Guild Wars 2

Did you get the dragon mini Mitch?

I’ve been going around making sure I got all the karma armor skins unlocked to expand my skins beyond the ones I get from salvaging every blue/green/yellow armor that dropped.

Yunielesca.2850:

Acrisor.8097:

I do not understand why they did not put Royal Terrace Pass too. It does the same thing, but on a different location.
Anyway, it’s not my decision to make

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Talk_Like_a_Pirate_Day

If you didn’t notice, it’s a pirate theme sale on the TP for 24 hours.

Well there’s the pirate sale on the Gem Shop. Anything remotely pirate has either returned or put on sale. Only for 24 hours.

• Bazaar Quaggan Mini Pack – 500 gems (includes mini Peggellegg the “Pirate”) – return
• Captain’s Airship Pass – 1000 gems – return
• Captain’s Airship Pass (2 Weeks) – 75 gems – 50% off
• Aetherblade Armor Skins – 640 gems – 20% off
• Pirate Captain’s Outfit – 490 gems – 30% off
• Magnus’s Eye Patch – 200 gems – 50% off
• Permanent Skritt-Scavenger Finisher – 450 + 5 gems – 30% off

Edit – de-kitten the Finisher price

I heard the reset is either Sunday or Tuesday and not the WvW reset.

Dreamslayer.7659:

Behellagh.1468:

Astralporing.1957:

Actually, they did contribute something. They lowered BL skin prices, which made them available to other players. Let’s face it, at 3k+ gold (the reasonable gold price if skins were coming from bought keys), not many people would be able to afford them on tp.

Very roughly it’s 20 keys per ticket which means a 5 ticket skin would cost roughly 8,400 gems or 1,700-1,800 gold. Adjusting for tax and fees that’s roughly 2,100 gold to break even. The question then is how much profit are you hoping for vs how much the market is willing to pay.

Don’t confuse value with cost. Whether you get 3 tickets from 5 keys or 1 ticket from 25 keys, the value of a BL skin will be determined by it’s desirability and rarity.

The other thing to keep in mind, as mentioned by another poster, is that the chests also drop items of reasonable utility and have a small chance to drop extremely valuable permanent contracts. It’s not a strict gems to keys to skins conversion. If you want certainty, buy the skin you want off the TP.

And that’s been my point but constantly shouted down that keys are ONLY good for getting tickets and not the so called “junk” BLCs also drop. And I am talking about actual cost. Of course the price the market is willing to accept is based entirely on desirability and the rate of supply.

Does a Dx9 game run in Windows 10? Yes. Therefore Windows 10 support Dx9.

Does Dx9 support extreme resolutions? I can see that not being the case but that’s an issue with the Dx9 feature set and driver implementation.

And once again Dx12 does not buy you much in terms of performance as people suppose until the game renderer is rewritten for multithreaded scaling for Dx11 and Dx12. Also the real bottleneck is the main thread at events and not currently the renderer.

There is a lot of infrastructure work needed to be done before they can even look at another API. Remember the entire game engine is home grown with roots going back to the original Guild Wars. This isn’t an engine from a game developer that uses it on multiple released games or licence it to 3rd parties and need to compete against other engines.

I’m not disagreeing that it wouldn’t be nice to have it happen, I’m merely pointing out that it’s not the same as adding a new API to a engine that already supports several. It’s much more difficult to go from supporting one to two than two to N.

His cost would be either the price on the TP or the amount of gold or cash needed to get enough gems to get enough for a ticket. But in reality it could cost a player as little as one key or as much as 100 keys (I’ll calculate at better number later … maybe).

Abimes keeps saying 30 keys. And while that is near the average of 1 it’s will still leave around 1/4 of the players (25.9%) using 30 keys will got nothing. 44.2% will get 1; 22.3% will get 2 or more; and 7.5% will get 3 or more.

And your dismissal of full ticket drops is a problem because they do drop enough to significantly generate tickets.

Lets say 100 players each open 30 chests so 3000 chests in total. Of the roughly 113 tickets generated as a group, 61 were full tickets, more than half. Because each player opens only 30 chests, collectively they will only get 52 tickets from scraps which leaves about 449 extra scraps will be spread around with no one player with having enough for another ticket.

