Guild Wars 2

You know what would be great? If they found a middle ground between “drops every time” and “10 people will ever see this item drop in-game.”

Black Lion keys are an awful value, so I dunno why people buy them.

Well I probably would not care about it much. However, no one can say that Anet has not put a significant amount of money and time pumping out skins into that black lion chest-and then having abysmal drop rates. Money that could go to development elsewhere, or produce skins that could just be outright sold, or you know to better content. Anet is greedy, welcome to gw2. I mean its unhealthy But you know, you take the good with the bad. The more you know!

maniamsmart.7981:

Why Would Anyone Buy Black Lion Keys?

if you have too much money logic doesn’t matter. this specific gem shop item is directed towards people that either get a thrill out of the possibility of losing money (chronic gamblers, the minority) or have so much of it that it doesn’t matter if they lose it (cash cows, the majority).
a randomized system is the easiest way to milk those cash cows. once you have bought everything in the gemshop there is not much incentive to spend thousands of dollars for gems so a tiny little gamblebox solves that problem. every game has some of those and as a company you want to make sure that they throw their piles of money at you and not somebody else.

for us plebs buying gold with gems and buying the blt skins on the tp is cheaper and safer on average. at least when they’re relatively new and available. makes us dependent on those cash cows, tho.

I buy keys frequently, but it’s mostly to replenish my boosters.

Anything ontop of that is extra to me

sephiroth.4217:

I buy keys frequently, but it’s mostly to replenish my boosters.

Anything ontop of that is extra to me

Yeah, if you get value from the boosters and things other than the claim tickets, it’s not quite as dubious. Still a little dubious though.

Why Would Anyone Buy Black Lion Keys? —> The same exact reason why anyone would buy lotto tickets in real life….. I know millions of them…

This is a reason why I have like.. 60 black lion chests just sitting in my bank.. lol

Fengzhou.9853:

This is a reason why I have like.. 60 black lion chests just sitting in my bank.. lol

60?

I have 154 sitting there right now, and trying to keep it under a stack is the only reason I sometimes will spend money on keys out of a paycheck. Well, a paycheck I don’t spend on MTG.

. . . talk about ‘gambling’.

Over 200 chests. I sell the excess down to 200 at the end of the month.

RNG. Other day my low level rev opened 1 via a key from story or something and got a full black lion trade in ticket or w/e. the first halloween i bought 50 million keys and I got two crappy shoulder skins, no chainsaw gs or anything. RNG.

fireflyry.7023:

Labjax.2465:

Ah, someone who feels the same way I do about it. Even there is technically no “real” monetary reward, you can pay real money to buy the keys. So it’s kind of a legal loophole and is most definitely gambling in the psychological sense. It’s rather sad to me that games can get away with this sort of thing, under the umbrella excuse “virtual” and “game.” It’s definitely ethically questionable when real money can be involved.

I imagine the only reason they don’t get slapped on the wrist for it is because it’s not possible for real money to exit the system – only to enter it – so the government couldn’t give two hoots about it.

Somehow the people who design these systems are ok with living with them. They probably sit there and reassure themselves that no one is actually wasting important money on key gambling, while some exec gets the brunt of the profit from it.

The dark side of game design… not fun to talk about or acknowledge, but it’s there.

Slight over dramatization me thinks.

As long as it’s a choice to take part or not the game devs should lose no sleep over it. I can’t see people not feeding their children or losing their house because they spent all their money on BL keys in GW2.

RL gambling is a huge issue but the rewards are RL money. In this format it’s supplementary income to help keep the game running in reward for niche in-game shinies.

Big difference.

It doesn’t matter whether the rewards are RL money or a permanent contract or tickets for a skin, they all use the same principles of operant conditioning to get people to spend money. The distinction for you is that the reward of RL cash is a higher value secondary reinforcer. It might not be for others. What’s highly positive reinforcement for one can be low reinforcement or even negative for others. Regardless, the psychology of a slot machine, lottery ticket, or black lion chest keys is the same.

