Guild Wars 2

Mungrul.9358:

…got 1 Black Lion Claim Ticket Scrap.
What’s the deal ArenaNet?
I strongly recommend people do NOT buy Black Lion Keys until this is resolved.

One scrap from 3 chests? From what i heard already, you were really lucky. It seems that their drop rate is about 10%, so one in 10.

Lots of misunderstanding and inability to read as this thread gets older.
One: I DIDN’T BUY THE KEYS. They were in my bank from story quest rewards.
Two: I assumed, somewhat naïvely, that from their wording, opening a chest guaranteed a scrap; I later edited my post to indicate I had realised my mistake.

Now you can jump on me for that, but the idiots posting needless attacks because they lose the ability to read as soon as they smell blood?

Get a life.

The sad part is that you will soon need 5 tickets or 50 scraps to get a weapon…

That is an average of $300 to get a single skin…

Yay! It’s another, I bought an RNG thing expecting to get quick and easy stuff out of it and didn’t get immediate gratification because the RNG gods were not with me.

It’s been far too long since the last one of these.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

The sad part is that you will soon need 5 tickets or 50 scraps to get a weapon…

That is an average of $300 to get a single skin…

The tickets and scraps are permanent so theres no hurry….

Mungrul.9358:

You’re supposed to get a scrap from every chest you open.
I didn’t buy the keys anyhoo, had 3 from the personal story.

Edit: My mistake, just re-read the patch notes. They’re a “Common” chance drop.
Well sod that then. Could swear it didn’t say that before.

It said it at least since the first time I read it, common for scraps and rare for the claim tickets. Lots of people were speculating about a 25% drop chance for scraps, since it said that most BL keys drops from chests were converted into scraps, and the keys had about that chance to drop.

So yeh, I assumed like many others that they keys being replaced by scraps would mean a 1:1 replacement. I used to get keys all the time, somewhere around 25% of the time. I just opened 70 BLTC and ended up with 11 scraps. I could have bought 2 or 3 skins on the TP at their inflated prices for that much just converting gems → gold. This is the last time I spend any money on gems until there is a holographic dragon mount available for me to fly around on. Anet is really too greedy with this and not providing correct information as to the expected drop rate. I’m happy to buy gems to get skins or unbreakable harvesting tools etc to support the game, but this RNG crap has turned me off entirely.

spoj.9672:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

The sad part is that you will soon need 5 tickets or 50 scraps to get a weapon…

That is an average of $300 to get a single skin…

The tickets and scraps are permanent so theres no hurry….

I fail to see how the length of time it takes you to spend $300 matters. You will still pay $300 for a single weapon skin, whether it is over 1 week or 6 months.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

I fail to see how the length of time it takes you to spend $300 matters. You will still pay $300 for a single weapon skin, whether it is over 1 week or 6 months.

For this event, the weapon skins cost 1 claim ticket. After, it will cost 5, so if you don’t get the 1 soon, you will end up having to pay 5x as much afterwards.

Everything about this event has been carefully designed to fleece as much money as possible from people. You actually have to admire the genius behind it. People are splurging cash now in the 2 week ‘cheap’ skins window, and they will splurge cash again once the 2 weeks are up and Evon’s inevitable win leads to a ‘cheap’ keys window, despite the skins now being more expensive themselves. I honestly thought they had changed after the jade weapon scam but whatever. I’m enjoying southsun survival though so Im not too bothered. As always, the content is great, but the skin policy is a cesspit of greed and deception. Scraps are a ‘common’ drop? Lol

DrMatt.9408:

Everything about this event has been carefully designed to fleece as much money as possible from people. You actually have to admire the genius behind it. People are splurging cash now in the 2 week ‘cheap’ skins window, and they will splurge cash again once the 2 weeks are up and Evon’s inevitable win leads to a ‘cheap’ keys window, despite the skins now being more expensive themselves. I honestly thought they had changed after the jade weapon scam but whatever. I’m enjoying southsun survival though so Im not too bothered. As always, the content is great, but the skin policy is a cesspit of greed and deception. Scraps are a ‘common’ drop? Lol

Yeah it is sad. I really thought they were taking a better route after dragon bash and kite fortunes both turned out pretty good with their balance between RNG and in-game aquisition.