This is an example of diffusion of key drops I was talking about. Lots of players with extra scraps but not enough to make a ticket.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Behellagh.1468:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Behellagh.1468:

As I said, numerous times, this is based on the current drop rate data in the wiki for Black Lion Chests and is an aggregate when a large number of chests are used.

Because of scraps there is a cumulative effect where you will get extra tickets over the normal full ticket drop rate of roughly 2%. Open 10 chests, it’s virtually impossible to get 10 scraps. Open 100 chests, you have a 72% chance to have 30 or more scraps, so three tickets on top of the 2 full ones that will likely drop (60% for two or more).

I can only work with the data I have and that data points to an overall rate, on an individual player of 1 ticket in 20 keys. You may have to open a lot of chests to reach that point starting at zero but that’s what the data is pointing to.

Should the cost for the individual player be calculated by the offs for the aggregate, most people will be using scraps, and the cost of scraps is what should be used. Not the cost reached over long periods of time.

Because you can’t be bothered to check the wiki itself.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Black_Lion_Chest/Drop_rate

I realized after I posted that you were adding in the rare chance for a full ticket and changed what I said. Since you posted before I changed it, I’ll repeat.

Should the cost for the individual player for the one weapon he is selling be calculated by the odds for the aggregate who, over large numbers of drops will get the occasional lucky ticket? Most people will be using scraps, and the cost of scraps is what should be used for one particular set of 10 scraps. Not the cost reached over long periods of time if they continue to open chests.

When I sell it’s based on the current range of prices on the TP for that skin.

This goes back to the intent of getting tickets. Are you getting them for your own personal use. “Gee that’s a sweet skin for my mesmer.” Or are you “crafting”.

I’m going to guess that ANet didn’t think anyone would bother doing something as boring, long and repetitive as continuously creating and running a character through the first personal story chapter. And if a player does it, it’s for acquiring a ticket skin for themselves. The idea that a cottage industry would get created to sell these “free” skins probably surprised them. The size of it and how it’s grown even more so.

To answer your question, the price will rise to what the market will bear to balance the influx of new supply to sales. If that price is now high enough that it’s better to buy keys and deal with the RNG, so be it. But there will always be somebody who has money and doesn’t want to deal with RNG and would be willing to pay 500 gold for a one ticket skin.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Behellagh.1468:

As I said, numerous times, this is based on the current drop rate data in the wiki for Black Lion Chests and is an aggregate when a large number of chests are used.

Because of scraps there is a cumulative effect where you will get extra tickets over the normal full ticket drop rate of roughly 2%. Open 10 chests, it’s virtually impossible to get 10 scraps. Open 100 chests, you have a 72% chance to have 30 or more scraps, so three tickets on top of the 2 full ones that will likely drop (60% for two or more).

I can only work with the data I have and that data points to an overall rate, on an individual player of 1 ticket in 20 keys. You may have to open a lot of chests to reach that point starting at zero but that’s what the data is pointing to.

Should the cost for the individual player be calculated by the offs for the aggregate, most people will be using scraps, and the cost of scraps is what should be used. Not the cost reached over long periods of time.

Because you can’t be bothered to check the wiki itself.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Black_Lion_Chest/Drop_rate

You then apply binomial distribution for n independent trials for both a full ticket and binned rates on scraps (0-9;10-19;20-29 …). You then multiply and sum all the various combinations to get the chance for X number of usable tickets. 100 chests using the roughly 2% for tickets, 32% for scrap (I was using the exact values) yields an average of 4.8 tickets with 54.5% of the time yielding 5 or more tickets.

The odds of getting 9 or fewer scraps and no tickets out of 100 chests is over 224 million to 1.

Edit: misremember the scrap rate when writing the post.

As I said, numerous times, this is based on the current drop rate data in the wiki for Black Lion Chests and is an aggregate when a large number of chests are used.

Because of scraps there is a cumulative effect where you will get extra tickets over the normal full ticket drop rate of roughly 2%. Open 10 chests, it’s virtually impossible to get 10 scraps. Open 100 chests, you have a 72% chance to have 30 or more scraps, so three tickets on top of the 2 full ones that will likely drop (60% for two or more).

I can only work with the data I have and that data points to an overall rate, on an individual player of 1 ticket in 20 keys. You may have to open a lot of chests to reach that point starting at zero but that’s what the data is pointing to.

