Guild Wars 2

Honestly there is one game that I feel nailed raids perfectly. Marvel Heroes 2015.

Raids there take 10 people (large group, epic), and basic coordination, but as a baseline are easy to get into and succeed at. And they only take an hour, if not HALF an hour. So you go in with your huge group of people, smash through some bosses which are more involved and interesting than usual without being punishingly hard, and get a fun loot-splosion. Hooray!

However, you can also take on the raid on a higher tier of difficulty, if you want. This is the point where hardcore players can get their jollies. It’s actually challenging in a serious way, but completely optional.

You can earn almost all rewards earned in the Easy and Hard raid in other areas of the game (via a weekly quest). So the raids aren’t even necessary. You unlock things FASTER via raid, but you will eventually get it all without raiding.

So they are short. They’re accessible. They are optional. They CAN be hard or easy, depending on your group’s mood. And most of all, they’re fun.

Honestly, it’s a pretty positive example of what raiding CAN be.

(Aside: MH2015 is the game that finally acclimated me to “FULL ZERKERS” meta. Very true in that game too. Honestly in games like this, killing everything as fast as possible is the only thing that matters, so long as you are doing the bare minimum to stay alive yourself. It’s just the nature of the game. shrug. I’ll play WoW when I want to tank and heal, and LoL when I want to be a super relevant support )

This is really frustrating. So you can’t progress past a certain point if you just want to log on and have some casual fun? Even on the generic 0045 Arenanet servers?

Josh Foreman.8250:

Smaller team, actually. And the length was my own desire to get as many ideas as I could in there. I spent several months pulling 16 hour days and a couple weeks where I did a couple 36 hour stretches, went home, slept and came back and did it again. No one else wanted me to do that. In fact those sort of crazy hours are discouraged at ArenaNet. I did that because I freeking love what I do and wanted this release to be the best thing ever. Turns out I pushed too hard to get those new mechanics in there and I’m being told here over and over that all that work was wasted and it’s making people miserable. I’ve learned my lesson. Won’t happen again! And for that, my family thanks you!

Now see, this is sad to read. I hate that anyone could spend so much time and put so much effort into something they love, only to be shrieked at by everyone and feel like it was “a waste”.

SAB is something special and forget anyone who can’t see it’s something that you’ve been absolutely dedicated to. W2 definitely needs some tweaks, but that’s all it is. Tweaks. Tweak it a bit, and it’ll be fun again, and we’ll all have a good time.

I’m sure MORE work is not what you were looking forward to, but it’s all that stands between this release and perfection.

As for everyone having a meltdown… maybe we should all relax for a little while, and go back to having fun after the tweaky-patch hits.

Josh Foreman.8250:

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

I can’t always dedicate hours at a time to GW2, and it would really, really, really help if we could start playing at unlocked checkpoints rather than the start of each zone, in all modes. That way I could focus on a smaller chunk at a time and progress in the SAB even when I “only” have an hour to play in the evening.
.

I would like this too. I think we don’t have a way to store that information on your character though.

I would like this too.

Me and my girlfriend have kind of hated World 2 Zone 1 for quite some time now, and have been unable to beat it. After 2-3 hours of trying, we were at our wits end at the obnoxious geyser segment. After trying there another 45 minutes, I disconnected just as my girlfriend game over’d. We now have to start. The entire zone. Over.

Not fun. Period.

I’m sorry x.x I know it must be stressful to hear all this negative feedback. I think its awesome how much heart and love has been put into SAB and all parts of it. It’s just that, for me and my girlfriend, Zone 1 of World 2 is not fun whatsoever, and it sounds like from what others are saying its just going to get more frustrating from there….

Edit2: I just want to say, reading through this thread, I really do appreciate how hard you’ve worked on all of this, and really want to say thank you again. I really don’t mean to come off as too harsh or whiny. I’ve just been having a bad night. I can imagine your night is going about as “well” and stressful. I hope you get it fine-tuned to where you want it so we can all be happy.

Thanks for the advice!

So me and my girlfriend have been trying to duo Scarlet’s Playhouse (we won) and get the Save Faren in 3 minutes achievment (we haven’t).

The thing is, the Twisted Horrors around Faren merge into Veteran Twisted Horrors, which are way too beefy to kill in the time alotted. We can’t figure out why. Sometimes the horrors do it at 100% hp, sometimes less, sometimes when one has died but not been destroyed, sometimes even when they’re both dead or one is all by itself.