Now we are 100x worse then anything else they’ve tried…

ZudetGambeous.9573:

spoj.9672:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

The sad part is that you will soon need 5 tickets or 50 scraps to get a weapon…

That is an average of $300 to get a single skin…

The tickets and scraps are permanent so theres no hurry….

I fail to see how the length of time it takes you to spend $300 matters. You will still pay $300 for a single weapon skin, whether it is over 1 week or 6 months.

It is possibly to farm keys and thus not spend anything at all, that is all.

Lue.6538:

It is possibly to farm keys and thus not spend anything at all, that is all.

Any idea on the cost in time it takes to get 70 keys ? It would take like 24 hours of non-stop farming at 20 minutes (which means you’ve got a lvl 80 boosting you with speed buffs and quick kills.) After this story line intro event is over, it will take 5 times as many keys, so 5 times as long. For those of us that get maybe 1 or 2 hours a day tops to play, it’s just not realistic to farm keys.

spoj.9672:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

The sad part is that you will soon need 5 tickets or 50 scraps to get a weapon…

That is an average of $300 to get a single skin…

The tickets and scraps are permanent so theres no hurry….

It’s not about the hurry of wanting a weapon quick, or a fast reward.

We can take as long as we need to get that 300 dollars for the one in game item – it doesn’t change the fact the item costs 300 dollars.

My personal problem with this isn’t the RNG, I’m fine with RNG – if an item was guaranteed it would be worthless as someone said.

The problem is that the RNG is an RNG that you only get from paid items, expensive items.

The dragon coffers or the fortune scraps were a great way to implement RNG in the game. You could get it just by playing the game, and if you were lucky you managed to get what you wanted, or if you really wanted it you could pay for either special RNG boxes or a bunch of the kite fortunes.

It wasn’t exclusively paid content RNG, that’s where the issue lies. In 2 weeks they’ll cost 5 tickets and you can’t get them from the events anymore, the only efficient way to obtain them will be paying actual money at an RNG box.

Corpdecker.3819:

Lue.6538:

It is possibly to farm keys and thus not spend anything at all, that is all.

Any idea on the cost in time it takes to get 70 keys ? It would take like 24 hours of non-stop farming at 20 minutes (which means you’ve got a lvl 80 boosting you with speed buffs and quick kills.) After this story line intro event is over, it will take 5 times as many keys, so 5 times as long. For those of us that get maybe 1 or 2 hours a day tops to play, it’s just not realistic to farm keys.

See, what I see as the problem here isn’t even with “it takes too much time to get this nice item”, it should! To get a good nice item that’s legit rare and prestigious it should in fact take a long time.

However the way you can farm keys is by making new characters, rushing them to story mission Lv10 and deleting them, rinse and repeat.

That completely breaks actual game play, instead of playing the game and working towards something as you do so, you stopped playing the game and are now creating and deleting characters to use a loophole to get what you need.

It becomes work, not effort, just tedious work.

Edit; for example now you’re guaranteed a key at the personal story Lv10 missions. If they removed that and instead you were guaranteed a key every 10 events you did in game, that would be a good solution, a good alternative.

That way you could actually work towards what you want while playing the game, you could buy keys if you wanted to speed the process up. And since you can get the keys in game while playing the game, it suddenly doesn’t become that expensive anymore – while still requiring time and effort.

Mungrul.9358:

One: I DIDN’T BUY THE KEYS. They were in my bank from story quest rewards.

This

Mungrul.9358:

One: I DIDN’T BUY THE KEYS. They were in my bank from story quest rewards.

Again, This

Mungrul.9358:

One: I DIDN’T BUY THE KEYS. They were in my bank from story quest rewards.

One more time for emphasis.

Several months ago I started farming the L10 story quest for the Black Lion Key with a spare character slot. Best. Decision. Ever.

1.) No one is forcing you to buy these skins. If you want to blow 50-200g on these skins (which aren’t even worth the money), then it’s your fault if you lose out. Don’t complain when the house wins.
2.) The current system is better than before. At least this time your failures still contribute to a reward in the end
3.) Guaranteed drop rates aren’t good. I bet a good majority of people like having rare skins that you don’t see other people wear. If they allowed guaranteed rates, these skins would be just another flavor of the month.