Like I showed. Based on the drop rate documented in the wiki for BLC, the large scale aggregate average is 20 keys per ticket. At bulk price for keys that’s 1680 gems so $21€. Since new skins go on sale of one ticket, that’s probably the targeted price point.

Astralporing.1957:

Actually, they did contribute something. They lowered BL skin prices, which made them available to other players. Let’s face it, at 3k+ gold (the reasonable gold price if skins were coming from bought keys), not many people would be able to afford them on tp.

Very roughly it’s 20 keys per ticket which means a 5 ticket skin would cost roughly 8,400 gems or 1,700-1,800 gold. Adjusting for tax and fees that’s roughly 2,100 gold to break even. The question then is how much profit are you hoping for vs how much the market is willing to pay.

Random musings

I brought up gambling because many times BLTC and keys are called gambling here. And I’m talking legal definition, not dictionary. To avoid legal ramifications, items in the shop are priced and their drop rates in BLTC adjusted so your 84-125 gem key rewards you with items that are priced at the store for at least that much. I am trying with this to remove that argument from the discussion.

And I’ve said that scraps are an insidious psychological reward because until you get 10, they aren’t of any immediate value and since they drop frequently if you only need a couple to get that ticket you are more likely to buy some keys.

@Abimes it doesn’t quite work out to that amount since due to RNG, using the drop percentage in the wiki, it becomes cheaper the more you open because of scraps. And here is what I mean.

You list 30 keys as average. Breaking down the distribution you get the following.

Full keys: 0 – 54.1%; 1 – 33.6%; 2 – 10.1%; 3 – 2.0%; 4 – 0.3%
Scraps: 0-9 – 48.0%; 10-19 – 52.0%; 20+ – 0.0%

This means that roughly 25.9% of the times you will get nothing, no ticket drops, not enough scraps for a ticket. That is the problem with RNG. On the other hand 29.8% of the time you’ll get 2 or more. And because of the conversion rate of scraps to tickets, the average is 1.13 tickets rather than the straight up estimate of 1.58 because you have extra scraps. But what happens when you double the sample to 60?

Full keys: 0 – 29.2%; 1 – 36.3%; 2 – 22.2%; 3 – 8.9%; 4 – 2.6%; 5 – 0.6%; 6 – 0.1%
Scraps: 0-9 – 0.2%; 10-19 – 51.7%; 20-29 – 47.7%; 30-39 – 0.3%; 40+ – 0.0%

On the bright side, there is now only a 0.6% chance of getting none. And the average is now 2.70 tickets, again less than the 3.16 from simple calculations but because of the cumulative nature of scraps that second group of 30 actually delivered 1.57 more which is darn close to 1.58. That means 90 keys will likely yield you 4 tickets which will drop your cost of 2550 gems (your 25 +5 pack) per ticket to roughly 2100 gems (25 pack) per ticket.

Open enough and on average it drops to 20 keys per ticket but we are talking a lot of keys. Buy keys in bulk and that puts the gem cost at 1680 gems, $21€/£14.28. That’s why I said if they sold keys directly, as some suggest, 1200 gems each would be a steal.

Of course right now converting 1200 gems to gold will give you roughly 160 gold at the moment. Dwyana’s skins are half that.

And here’s the problem with diffusing key drops across the population as ANet is doing. Assume they have a handle of how many extra keys key farmers generate beyond 1 a week and they up the drop rate so those extra keys are now dropped around the world every week.

One player opening 1000 chests should get on average 20 full tickets and 320 scraps or 32 more tickets for a total of 52 tickets.

Ten players opening 100 chests each will still cumulatively get 20 full tickets but only 32-33 scraps each or 3 more tickets for a total of 50 tickets.

One hundred players opening 10 chests each again will cumulatively get 20 full tickets but virtually nobody will get 10 scraps out of 10 chests so the total tickets drop is only 20.

Same number of keys, way fewer tickets, 60% fewer tickets.

Some have suggested that this change is the fault of P4F players. Schemes are spun that keyfarming bots on P4F accounts could generate loads of keys, upgrade the account, buy the available skins that can be sold for the highest amount of gold and then sell that gold for more than the $50 for the HoT account.