Bonus points go to the time where somehow four normal Twisted Horrors turned into two Veteran Twisted Horrors and three Twisted Menders, or the time they all turned into a huge Twisted Nightmare with a silver dungeon-mob portrait which wiped us out.

Sometimes this doesn’t happen, more often than not it does. What the heck is going on?

I loved everything about the cutscene, and prefer these traditional cutscenes to the weird dialogue stuff elsewhere.

I will say though, the camera does NOT need to swoop around dramatically every single second. Every cutscene they’ve done like this has the camera just flying around like crazy instead of just sitting still to focus on what’s actually happening. It is REALLY annoying.

Thanks for the help.

Suggestion for Anet to state this in a place that is both clear and easy to find still stands though, lol.

I hate not being able to tell how long specific events will run when they are announced and for most of their duration.

Ooh, Zephyr Sanctum/Queen’s Jubilee are opening up! Cool! How long do I have to finish up all these achievements? ….who knows.

Well, it’s been a week or two and the events are still running. Wonder if I need to be getting into gear to finish these things up, or if I have another two weeks? Can’t tell, it sure doesn’t show up anywhere obvious or helpful.

What I want is just a very clear message in a very visible place: say, the official Release page for a specific event, that states “EVENT RUNS FROM Xmonth/day TO Ymonth/day.”

It would really be nice :P.

1) Better writing.

2) Non-flat VO.

3) Cutscenes that have the patience to just keep the camera in one position instead of “dramatically” swooping in every single scene.

So I just went through the Battle of Fort Trinity and there was no music playing, at all, the whole time. Sound effects worked fine.

Well, I guess, to be more specific, there was some basic background music, but no epic themes or drama to it at all. I assumed this was a bug, but it might just be a design decision.

Most noticeably, during the painting-style cutscene at the very end, there was no music whatsoever, just ambient noise. Was this intentional? It was really, really underwhelming.

But then, so was Tonn’s death.

…and the home instance…

….and all of the personal story…

what was i even talking about

Oh yeah. Shouldn’t there be more… dramatic music during the Battle of Fort Trinity? Or was I just glitched out?

I bet it’s been suggested a hundred times before, but I just think that previewing items needs two additions:

1) Previews need to include glow effects!
Because some items look ugly without their glow, and even those that look great sans-glow look better with it. There are some items I’ve passed up on getting because of their look, only to find out that Preview was lying and they are in fact amazing (Ghastly Weapons!). Preview needs glow effects.

2) Preview Trading Post items.
It would be nice to preview weapons/armor before you purchase them through the trading post. Self explanatory.

Yeah :>

Would it kill the Heralds to tell us what exactly, or what vaguely, the “refugees” in the Charr and Norn lands are fleeing from?

I mean, I know that each new event is supposed to be epic and mysterious and discovered slowly over time, but shouldn’t the Heralds have at least even the slightest clue why refugees are flocking to cities in droves? Don’t the refugees talk about where they are from or what they’re fleeing?

But then again, all the refugees say is “Hey there.” and “MY MOMMY TOLD ME NOT TO TALK TO STRANGERS.” Hmm…

Either way, it wouldn’t hurt to even just say “There are refugees fleeing destruction from the north.” Destruction. There. Something is destroying some homes somewhere. It’s more information than we have right now, and certainly a reasonable level of information to display.

It’s just weird to hear about some huge dramatic event, that I am sure will be more epic with time, but to find only some broken signs on the side of the road. I’m looting people’s bodies for necklaces, giving those necklaces to random hobos, and putting up “refugee sign.” What are they running from? Who are they? Why are they all dead on the road? What on earth do the signs say or what purpose do they serve?

There’s mystery, and then there’s “not-very-engaging.” A little Herald dialogue edit, or giving the refugees something to say, could really help.

Forewarning: This game is extremely fun, I enjoy it and can’t get enough of it, and it’s still one of the best MMO’s ever made. So please remember that, any dev reading this, and know that I appreciate this game a lot, and I take pride in the fact that every gem I buy helps generate income for the fantastic creative team behind this game.

But the personal story is still so kitten it still needs to be criticized and talked about.

Just wanted to give my two cents.

I really loved the plot of this particular story step, it really stepped up the scale of the dragon conflict beyond just “random stuff that happens in mostly uninhabited areas”.