Vol.5241:

1.) No one is forcing you to buy these skins. If you want to blow 50-200g on these skins (which aren’t even worth the money), then it’s your fault if you lose out. Don’t complain when the house wins.
2.) The current system is better than before. At least this time your failures still contribute to a reward in the end
3.) Guaranteed drop rates aren’t good. I bet a good majority of people like having rare skins that you don’t see other people wear. If they allowed guaranteed rates, these skins would be just another flavor of the month.

How is this system in any way shape or form better than dragon coffers or fortune scraps?

The only advantage is that you can directly buy these off the TP instead of buying the coffers. However the prices for these are set strictly by the trials drop rate, not the BLK’s otherwise they’d be an order of magnitude higher in cost.

Doesn’t change anything for me. I’m not going to gamble for a chance at a skin unless I can do it without the gemstore.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Vol.5241:

1.) No one is forcing you to buy these skins. If you want to blow 50-200g on these skins (which aren’t even worth the money), then it’s your fault if you lose out. Don’t complain when the house wins.
2.) The current system is better than before. At least this time your failures still contribute to a reward in the end
3.) Guaranteed drop rates aren’t good. I bet a good majority of people like having rare skins that you don’t see other people wear. If they allowed guaranteed rates, these skins would be just another flavor of the month.

How is this system in any way shape or form better than dragon coffers or fortune scraps?

The only advantage is that you can directly buy these off the TP instead of buying the coffers. However the prices for these are set strictly by the trials drop rate, not the BLK’s otherwise they’d be an order of magnitude higher in cost.

Doesn’t change anything for me. I’m not going to gamble for a chance at a skin unless I can do it without the gemstore.

When I say better I’m thinking from both perspectives – Anet and players. Anet wants the most money. Players want stuff for free. So the middle ground is tough to balance.

I don’t have anything to back it up, but I’m pretty sure Anet loses a ton of money utilizing the coffer/scrap method. I don’t think anyone is naive enough to waste money on the BL fortune scraps or BL dragon coffers when they have a pretty low chance to begin with (it doesn’t scale well with normal scraps/coffers).

So this change is much better for the both sides as a whole since it both increases Anet’s profits while also gives players a sense of progression even through BL chest failures.

Maybe if you guys would stop throwing away your money, then hey they might actually incorperate a non REAL MONEY NO GAMEPLAY AT ALL GAMBLING TYPE rng way to get new items, hey i got a GREAT idea how but getting items from actually PLAYING THE GAME this is becoming diablo 3, gw2 DOES NOT WANT TO BECOME D3.

In GW1 you got cool weapons skins as a CHANCE TO DROP from said REAL BOSS MOBS THAT WEILDED THE WEAPON ITSELF.

example; Blissified wields the Demonic blade of the blisslord, well galie grey comes by with her 8 friends, she slays me but almost dies, because i am very heard to kill and a lot of parties fail to kill me, well she kills me, gets lucky and gets my weapon; the demonic blade of blisslord, it very unique.

Galie shows it off to her friend bobby, bobby sais “Wow thats cool, i killed blissified but i didnt get his drop” then bobby sais “But i did find these Angelic pauldrons of might, they glow n kitten! i got it from killing that fallen angel boss”

and then they live happily ever after, continueing to play the game and find new unique skins, heck anet even added in 10 more bosses around existing tyria that have chances to drop their weapons / armor pieces on kill, but some of these may even spawn randomly around world, some may not.

A.net also added wvw specific armor/weapons that you can only earn in wvw but use anywere, same with spvp, and pve, you get them from doing those things but you get to wear them anywere.

Also anet revamped champiosns, so that randomly generated mini champions can spawn randomly out in the wilderness, they are randomly chosen with different attributes / unique abilities each time they randomly spawn, these guys have high chances to drop named exotics, and out top teir ascended gear (anything except legendarys)

these bosses would be very hard and spawn in different places and arre also rare

gw2 is becoming almost like p2win because for some winning in gw2 means having the nicest look gear that u could have for your character. same as in gw1, cept gw2 makes it s o you have to buy the new cool armor with real cash, ontop of that you have to pay atleasrt 50 bucks for one new peice because of their rng assure people spend atleast 40 – 50 bucks

Vol.5241:

I don’t have anything to back it up, but I’m pretty sure Anet loses a ton of money utilizing the coffer/scrap method. I don’t think anyone is naive enough to waste money on the BL fortune scraps or BL dragon coffers when they have a pretty low chance to begin with (it doesn’t scale well with normal scraps/coffers).

