a shame really, because all this is doing is punishing us regular players. They are making things less and less rewarding.

So with the most recent patch and the weekly limit to personal story with acquisition with keys you seem to have forgotten about the key acquired at level 40 and 60 in the tree and only thought about the farmed level 10 one. I know a lot of players are like me and charge through the story in the span of a couple days when they actually do it so you are now punishing them because the key farmers remaking toons constantly. As well you are punishing the newer players that don’t know about the second key reward at the higher levels that may lost out on that due to the account limitation.

So a question to the devs, is this only restricting the level 10 keys or are you forcing us to wait two weeks per a character and another week to start another characters story to complete it without being robbed of the one true reward throughout it all? And as well does this also affect the Living Story 2 key acquisition and is it on the same timer or different?

I have no problem waiting a week between characters, but if it takes me 2 weeks and a day just to complete the story to not get robbed of rewards then how is that fair to me? I normally either bust through the story in 2-4 days minus the last mission (which now can be soloed), so I went from being able to get 3 keys in that down to 1 and no other notable rewards minus upon completion getting rid of that green star.

It says in the patch notes “early” personal story. guess some clarification is needed for the players to know what constitutes “early”.

We are not sure yet which levels are restricted. I am assuming it’s only the lvl 10 PS and if so it would be perfectly fine for your char to continue on with the story. Until otherwise told by Anet I would take that as fact personally.

It’s one key a week for the low level storyline, most probably the level 10 story.

Black Lion Chest Keys from the early personal story rewards have been limited to one per week accountwide.

TheGrimm.5624:

Could of annoying things about this is:

• ANet will not tell us the reason behind this change since it is more than likely multi-faceted and there are a number of reasons
• This was a rather fun activity to do with guildmates after a night of pvp which now probably will be stopped

You never want to introduce “unfun” in your games, makes people move on and we do have a lot of new games coming out in the upcoming months.

That’s my main gripe – and not just with this change. I get they are combating shady types and bad peeps, but the more changes they’ve made has just made things less fun for all of us who got that little extra nice shiny every now and then. They’ve become more and more stingy and tightfisted as time has passed. Every little extra bauble that could be got in some other way, if you could be bothered putting in the time, has been stripped out and replaced with ‘If you could be so good as to follow me, the gemstore is this way. Will that be visa or mastercard?’. It’s like an accountant is deciding content.

CandyHearts.6025:

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?

yeah, but the engineer specialization is up next. I shutter to think how its gonna turn out at this rate.

Agrotera.1254:

Who is the uninformed person that works at Anet that thought this was a good idea and fair thing to do?

The accountant. Anet needs dat $$$$.

Serophous.9085:

CandyHearts.6025:

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?

yeah, but the engineer specialization is up next. I shutter to think how its gonna turn out at this rate.

Ooooooo you, don’t you DARE jinx it, I main Engi. Do NOT jinx it. Tommy Gun or Bust!

Agrotera.1254:

Once per day I could see, once a week is unneccessary.

Agree, once per day is a nice compromise.

MashMash.1645:

Agrotera.1254:

Who is the uninformed person that works at Anet that thought this was a good idea and fair thing to do?

The accountant. Anet needs dat $$$$.

But the people that don’t buy keys, will just convert in game gold to gems so you increase people grinding and people creating gold farms which creates negative environments.

I did not get a key with my level 40 rewards when I tried it the first time those +30 scrolls came out. So as far as I know the level 40 key reward is not 100% as the the level 10 key is. Granted it could have been a bug?

The other issue is that it takes 45m (the way I farm them, I use map to level) to get a key start to finish from level 10 vs unknown (maybe 1h given xp takes longer to gain at higher levels) time for farm at level 40 and that’s IF you get the key.

Black Lion Chest Keys from the early personal story rewards have been limited to one per week accountwide.

Probably level 10 only. The next one is level 40. Level 40 is mid level (and not part of the usual key farm),

DaShi.1368:

What they should do is drop the requirement for the BL skins to 1 ticket regardless of skins. This would make paying for the keys a bit more palatable.

The rotation of their life cycle is what creates some of the demand for the skin and encourages people to act while they have the chance. This makes sense in the supply and demand portion of the skins.

TJgalon.5012:

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’ve just picked up both the level 40 and level 10 keys in the space of an hour.

Keyrunning is now a question of which 1-30 set of PS quests is the fastest.

The logic is they don’t want us to play the game to get keys any longer. They want us to buy them with gems. End of story.

It would be dumb if you waited and did the story all in one day and got the key on level 10 but not at level 40 story part

Leveling alts to 40 once a week for 2 keys? That hardly seems worth it any longer. Leveling to 10 was relatively easy with tomes.

Celtic Lady.3729:

The logic is they don’t want us to play the game to get keys any longer. They want us to buy them with gems. End of story.

That’s how it has always been tbh. All other forms of getting keys were merely put in as the odd advertisement now and then to entice you to buy them with gems.

Just wait and see, next they will nerf being able to get them from map completes. As I suspect many key farmers will just turn into map complete farmers instead. Anet will see the spike in keys being obtained this way and go into emergency nerf mode again.