However, a few things still fell so impossibly flat that it was impossible to take seriously.

Voice Acting: Deputy Mira wins worst voice acting of the year award. Every single person on the island she patrols is dead or dying, and the city proper is almost sure to follow after. Does her voice falter? Does she express fear, doubt, shame, rage, or remorse? Does she express any emotion at all? No, she just talks to you like she’s reading off a shopping list. I maintain my stance that although the voice actors themselves are decent to good, they need better direction. They put odd inflections in the things they try to say, as if they have no idea which parts of a line to emphasize due to the context of the statement, which could be ironed out if one of the writers would just tap their shoulder and say “Hey, you’re supposed to be sad here,” instead of just making the VA’s guess. Deputy Mira made the entire tragedy entirely impossible to take seriously.

Dialogue The actual dialogue is atrocious. Most pertinent example: before Seiran sacrifices herself, she spouts some completely random nonsense about friendship. “Player, you taught me that friends can do anything together!” What? How? We grabbed some awful cliche blooddragonravenMAGIC sword, and rescued some quaggan sure, but there was no bonding. There was no moment where we became friends. We just randomly ran around for about 30 seconds total (because these story steps are so very short and so very far between) with her being bubbly and us accomplishing things. At what point did a friendship form? We were never asked to trust one another, or had lengthy conversations, or anything really. We just worked together on a few brief missions. And furthermore, she was exactly the same person in this story step as she was when we first met her. “I was so selfish when I met you, but now I’m not!” Uhhh…. okay? She never acted selfish, and in fact ran out to help everyone and anyone she met. Since the day she showed up. She hasn’t changed whatsoever. So the things she says towards the end of the mission are just random garbage that you think you’d hear out of a particularly saccharine children’s cartoon. And for the record, I am a person who personally believes what others find cheesy and saccharine: things like “friendship is wonderful and important and powerful!” and “we all need to work together to make eachother happy 8D,” but with Seiran it is just atrociously forced, unfounded, and godawful. It derailed any pathos for the events that transpired.

So…. yeah. Seriously.

If you ask me, the plot in this game is fantastic. Strip out the dialogue and VA and horrid conversation-cutscenes, and boil down the major events of any given story arc, and you have a very engaging and interesting story. Then the dialogue comes in, and tends to A) be entirely childish, be information-dry (there are often dearths of within-story explanations for any enemy faction or motivation at any given time…. it seems like a bunch of random events just happening, which could be fixed with some dialogue edits), and C) fail to impart the scope of the damage being caused in the world. Then the VA comes in, and some lines are so horribly delivered (due to the lack of emotion more often than anything else, period)… all in some empty void, with two floating actors. It’s just a train wreck.

I still love the lore! I still love the plot, specifically! But dear goodness, the dialogue/VA are in need of dire, dire help. Still. I just want it to be good x.x, I see so many good intentions from the writers failing so thoroughly, I wish there was some way to patch in a fix.

The jokes on the Mad King Thorn outfit from the gem shop are simply the worst voice acting in the game, period.

He sounds like a bored office worker.

Shouldn’t the Mad King sound threatening, supernatural, imposing, crazy?

Or are we not using his voice, and instead using our character’s? Because the voice sounded exactly the same on my norn and sylvari, and neither sounded a whole lot like my character.

Morthur.3894:

I’m sorry to say that I also found the dialogue in the personal story very weak. I think a large factor is also how the story is presented: all key events are set in stone – whenever a cut scene fires it’s basically “meh” because everything I did before it and everything that comes after are totally and utterly irrelevant and have zero impact on the cut scene. It’s like they happened in a universe of their own.

I would almost agree, but what I latch onto mostly is this:

Morthur.3894:

…everything I did before it and everything that comes after are totally and utterly irrelevant and have zero impact on the cut scene. It’s like they happened in a universe of their own.

The different branches from 1-10, 10-20, 20-30, etc, all feel utterly and totally disconnected. Most characters you meet disappear entirely and completely, never to be seen or reflected on again, never to impact the story beyond the ten minutes you spent with them. The characters that do recur don’t really feel like they grow, develop, or change at all between story steps. I’d bet everything that happened outside of the current 10-level bracket is just some null oblivion in their memory.

Nothing has a lasting impact. Nothing.

