Guild Wars 2

skotie.2614:

@ Duplicated and that would be a problem because? What then you might not have a large stack of unopened chests which you need to buy keys for off the in game store sitting in your bank?

There is a simple answer. Money. Anet makes a ton of money off of black lion chests by requiring you to either purchase the keys or do some personal storyline to acquire them. It’s the whole reason they are in the game in the first place. Keys are probably their biggest money maker other than people buying gems to convert to gold. Not a horrible idea, but not a realistic one either. I would be all for an easier, cheaper method of opening those kitten things.

Ohoni.6057:

And they never have been. The stuff that you can get out of a Black Lion chest are mostly junk, and yet I have about 80 of them with not nearly enough keys to open them. Currently, Black Lion Keys are on “sale” for 80 cents each, or 5 gold each if you convert gold to gems. I have never received either 80 cents worth or 5 gold worth out of a Black Lion chest, even when that chest contains a new key (which hasn’t happened to me since beta). Even at the sale price it would cost me $64 to clear my inventory of chests, or 427 gold, which is the cost of almost any two precursors, and about 15 times more gold than I’ve ever accumulated between all my characters.

ANet needs to drastically and permanently alter the cost/value balance of black lion keys, so that a player can reasonably afford to open all the chests he receives. Here are some suggestions:
A: make gold far more common, deflating the economy, such that spending 5 gold on a key is as casual as deciding to take a waypoint someplace, mere pocket change.
B: make gems far cheaper to buy with gold, so that would take perhaps only around 10s to purchase the 60 gems needed to buy one key on “sale”.
C: make keys cost way fewer gems, so that you could spend around 10s on enough gems to buy a key.
D: Make the contents of the chest guaranteed to be worth far more than they currently are, like at least one non-consumable goodie. There is not one item I’ve found in a Black Lion chest that I would pay even 1g for on the TP, so asking 1.25g per item is a bit silly.
F: Make chests drop far less common, so that you rarely find more chest than you do keys. Based on current rates that would have to be around 1/50th as common. Of course, you’d also need a temporary method to let players clear their existing inventory.
G: Make a permanent recipe similar to the Mad King’s Chest that allows you to combine four chests into one “super chest” that has a much higher rate of quality drops and a much lower rate of consumables, so that the total contents of the “super chest” would be well worth the 20g it would cost. Maybe a precursor or several exotics.

I like C and D the best, but any of them would do. Does anyone else have better ideas?

I think you are asking for a lot just based on “I have too many chests that I can’t open.” I agree that key prices are too high, but I don’t think they need to, “cost way fewer gems”. I would have been happy with their current sale if they had just reduced their 5 pack of keys by 50% rather than making a bundle of 25. Their so-called, “50% off” is based on if you were buying one key at a time. Cheaper keys would be nice, not way cheaper, just not happy with being forced to spend close to $20 to get a THIRTY PERCENT off deal. The way it is currently, I would still be more inclined to buy their overpriced 5 pack of keys than their “black friday deal”.