Yesterday a friend of mine bought and used 7 black lion keys. I never asked “why seven?” Thats what he did.

He got an unlimited hair change contract, or whatever its called, nonchalantly looked it up on the tp to see what it sold for… and suddenly went silent for a moment.

Approximately 1700 gold.

So, thats why. Granted, that was a gift from RNGesus, but it can happen.

Just not often.

Black Lion Keys are a great deal for people who love the anticipation before opening the chest and are willing to pay for it. I know a couple of people who only spend gems on keys and they are very happy, because they are doing it for the fun, not the economic efficiency.

Generally speaking, the best use of gems for making money: convert them to gold, skip the gem shop entirely.

Fengzhou.9853:

This is a reason why I have like.. 60 black lion chests just sitting in my bank.. lol

Wow you must buy keys a lot.. cos I can loot 60 chests in a few days.

In fact every time I buy a set of 5 keys.. I guarantee I will have looted at least 5- 10 chests in the next day or 2 to replenish and tempt me to buy more.. its like buying keys is a trigger.
If I leave the gems in my wallet for any significant amount of time, chests seem to slow up considerably almost as if the game gives up on me and says “meeehh – dat foo not gunna buy no more, no more, no more, nooo more so hit da road chump and don’t ya come back no more!”

Fengzhou.9853:

This is a reason why I have like.. 60 black lion chests just sitting in my bank.. lol

Wow you must buy keys a lot.. cos I can loot 60 chests in under a week if I really put my mind to it .. that’s why I got a full stack staring at me in the bank.. I only buy keys to burn the excess after selling 20-30 on the TP

In fact every time I buy a set of 5 keys.. I guarantee I will have looted at least 5- 10 chests in the next day or 2 to replenish what I used and tempt me to buy more.. its like buying keys is a trigger.
If I leave the gems in my wallet for any significant amount of time, looting chests seems to slow up considerably almost as if the game gives up on me and says “meeehh – dat foo not gunna buy no more, no more, no more, nooo more so hit da road chump and don’t ya come back no more!”

Look at it this way… At least the chests actually stack. Prior to returning to GW2 I was playing a game with a similar chest/key system, except those do not stack, which is infinitely more irritating.
Here, I have something like 200 happily sitting in my vault and only occupying one inventory slot (once they exceed a stack, I list them on the TP). When I acquire a key from map completion, personal story or an extremely rare drop, I open a chest, roll my eyes at the paltry contents and then carry on about my business. I really do not understand why people buy keys.. but then again, I’m a hard sell, to the point where I’ve actually had phone solicitors slam down their receivers on me. :P

BLC keys have never been worth buying. Yes you could get lucky, but let’s face it, you probably won’t.

As people have previously stated in this thread, they’re basically lottery tickets. Except instead of getting nothing, you always get some decent stuff out of it.

Buying one every once in a while and trying your luck is always something pretty fun to do, even though I would advise against buying bulks of them and expecting a gain. A friend of mine gets a key every now and then, and ended up uncrating a permanent hairstyle kit just a couple days ago.

And hey, there’s always ecto gambling if you really want to waste your money and get absolutely nothing out of it. :P

Fengzhou.9853:

This is a reason why I have like.. 60 black lion chests just sitting in my bank.. lol

Wow you must buy keys a lot.. cos I can loot 60 chests in a few days.

In fact every time I buy a set of 5 keys.. I guarantee I will have looted at least 5- 10 chests in the next day or 2 to replenish and tempt me to buy more.. its like buying keys is a trigger.
If I leave the gems in my wallet for any significant amount of time, chests seem to slow up considerably almost as if the game gives up on me and says “meeehh – dat foo not gunna buy no more, no more, no more, nooo more so hit da road chump and don’t ya come back no more!”

maniamsmart.7981:

Katta Castellum.3957:

i think the problem is you opened 10 chests. that is not a large enough sample size to have any conclusive results.