And if the intended effect was that each 10-level story path was a short story all its own, that could stand on its own merits…

Well, each 10-level step is more like a page than a short story, you know what I mean? Very short. And of course each page is disconnected from the next. That’s how I feel having played this game. Like I just read 8 individual pages, each almost entirely independent from the last, some characters getting a paragraph’s worth of mention and others half a sentence before they disappear.

Not, satisfying.

Metadigital.9426:

- There’s no sense of hopelessness in the game, which is odd, considering that the plot seems to be so focused on finding hope. There is never a time where the players or the characters are really defeated in any meaningful way. There is a moment, which is nearly comical, when Trahearne attempts to purify Orr for the first time and fails. He loses hope for one line of dialogue, but restores it again after your character responds with one more line of dialogue. I almost laughed then, but didn’t until later, when Trahearne remarks at how he almost lost faith in a later scene. At this point, I wasn’t sure if the game was being serious or it was satire. The ending is entirely undermined by the story’s lack of giving you a point in which you feel you cannot win. I always felt like the game was handing me victories on a silver platter, even if the mission was actually difficult.

- There is something to be said for grit and dark fantasy. Guild Wars 2 is all rainbows and puppy dogs, and this really clashes with the game’s themes (undead rising from the ocean threatening to swallow the world, dragons eating finite supplies of magic, etc). The story just needed a little more darkness to round it out, like shadows round out a painting. I felt that this was probably intentionally left out to reach out to as wide an audience as possible, but it just went to far. I just can’t bring myself to believe this world. It’s too bright, even in the ruins of Orr.

I think this is another key. I for one fully support the move to make Guild Wars 2 bright and optimistic, because I like optimistic stories just as much as gritty ones, and they put me in a better mood lol. But if there is never any danger, sorrow, loss, or fear of failure, then the message isn’t “finding hope in dark places”, which is deep and meaningful. It comes off more as “yeah don’t worry things are basically okay. Great even.” The world is covered in monsters and death, but I don’t think anything brings that point across other than the implications of the character creation cutscenes.

The state of the world has no impact on the personal story steps. The dragons appear to have zero impact on the side character’s lives, and our initial story steps have nothing to do with the dragons. When we do start to level up, the characters treat everything like an adventure (like for example Seiran from the Priory arc, dear god), a thrill ride, instead of anything to be taken seriously, so we don’t take it seriously, so it has no impact again.

I have to say that I would give up entirely on fantasy as a genre if it was all written in GRR Martin’s style. It’s good, and I love Game of Thrones, but too much grit would make for an uninteresting genre. Snarling space marines anyone? Besides, sometimes you want to be cheered up and hope for a brighter world, instead of get drawn into a darker “more realistic” setting. There’s nothing inherently unrealistic about hope and pragmatic about pessimism.

Edit: This is why I believe the Caladbolg arc stands out above all others I have witnessed so far. It involves loss and failure (the Sylvari lose one of their all-time heroes due to the guy putting his trust in someone who turned out to be a selfish coward), it involves a real and believable villain instead of just a cartoonish evil (a guy who starts out as a scared kid you can almost sympathize with but has grown into a remorseless and brutish man), and a player character choice made out of an emotion other than “ADVENTURE 8D” (in this case, revenge). It provides contrast to the rest of the game in ways no other story has, and it actually transports us for a moment into a world where things can go wrong, so the victories you earn and the lives you save are actually meaningful. That said some of the dialogue was absolutely painful to sit through (some stuff about how the fallen Sylvari stood for LOVE AND BRAVERY AND FRIENDSHIP or some such, and the ways the kid expressed his fear, I forgot specifics by now) but as a whole the Caladbolg arc I believe worked, and if there were more story arcs with its tone and sense of writing, I would chalk this game’s story up to Great.

Still love the game guys! Just being analytical about the plot :X

Gab Superstar.4059:

Constantly trying to portray my character as a hero is NOT more important than making the dialogue believable.

I’ve noticed this as well, and it extends beyond just the Personal Story.

Sometimes I feel that the game is just outright condescending to me.

From the ad campaigns to the blog posts to the way NPCs react to you to the narcissistic little voice snippets your character says when you level up, I feel that everyone, always, will not shut up about how great/amazing/incredible I am. The story is ABOUT YOU! You are a SUPER HERO! YOU play this game YOUR WAY! I JUST KEEP GETTING BETTER AND BETTER! A HERO LIKE YOU IS JUST THE BEST.

