Guild Wars 2

For a while now, I have seemed to be acquiring a BL chest or 2 anytime I played any toon of any level in PvE. Even after dumping 500 on the TP I have over 100 now. I did have a key drop a couple of weeks ago in Orr, off a random npc, but that was before the patch.

Opened a BL chest over the weekend, and got a ticket and a scrap. Scrap got me to 10, so I picked up 2 skins. Probably use them myself, but tempted to hold on for a while to see how prices go.

Roundabout.1752:

We shouldn’t blame this on F2Players Anet restricted their use of the TP.

An F2P account can be unlocked by upgrading the account. Thus, an RMT/gold seller could employ an army of F2P accounts to farm keys and gather black lion tickets or other rare items, then upgrade each account when it hit critical mass.

The problem could have been dealt with much more elegantly by preventing F2P accounts from being able to get Black Lion Keys. The change they implemented went overboard and hurt legitimate players.

Kalendraf.9521:

Roundabout.1752:

We shouldn’t blame this on F2Players Anet restricted their use of the TP.

An F2P account can be unlocked by upgrading the account. Thus, an RMT/gold seller could employ an army of F2P accounts to farm keys and gather black lion tickets or other rare items, then upgrade each account when it hit critical mass.

The problem could have been dealt with much more elegantly by preventing F2P accounts from being able to get Black Lion Keys. The change they implemented went overboard and hurt legitimate players.

Yes, it would have been an effective strategy to allow free accounts to get chests, but limit keys to paid account. Upgrade to open the chests. Even give a free key for upgrading.

Kalendraf.9521:

Roundabout.1752:

We shouldn’t blame this on F2Players Anet restricted their use of the TP.

An F2P account can be unlocked by upgrading the account. Thus, an RMT/gold seller could employ an army of F2P accounts to farm keys and gather black lion tickets or other rare items, then upgrade each account when it hit critical mass.

The problem could have been dealt with much more elegantly by preventing F2P accounts from being able to get Black Lion Keys. The change they implemented went overboard and hurt legitimate players.

I guess that could happen seems like a lot of time and trouble to invest but I guess it could happen. I’m still not willing to blame F2Players for this, I know who I think is responsible and it’s not any player group.

I haven’t ready all of this topic, obviously. It is 9 pages long. But personally I don’t agree with this change.

TLDR:
1.) If I take a character through level 10 story and level 40 story in the same week I get screwed out of a key.
2.) If I have multiple characters more than likely I get screwed out of a key.

Long:
I don’t necessarily disagree with the block for farming the keys, but it shouldn’t be hard to detect if a character gets deleted at level 11 and remade and deleted at level 11 and remade to block a key farm. But people putting effort in to level multiple characters during the same week, or do story missions in the same week on different characters….

Really you think that decreasing drop rates or making items harder to get than historically possible wouldn’t happen anymore. Considering the last event had issues, then a day later we get slapped with this? Something more or less ignored for the last few years…. I’m starting to wonder why I bought the 100 dollar preorder.

Chests don’t have a good enough droprate to warrant me ever spending money on the keys. Changing how often I can get keys isn’t going to change that fact. That and the fact that keys are far too expensive for the droprate on items worth anything. Basically all this does is increase 1 ticket skins to 700 gold and all the more ticket skins to higher amounts of gold.

So really, either reverse this change and only block the people farming keys constantly. Or just make Black Lion chests/keys even more pointless than they are already. It doesn’t matter to me in the end, I’ve been here since GW1, I’ll probably be here after any other expansions released…. Probably not completely happy and spending money on gems though.

Instead of players aiming for rewards(black lion key drops)that give a mere chance at something cool, shouldn’t we be aiming our sights higher? Like, asking for drops that are rewards in and of themselves? Why should I want to have a better RNG chance of getting something that also has RNG involved in it? That’s super gross.

Iason Evan.3806:

Instead of players aiming for rewards(black lion key drops)that give a mere chance at something cool, shouldn’t we be aiming our sights higher? Like, asking for drops that are rewards in and of themselves? Why should I want to have a better RNG chance of getting something that also has RNG involved in it? That’s super gross.

Agree’d, before at least the keys were guarantee’d at level 10 story. Increasing their drop rate means nothing to me because abysmally low to abysmally low is still abysmally low. I think ANet has gotten further and further along in the cash shop route as time has gone on. And honestly its a bit disappointing considering what gw1 was for the longest time.

