Guild Wars 2

Has anyone seen a noticeable drop rate of the keys? Or is it safe for me to assume they just increased it by .001% for the sake of saying it was increased?

Just gonna assume the latter.
They seem to believe that their cost:profit curve maximizes at 125 gems.

What is the drop rate for anything? ANet has never told us anything about drop rates on anything other than in vague terms like common, uncommon or rare.

If they did (and I don’t believe that for a second) it wouldn’t matter whether it was .001% or 100%

I had 2 keys drop from 3000+ hours over 3 years. Two.
A 100% increase in drop rate would make that 4 keys in 3 years.
Woop-de-freakin-do.

Use to get keys as a map reward way back when and I did get one key drop in the wild a few months ago.

AVM.5746:

Has anyone seen a noticeable drop rate of the keys? Or is it safe for me to assume they just increased it by .001% for the sake of saying it was increased?

I’m about to venture and test it out for myself.

I saw on reddit that people have gotten them from
-Fractals
-Trash mobs in various areas
-SW

But it’s not a lot of people so far. But! Maybe people just aren’t posting about it.

I’m sure it’s still impossibly low, liek the last time they raised the chance.
We are not going to benefit from this nerf. Prices will raise.

You actually have a better chance winning real money from a scratch off ticket and using it to buy gems to get keys than you do actually getting one to drop.

Guys it’s been changed for a day. I’m 100% you didn’t test enough to know the exact odds. Don’t be so down. We can make this work!

I’m going to make the guess that it will be moderately frequent. Let’s say an average of one a month per player.

Why? It ties in with the nerf to key farming. With one a month drop rate, people will now start to accumulate scraps. Once they get a few scraps they’ll start thinking about getting a ticket. Since they can no longer do a fast farm and get the remaining scraps, they’ll have to buy keys or wait however long it will take to finish the ticket.

With this new system ANet can get people who normally never buy keys to buy some to finish up their ticket.

CandyHearts.6025:

Guys it’s been changed for a day. I’m 100% you didn’t test enough to know the exact odds. Don’t be so down. We can make this work!

Like ScribeTheMad above, I too have only seen 2 drop in 3 years of play. Both times in WvW oddly enough.

Unless they increased it by several thousands of percent, it wont be anywhere near a noticeable amount.

Even the old drop rate of chests was fairly uncommon.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I’m going to make the guess that it will be moderately frequent. Let’s say an average of one a month per player.

Why? It ties in with the nerf to key farming. With one a month drop rate, people will now start to accumulate scraps. Once they get a few scraps they’ll start thinking about getting a ticket. Since they can no longer do a fast farm and get the remaining scraps, they’ll have to buy keys or wait however long it will take to finish the ticket.

With this new system ANet can get people who normally never buy keys to buy some to finish up their ticket.

It takes on average 2 boxes to get a single scrap.

At one key per month, you look at 6 scraps per year. You need 50 scraps for one of the more expensive weapon.

You are looking at a droprate which would require a player to play for 8 years for a single weapon. Such a vendor has 16 years. So to get every weapon from a single vendor → 133 years.

Legendaries are a joke compared to that.

Here is how many keys should drop right now: a few per day with averaging at about 2 per player per day. That would mean a player can choose one of the expnesive weapons about every two months. That some serious time commitment.

Or of course… they could up the item output of those boxes. Make them actually useful. More tickets (not scraps, tickets) and other actual useful stuff.

kitten instead of throwing out full tickets how about a good chance at a random Black Lion Skin. 20-25%.

Varonth.5830:

kitten instead of throwing out full tickets how about a good chance at a random Black Lion Skin. 20-25%.

It should just be a guarantee of a scrap per box if a whole ticket isn’t spawned.

People already would just convert 800gems to buy a single skin. This would be more expensive but it would at least feel like the boxes got you somewhere. I’ve opened 5 in a row before and gotten no scraps at all.

Substance E.4852:

CandyHearts.6025:

Guys it’s been changed for a day. I’m 100% you didn’t test enough to know the exact odds. Don’t be so down. We can make this work!

Like ScribeTheMad above, I too have only seen 2 drop in 3 years of play. Both times in WvW oddly enough.