I keep expecting to get a little gold star sticker on my report card, because I’m just such a special little child. D’aww.

I just find it weird that absolutely everyone is just filled with awe and praise just from being within inches of you. I find it weird that every single character you meet is either 100% inoffensively agreeable and respectful towards you, or a villain. And while I understand that it is interesting for players to have story branches, its odd that people who far outrank or out-experience you are leaving their Very Crucial decisions up to you. (I like the branches better where the NPC basically says “Hey we’re sending one group to do Plan A and another to do Plan B, which would you like to join?”: it implies that while you are important, the NPCs don’t just blindly put say the fate of the Priory in the hands of a new recruit).

It just seems, like the quote, that the story (and as I mentioned, every single force ArenaNet can muster, anywhere) constantly goes out of its way to remind you how absolutely special and unique and amazing you are and pat you on your little head, and it kind of makes you want to throw up a little.

And for me, it sounds like I’m being treated like a child. I don’t exactly think our fragile little egoes will shatter of you go one second without telling us we’re amazing.

Fox.1054:

Compared to the conversations in GW1 it was really cheesy. Atleast in GW1 characters felt believable and had a purpose… I liked the group based story in GW1 much more, everyone wants to be part of a group! Sole heroes are better spent in comic books, hence why the GW2 personal story very much feels like a comic story.

A thousand times this. In GW1 (I loved all four campaign stories) the story was not specifically about you: it was about nations, about cities, about small groups of survivors, about the NPCs. You were not the focal point of the story. However, at the same time, you were crucial to the plot, because you were the muscle got the NPCs from Point A to Point B: the only one who could, and did help them. You got several extremely interesting stories about apocalyptic gods, rogue spirit guides, and the death of a kingdom, and you were the one that saved it all, even though the story was not zoomed in on you. I feel like the ArenaNet writing team is just far better at this type of writing, and that they just kind of fall apart when it comes to trying to write a story centered on the player characters. The scale is smaller and more uninteresting: its about some human politicians hiring thugs, instead of the destruction of Ascalon. And when the writers try to focus on the Player Character, they go way overboard with the condescension. We didn’t have to sit through every NPC we met telling Prince Rurik how amazing and manly he was. Kormir didn’t get worshipped until after she became a goddess. And the writing, and the game, was better for it.

That being said, this isn’t always the case, and I am still really enjoying the game, just an observation. >_>

First off, I want to make it clear that I find the dialogue neat or even great at times (The Caladbolg arc) and somewhat cheesy at others, I really do enjoy this game quite a lot.

I think though the Voice Acting stumbles now and again. Somebody put it together pretty well on the Guild Wars 2 Guru forums: the Voice Acting ranges from good to great, none of the voices are grating or dull and many are full of life, but the problem lies in the direction. It feels like there was no director for the voice actors sometimes. No one giving them context for their statements or a clue as to what they should be feeling when they read a line. Some characters say things like “I’m scared that Tegwynn might be harmed!” in an upbeat and cheery, bubbly voice. I… am actually not going to be too useful for specifics, because I have a bad memory. So I guess I’ll just stick with the two examples I do have.

Bad/No Direction: The VA for Carys (a Sylvari NPC in the Orrian Mirror lvl 10-20 arc) was extremely good at making Carys stand out as a bouncy, excitable, and optimistic Sylvari warrior who didn’t always think things through. The voice was engaging, believable, and enjoyable. The problem is that Carys never really expressed any other emotions, and while at times this was in line with character and text, at others, it sounded like she should have been speaking with dismay. Tegwynn, her mentor, gets sucked into an ancient undead mirror, and Carys is constantly saying things like “I’m so scared for her…” or “What if she’s dead…” or “We need to find her!”. Only every single time, she is using the same “I just love picnics! 8D” tone, so its hard to tell that she’s taking any of it seriously, and there seems to be a disconnect between the written dialogue and the verbal attitude. I can’t place any specifics right now but this kind of thing has constantly bothered me throughout the game: judging by the writing and context, it would appear that a line should be spoken with a specific tone (ruggedly/angrily/sadly/humorously), but the actual vocal tone seems disconnected from the emotion you would expect. This might fall under subjective judgments at times (if I were speaking the line, I would say X with a casual confidence, not flippant humor, dangit!) but I truly do feel that sometimes the VA is not getting across the emotion the writer had in mind.