It’s funny. Remember a few months back when we were all worried about Nexon taking over NCsoft? Turns out we had nothing to fear. ANet are nickel and diming us all on their own :-(

More and more grind, and cash shop pushing.

MashMash.1645:

It’s funny. Remember a few months back when we were all worried about Nexon taking over NCsoft? Turns out we had nothing to fear. ANet are nickel and diming us all on their own :-(

More and more grind, and cash shop pushing.

You forgot “grind for very little to next to no rewards” (invasion event).

Paulytnz.7619:

MashMash.1645:

It’s funny. Remember a few months back when we were all worried about Nexon taking over NCsoft? Turns out we had nothing to fear. ANet are nickel and diming us all on their own :-(

More and more grind, and cash shop pushing.

You forgot “grind for very little to next to no rewards” (invasion event).

I haven’t forgotten. I’m still having nightmares. GOTTA TAG EM ALL!

Dinks.2478:

Behellagh.1468:

Darigen.2309:

Behellagh.1468:

Astralporing.1957:

Too bad they didn’t think that it might be because it’s the chests that are a problem.

That’s only because players collectively ignore the fact that the “junk” in chests is actually what chests were designed to deliver.

If they were designed to deliver that “junk”, why are the tickets in there as the only way to obtain them, too?

Unique backpack skins, account bound minis, set minis and missing event dye kits are also only available now from BLTC. Because it’s a rare PRIZE.

The mentality here if in the real world would be going into your local McDonalds and buying out all their packages with Monopoly game pieces, throwing away the “food” because you are hoping for one of the bigger prizes besides a bunch of tickets for free small fries. And then complain that the free small fry tickets are blocking you from getting one of the good prizes.

For the first 9 months of the game BLTC did not contain tickets. Period. Tickets and scraps were added to the existing reward pool as just one more potential reward. The notion that all those other rewards, many that have been there since launch, are cluttering your chance to get a ticket or scrap astounds me.

No, its not like that at all. The main reason people buy McDonalds is for food. People don’t buy BL Keys for worthless boosters and other worthless stuff. They know what they want out of it. This is 100% on anet, not the people.

Yeah, the McD’s contest is just an added bonus thrown in with your food purchase. You’re buying the food, unlike with BL keys where you’re buying the ability to open an RNG box. The keys are closer to a lottery ticket, or a raffle where everyone gets a little something with a chance at a jackpot.

And even the “junk prizes” in McD’s game are more valuable. You can win free food or drinks. And there no losing to bad RNG, because you still get the food you wanted, and paid for.

As far as the BL weapon skins are concerned, it’s just a system to sell weapon skins at $30/150 each. The 33% drop rate on scraps doesn’t make it much of a lottery that you can win. It’s a fairly high chance, and all it does is set the average number of keys you’ll have to buy in order to get a weapon. The only way to “win” with a BL chest is the small chance to get complete ticket, or the tiny chance of getting one of the more valuable gemstore items or an NPC service contract. And “losing” with the BL chest means getting items that are inferior (boosters) to items that are already sold at a lower price in the gem store, or getting something that is completely worthless(armor repair/res/powder).

Kodiak.3281:

I figure it’s one of two things.

1. They didn’t meet their key sales numbers when Keys were on sale during the anniversary sale and they’re blaming Key farming.

2. The F2P people figured out you can farm Black Lion keys and Anet is putting the pinch on lower level keys to prevent it cause it’s a decent source of income with the skins (decent, not the best).

Either scenario not happy. This was pretty much the only way I bothered with keys. In every scenario its’ better to buy what you want out of the chest by buying gems, selling gold, then buying the item because of how crappy the drop rates are of useless garbage in the chests. No one wants an armor booster Anet. When we get Booster, Booster, Repair Cannister it’s a kick in the balls.

They didn’t have good deals on keys to boost sales. Heck they had the 5 keys deal a week ago, limited to 1 purchase. I bought that. All I wanted out of it were some scraps to add to my existing 4 and got a total of 0 out of those 5 keys. Not exactly enticing me to buy more, and the fact I was only limited to 1 purchase at what I would consider a reasonable price for them makes it their loss more so than mine.

I’m fairly certain this is not a way to encourage sales. Players that weren’t buying them a week ago aren’t feeling any more tempted to purchase just because of this. To boost sales they’d need to adjust the content tables of chests or lower their price.