Now if that is true we can see that they can place restrictions into the game based on being P4F. If this was a concern this restriction would only be on them on not on everyone. This also assumes the can’t spot suspicious forms of game play and shut down a P4F bot before it upgrades and impacts the economy.

Maybe they should add farm a key to the PvE dailies. I know several players who would never farm keys now considering this as a valid activity now that there’s a weekly limit. It can be a guild activity, the weekly key farm.

I don’t disagree that the BLC have some crap in them or that some of the gem shop staples are overpriced in what they provide. Boosters should last a lot longer if you are charging a dollar for each of them. If you can buy something from a vendor for in game coin, it shouldn’t be in the chest, ever. See Boost Enchantment Powder.

That’s it. Fire away.

Fine, value in gems.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Behellagh.1468:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Behellagh.1468:

Paulytnz.7619:

You keep giving this history lesson and I think people are sick of hearing about it now. Okay we get it, the chests when FIRST released had a totally different purpose – to give random items from the pool of other items you could just buy directly. With that the chance to get some super rare items you could not buy directly – Tonics, perm bank contracts etc. I would say that the people were buying the keys for these items and not the other random junk because they could simply just buy them directly anyway.

Then Anet decided to add their frist skin set in the gem store, I can’t remember exactly how it went but I remember there was a LOT of anger over it because of the RNG and cost in the long run. So Anet then decided to shift them to the chests. I would say at this point the whole focus of the chests changed, and yes in Anet’s eyes.

So please, can we stop pretending that the purpose of these chests NOW is for a random thrill of getting boosters, dyes, minis or anything else that you can buy directly. Obviously this has changed not only in the eyes of the players but also in Anets. Why else would they advertise keys and chests as the way to get the new weapon skins every time a new set comes out? They certainly do not say:

“buy some keys now for a random item that you could get directly if you want, but just buy these keys now for the fun of getting one of them randomly – you will get a surprise everytime!” “oh and btw you may also get some scraps to turn into tickets to buy these new skins, but that’s not the main point here, go for the random fun of it all!”

The purpose from ANet’s perspective has not changed. If it did then they would have substantially alter the chest’s drop table. They haven’t. They’ve tweaked it from time to time, adding one kind of “junk” to replace another. They’ve modified some of the drop rates. They’ve added items you can no longer buy directly from the Gem Shop. But it still is fundamentally a sampler whether you are willing to acknowledge that or not.

Do people buy chocolate samplers because they only want chocolate Turtles or ones with coconut fillings? No, of course not, they buy a box of what they want. So yes, if a player wants something particular that a chest drops that’s also in the Gem Shop that of course they will buy it directly. Yet boxes of chocolate samplers still sell in greater volume than boxes with only a specific kind.

Ever play a CCG? CCG booster packs are another example of a random collection where you don’t know what you are going to get, a sample of cards. Yes MTG and other CCGs became a battle of wallets with players buying cases of display boxes of boosters to get those desirable rares but that doesn’t mean the rest of those cards are junk or the intent behind the distribution method wasn’t sound.

But you all are so goal focus, your blinders don’t let you even acknowledge that there is another purpose for BLTC than a means to get tickets. They aren’t broken, your view of them are.

Your chocolate sampler analogy doesn’t hold because if I only want cherry centered chocolates, I don’t have to buy samplers with flavors I don’t like inside. I can buy cherry centered ones alone. You can’t do that with scraps/tickets. You can’t buy them alone from the gem store. They are “held hostage” within the sampler box and that’s the only way to get them. People must buy the “chocolate samples” box with chocolates that they don’t want to get those “cherry centered chocolates.”

That assumes that they sell boxes of cherry centered ones but if they don’t, samplers are your only choice. Lets face it, any analogy is never going to be 100% accurate. And chocolate samplers aren’t a blind random collection either. And CCG booster packs normally have a guarantee that one card is from the rare or uncommon set. But if all you cared about were Moxes and Black Lotus (yes I go that far back) you aren’t going to care about whatever else is in the rare pool.

Let’s try another analogy

Let’s say there is only one place that you can buy a car. You go to the dealership and they sell you boxes with a random chance to get one of a 10 part ticket. Inside the boxes are also other items such as cigarette lighters, car wax, tire pressure gauge, a coupon for a new tire. etc.. The dealer claims these items are the real purpose of the boxes and the car scraps are just the bonus. You must buy a variable, unknown number of boxes until you finally get enough car scraps to get the car you want.