Which may be true I agree, but 10 keys is like 12 dollars… I’d at least expect one rare item.

And your expectation would be wrong.

The only guarantee is that you get three spins on the wheels. Even the streak-breaker scraps are pretty erratic.

I went on a spree one time and bought the bundle of 25 with real money. There was a new black lion weapon set out I wanted one from (and they are so very rarely to my taste…). I got enough scraps to make a ticket, a couple of mini’s I didn’t have, and an oricalcum node for my home instance. All and all I was pretty satisfied.

But really I find you get the best results if you think of them as ‘stocking up on my boosts’ with an occasional surprise. Any higher expectations lead to disappointment. Buying them for the prize items definitely leads to disappointment.

Is there ANY other way to get the scraps? I regularly buy 5 keys every month, and have had a very decent luck so far, but making the tickets is SLOW, adn I would really prefer another way to aquire some of those cool looking weapons.

This is just gamble and gambling can bankrupt you.

I’ve seen this happen in many games, people spending thousands of dollars on fictional game characters, unbelievable.

There’s no difference between gambling in an MMO and a slot machine in a casino. Each promises results, but each has a set algorithm to cheat you out of your savings.

Don’t do it.

it’s like buying a lotto ticket. sometimes you get diddly... sometimes you get the jackpot.

there’s plenty of people who say "i’ll never buy a lotto ticket... it’s not worth it, i never win..." and yet the powerball doesn’t get to 254 million all by itself...

Once I bought a single black lion key with my last 10 or so gold, and got a permanent hair style contract. Instant 1,800g. That is why.

OP, I think the problem is people like yourself either expect to make money off them, or perhaps think that people buy them expecting to make money.

I buy them as a small treat for myself every now and then. If I wanted to make money, I’ll buy gems and convert them to gold. If I one day get a Permanent thingy, it’s a bonus.

I only bought keys once, a batch of 25 believe, when they were on sale. But I think that was in the days when chests still awarded 4 items. Other than one BL ticket, couple total makeover kits and perhaps a couple 1g+ minis, I know I got nothing really impressive. Bought a Sclerite GS skin with it and used it for a long time. Then manage to get enough scraps for another BL skin. Bought a chaos GS with it and stored it in the bank for over a year. Sold it for something like 300g. If you’re looking to make money from tickets…the only way os long term investment…if you manage to find a skin that appreciates well. It’s like the MF. It’s gambling and I refuse to partake save for once in a very blue moon.

Personally I’d say take any money you are willing to blow on keys and just convert it to gold, eventually you can just buy something nice off the trading post.

Because gamble!

GAMBLE MAN! GAMBLE!

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Some people say buying BLKeys are like playing lottery. I’m sorry but 21000 gems for a full stack? This is more than absurd.

Even when those keys are on sale, they are way too expensive. If my math is correct, that’s $262.50 for 250 keys if you were to buy gems using money.

If you bought those keys using real money, either you have money to burn or you are no better than those suckers paying to play on that Kardasian app or Clash of Clans. Makes me wonder if PT Barnum runs Anet.

I have no problem with Anet selling keys but prices definitely need to be way lower. Also keys need to drop in game and more often.

I bet you if prices were lower, more of us would be willing to buy keys and Anet will reap more profit due to greater volumes.

It’s roughly a buck ($1) a key in bulk.

Those who complain about the cost tend to discount the vast majority of the drops from BLCs, and for those players I can understand but in that case perhaps BLCs aren’t for you. You want a weapon skin, it’s cheaper on the TP even with gem bought gold much less than gold bought gems for keys.

And here’s the thing. If keys were cheaper in terms of gems, it also means it’s easier to get with just gold. And the easier that is, it’s likely means less cash bought gems devoted to buying keys. It’s an empty promise that there would be more gems bought for keys.

