Guild Wars 2

Black Lion Keys & Chests are pretty much your standard gachapon system of rewards. That means that each reward is tied to a different percent chance. In the case of the exclusive BLC items, the drop rate is so low that it’s possible to spend hundreds of keys and still not receive the one off item. That’s just not tenable, encourages gambling that goes against the game’s ethos and can ruin one’s faith in spending via the gemstore.

Decent gachapon systems have a mechanism called the ‘pity timer’ which means that after a certain number of attempts the gacha system either increases the odds for the exclusive reward or ensures a near 100% chance. Those without pity timers are usually scam based mobile games which GW2 shouldn’t be

So I suggest that the BLCs add a pity timer mechanism that means that for this month, if you use around a dozen or so keys you get a 100% chance of obtaining the Sworn Zaishen Helm. Or make these exclusive items obtainable only after spending a set number of keys, so that way they can be assigned a monetary value, leaving the random gachapon values for the standard BLC items.

Also don’t add two monthly exclusive items, it’s bad enough getting duplicates of the mail carrier when you only want the helm. Just leave it to one item per month. Or make it that when you receive the account bound item the first time, then it is then removed from the reward pool to avoid pulling useless duplicates.

You want a pity timer on items that are uncommon that can only appear in a 4th slot, a slot that shares those uncommon item chances with both the rare and super-rare pool, a 4th slot that appears to only have a 10-15% chance of appearing?

Pretty sure you wouldn’t like the number of attempts I’m thinking is reasonable since at 2 or 3% chance. At the very best, it would be 50 and 33 respectively with the odds I stated. I personally would double or even triple that because those numbers 86% of the players would have gotten it “naturally” with the number doubled and 95% with the number tripled.

Would have loved to buy the Balthazar Hound mail carrier directly, but it will be a cold day in hell for me to gamble away my money. Especially when every time I used one of my rare freebie keys from the occasional map completion reward I got nothing but trash items.

To me these Black Lion Chests are currently just a Korean style cash-grab scam imo and I would never spend actual money on buying keys.

Mordeus.1234:

Black Lion Keys & Chests are pretty much your standard gachapon system of rewards. That means that each reward is tied to a different percent chance. In the case of the exclusive BLC items, the drop rate is so low that it’s possible to spend hundreds of keys and still not receive the one off item. That’s just not tenable, encourages gambling that goes against the game’s ethos and can ruin one’s faith in spending via the gemstore.

Decent gachapon systems have a mechanism called the ‘pity timer’ which means that after a certain number of attempts the gacha system either increases the odds for the exclusive reward or ensures a near 100% chance. Those without pity timers are usually scam based mobile games which GW2 shouldn’t be

So I suggest that the BLCs add a pity timer mechanism that means that for this month, if you use around a dozen or so keys you get a 100% chance of obtaining the Sworn Zaishen Helm. Or make these exclusive items obtainable only after spending a set number of keys, so that way they can be assigned a monetary value, leaving the random gachapon values for the standard BLC items.

Also don’t add two monthly exclusive items, it’s bad enough getting duplicates of the mail carrier when you only want the helm. Just leave it to one item per month. Or make it that when you receive the account bound item the first time, then it is then removed from the reward pool to avoid pulling useless duplicates.

If you received a duplicate Account Unlock (such as the Mail Carrier), you should have received 2 Black Lion Chest Keys, instead. (Of course, if it comes as a consumable item, you would have to have ‘consumed’ it, first, I believe.) Either way, you can contact the CS Team via the ‘Support’ link for assistance.

Good luck.

Behellagh.1468:

You want a pity timer on items that are uncommon that can only appear in a 4th slot, a slot that shares those uncommon item chances with both the rare and super-rare pool, a 4th slot that appears to only have a 10-15% chance of appearing?

Pretty sure you wouldn’t like the number of attempts I’m thinking is reasonable since at 2 or 3% chance. At the very best, it would be 50 and 33 respectively with the odds I stated. I personally would double or even triple that because those numbers 86% of the players would have gotten it “naturally” with the number doubled and 95% with the number tripled.

I’m suggesting a pity timer only for the monthly exclusives like the Zaishen Helm. The ordinary uncommon & rare items that appear frequently would be exempt since they aren’t monthly exclusives.