If someone tried to convince you that the reasons you bought all those boxes was to get the random items inside and that this sampler was a good way for you to buy a car, would you believe him?

The people buying the keys are trying to get the ticket. They are not trying to get the other items and this is why your analogies fail. You’re looking at it from the “dealership’s” perspective. Not from the people who are trying to “buy the car” and have to buy boxes with cigarette lighters inside instead.

Except that’s not the case and you know it. You may not believe that all that “junk” is worth the gem price of a key on average but it is. As long as that is true you are getting your gems worth of goods then it’s not gambling. Doesn’t matter if you don’t want fuzzy backpacks, minis, BLSKs, Total Makeover Kits, or a butt ton of boosters.

What this takes away is the ability to concentrate scraps onto a single account quickly for a full ticket, even if the rate of keys dropped onto the population remains the same overall. Full tickets aren’t an issue but scraps will be spread about not amounting to as many full tickets in the same period of time.

Ayrilana.1396:

Mystic.5934:

Ayrilana.1396:

The rate may be lower than a gold per laurel. I tested a full monthly cycle (55) a few months ago and got around 70s each. I’m about to try out 500 laurels within the next week which should produce a more reliable result.

nice, let me know what you come up with. of course, the number will change constantly as the T6 mats change.

I had enough to reach 500 so I went ahead and cashed out. Looks like I can blame the horrible sample size I originally used which is a relief. I’m making slightly over 98 silver per laurel based on a sample size of 500. This is based on the profit projections off the TP using sell prices.

Well assuming even distribution that’s 1.04 g per crafting bag before fees and taxes, 88s after.

Gee. If only they had a website that detailed what came in the expansion.

https://heartofthorns.guildwars2.com/game/specializations

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Behellagh.1468:

Paulytnz.7619:

You keep giving this history lesson and I think people are sick of hearing about it now. Okay we get it, the chests when FIRST released had a totally different purpose – to give random items from the pool of other items you could just buy directly. With that the chance to get some super rare items you could not buy directly – Tonics, perm bank contracts etc. I would say that the people were buying the keys for these items and not the other random junk because they could simply just buy them directly anyway.

Then Anet decided to add their frist skin set in the gem store, I can’t remember exactly how it went but I remember there was a LOT of anger over it because of the RNG and cost in the long run. So Anet then decided to shift them to the chests. I would say at this point the whole focus of the chests changed, and yes in Anet’s eyes.

So please, can we stop pretending that the purpose of these chests NOW is for a random thrill of getting boosters, dyes, minis or anything else that you can buy directly. Obviously this has changed not only in the eyes of the players but also in Anets. Why else would they advertise keys and chests as the way to get the new weapon skins every time a new set comes out? They certainly do not say:

“buy some keys now for a random item that you could get directly if you want, but just buy these keys now for the fun of getting one of them randomly – you will get a surprise everytime!” “oh and btw you may also get some scraps to turn into tickets to buy these new skins, but that’s not the main point here, go for the random fun of it all!”

The purpose from ANet’s perspective has not changed. If it did then they would have substantially alter the chest’s drop table. They haven’t. They’ve tweaked it from time to time, adding one kind of “junk” to replace another. They’ve modified some of the drop rates. They’ve added items you can no longer buy directly from the Gem Shop. But it still is fundamentally a sampler whether you are willing to acknowledge that or not.

Do people buy chocolate samplers because they only want chocolate Turtles or ones with coconut fillings? No, of course not, they buy a box of what they want. So yes, if a player wants something particular that a chest drops that’s also in the Gem Shop that of course they will buy it directly. Yet boxes of chocolate samplers still sell in greater volume than boxes with only a specific kind.

Ever play a CCG? CCG booster packs are another example of a random collection where you don’t know what you are going to get, a sample of cards. Yes MTG and other CCGs became a battle of wallets with players buying cases of display boxes of boosters to get those desirable rares but that doesn’t mean the rest of those cards are junk or the intent behind the distribution method wasn’t sound.