I care for no single item in chests other than the ocassional BL skin and they’d make far more money from me if they removed this annoying RNG acquisition of 10 scraps from chests entirely and sold them separately. I posted this in another thread recently, but a smartbox system would bring them more revenue if they sold to 70% of playerbase than relying on the 10% with nothing better to do than buy keys and gamble. Hell if the skins were nice I’d shell out for a full set and maybe finish a collection, if they were guaranteed and at a reasonable, fixed price.

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.

People will never buy keys as long as the content of the BL chests is so horrible.

Seriously, half of the junk you can get from BL chests needs to be removed from the BL chest drop table, and in turn the drop chances for BL tickets and BL ticket scraps need to be increased.

Scraps should be a guaranteed drop, in addition to the chance of more scraps. With this, skins would be around 7-8 keys/630-720gems/$8-9/130-150g average. That’s about the upper limit what a skin should cost in gems/cash.

they only mentioned the level 10 personal story. I assume the level 40 and 60 personal story will still give unlimited keys?

What should of been done first

1. Fix contents of Chests
-Check profits made only via keys

2. Remove key gain for free accounts.

3. Give time frame upon character creation in which tomes can be used. Be it level restriction / age of character.

4. If still all else has failed, then nerf key farming with a giant slam of rage.
-Check sales.

5. Rinse and repeat of option 1 until it meets players standards.
-Remembering the customer is always right is the biggest key factor here. If they do not listen to demands that are reasonable they will only sink their own ship.

Okay, further to my receiving 2 chests yesterday with utter nonsense inside, once again today I get one chest and zero keys. I did still have a key though from the sale, so, like in my last post, I opened it. Contents:

Bank access express #facepalm
Trading post express #pullmorehairout
Speed booster #KILLMENOW

This change is utterly banal when the contents of these chests are abysmal.

Out of 60 guild mates only one has had a key drop so far. Oh and he got an account bound mini he already had and I forget what else because it was so dull.

Please anet address this and answer our legitimate, fair questions regarding the subject too. A lot of people in this thread have great ideas – we need your input. We are your future and you are jeopardizing a lot by not commenting and responding to is very VERY loyal supporters.

Personally, I have had enough of the changes in Guild Wars 2 that look to make playing the game less rewarding, over the past year the game changes have steadily tried to force people to the conclusion that they should just BUY the things they want from the gem store, as farming for anything is too tedious and time consuming, and will be constantly nerfed until it is pointless to do anymore.

I had originally decided after yesterday’s patch to simply boycott buying keys, or anything else from the gemstore, their overpriced expansion included.

But as I logged in today, and ran around doing the same old crap I have done countless times, getting the same old junk drops, I asked myself why am I even here doing this again today…

The answer is because I feel invested, I purchased the game, I supported Anet and Guild Wars 2 through gem store purchases throughout the last 3 years and have built a pretty solid account, with a full roster of characters, skins, legendaries, etc.

But should I let myself feel obligated to continue playing a game that is not only becoming stale due to the lack of fresh content, but has also become less and less rewarding to play as Arenanet makes every effort to thwart the player’s accumulation of wealth by any means other then gem store purchase?

The answer, for me at least, is no.

I dislike the direction the game is headed in, now being free to play, Arenanet feels the need to try and soak every cent that they can from each and every player, with no distinction or concession for those of us that actually bought this game and supported it for the last 3 years.

The content has become stale, the action is lacking and the focus is on costumes and skins, most of which I don’t even like.

I like to grind, play hard and go after coveted items, I enjoy the journey, I enjoy finding ways to make the gold I need to progress, I like the rewarding feeling I get when I kill something challenging and get awesome loot.

I used to get this feeling when I played Guild Wars 2, but over the past year or so it has felt like Anet has been there at every turn to water down these experiences, make the loot less awesome, and less frequent, and has, beyond that, been focused on nothing but pushing gem store items and pre-orders for this expansion, that as of this point really doesn’t seem to contain very much content in comparison to what we got when we purchased Guild Wars 2 at nearly the same price.

It feels like greed, it feels like disrespect and I feel insulted because of it.

This isn’t just about key farming being removed from the game, it’s about the entire laundry list of things that have led up to this.

Maybe things will change after the expansion rolls out and Anet no longer has the “Boy, wait to you see what we have in store for you guys!” card to play that many people seem so enamored by, but that remains to be seen.

I’ll probably check back in for a visit once the expansion goes on sale and is at a price that is more congruent with the amount of content included in it, but, until then, I am off in search of a more rewarding experience, with a focus on action and adventure, not on rainbow colored outfits that would look less out of place in Caitlyn Jenner’s closet then they do on my Warrior.