Maybe move the Zaishen Helm item from appearing in the 4th slot, to appearing in the 1st slot over the monthly item caches like the Zaishen War Paint Kit. So if the pity timer number was set at 12, then by spending 12 keys per month you are guaranteed the monthly exclusive. If you are opening the chests for other items then the rates wouldn’t change.

Now for the average player who key farms, the pity timer wouldn’t help them unless they buy some keys to reach that 12 key quota. But for those unlucky players who end up using 200+ keys just to get that one skin, it would be a big help.

Aveneo.2068:

Would have loved to buy the Balthazar Hound mail carrier directly, but it will be a cold day in hell for me to gamble away my money. Especially when every time I used one of my rare freebie keys from the occasional map completion reward I got nothing but trash items.

To me these Black Lion Chests are currently just a Korean style cash-grab scam imo and I would never spend actual money on buying keys.

Yeah it made no sense why they made that item available only through the chests. Especially since there was already an exclusive skin set aside for this month. I also wonder how items like that will reappear in the future. Whether they’ll reappear next year via the chests or make their way on the gemstore.

Anyways, they need to give a guaranteed cost to those items. Like calculate the average gem cost of mail carriers, double it, convert that into the number of keys required to use until you are guaranteed obtaining it via the chest. Which ends up being 10 keys. Having skins like that tied to a pure gacha system is antithetical to what I used to associate GW2 to.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

If you received a duplicate Account Unlock (such as the Mail Carrier), you should have received 2 Black Lion Chest Keys, instead. (Of course, if it comes as a consumable item, you would have to have ‘consumed’ it, first, I believe.) Either way, you can contact the CS Team via the ‘Support’ link for assistance.

Good luck.

Huh, that’s news to me. Luckily I got no duplicates this time round, unlike people I know. But back during Christmas I got around 3 duplicates of that Candelabra Staff while chasing the glider. I’ve since deleted those but had no idea that duplicates weren’t supposed to happen.

I only get tomes and transmutes from BLCs. I think trash items like that should be removed. I’d be more likely to buy keys if I didn’t get garbage every kitten time. I made the mistake of buying keys before. Never again.

While I am not opposed to the OP’s request, I don’t believe that its implementation would cause me to relax my stance on purchasing keys (I don’t, either with cash or gold). The entire point behind chests and purchased keys is to exploit low self control and player belief in the gambler’s fallacy to entice players to spend more to get specific virtual item X than an average, reasonable customer is likely to pay if the item were to be purchased outright. For that reason, I find it hard to believe that the pity system would kick in soon enough to suit me. Others’ mileage obviously varies, because enough people are buying the darned keys that ANet has not moved to a different system.

They should rather put a cool down timer on those one armed bandit chests. After every 5 keys used, you have to wait 5 hours or so, or you can only use 2 keys per day or whatever sounds reasonable.

In Germany, slot machines are required to have a cool down timer by law, and those chests function exactly like slot machines.

Faaris.8013:

They should rather put a cool down timer on those one armed bandit chests. After every 5 keys used, you have to wait 5 hours or so, or you can only use 2 keys per day or whatever sounds reasonable.

In Germany, slot machines are required to have a cool down timer by law, and those chests function exactly like slot machines.

Yeah certain countries have strict gambling laws but legislators seem to be slow to see gambling via online gaming in the same scope as slot machines.

I know that in Japan they recently passed a law that forced companies to be transparent with the actual drop rates of online gaming gacha rewards. When in the past they could get away with absurdly low drop rates without being upfront about the actual chances. The very least ArenaNet could do is to assign percentages to each BLC reward for the sake of transparency.

It’s a shame that outside of ArenaNet choosing to reform their BLC system on their own, it’ll probably fall on rather technologically illiterate legislators to pass laws to force such companies from using pure gacha systems.

I’ve open 101 of the chests after they switched to this new seasonal item.

I’ve gotten the 4th slot only 10 times. Once was a skin from the rare pool, the rest were uncommon including 4 BL Tickets, 2 seasonal dye kits and 3 seasonal items.

As long as you buy keys for the surprise factor instead of targeting a specific item from them then it’s fine. I like blind box and capsule toys and I see BLC no differently.