But you all are so goal focus, your blinders don’t let you even acknowledge that there is another purpose for BLTC than a means to get tickets. They aren’t broken, your view of them are.

Your chocolate sampler analogy doesn’t hold because if I only want cherry centered chocolates, I don’t have to buy samplers with flavors I don’t like inside. I can buy cherry centered ones alone. You can’t do that with scraps/tickets. You can’t buy them alone from the gem store. They are “held hostage” within the sampler box and that’s the only way to get them. People must buy the “chocolate samples” box with chocolates that they don’t want to get those “cherry centered chocolates.”

That assumes that they sell boxes of cherry centered ones but if they don’t, samplers are your only choice. Lets face it, any analogy is never going to be 100% accurate. And chocolate samplers aren’t a blind random collection either. And CCG booster packs normally have a guarantee that one card is from the rare or uncommon set. But if all you cared about were Moxes and Black Lotus (yes I go that far back) you aren’t going to care about whatever else is in the rare pool.

Kain Francois.4328:

Behellagh.1468:

Forum Bug, she’s on it.

What anime is that?

Ah (or Oh) My Goddess!

That’s Skuld, the youngest of the three Norn sisters of fate who in this series is a system debugger for Yggdrasil, the computer system that governs reality.

Forum Bug, she’s on it.

Paulytnz.7619:

You keep giving this history lesson and I think people are sick of hearing about it now. Okay we get it, the chests when FIRST released had a totally different purpose – to give random items from the pool of other items you could just buy directly. With that the chance to get some super rare items you could not buy directly – Tonics, perm bank contracts etc. I would say that the people were buying the keys for these items and not the other random junk because they could simply just buy them directly anyway.

Then Anet decided to add their frist skin set in the gem store, I can’t remember exactly how it went but I remember there was a LOT of anger over it because of the RNG and cost in the long run. So Anet then decided to shift them to the chests. I would say at this point the whole focus of the chests changed, and yes in Anet’s eyes.

So please, can we stop pretending that the purpose of these chests NOW is for a random thrill of getting boosters, dyes, minis or anything else that you can buy directly. Obviously this has changed not only in the eyes of the players but also in Anets. Why else would they advertise keys and chests as the way to get the new weapon skins every time a new set comes out? They certainly do not say:

“buy some keys now for a random item that you could get directly if you want, but just buy these keys now for the fun of getting one of them randomly – you will get a surprise everytime!” “oh and btw you may also get some scraps to turn into tickets to buy these new skins, but that’s not the main point here, go for the random fun of it all!”

The purpose from ANet’s perspective has not changed. If it did then they would have substantially alter the chest’s drop table. They haven’t. They’ve tweaked it from time to time, adding one kind of “junk” to replace another. They’ve modified some of the drop rates. They’ve added items you can no longer buy directly from the Gem Shop. But it still is fundamentally a sampler whether you are willing to acknowledge that or not.

Do people buy chocolate samplers because they only want chocolate Turtles or ones with coconut fillings? No, of course not, they buy a box of what they want. So yes, if a player wants something particular that a chest drops that’s also in the Gem Shop that of course they will buy it directly. Yet boxes of chocolate samplers still sell in greater volume than boxes with only a specific kind.

Ever play a CCG? CCG booster packs are another example of a random collection where you don’t know what you are going to get, a sample of cards. Yes MTG and other CCGs became a battle of wallets with players buying cases of display boxes of boosters to get those desirable rares but that doesn’t mean the rest of those cards are junk or the intent behind the distribution method wasn’t sound.

But you all are so goal focus, your blinders don’t let you even acknowledge that there is another purpose for BLTC than a means to get tickets. They aren’t broken, your view of them are.

Dinks.2478:

Astralporing.1957:

Behellagh.1468:

Astralporing.1957:

Too bad they didn’t think that it might be because it’s the chests that are a problem.

That’s only because players collectively ignore the fact that the “junk” in chests is actually what chests were designed to deliver.

Wait, what? If the players collectively ignored the fact that chests give out mostly junk, then they would be buying keys, and the whole problem wouldn’t exist. It’s because they know the chests’ worth that key sales drop.

I think he was trying to say that we should accept the junk. Which we absolutely should not. Anet refuses to make keys worthwhile to buy and would rather spite us out of legitimate rewards than do so.