Unless they increased it by several thousands of percent, it wont be anywhere near a noticeable amount.

Even the old drop rate of chests was fairly uncommon.

Welp I’m going to spend my day fighting trash mobs and uncovering maps to see if I get anything. Seeing as RNG hates me. . . If I get one then the odds were increased by a large amount. XD

CandyHearts.6025:

Substance E.4852:

CandyHearts.6025:

Guys it’s been changed for a day. I’m 100% you didn’t test enough to know the exact odds. Don’t be so down. We can make this work!

Like ScribeTheMad above, I too have only seen 2 drop in 3 years of play. Both times in WvW oddly enough.

Unless they increased it by several thousands of percent, it wont be anywhere near a noticeable amount.

Even the old drop rate of chests was fairly uncommon.

Welp I’m going to spend my day fighting trash mobs and uncovering maps to see if I get anything. Seeing as RNG hates me. . . If I get one then the odds were increased by a large amount. XD

More power to ya but I suspect you will end up earning enough gold to just buy a key before one ever drops.

Substance E.4852:

CandyHearts.6025:

Substance E.4852:

CandyHearts.6025:

Guys it’s been changed for a day. I’m 100% you didn’t test enough to know the exact odds. Don’t be so down. We can make this work!

Like ScribeTheMad above, I too have only seen 2 drop in 3 years of play. Both times in WvW oddly enough.

Unless they increased it by several thousands of percent, it wont be anywhere near a noticeable amount.

Even the old drop rate of chests was fairly uncommon.

Welp I’m going to spend my day fighting trash mobs and uncovering maps to see if I get anything. Seeing as RNG hates me. . . If I get one then the odds were increased by a large amount. XD

More power to ya but I suspect you will end up earning enough gold to just buy a key before one ever drops.

Well then. Either way I get something! Sweeeet!

But for the community’s sake I hope its a key. We’ve been let down so much lately that I feel like something has to give.

CandyHearts.6025:

Guys it’s been changed for a day. I’m 100% you didn’t test enough to know the exact odds. Don’t be so down. We can make this work!

I’ve had over 3 years of experience with this very topic though.
I’ve developed a telepathic link with them that can sense such mischievous thingz.

Varonth.5830:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I’m going to make the guess that it will be moderately frequent. Let’s say an average of one a month per player.

Why? It ties in with the nerf to key farming. With one a month drop rate, people will now start to accumulate scraps. Once they get a few scraps they’ll start thinking about getting a ticket. Since they can no longer do a fast farm and get the remaining scraps, they’ll have to buy keys or wait however long it will take to finish the ticket.

With this new system ANet can get people who normally never buy keys to buy some to finish up their ticket.

It takes on average 2 boxes to get a single scrap.

At one key per month, you look at 6 scraps per year. You need 50 scraps for one of the more expensive weapon.

You are looking at a droprate which would require a player to play for 8 years for a single weapon. Such a vendor has 16 years. So to get every weapon from a single vendor -> 133 years.

Legendaries are a joke compared to that.

Here is how many keys should drop right now: a few per day with averaging at about 2 per player per day. That would mean a player can choose one of the expnesive weapons about every two months. That some serious time commitment.

Or of course… they could up the item output of those boxes. Make them actually useful. More tickets (not scraps, tickets) and other actual useful stuff.

kitten instead of throwing out full tickets how about a good chance at a random Black Lion Skin. 20-25%.

Or maybe at 5 scraps in 9 or 10 months, the player looks at his scraps, thinks about how long it would take to get the rest, and springs for some keys to try for one ticket to get the newest weapon. It fits together with nerfing the free, fast way to get the rest of the scraps to get a ticket. People are more likely to buy enough to finish the ones they have than to buy enough to get 10 scraps when they have zero scraps.

This system is not to give people enough keys to get a ticket. It’s to give them enough keys so they buy more keys to finish the scraps they have (and not farm them).

So far I have only been on a map for about 3 hours grinding the trash mobs while I uncover the map slowly. I’ve gotten 0 keys (obviously XP) but 3 kitten BLC.

I mean they are stacking up really quick since the patch yesterday. Meanwhile the keys are MIA. I’m going to see how the map completion renders here in a bit though.