Next stop Elder Scrolls Online, I have heard great things about this game since it’s botched launch, and now I think the time is right for me to revisit Tamriel, so, for now, farewell my friends.

Maybe sometime in the future I will find myself on their forums writing a similar post, I guess only time will tell.

-Eddie

/rant

Behellagh.1468:

The mentality here if in the real world would be going into your local McDonalds and buying out all their packages with Monopoly game pieces, throwing away the “food” because you are hoping for one of the bigger prizes besides a bunch of tickets for free small fries. And then complain that the free small fry tickets are blocking you from getting one of the good prizes.

No, in your analogy the initial food purchase is not thrown away, it’s the equivalent of the BL key and it’s consumed.

That aside, if you consider permanent contracts as the “car” prize, weapon skins as the secondary “TV” prize, and boosters as the “free meal” prize, then it’s more accurate to say that people are complaining they have to shell out $4k in meals for the secondary TV prize that has a MSRP of $1k; similarly we’re complaining that we have to shell out an average of 2550 gems for a skin that shouldn’t be more than 500~600 gems (because that’s what ANet sets their gem store weapon skin prices at).

Difference is someone can walk away from McDonalds and buy the TV at its actual value. We don’t have that choice, our alternative is a market that already prices the skins above what the value should be – and if our fears prove correct, that price is going to shoot up now that we have fewer people with surplus skins to sell.

bacon.9461:

TLDR:
1.) If I take a character through level 10 story and level 40 story in the same week I get screwed out of a key.

I got the level 10 and level 40 keys on different characters this week. I’ll come back when I get the level 10 character to level 40 and see if a key comes out. (If it doesn’t, I can’t be certain why, either because the reason stated is true, or the level 40 key is also time gated.)

I notice there are a lot of intelligent people posting on this forum, with great ideas on how to make the game better for the players and more profitable for Anet.

It’s unfortunate that Anet doesn’t listen to it’s playerbase more often.

What’s more unfortunate though, is that all these cool and level headed people are here on the forums venting their frustrations instead of having fun and playing the game they all paid for, several times over in most cases.

CandyHearts.6025:

What should of been done first

1. Fix contents of Chests
-Check profits made only via keys

2. Remove key gain for free accounts.

3. Give time frame upon character creation in which tomes can be used. Be it level restriction / age of character.

4. If still all else has failed, then nerf key farming with a giant slam of rage.
-Check sales.

5. Rinse and repeat of option 1 until it meets players standards.
-Remembering the customer is always right is the biggest key factor here. If they do not listen to demands that are reasonable they will only sink their own ship.

Or they could just utilize “per character slot” more often. If key farming is an issue then only allow X per week per character slot, this way those with multiple characters can still run PS just fine, but blocks key farming.

I also don’t think they should inhibit F2P accounts from getting BLK, its a good marketing tactic and with F2P restrictions the effect is limited.

XYLUM.7286:

I notice there are a lot of intelligent people posting on this forum, with great ideas on how to make the game better for the players and more profitable for Anet.

To be fair, we don’t know what would be profitable for ANet, only ANet would really know that since they’re the ones with the metrics on overall player spending behavior.

The only thing we can really comment on is how fair (or unfair) ANet’s choices are on an individual level and stripping the ability to mitigate (or completely eliminate) the cost of overpriced skins is pretty kitten unfair.

Behellagh.1468:

CandyHearts.6025:

The issue I have with this at the moment is. How does the key reset work? Is it based on when you get one? Or the weekly reset?

I heard it was a weekly reset and not timed to your last one.

I’ve been trying to locate a source for that; do you have one? If that’s true, it makes the change suck slightly little less. At least we can easily keep track of it…

Pandaman.4758:

XYLUM.7286:

I notice there are a lot of intelligent people posting on this forum, with great ideas on how to make the game better for the players and more profitable for Anet.

To be fair, we don’t know what would be profitable for ANet, only ANet would really know that since they’re the ones with the metrics on overall player spending behavior.

The only thing we can really comment on is how fair (or unfair) ANet’s choices are on an individual level and stripping the ability to mitigate (or completely eliminate) the cost of overpriced skins is pretty kitten unfair.