I get it that since the key farm nerfs that your source of “free” keys by doing a specific activity is virtually gone. Now it’s gold farming if you want your keys but as I already pointed out, if you are doing this just for BL Tickets for skins, your farmed gold is better spent buying them from TP.

maniamsmart.7981:

ArchonWing.9480:

It prays on hopes and dreams, because there’s always a chance.

If something were impossible, people wouldn’t do it. It’s the hope of that tiny chance that causes ruin.

It’s the nature of gambling, because people think only others are subject to the laws of probability. It’s also unfortunately, extremely profitable, for the one that is the house.

Yeah well I don’t have the time or money to spend on hopes or dreams.

A much better system would be to encourage players to continue to buy keys, which would be perhaps getting something cool or rare every 10 chests or whatever, at least that reinforces people to buy keys still. As I already saw in this thread, and in other threads, some people refuse to buy anymore ever again, including myself. So how does that make any money, or make any sense even. If you want people to buy your stuff and if you want to make money, give people a reason to buy it. I have zero reason to buy another key ever again.

If I would have gotten perhaps 1 rare item at least out of the 10 boxes, I would have been happy and bought more keys in the future.

You still don’t get it? That’s exactly why it works and why they got you in the first place. And there are those that don’t get the message even with repeated failures. You had the sense to stop, but that’s not where the cash cow comes from. And like you said, you don’t have the spare resources to be taken advantage of anyways.

That’s how all casinos work, too. String in some easy money from those that will try a bit and leave, and live off the addicts. They don’t need to worry about making more money from you, because they already have and they don’t need to optimize it, because it’s already optimizing from their biggest money source.

Then once in a long while, someone will get lucky, and that continues to sell the illusion that gambling works. Which it never does, at least against the house. Gambling is all about someone losing their money to something else. Even in skill based games like poker, where you can win consistently, the house still wins, and you’re just trying to take the losers’ money before the house takes theirs (and yours, through rake). But even in that ideal scenario, you’re still basically climbing a pile of bodies to get to the top of a ship that keeps sinking lower.

Because people fail to understand this, and many more understand it and choose to ignore it, it remains insanely profitable regardless of whatever subjective opinion one may hold.

The casino analogy is slightly different, though.

The casino uses that cash to keep itself funded; it needs to pay for its utilities, prizes, and so on. A lot of money will both circulate in and out depending on the games played. Blackjack against the house is rarely as profitable as the slots from the casino’s point of view, despite the higher denominations of the blackjack games, as especially at the higher-pay tables, more… experienced players are attracted, if you catch my drift

As such, there needs to be a distinct statistic to make sure the house wins a disproportionate amount of times.

In regards to the conversion of virtual currency and game operations, as long as there’s enough money funneling into the system to pay the utilities, it doesn’t matter. There’s zero chance of directly losing money, or not gaining profits because for each person losing, someone else is winning. In the case of item generation, as long as someone buys the keys, the company wins. It doesn’t matter how much artificial value they get. They’re after the fancy skin in the box, and that acquisition is pretty much totally absolute. The only sense of “value” is that of the in-game economy or the capacity and willingness for other players to purchase the items second-hand. Thing is, no matter how common or uncommon they are, ANet’s made their money as long as the drop rate reflects the expected number of chest purchases. Gold values will depend entirely on the number of these purchases and rates of acquisition.

Keeping the price of the keys high or even making the drop rate so low may ultimately negatively impact ANet’s profits, for lower prices and higher rates would make more people, like the OP, keep buying keys. The TP flipper will get the skins, anyways, and the higher the real-money price, the less willing players will be to support the micro-transaction model.