Guessing the drop rate is somewhere in the vicinity of 3 keys per year of playing.

Why not replace the luck from monthly rewards with keys. This sounds more convenient to me.

Increased from:
.00000000001
To:
.00000000002

We should be happy.

I’ve had 2 keys drop in the open world, and 2 that were from BL chest loot.

bacon.9461:

Increased from:
.00000000001
To:
.00000000002

We should be happy.

^this probably
If the keys had a decent droprate anet wouldn’t be making enough $$$

ScribeTheMad.7614:

If they did (and I don’t believe that for a second) it wouldn’t matter whether it was .001% or 100%

I had 2 keys drop from 3000+ hours over 3 years. Two.
A 100% increase in drop rate would make that 4 keys in 3 years.
Woop-de-freakin-do.

Yeah, I have played 628 hours in 3 years, and never had any drop at all.

So yeah, what ever they changed it to, I doubt it will even be noticeable.

It would probably be quicker to make an alt, level him up to 80, do the personal story to completion and then go through LS 2 if you have it.

Doing this would probably be quicker than relying on a drop and if I have my intel right you should get a total of 4 keys all up. 3 from PS right (lvl 10, 40 and 60 I think) and 1 at the completion of LS 2 chapter 6.

So, forget this increased drops garbage, it’s not reliable….

Edit:

Then again completing maps would probably be a quicker method than what I just typed up. :P

Paulytnz.7619:

It would probably be quicker to make an alt, level him up to 80, do the personal story to completion and then go through LS 2 if you have it.

Doing this would probably be quicker than relying on a drop and if I have my intel right you should get a total of 4 keys all up. 3 from PS right (lvl 10, 40 and 60 I think) and 1 at the completion of LS 2 chapter 6.

So, forget this increased drops garbage, it’s not reliable….

Edit:

Then again completing maps would probably be a quicker method than what I just typed up. :P

Have you had any luck with this? After spending some time learning about this “increase in drop rate” (hue) I wasn’t eager to finish the map I’d been working on to find out. >.<

I’ve gotten 2-3 key drops from 4k hours of play. Still no key since the patch, so I’m guessing the drop rate hasn’t changed much.

Let’s face reality here:

We wont be able to give an accurate answer until we find out how many keys an average player gets whilst playing for the next 3 years. then comparing this to the last 3 years we’ll be able to get an accurate value. :P

Substance E.4852:

CandyHearts.6025:

Guys it’s been changed for a day. I’m 100% you didn’t test enough to know the exact odds. Don’t be so down. We can make this work!

Like ScribeTheMad above, I too have only seen 2 drop in 3 years of play. Both times in WvW oddly enough.

Unless they increased it by several thousands of percent, it wont be anywhere near a noticeable amount.

Even the old drop rate of chests was fairly uncommon.

Around 5 for me but that is at least 5000 hours. Also mostly in the starter zones.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3l4ouh/anyone_get_a_black_lion_key_to_drop_yet_since/

Posters in that thread are seeing them drop in fractals, wvw, and elsewhere. It’s unclear if this is selection bias (there are always people getting keys; they are just posting about it now, based on the request) or if there’s been an actual change.

I think the only way we’ll be able to tell is is there’s a drastic change in the price of the next set of BL weapons — if keys are plentiful enough for folks to get 10 scraps or 1 ticket, then prices could even drop (since the market is no longer controlled by farmers). If the keys are dropping only slightly more often than before, then we should expect that even an ugly set of skins will sell for 120g or more, even 1-2 weeks after they are available.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Or maybe at 5 scraps in 9 or 10 months, the player looks at his scraps, thinks about how long it would take to get the rest, and springs for some keys to try for one ticket to get the newest weapon. It fits together with nerfing the free, fast way to get the rest of the scraps to get a ticket. People are more likely to buy enough to finish the ones they have than to buy enough to get 10 scraps when they have zero scraps.

This system is not to give people enough keys to get a ticket. It’s to give them enough keys so they buy more keys to finish the scraps they have (and not farm them).

Or more likely, they key farm the 4 allowed a month to make up for the few scraps needed.