Anet might not make as much as they could have (they don’t “lose” money), but their player base gives back much more positive feedback and generally feels better about the game as a whole.
If you don’t think anyone was “naive enough” to waste money on the scraps or coffers, exactly how do you think that low drop rate was discovered in the first place ? Not everyone flips the trading post all day or gets insanely lucky in the mystic for or from random drops like your sig suggests and has enough gold to buy gems all day long. The wording Anet gave to the latest scraps RNG was that it was replacing most of the key drops, which indicates a lot higher drop rate than what we are finding is actually the case. Are we being naive to think we understood what they were saying, and that it made sense that it would cost about 15-20 chests to get enough scraps, if the claim ticket itself didn’t drop ? No, if anything it was false advertising, and I know for a fact that they have and are losing quite a lot of faith and future business with this.
See it’s not what YOU think, or what you think others should think, it’s what the collective thinks, and I’m going on record in this thread to warn people that the drop rate is crap and discourage them from spending money on gems for it thinking that it’d only take a couple thousand gems worth max, based on what Anet said.

See: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Black-Lion-Ticket-Scraps-Are-Common

Blissified.8369:

gw2 is becoming almost like p2win because for some winning in gw2 means having the nicest look gear that u could have for your character. same as in gw1, cept gw2 makes it s o you have to buy the new cool armor with real cash, ontop of that you have to pay atleasrt 50 bucks for one new peice because of their rng assure people spend atleast 40 – 50 bucks

It’s P2Bling! as it has no bearing on “winning” (and you pointed that out…sort of). I’d rather ANet make their money off some other sucker that wants to look kewl than me…. I do buy some gems for storage and additional char slots, but I don’t buy digital dress up items.

Terrible luck with these things as always 2 scraps in 10 chests.
some guy in map chat of course got 11 scraps and 1 Gold in 20.

I’m usually one of the first to complain about RNG (the RNG gods hate me), but I think people in this thread are overlooking some very important things.

1) These items aren’t going to disappear after 2 weeks. Yes the price is going to go up, that’s your incentive to get them fast. But you don’t HAVE to get them fast. They aren’t going anywhere. And who knows, maybe they’ll go on sale in the future, like maybe a year from now when the bazaar perhaps returns?

2) You are NOT required to buy the keys to open the chests. You CAN farm black lion keys. There are several threads on several forums, including this one, discussing how you can easily get 1 key for about half an hour of game play by making a common human warrior and playing through to the level 10 quest non-stop for a key. Also you can farm gold and convert the gold to gems for keys and chances at scraps, which allows you to get the skins absolutely free whether it takes you 50 chests or 100.

I’ve always been of the opinion you should be able to work to gain your rewards in a game. Is farming the kind of work I’d like to get my reward from? No. But if I want something bad enough and that’s the only way to get it, I’ll do it. I wish the fused skins were available via this method. Because even if it took me a year I’d find a way to get the materials to get one.

Certainly money makes the acquisition faster. That’s how A-net is going to make money off of doing things this way. People who want them NOW will pay to get them NOW. If you don’t want to pay for them, don’t. But then you have to pay for them in some other way, in this case time. If you aren’t willing to put the TIME in, and don’t want to pay money, then there really is a problem, because A-net will never be able to please their fanbase. I, for one, am relieved that the skins are staying around. Even if they’re time-consuming to acquire it’s better than previous methods which were always temporary. I even hope to see some of the old skins added to this system.

Astral Projections.7320:

Absolutionis.9427:

Shiren.9532:

This is disappointing. Why can’t we just have a guaranteed scrap from the chest?

When the Aetherized Weapons from BLTC reward was first explained, many people thought that you get a super-rare chance at a whole ticket and otherwise a guaranteed scrap. “Finally, Anet got rid of RNG!” we thought after the Kite Fortune system was well-received.

It seems they made it worse in that you get a rare chance at a tenth of a part of the new weapon skins from an item you get with gems.

The question is, how many people actually bought the kite fortune scraps? If very few did as compared to the numbers who buy keys then ANet will go back to the RNG because I bet it makes them more money.

In one of the recent interviews one of the devs said they got a more positive feedback over the Kite thing. It’s not a fair comparison because the only thing the kite scraps give you (as far as I can tell) is one of those ugly helmets. The back items are more easily obtained through the TP. If the kite scrap thing was designed around an exclusive weapon set I could see that getting more favourable feedback.