Good Direction: The Caladbolg arc. The Caladbolg arc is the 20-30 Sylvari arc where one is exposed to the three orders. I have to say this was my favorite story in the entire game so far and the first time I was actually hit with a bit of true pathos, instead of just entertainment. Characters expressed more than just light hearted goofiness, light hearted heroism, and light hearted confidence (EVERY character constantly being agreeable is another problem, its unrealsitic lol): they were able to express doubt, remorse, anger, toughness, and vengeance. They always felt like they were expressing an emotion proper to the moment. When they discovered something or achieved a victory, they exalted. When they witnessed the death of a hero, they were sad. When something happened in the story, the characters actually sounded like they were emotionally responding to the situation instead of just trying to read a bunch of lines.

I have to wonder, when you guys were recording VA for the personal story steps, did you gather all of the voice actors in a given story step and have them record a given conversation together? Or did the VAs record individually, separate from one another? Because sometimes it sounds like the characters aren’t talking with each other so much of vaguely talking at each other. To pull a random hypothetical, lets pretend Zojja and Logan have a conversation. It seems that having Logan and Zojja’s VA’s in the same recording session and talking to each other would allow them to build the mood for the scene together and constantly play off of each other. If you had one come in and record all of their lines on Monday, and the other come in on Friday, then they’re not two people having a conversation. They are two people taking turns monologuing to each other, no matter how it is written.

TL;DR: I feel that sometimes the VA miss their mark and read a line with a tone inconsistent with the intent of the text/context/writer, and sometimes it seems like the characters are taking turns rambling instead of having an organic conversation with one another. I believe the problem lies in lacking direction and coordination between writers and Voice Actors/Voice Actors and other Voice Actors in a specific scene. Of course I don’t know the underlying process, but those are my guesses.

Character Name: Thalann(me) Vendeera(friend)
Race: Sylvari
Profession: Warrior (me) Elementalist(friend)
Server: Tarnished Coast
Story Step: Lvl30 Flower of Death (me, guest) Dead of Winter (friend, host)

Yeah as above I entered my friend’s level 30 story step (the one where Destiny’s Edge gets talking together in LA) and when we exited the completed story step, my friend was on track just fine with her first Durmand Priory mission whereas I was skipped ahead to level 48 Forewarned is Forearmed. Just been levelling in the meantime :X almost 40.

I was wondering, does skipping the level 30-48 story arcs mean your character can’t earn the account banner for “completing initiation” in a given order? Not sure what actually earns that banner lol.

I am wondering this too. >:(

Yeah, me and my girlfriend were playing our Sylvari and I got doubly messed up lol. First we were asked whether we wanted to formally join the Vigil, the Order of Whispers, or the Durmand Priory for our level 28 punch-the-lich story. My girlfriend was the one leading the instance, and she selected the Durmand Priory. I liked their plan best, so I agreed to progress my story similarly.

Then we got to the Gendarren Fields, and realized that we were on two different quests. She was on the level 28 pre-Durmand Priory quest, correctly, Dead of Winter. I was on the pre-Vigil step, Flower of Death, for some reason, against my will and what I was told I would be progressing to if I accepted my girlfriend’s progress. I opened a Support Ticket and to this day have not gotten a response.

We waited a few days, did some map completion, no ticket response. So we just decided to do her story (Dead of Winter), and I decided to do my story (Flower of Death) and I would just suck it up and join the Vigil since the dev team is busy and I really didn’t want to wait forever just so I can join the Durmand Priory. We both beat our level 28 quest/arc, got rewarded, and headed to Lion’s Arch for our first assignment.

We went into her instance of the level 30 step “go report to _ for your first set of orders” (more like listen to the five Signature Noobs argue like kids) and lo and behold when we pop out, not only am I still in the Vigil when I had originally wanted the Priory, but I am now on my level 48 story step (Forewarned is Forearmed) having skipped everything in between. Everything.

I have a lot of other characters to play but this really is kind of an obnoxious bug, and I’m shocked that absolutely nothing (supposedly) can be done about it.

Just wanted to pop in and say my girlfriend had this problem too: got a Black Lion Key from zone completion (Gendarran Fields), tried to unlock a Black Lion Chest with 0 free inventory slots, key disappeared and chest did not unlock. Very disappointing!