And that’s the crux of the matter. It’s “my way or the highway” with this change. Either you pay with money/gold or you don’t get to have the nice skins. If you do the allowable weekly key farm, you’ll get one skin a year, 2 if very lucky. Unless you pull out your wallet or grind for the gold, more than that is out of reach. The skins that will be in the trading post are going to be from people who bought keys and if they have any sense they will price the skins for what it cost them plus profit. It really tightens the screws on getting the nice cosmetics in a cosmetic based game.

XYLUM.7286:

I notice there are a lot of intelligent people posting on this forum, with great ideas on how to make the game better for the players and more profitable for Anet.

It’s unfortunate that Anet does listen to it’s playerbase more often.

What’s more unfortunate though, is that all these cool and level headed people are here on the forums venting their frustrations instead of having fun and playing the game they all paid for, several times over in most cases.

Because if this is the direction the game is headed, where loot as rewards for doing actual content is removed in favor of herding us to the gem store do we really want to be here as it gets worse? We have to spread our message now, because if we wait there will be nobody to spread our message to later.

Probably problem was to many player do same easy L10 story over and over to get key and then ticket for easy gold. Get tickets buy skin and sell on TP for 100-500 gold or some thing like that. Arena net probably do not want people do L10 stuff in instance over and over for so much gold. Some people even say they watch movie when they do key run. They want player to go out in world and do other thing. Just like when they nerf champ train in Queensdale. Or when they change some daily to try and make player go to PvP or WvW or fractal. To many people do low level thing over and over for gold. I think arena net try to change that.

Qugi.2653:

Probably problem was to many player do same easy L10 story over and over to get key and then ticket for easy gold. Get tickets buy skin and sell on TP for 100-500 gold or some thing like that. Arena net probably do not want people do L10 stuff in instance over and over for so much gold. Some people even say they watch movie when they do key run. They want player to go out in world and do other thing. Just like when they nerf champ train in Queensdale. Or when they change some daily to try and make player go to PvP or WvW or fractal. To many people do low level thing over and over for gold. I think arena net try to change that.

And as sure as water flows down hill, we all just went and found something else to farm. shrug It’s human nature.

MashMash.1645:

Qugi.2653:

Probably problem was to many player do same easy L10 story over and over to get key and then ticket for easy gold. Get tickets buy skin and sell on TP for 100-500 gold or some thing like that. Arena net probably do not want people do L10 stuff in instance over and over for so much gold. Some people even say they watch movie when they do key run. They want player to go out in world and do other thing. Just like when they nerf champ train in Queensdale. Or when they change some daily to try and make player go to PvP or WvW or fractal. To many people do low level thing over and over for gold. I think arena net try to change that.

And as sure as water flows down hill, we all just went and found something else to farm. shrug It’s human nature.

Share your farm because I think key farmer here will like to know how to get 100+ gold a week from doing L10 thing over and over while watch movies. But arena net might nerf to if it is low level farm.

Personal Story

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

Really? Was this a change many people demanded? Why, just why?

I tried this a bit back before the NPE changed things the first time around, and it was one of the most boring things ever in this game. I couldn’t stand to do it even when it wasn’t restricted at all!

Also, what if I’m spending a week running through Personal Stories for characters to get it over with? Do the keys just vanish or do I get them later? Does this affect just the Lv10 instance for the key (implied by the “early” mention in the text), or the Lv30 and 50 ones too?

Even as someone that didn’t care about it at all, I feel this change is stupid. This will not encourage key sales nor do anything actually helpful for the game. I don’t believe enough people did this to impact anything.

It’s just a pointless restriction. And I don’t believe the supposed increase on the drop rate of the keys and chest will compensate either.

XYLUM.7286:

I notice there are a lot of intelligent people posting on this forum, with great ideas on how to make the game better for the players and more profitable for Anet.

It’s unfortunate that Anet does listen to it’s playerbase more often.

What’s more unfortunate though, is that all these cool and level headed people are here on the forums venting their frustrations instead of having fun and playing the game they all paid for, several times over in most cases.

I believe they just don’t want to turn out like this. In other words, even while having fun, don’t ignore whats going on around.

bacon.9461:

I haven’t ready all of this topic, obviously. It is 9 pages long. But personally I don’t agree with this change.

TLDR:
1.) If I take a character through level 10 story and level 40 story in the same week I get screwed out of a key.

Ignoring the patch notes that says it only affects “the early personal story rewards”.

I would not be surprised if this is a means to reduce the likelihood that free players can use key farming to avoid the gem cost of keys. Whether or not free players can trade these I am sure that Anet would rather they be a source of revenue.