I think at the end of the day the devs like RNG in the boxes because it promotes more sales beyond the ones you are happy to buy. Dropped 20 bucks and didn’t get what you wanted? Try again. Dropped 10 bucks and got what you wanted? You’re done. At the end of the day, the monetisation team isn’t willing give a guaranteed gem to item progression system. The increased revenue from the RNG system is too appealing for them to abandon it to satisfy player demand.

The monetisation team is drawing the line. Unfortunately they aren’t willing to abandon RNG with that line.

They are milking it even more with these scraps. If you get a couple of course you’re going to want to blow more money to get 10. And with this “half-off” period they are really banking on people blowing all their money trying to get 10 scraps before the “sale” ends.

Onkelbubu.3108:

I know i get hate for this,
i opened 5 chests and got 1 ticket, 1 scrap and 1 level up book.

First time i am lucky in this game.

I opened 4 and got a ticket on my 3rd now I just got to figure out what to use i on

Shiren.9532:

The monetisation team is drawing the line. Unfortunately they aren’t willing to abandon RNG with that line.

Unfortunately many users are willing to abandon gw2, especially with the slew of new mmos coming out. No real new content, and korean rng gambling, I hardly play anymore except wvw. Will stop playing gw2 if ESO gets good reviews, will still play gw1.

This is what you get for voting Evon.

The fact that you can make up ten scraps to get a ticket and that they are trade-able is an improvement.

To put the scraps as RNG in an item you have to pay real money to unlock is silly and not well implemented.
To state that they will add future skins this way is an outrage, really I am not exaggerating- GW2 is based on cosmetics.

Since they now removed keys from the loot table they should really just make it a scrap per chest- 10 chests gets you a ticket.
As another option put the weapons straight up on the Gem Store.

Everyone wins- no-one gets ripped off because they got suckered again, Anet gets money and grateful players who now have options- instead of rage posts from people who fell for the RNG again.

If you don’t want to play the RNG lottery- don’t do it, seriously, please.
Maybe then we will get other options

Ive opened 15 Black Lion Chests, using keys I had / gold to gems, and I got:

- Boosters
- Make Over Kit
- 3 Scraps

The new weapons and any following weapons are going to be extremely rare, and most will of spent stupid amounts on gems (be this gold or real money) to get even close to having enough scraps.

I think its an extremely unfair system, and is simply farming keys/chests for cash.

It’s counter-intuitive actually. Scraps are supposed to be the consolation prize, however, as it stands you have to be lucky to even get the consolation prize.

So it’s no longer a certain consolation, but an uncommon consolidation prize.

I sell all my BLC’s…haven’t opened one since trying to get a fused weapon and got squat nor will I ever play their RNG game again. Good luck to those that do! I look forward to seeing your weapons ingame.

TheLaughingMan.4320:

Shiren.9532:

The monetisation team is drawing the line. Unfortunately they aren’t willing to abandon RNG with that line.

Unfortunately many users are willing to abandon gw2, especially with the slew of new mmos coming out. No real new content, and korean rng gambling, I hardly play anymore except wvw. Will stop playing gw2 if ESO gets good reviews, will still play gw1.

The writing is clearly on the wall about ANET’s unwavering devotion to this RNG path. The game is simply not as advertised any more. All the Living Stories are a glitzy, fluffy, candy shell surrounding RNG gambling for the next skin. I used to log in every day as well, but not anymore after this radical change. I’ve simply moved on.

A lot of people don’t seem to understand the issue with why we’re upset with this system, let me try to address some things;

-The issue isn’t RNG, the issue is RNG in a gemstore purchase only (any other method isn’t reliable, I’ll address the farming bellow) item.

-The issue isn’t paying money for an item, it’s paying aprox $50 now and $300 later on a chance to get an item.

-You can get them off the TP, but the only reason their price is more reasonable (average of 50 gold is barely reasonable, but still not outrageous) is because of the events. The events will go away and their price will rise, thus so will the TP prices; dramatically.

-Farming is a part of most games, and it needs to stop getting such a bad rep; farming is fine. The issue with the Key farming is that the only way to farm them completely breaks regular gameplay, as I stated if you could farm them in a way that didn’t force you to completely break the regular gameplay it’d be fine with the current prices.

-The current means to farm keys is so unusual that it was questioned by players if it was considered an exploit.