No. My point being is that BLTC had these items from day one that’s what you spent keys on to get. Then in July 2013 they added tickets and now players seem to forget that the so called junk was what players were buying keys to get before tickets were added.

The free key at the end of the first chapter of the personal story was put there so new players would get a sampler of what the Gem Store offered. Their first free hit.

But once they added tickets the chest’s true purpose doesn’t matter anymore to some of you. It’s all about the tickets and if you don’t get one or at least a scrap then it’s a rip off. It’s not a rip off, it’s working as intended, as a means to get random stuff that is or once was available at the Gem Shop, plus some exclusives which includes tickets and scraps. Consciously ignoring that by saying the chests and hence the keys are only about the tickets is a perverted view on what that item is for.

Explorer is not the same as map complete. You need to uncover blurred out areas on your maps. Everything is attainable in the open world, no need for going into an instance.

Invictus.1503:

Behellagh.1468:

Someone just watched WP.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUddp2KT5VE

Yes, and even referenced him in my OP.

Which proves I simply read the title of the thread after watching WP’s video myself.

Why am I still awake …

Rauderi.8706:

tl;dr and still didn’t mention the biggest “casual” player insult:

RNG rewards.

When only playing a few hours a week, the notion of rewards per hour means more to those players with limited time.

RNG is also it’s greatest strength because something “good” can drop on anyone at any time. Open a BLTC and get a permanent hair style contract or a ticket on your first try, pull a precursor out of the Mystic Forge, getting a useful exotic rather than a rare ring out of a boss chest. All of this rather than endless running of repetitive Raids simply to eventually earn the gear needed to join the next Raid.

These are always dumb, passive aggressive threads. Why should we prove to you, who don’t list the reasons why you left, why you should come back. Especially since the game has no subscription. Come back spend a week and decide for yourself but I doubt you are actually thinking of coming back at all and simply acting as an under the bridge dweller waiting for responses and only then list all your personal reasons for disliking this game that you already know hasn’t changed since you left.

I’ve seen this bait too many times. This is the Kobayashi Maru of thread topics.

Someone just watched WP.

You say Casual but I think you mean the other thing.

Bob F It.5701:

Good news: the level 40 key is unrestricted.

Why is that a surprise? It was obvious in the patch notes that it would only affect the key reward in the Level 10 story or do people construe “early” meaning anything under level 80?

I don’t think this has anything to do with P4F. This falls into the same category of altering events to encourage players to do “other” things and to disrupt emergent game play modes that the devs frown upon. They were able to contain P4F accounts without altering things for paid players, they could have done the same in the PS.

Sadly I can’t really get into the altaholicism here as I did with City of Heroes.

Then it would be a region like NA or Europe. Are there enough players for three servers so WvW can be done? If not, then it’s doubtful.

bacon.9461:

I haven’t ready all of this topic, obviously. It is 9 pages long. But personally I don’t agree with this change.

TLDR:
1.) If I take a character through level 10 story and level 40 story in the same week I get screwed out of a key.

Ignoring the patch notes that says it only affects “the early personal story rewards”.

Honestly you all won’t be happy until the BLTC only gives tickets or scraps and keys are as cheap as Transmutation Charges.

We could go back to the time of Dragon Bash, before tickets were added to the BLTC and sell chests that specifically drop skin tickets. They are slightly cheaper than keys and have half the chance that BLTC have. That’s okay, there are lesser chests that drop from mobs that have 1/20th the odds of getting a ticket as a paid one. Doesn’t that sound better?

Or you could sell tickets directly. 1200 gems each would be a bargain. Of course that means there isn’t a chance, no matter how small, that you could get a ticket for free when a key is handed out as a reward or from a drop or map complete.

Either allow account bound minis to be forge fodder. Or make it smart enough to roll again if you get a duplicate.

CandyHearts.6025:

The issue I have with this at the moment is. How does the key reset work? Is it based on when you get one? Or the weekly reset?

I heard it was a weekly reset and not timed to your last one.

Rauderi.8706:

Heh, funny notion.
GW2 tried to break convention by avoiding “how it’s done” in some places, but they seem firmly entrenched in their crappy keybox ripoff strategy, just like every other Asiagrinder MMO.