The F2P business model is not just about attempting to encourage people to buy the game, some people never will, it is also about encouraging people to make microtransactions.

Ashen.2907:

I would not be surprised if this is a means to reduce the likelihood that free players can use key farming to avoid the gem cost of keys. Whether or not free players can trade these I am sure that Anet would rather they be a source of revenue.

The F2P business model is not just about attempting to encourage people to buy the game, some people never will, it is also about encouraging people to make microtransactions.

If F2P players were the reason for the change, then it would have only restricted those accounts. This was applied to everyone, when it could just as easily been only for F2P accounts.

Maybe the idea started off as a way to prevent F2P accounts from getting free gemstore stuff, but Anet made the decision to go ahead do this to everyone.

I don’t think this has anything to do with P4F. This falls into the same category of altering events to encourage players to do “other” things and to disrupt emergent game play modes that the devs frown upon. They were able to contain P4F accounts without altering things for paid players, they could have done the same in the PS.

Ok I Did It.2854:

This statement may hold weight, if they had removed the keys when key farming became mainstream, fact is its been in game well over a year, and now it gets nerfed, seems kind of strange, was there really that many key farmers upsetting the balance….doubtful

If you ask me, they deliberately left key farming in for a while to temper the effect of Lionguard Lyns allowing wealthier people early in the game to acquire massive numbers of black lion keys.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lionguard_Lyns#Trivia

If they’d banned key farming immediately, there would’ve been a huge outcry about how it was so unfair that early players were able to “easily” acquire so many keys, while it was near-impossible for later players. But by leaving key farming in, any complaints about Lionguard Lyns being removed would be met with, “Just go farm a key in 10 minutes.”

Now that we’re several years removed from the Lionguard Lyns key “exploit”, they can start cracking down on key farming. And they have been.

mrstealth.6701:

Scraps should be a guaranteed drop, in addition to the chance of more scraps. With this, skins would be around 7-8 keys/630-720gems/$8-9/130-150g average. That’s about the upper limit what a skin should cost in gems/cash.

mrstealth.6701:

As far as the BL weapon skins are concerned, it’s just a system to sell weapon skins at $30/150 each. The 33% drop rate on scraps doesn’t make it much of a lottery that you can win. It’s a fairly high chance, and all it does is set the average number of keys you’ll have to buy in order to get a weapon.

You’re only getting 33%? I’ve farmed/found about a dozen keys over the last month. Nearly every one has given me a scrap. And one of the ones which didn’t give me a scrap gave me two tickets. The chest drops guildmates have linked in guild chat have almost always included a scrap too.

The scraps used to be a lot rarer (I saved up 40 keys last year and opened them all at once – only got a dozen scraps). But right now they seem to be very close to a guaranteed drop. The tickets seem to be a lot more common too, as I’ve gotten 3 from the dozen recent keys. Several guildies linking their chest drops have gotten tickets as well. I only got one ticket the previous year from probably 150 chests.

I did still have a key though from the sale, so, like in my last post, I opened it. Contents:

Bank access express #facepalm
Trading post express #pullmorehairout
Speed booster #KILLMENOW

This change is utterly banal when the contents of these chests are abysmal.

At least those are all useful items. A year ago, more than a third of the items I got from the BLCs were those stupid mystery tonics. In fact I still have several stacks of them on some alt. Good move by Anet as they seem to have eliminated the tonics from the chest drop tables. The current chests are much improved over the past ones.

Behellagh.1468:

I don’t think this has anything to do with P4F. This falls into the same category of altering events to encourage players to do “other” things and to disrupt emergent game play modes that the devs frown upon. They were able to contain P4F accounts without altering things for paid players, they could have done the same in the PS.

No. Because malicious hardcore grind keyfarm f2p was possible for the bad people. Bad people did this in f2p, because there is no risk.
As soon as bad f2p people gain hundrets or thousands of keys/tickets without risk they can upgrade their f2p account and $$$$$.
Thats the problem. Thats why we all had to get this restrictions. Thats why its only f2p’s fault.

PS: If this gets deleted again then I serioustly have no idea how to explain it to someone. I wonder why it seems to be not allowed to explain the real reason why we all got these restrictions.

Bomber.3872:

Behellagh.1468:

I don’t think this has anything to do with P4F. This falls into the same category of altering events to encourage players to do “other” things and to disrupt emergent game play modes that the devs frown upon. They were able to contain P4F accounts without altering things for paid players, they could have done the same in the PS.