I’m generally against this method because I would’ve paid good gems for it,
But I’m not gonna pay real life money without even knowing whether or not
I’m going to get the item.
I’d pay 2000 gems for a permanent contract, I’d pay 600-700 gems for the
elemental sword or sword zaishen helmet, but I’m not gonna spend 200 keys for a small chance of either skin, or 10,000 key for a small chance of a contract.
If anet doesn’t want my money, that’s fine, it’s their choice, it’s just a lose-lose situation, and that’s just kinda sad

Behellagh.1468:

I’ve open 101 of the chests after they switched to this new seasonal item.

I’ve gotten the 4th slot only 10 times. Once was a skin from the rare pool, the rest were uncommon including 4 BL Tickets, 2 seasonal dye kits and 3 seasonal items.

As long as you buy keys for the surprise factor instead of targeting a specific item from them then it’s fine. I like blind box and capsule toys and I see BLC no differently.

I just wish they would be transparent to what’s the difference in terms of % from common, uncommon, rare and super rare. The collected data on the wiki page doesn’t seem to have a big enough sample size to put a % value onto the various tiers. At the moment the various rarity labels seem to be misnomers. Because the BLC definition of uncommon is probably not the drop loot definition of uncommon.

I’d be fine with the BLC business model if there weren’t those limited skins thrown in. They seem to be marketing the BLCs these days less on the random chance and more on obtaining specific account bound items.

The definition of season items seems largely undefined because while I can see the Infinirarium Glider being in rotation every christmas, the Living Story specific ones seem like their ‘season’ is a one time only thing. It would suck for those who bought such items via the keys, if they eventually repackage them via the gemstore.

To try and get those one or two exclusive monthly items every month, means spending alot on keys. You probably have the right approach by pulling randomly and not expecting much. But the way they’ve been marketing those exclusives seems rather off.

Amaimon.7823:

I’m generally against this method because I would’ve paid good gems for it,
But I’m not gonna pay real life money without even knowing whether or not
I’m going to get the item.
I’d pay 2000 gems for a permanent contract, I’d pay 600-700 gems for the
elemental sword or sword zaishen helmet, but I’m not gonna spend 200 keys for a small chance of either skin, or 10,000 key for a small chance of a contract.
If anet doesn’t want my money, that’s fine, it’s their choice, it’s just a lose-lose situation, and that’s just kinda sad

I think the rarity of the permanent contracts, nodes and BL weapon skins is fine because they can be bought via the trading post with gold and should be that rare. But those account bound skins really need to have a specific monetary value placed on them. Instead of using them to drive the sale of keys, they should have them as a loyalty rewards for those who use a certain number of keys each month.

I frankly hate the black lion chests. all the items in those chests should be available in the gem store for gems. Not through the stupid gambling chests… >.>

Zelanard.5806:

I frankly hate the black lion chests. all the items in those chests should be available in the gem store for gems. Not through the stupid gambling chests… >.>

Well ANet did do an A/B test once with the item available from chest and the gem shop at the same time. And I bet dollars to doughnuts that what they learned was they sold more gems when the item was available only in the chest. Remember the Gem Shop is substituting for the income MMOs once made from subscriptions. Considering the way the gem exchange rate spikes when keys go on sale, RNG chests are still quite popular.

I would also love to see a general breakdown in odds for drawing from the uncommon, rare and ultra-rare pools. But specific within each pool, no, unless that too is general such as getting a weapon skin vs a contract in the ultra-rare pool or weapon skin vs mining node in the rare pool.

look I can get 1 key a week that’s 4 keys a month it take me 4 and half months to get 10 keys I save them and use them all in 1 month you get the item so you can say it will make you earn it look at it this way

Excelsior.

As someone said, it’s more a fun gamble (or it should be) for something unexpected. Putting in things that are more or less wanted is bad. I only bought it once because I wanted Mini Rox (aka the cutest cat in this game) but I immediately hated the slot machine feel to it.

The pity timer is something I wish in many RNG games, like the chores in FF14. Gambling and/or RNG are very bad mechanics in almost every way expect if you have a sure chance on “something” good no matter what and the RNG just selects one of the goodies instead of “goodie or trash”.