-You can make the argument that the skins will be here for ever unlike previous ones; that solves one issue but presents a completely new one.

-So you have 3 years to get the item, doesn’t matter how long you have if the item still costs $300 – the issue in this new method isn’t time, it’s the outrageous price.

-You should in fact take time and effort to get rare items, I’m all for that. However these new items requires neither in a decent way, it takes money or erratic gameplay which was once questioned as an exploit.

So in conclusion; the prices either need to go way down, or there should be a better method of obtaining black lion keys, or there should be a way to get scraps without relying entirely on a gem store purchase gamble item.

had 3 keys in my bank (that got from missions), got a ticket in my 3rd chest, very lucky but I still hate RNG since I couldn’t get any fused weapon.

Really most people should just resign themselves from the idea of having the best looking stuff the game will have to offer. It will more often than not be locked behind RNG.

The craftsmanship in these weapons, the Dragonbash weapons and the Scelerite (even though a lot of people didn’t like them, the Geiger esque textures were really well done) surpasses just about every other item available through game-play, sans a few of the legendaries.

And only a subset of players, or a subset of a subset, will ever have access to them. What makes it even worse is the message that will be sent by electing Evon to the council. Many of the designers will realize it would be a victory leveraged by the Fractal or just wanting to vote for the “bad-guy”, but dollars to donuts, the monetization team will say that the majority player base is in love with the RNG chests and wanted to access more of them. This is another strategy straight from the Nexon / Maple Story play book.

Fortunately, none of this really takes away from the game. The skins are so rare that you only see them occasionally out in the world. That removes any real skin-vy issues and feeling left out because everyone else has something you don’t and can never get. The skins don’t confer any statistical advantage or status. They aren’t a mark of some specific accomplishment. They are in almost all cases, pixel crack that people want because its the new thing or fits the character theme.

Save yourselves the frustration, and just never expect to have them. That way you wont end up disappointed and if you somehow get one, it will be that much more exciting. Also, never ever ever think you will somehow have a better chance this time than you did last time based on the words used in the marketing material. Read it, pick out the bit that is there to intentionally make you think you have a fair shot and then laugh about how they tried to catch you with it and move on to the bullet points about new items you can buy directly or new activities to participate in. You’ll be much better off for it.

Best advice in this thread ^

If GW2 wants to earn money, they need to sell copies of the game itself by making the game compelling, making characters more diverse and customizable for skills, and release some expansions that open up continents on the map.

The “Living Story”, which is just junk content pumped out to sell stuff on gem store, does not draw in new players. I suspect someone in upper management, who wants to pad their resume with something like, “Dynamically engineered evolving content in MMO” has this kittened bee in his bonnet, and Crystal Cox is forcing anet to put too much staff hours into gem store crap, taking away from development of the GAME.

AcidicVision.5498:

Really most people should just resign themselves from the idea of having the best looking stuff the game will have to offer. It will more often than not be locked behind RNG.

The craftsmanship in these weapons, the Dragonbash weapons and the Scelerite (even though a lot of people didn’t like them, the Geiger esque textures were really well done) surpasses just about every other item available through game-play, sans a few of the legendaries.

And only a subset of players, or a subset of a subset, will ever have access to them. What makes it even worse is the message that will be sent by electing Evon to the council. Many of the designers will realize it would be a victory leveraged by the Fractal or just wanting to vote for the “bad-guy”, but dollars to donuts, the monetization team will say that the majority player base is in love with the RNG chests and wanted to access more of them. This is another strategy straight from the Nexon / Maple Story play book.

Fortunately, none of this really takes away from the game. The skins are so rare that you only see them occasionally out in the world. That removes any real skin-vy issues and feeling left out because everyone else has something you don’t and can never get. The skins don’t confer any statistical advantage or status. They aren’t a mark of some specific accomplishment. They are in almost all cases, pixel crack that people want because its the new thing or fits the character theme.

Save yourselves the frustration, and just never expect to have them. That way you wont end up disappointed and if you somehow get one, it will be that much more exciting. Also, never ever ever think you will somehow have a better chance this time than you did last time based on the words used in the marketing material. Read it, pick out the bit that is there to intentionally make you think you have a fair shot and then laugh about how they tried to catch you with it and move on to the bullet points about new items you can buy directly or new activities to participate in. You’ll be much better off for it.

Very well said. It’s a shame this can’t be stickied.