No. Because malicious hardcore grind keyfarm f2p was possible for the bad people. Bad people did this in f2p, because there is no risk.
As soon as bad f2p people gain hundrets or thousands of keys/tickets without risk they can upgrade their f2p account and $$$$$.
Thats the problem. Thats why we all had to get this restrictions. Thats why its only f2p’s fault.

PS: If this gets deleted again then I serioustly have no idea how to explain it to someone. I wonder why it seems to be not allowed to explain the real reason why we all got these restrictions.

Uh, no, your post is probably getting moderated because your reasoning makes no sense and you’re using it to attack F2P.

There was never a risk to keyfarming, ANet was aware of it for years and explicitly stated it wasn’t against any rules, why would anyone use a F2P account for that? Furthermore it would be stupid to keyfarm on a F2P account because you wouldn’t have access to ToKs, crafting materials, or the gold needed to bump yourself up to level 10, which would slow your progress down to three keys every two hours instead of the three keys per hour you would normally be able to do – and in the end you’d have to pay $50 just to access anything you get from keyfarming on a F2P account, totally defeating the purpose of keyfarming.

Pandaman.4758:

…

Seriously??? Stop thinking on one lonely new gw2 tester if you think about f2p.

Without going into detail (because I know detail in such things is not allowed and even then some people have problems to think or just to use google), the problem is: ‘automatisation’

If you still don’t understand it, then its your problem.

Bomber.3872:

Behellagh.1468:

I don’t think this has anything to do with P4F. This falls into the same category of altering events to encourage players to do “other” things and to disrupt emergent game play modes that the devs frown upon. They were able to contain P4F accounts without altering things for paid players, they could have done the same in the PS.

No. Because malicious hardcore grind keyfarm f2p was possible for the bad people. Bad people did this in f2p, because there is no risk.
As soon as bad f2p people gain hundrets or thousands of keys/tickets without risk they can upgrade their f2p account and $$$$$.
Thats the problem. Thats why we all had to get this restrictions. Thats why its only f2p’s fault.

PS: If this gets deleted again then I serioustly have no idea how to explain it to someone. I wonder why it seems to be not allowed to explain the real reason why we all got these restrictions.

Explain what the risk was. If you mean accounts that grind gold for gold sellers. it doesn’t matter if the account is paid or free. The computers can see accounts with abnormal activity and they’ll ban a paid account as fast as a free one. If you don’t think ANet can’t spot bots, well they can. Gold grinding accounts don’t last long.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Bomber.3872:

Behellagh.1468:

I don’t think this has anything to do with P4F. This falls into the same category of altering events to encourage players to do “other” things and to disrupt emergent game play modes that the devs frown upon. They were able to contain P4F accounts without altering things for paid players, they could have done the same in the PS.

No. Because malicious hardcore grind keyfarm f2p was possible for the bad people. Bad people did this in f2p, because there is no risk.
As soon as bad f2p people gain hundrets or thousands of keys/tickets without risk they can upgrade their f2p account and $$$$$.
Thats the problem. Thats why we all had to get this restrictions. Thats why its only f2p’s fault.

PS: If this gets deleted again then I serioustly have no idea how to explain it to someone. I wonder why it seems to be not allowed to explain the real reason why we all got these restrictions.

Explain what the risk was. If you mean accounts that grind gold for gold sellers. it doesn’t matter if the account is paid or free. The computers can see accounts with abnormal activity and they’ll ban a paid account as fast as a free one. If you don’t think ANet can’t spot bots, well they can. Gold grinding accounts don’t last long.

Risk is that real accs cost $, f2p don’t… Isn’t that obvious?

I actually wonder if in the long run we wont see much difference or so. I heard lots of people who normally wont do key farming may start once a week. Without the large increase in keys, they may even see more sales, which in turn means more chests open too. Yes I know the drop rate is not much better now, as far as we know, but that still more keys too. It really way to early to tell right now how things are effected except for the fact some hardcore key runnier have to stop.

TJgalon.5012:

I actually wonder if in the long run we wont see much difference or so. I heard lots of people who normally wont do key farming may start once a week. Without the large increase in keys, they may even see more sales, which in turn means more chests open too. Yes I know the drop rate is not much better now, as far as we know, but that still more keys too. It really way to early to tell right now how things are effected except for the fact some hardcore key runnier have to stop.

hardcore key runner do it until a ticket is full and sell the skin. → mor runs in a row until their goal is achieved

your lots of people who normally wont do key farming need at least 10 weeks for one ticket… (realistic over 20 weeks!)