And if the drops become more common such that gold prices somehow drop enough to notice (I can tell you BLC skin rate won’t do this), gold de-values, which also helps drive gem sales through people purchasing gold via gems for every other purchase (legendaries, server transfers, services, etc., which are bigger drivers for gold buying)

Pricing on BLC’s likely needs some adjustments depending on the metric data possessed. The mechanics, contents, and drop rates of certain items have changed a lot over the past few years, but the price hasn’t. I refuse to believe that chests are mathematically balanced properly to bring the best return for the price based on the sheer number of people willing to have spent hours farming keys on alts and still buying gems for other things, and how few people buy keys in general/claim they are ripoffs relative to the number of people who do, and how many they also buy.

Ardid.7203:

Is there ANY other way to get the scraps? I regularly buy 5 keys every month, and have had a very decent luck so far, but making the tickets is SLOW, adn I would really prefer another way to aquire some of those cool looking weapons.

There’s no other way to get the scraps, but you can buy the weapon skins off the trading post. I find that to generally be MUCH more cost-effective, personally. If you complete a collection of the skins (even the Halloween one, which only has 5 weapons) the collection rewards you with a number of tickets. I think that number should be a bit higher than it is, but it’s still a decent reward.

Behellagh.1468:

It’s roughly a buck ($1) a key in bulk.

Those who complain about the cost tend to discount the vast majority of the drops from BLCs, and for those players I can understand but in that case perhaps BLCs aren’t for you. You want a weapon skin, it’s cheaper on the TP even with gem bought gold much less than gold bought gems for keys.

And here’s the thing. If keys were cheaper in terms of gems, it also means it’s easier to get with just gold. And the easier that is, it’s likely means less cash bought gems devoted to buying keys. It’s an empty promise that there would be more gems bought for keys.

I get it that since the key farm nerfs that your source of “free” keys by doing a specific activity is virtually gone. Now it’s gold farming if you want your keys but as I already pointed out, if you are doing this just for BL Tickets for skins, your farmed gold is better spent buying them from TP.

$1 per key is still too much. I’d suggest $1 per 5 keys.

I don’t care for skins or whatnot, I just don’t like seeing ridiculous prices. 5 keys or a Starbucks drink? I’d go with the drink. 25 keys or a Starbucks drink? I’d even begin to consider keys just because I like to open chests.

FYI I haven’t bought a key off gem store and I definitely will never do so at the current price so your overall claim that people who are complaining are those who got lousy drops from chests is very simplistic and erroneous.

Barinthus.8347:

Behellagh.1468:

It’s roughly a buck ($1) a key in bulk.

Those who complain about the cost tend to discount the vast majority of the drops from BLCs, and for those players I can understand but in that case perhaps BLCs aren’t for you. You want a weapon skin, it’s cheaper on the TP even with gem bought gold much less than gold bought gems for keys.

And here’s the thing. If keys were cheaper in terms of gems, it also means it’s easier to get with just gold. And the easier that is, it’s likely means less cash bought gems devoted to buying keys. It’s an empty promise that there would be more gems bought for keys.

I get it that since the key farm nerfs that your source of “free” keys by doing a specific activity is virtually gone. Now it’s gold farming if you want your keys but as I already pointed out, if you are doing this just for BL Tickets for skins, your farmed gold is better spent buying them from TP.

$1 per key is still too much. I’d suggest $1 per 5 keys.

I don’t care for skins or whatnot, I just don’t like seeing ridiculous prices. 5 keys or a Starbucks drink? I’d go with the drink. 25 keys or a Starbucks drink? I’d even begin to consider keys just because I like to open chests.

FYI I haven’t bought a key off gem store and I definitely will never do so at the current price so your overall claim that people who are complaining are those who got lousy drops from chests is very simplistic and erroneous.

You don’t buy keys, not interested in ever buying keys, yet you think it’s too expensive. That would be like me walking into Starbucks and tell them to lower their price to $1 a cup because I think it’s too expensive, even though I don’t drink coffee.

If you devalue the price of keys, then the “junk” items the chest drops that are also sold in the gem shop will also need to be devalued to stay competitive or they get replaced with true junk items that are useless for everyone. Newsflash, there are players who use those “junk” items that are dropped today and often it’s cheaper although random with a key.