Angus.5961:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Or maybe at 5 scraps in 9 or 10 months, the player looks at his scraps, thinks about how long it would take to get the rest, and springs for some keys to try for one ticket to get the newest weapon. It fits together with nerfing the free, fast way to get the rest of the scraps to get a ticket. People are more likely to buy enough to finish the ones they have than to buy enough to get 10 scraps when they have zero scraps.

This system is not to give people enough keys to get a ticket. It’s to give them enough keys so they buy more keys to finish the scraps they have (and not farm them).

Or more likely, they key farm the 4 allowed a month to make up for the few scraps needed.

It will take about 7-8 months to get 10 scraps, if the RNG favors them. If someone only had 5 scraps, as in my example, then he will need to farm keys for 3-4 months, again, if RNG favors him. While some people may take the 3-4 month route to getting the last 5 scraps, I suspect the average person finds key farming too dull and will pay for the keys to get them right away rather than farm them for months.

Let’s hope the drop rate of 1 every 2000 hours of play has be increased to a rate to compensate the nerf to keyfarming.

Seriously Anet…WTF.

If you want to find out the drop rate of an item (in this case, keys) you have to stop conflating play-time with rolls on the loot-tables. You can play for ages in Queensdale and get nothing, while someone plays in Orr for a short time and gets a lot better loot (for obvious reasons). To get the drop rate, you’re going to need a tremendous amount of data, which you’re probably never going to get your hands on.

First, you’ll have to document EVERY creature you kill. Since we don’t know the effects the creature’s level has on the rolls, you’ll have to document that too, along with its rarity, location, your character level (to see if down-leveling has an effect) and any other possible thing which may change the drop-rates. You’ll have to track each item you get, including money, as those are what represent the rolls on the loot-tables. (And remember, we’re not even sure how some of these loot-tables are structured!)

Second, you’ll need to recruit a lot of people to do this task. This item is quite rare, and you have to deal with cases where you get one right away, or you don’t get any at all (both of which are expected results). And I don’t mean a few people; A lot of people. You want to get as many drops tabulated as possible, and remember, the quality of the data is as important as the quantity.

Third, you’ll need to figure out the possible effects due to Magic Find and Power of the Mists. The latter changes over the course of the week. So contact your local statistician if you want to figure out how to nullify those effects, if present. It’s doable.

Forth, if you’ve done this data gathering well enough, you should be able to gather hints as to what the current precursor drop rate is, so do share!

I’m guessing still around 1 in 2000. In my playtime I’ve probably gotten around 15 dropped in total.

Was doing AC yesterday evening and a guildy had one drop, he doesn’t know if it was from a foe or chest though, just noticed it in his bag.

CandyHearts.6025:

Paulytnz.7619:

It would probably be quicker to make an alt, level him up to 80, do the personal story to completion and then go through LS 2 if you have it.

Doing this would probably be quicker than relying on a drop and if I have my intel right you should get a total of 4 keys all up. 3 from PS right (lvl 10, 40 and 60 I think) and 1 at the completion of LS 2 chapter 6.

So, forget this increased drops garbage, it’s not reliable….

Edit:

Then again completing maps would probably be a quicker method than what I just typed up. :P

Have you had any luck with this? After spending some time learning about this “increase in drop rate” (hue) I wasn’t eager to finish the map I’d been working on to find out. >.<

TBH I am not finishing maps atm as I have already done world complete 10 times across my main and alts. But I can tell you from doing all of these completes I have indeed gained many keys. So I should imagine it has not changed much.

So… what IS the new drop rate of the keys?

Punishingly low. And that’s all you’ll ever know.

Nike.2631:

So… what IS the new drop rate of the keys?

Punishingly low. And that’s all you’ll ever know.

The drop rate was doubled. It was punishingly low. Now it’s punishingly low x 2.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

The drop rate was doubled. It was punishingly low. Now it’s punishingly low x 2.

That makes sense — a LOT of people are feeling doubly punished …

Etien.4601:

Why not replace the luck from monthly rewards with keys. This sounds more convenient to me.

By all sacred, yes. It’s consistent, and it still fulfills the “hey would you like some more” drug-pusher mentality ANet seems to want out of these keys.