-> more scraps on more account but no full tickets

I am not saying it easy. I am also saying, who knows if it effects matter. I am just saying, it might not be as bad, we only seen a couple days and a ton of panics and such.

Also sorry, some reason it corrected it to Runnier when I meant, Runner, though I am going to assume you know exactly what i meant.

Bomber.3872:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Bomber.3872:

Behellagh.1468:

I don’t think this has anything to do with P4F. This falls into the same category of altering events to encourage players to do “other” things and to disrupt emergent game play modes that the devs frown upon. They were able to contain P4F accounts without altering things for paid players, they could have done the same in the PS.

No. Because malicious hardcore grind keyfarm f2p was possible for the bad people. Bad people did this in f2p, because there is no risk.
As soon as bad f2p people gain hundrets or thousands of keys/tickets without risk they can upgrade their f2p account and $$$$$.
Thats the problem. Thats why we all had to get this restrictions. Thats why its only f2p’s fault.

PS: If this gets deleted again then I serioustly have no idea how to explain it to someone. I wonder why it seems to be not allowed to explain the real reason why we all got these restrictions.

Explain what the risk was. If you mean accounts that grind gold for gold sellers. it doesn’t matter if the account is paid or free. The computers can see accounts with abnormal activity and they’ll ban a paid account as fast as a free one. If you don’t think ANet can’t spot bots, well they can. Gold grinding accounts don’t last long.

Risk is that real accs cost $, f2p don’t… Isn’t that obvious?

1) you can only run keys one at a time. Multiple accounts won’t help you and actually hurt as it splits your scraps up between accounts, slowing you down.
2) if you have to pay to get use of the money, then how free they are doesn’t matter. Sooner or later you have to pony up the money. It’s $50 now or $50 later.
3) f2p accounts lack access to valuable help for doing key runs. No tomes or writs, making them less efficient.

Last but certainly not least

4) if you don’t think that ANet doesn’t have the metrics in place to see accounts that grind in an excessive, abnormal manner then you haven’t thought it out. Gold grinding accounts are in every MMO and every MMO learns to spot and ban them. Any account, free or paid that tries to run keys like you suggest would be spotted by the computer and banned.

TJgalon.5012:

I am not saying it easy. I am also saying, who knows if it effects matter. I am just saying, it might not be as bad, we only seen a couple days and a ton of panics and such.

Also sorry, some reason it corrected it to Runnier when I meant, Runner, though I am going to assume you know exactly what i meant.

its off topic but it was a language fail at me. i read first Ruinnier. nvm and sorry

also the reason why i delete it.

my apprehension is still that the sutff is more divided between accounts and i guess thats anets clue…. " oh i have now 7 scraps .kitten hat to wait 3 more weeks. i venture and buy some keys at gem store to finish the ticket "

but we will see

Bomber.3872:

Pandaman.4758:

…

Seriously??? Stop thinking on one lonely new gw2 tester if you think about f2p.

Without going into detail (because I know detail in such things is not allowed and even then some people have problems to think or just to use google), the problem is: ‘automatisation’

If you still don’t understand it, then its your problem.

You honestly believe ANet would not notice someone running a keyfarming bot 24/7, mark the account to be monitored, and simply ban both the alt and main account the moment they enter their CC information and/or transfer skins/gold to their main account?

Thing about automation is that the longer you run it, the more obvious a pattern it generates no matter how much randomization you try to code in, which in turn means you can also automate the process of detecting the activity. ANet did this in GW1, the only thing anyone dumb enough to try this in GW2 is going to do is cry on the account help forum about their “innocence”.

I never buy key for 125 gem each, but maybe with the keyfarming mostly gone, they could do more sale. 25 gem for a key, I would buy 4 at that price, or say 5 for 100, sounds better to me, lol.
I also wonder if this is a first step to something else. I hope for the better, just a wait and see of course. Till then, just going to hold on to my key, for the chest not really offering to many things I want atm. Also to prepare my self and my friends, for a Sunday run. Since I am not worry about being slowed down now, i don’t mind doing it as a group with them, and getting them into it too, hehe.

Ashen.2907:

The F2P business model is not just about attempting to encourage people to buy the game, some people never will, it is also about encouraging people to make microtransactions.

Its doing quite the opposite for me. Make the rewards from chests better encourages. Trying to force me by reducing the other ways makes me determined not to buy.

Ugh, forum bug.