I’d even say people would buy stuff from the store if they simply point there and pick it up. If I wouldn’t get Mini Rox from my €10 I spent for those boxes, I would never ever again pick up a BLC because my success rate would be 0% so far and I won’t throw another tenner for more attempts.

I don’t have a lot of spare money so I don’t buy keys because they have tomes of knowledge and transmutation charges in there. I have close to 250 tomes just sitting in my bank, I have absolutely no need for them. If they removed those two things and replaced them with something else I would probably buy keys more often.

The Trading Post exists, which means that a “pity timer” already exists. If you aren’t lucky, you can always buy it from someone who was.

mtpelion.4562:

The Trading Post exists, which means that a “pity timer” already exists. If you aren’t lucky, you can always buy it from someone who was.

Okay, let me just look for the Elemental Sword or the Zaishen Helmet, ..
..
aah, there they are, 350g and 525g respectively, that’s affordable, let me just do a few fractals and I have the money..
..
..
Okay, I have the money, time to buy one..
..
..
I’m clicking buy but it doesn’t work.. it says something about the item being accountbound to the finder.. weird..

Aveneo.2068:

Would have loved to buy the Balthazar Hound mail carrier directly, but it will be a cold day in hell for me to gamble away my money. Especially when every time I used one of my rare freebie keys from the occasional map completion reward I got nothing but trash items.

To me these Black Lion Chests are currently just a Korean style cash-grab scam imo and I would never spend actual money on buying keys.

I’m with you 100%, that’s why I won’t buy keys and only get a few from map and personal story completions.

And to be honest I have never gotten anything from a chest or drop worth anything. If I like something in the Black Lion Trading Post I will buy it with cash to gems, I keep in game gold as gold to spend on my characters.

Amaimon.7823:

mtpelion.4562:

The Trading Post exists, which means that a “pity timer” already exists. If you aren’t lucky, you can always buy it from someone who was.

Okay, let me just look for the Elemental Sword or the Zaishen Helmet, ..
..
aah, there they are, 350g and 525g respectively, that’s affordable, let me just do a few fractals and I have the money..
..
..
Okay, I have the money, time to buy one..
..
..
I’m clicking buy but it doesn’t work.. it says something about the item being accountbound to the finder.. weird..

I was under the impression that both of those two skins were automatic? I was generally referring to the hundred or so other skins that are purchased with BL tickets.

mtpelion.4562:

I was under the impression that both of those two skins were automatic? I was generally referring to the hundred or so other skins that are purchased with BL tickets.

Automatic? If you mean “guaranteed drop”, no. They’re a rare drop from the chests, and they’re indeed account bound on acquire. That’s why people are frustrated about them.

RoseofGilead.8907:

mtpelion.4562:

I was under the impression that both of those two skins were automatic? I was generally referring to the hundred or so other skins that are purchased with BL tickets.

Automatic? If you mean “guaranteed drop”, no. They’re a rare drop from the chests, and they’re indeed account bound on acquire. That’s why people are frustrated about them.

Well, bless my good luck then, I thought they were guaranteed!

+1 to the idea of a pity counter! Doesn’t even have to be anything specific, just a gradual uptick of a chance to score a rare slot. +1% per key until you get it, then the bonus drops to 0 again.

mtpelion.4562:

RoseofGilead.8907:

mtpelion.4562:

I was under the impression that both of those two skins were automatic? I was generally referring to the hundred or so other skins that are purchased with BL tickets.

Automatic? If you mean “guaranteed drop”, no. They’re a rare drop from the chests, and they’re indeed account bound on acquire. That’s why people are frustrated about them.

Well, bless my good luck then, I thought they were guaranteed!

Nope, and the worst part is, you can find multiples. I have a guildy who ended up with 4 copies of the sword.
Can use only 1, after that it’s unlocked. He just had 3 extra free transmutes. Couldn’t sell them, or give them to his friends, completely wasted…

Which means you need to use it as soon as you get one and then since it’s unlocked you should get keys for the dups.

Amaimon.7823:

I’m clicking buy but it doesn’t work.. it says something about the item being accountbound to the finder.. weird..

While I mostly agree, this spcecific example is a pretty bad one, mostly because in this case the account-bound prevented you from spending ~500g on a plastic stage prop. :P