So what you are really asking is for ANet to cut their primary source of income between releases which is the sale of gems with cash. Good luck with that.

Inoki.6048:

This is just gamble and gambling can bankrupt you.

I’ve seen this happen in many games, people spending thousands of dollars on fictional game characters, unbelievable.

There’s no difference between gambling in an MMO and a slot machine in a casino. Each promises results, but each has a set algorithm to cheat you out of your savings.

Don’t do it.

The true gamble can come weeks or months down the road when the skills, traits, and visualizations associated with your prized $100 skin get ruined thanks to esports.

Behellagh.1468:

Barinthus.8347:

Behellagh.1468:

It’s roughly a buck ($1) a key in bulk.

Those who complain about the cost tend to discount the vast majority of the drops from BLCs, and for those players I can understand but in that case perhaps BLCs aren’t for you. You want a weapon skin, it’s cheaper on the TP even with gem bought gold much less than gold bought gems for keys.

And here’s the thing. If keys were cheaper in terms of gems, it also means it’s easier to get with just gold. And the easier that is, it’s likely means less cash bought gems devoted to buying keys. It’s an empty promise that there would be more gems bought for keys.

I get it that since the key farm nerfs that your source of “free” keys by doing a specific activity is virtually gone. Now it’s gold farming if you want your keys but as I already pointed out, if you are doing this just for BL Tickets for skins, your farmed gold is better spent buying them from TP.

$1 per key is still too much. I’d suggest $1 per 5 keys.

I don’t care for skins or whatnot, I just don’t like seeing ridiculous prices. 5 keys or a Starbucks drink? I’d go with the drink. 25 keys or a Starbucks drink? I’d even begin to consider keys just because I like to open chests.

FYI I haven’t bought a key off gem store and I definitely will never do so at the current price so your overall claim that people who are complaining are those who got lousy drops from chests is very simplistic and erroneous.

You don’t buy keys, not interested in ever buying keys, yet you think it’s too expensive. That would be like me walking into Starbucks and tell them to lower their price to $1 a cup because I think it’s too expensive, even though I don’t drink coffee.

So what you are really asking is for ANet to cut their primary source of income between releases which is the sale of gems with cash. Good luck with that.

Bad analogy re Starbucks. The big difference is I want to support Anet’s no-subscription model, that’s what attracted me to GW in the first place. I just refuse to pay what I consider to be unfair prices to support them. If keys were cheaper, I’d be more likely to buy keys and I have no doubt that they will earn more if they were to reduce prices due to greater volume of purchases.

Not accurate but to illustrate – Anet release a widget for $10 dollars each. Only 50 ppl will be willing to pay that much ($500). If they changed the price to $2, it’d be more affordable and more people can justify to themselves the cost resulting in more customers…. say 1000 people. That’s $2000 right there. The cost reduction doesn’t have to be permanent, it could be once in a while sale where they sell keys for 90% off. They could even add a cap like people only can buy 25 per sale period.

As for junk items, shrug, they’ll have to figure out something… if there’s a will there’s a way.

My analogy is Dom Perignon, people rave about how delicious it is and so on but I will be kitten ed if I shell out $100+ for a bottle. I’d love to taste it given an opportunity but I can’t justify the cost. If the company decided to reduce the cost to perhaps $40 even for a short sale period, I just might go ahead and splurge for a special event.

Cuz gambling is an addiction and some people simply can’t resist mentally. MMOs often execute it as a “whale catching” method to hook these kinda people with deep pockets more-so than focusing on the vast majority of players. I’ve never bought a Key, I generally only buy permanent fun related stuff like mini pets and skinz. Gambling is against my beliefz.

That aside; feel free to buy them if you enjoy donating money to your favorite game outa the sheer goodness of your heart by buying them if you have the money and don’t need anything else for a more pleasant reason.