Of course, now I wonder how I’d find peer-reviewed articles about how to con people into buying keys, and what the findings were. “That’s how we do things” isn’t the most suitable mode of course in design decisions.

Actually it’s most non-subscription MMO with cash shops, not just “Asiagrinder MMO”.

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

Dallas, TX or Austin, TX area.

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

• You can convert gold to buy keys.
• You can spend real money to buy keys.
• You could spend some amount of time to play the first chapter of the personal story for a single key.

Now pre NPE you could grind out 2 to 3 keys an hour. After I have no idea how fast unless you have a ready supply of Tomes of Knowledge.

Well lock box keys in other games are similar in price to our keys. None are as cheap as you are suggesting.

I agree about the scraps. Scraps are there as a psychological inducement to buy more keys. “I only need X more scraps for a ticket, scraps are pretty common.” Scraps are only useful for players who use lots of keys. Doubling the ticket drop rate while eliminating scraps would reduce the casual desire to binge on keys. Which is why it won’t happen.

I buy Tier 6 bags every week with laurels and I get after fees and taxes roughly 85-95 silver each on average but it all depends on what you get (RNG), what the market is doing and what your tactic is in selling them (high bid, undercut low ask, sell above current low ask).

Darigen.2309:

Behellagh.1468:

Astralporing.1957:

Too bad they didn’t think that it might be because it’s the chests that are a problem.

That’s only because players collectively ignore the fact that the “junk” in chests is actually what chests were designed to deliver.

If they were designed to deliver that “junk”, why are the tickets in there as the only way to obtain them, too?

Unique backpack skins, account bound minis, set minis and missing event dye kits are also only available now from BLTC. Because it’s a rare PRIZE.

The mentality here if in the real world would be going into your local McDonalds and buying out all their packages with Monopoly game pieces, throwing away the “food” because you are hoping for one of the bigger prizes besides a bunch of tickets for free small fries. And then complain that the free small fry tickets are blocking you from getting one of the good prizes.

For the first 9 months of the game BLTC did not contain tickets. Period. Tickets and scraps were added to the existing reward pool as just one more potential reward. The notion that all those other rewards, many that have been there since launch, are cluttering your chance to get a ticket or scrap astounds me.

Linfang.1087:

The old exchange was better. The new exchange rounds to the nearest gold. In the old system if I had 803 gems and wanted to round it down to a even 800 for OCD sake. I could put in 3 gems and get the exact exchange in silver.

I hear you. It’s actually worse as it truncates. What’s wrong asking to buy 100 gold and get 100 gold and change when we have to pay down to the copper for gems.

Iason Evan.3806:

My beef with the gem shop is that 2 years ago things were reasonably priced. I could get 5 keys for like 25-35 gold. That seemed reasonable. The prices aren’t reasonable anymore. The items in the chest were worth it for fake, in-game currency. For real money though? No thanks.

Gem Store prices haven’t changed since they are priced in terms of real money and not “fake, in-game currency”. It always was a sucker’s play to buy keys with gems for skins rather than buy them off the TP, even two years ago when a 5 ticket skin was selling for 90g and gems were 5g per 100.

Astralporing.1957:

Too bad they didn’t think that it might be because it’s the chests that are a problem.

That’s only because players collectively ignore the fact that the “junk” in chests is actually what chests were designed to deliver.

Seera.5916:

Behellagh.1468:

TheBlackLeech.9360:

Behellagh.1468:

I can click anywhere in the red box in the image and get a cursor to appear. If that’s too small of an area for you, I don’t know what to say.

1) This has already been patched
2) You STILL don’t understand how the bug occurred, since you need(ed) to have less than the amount of gold required to purchase 400 gems.
(In your screen, you have enough gold to buy 400 gems)

We might as well be carrying on a conversation with a cardboard box.

And the bug was fixed already or so it was reported the same day this bug was first reported in the forum and that was a while ago.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/support/Unable-to-custom-exchange-gems

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/custom-exchange-gem-broken

And maybe the patch yesterday broke it again. Maybe the fix fixed it for most players but some still have an issue.

I’ve got just over 99 g. I’ll attempt to change the gems I get when I get home. Then I’ll buy some stuff and go under 99 g and try again.

But then he said he could change the amount but the area you needed to click on was extremely small. Face it, he wanted to complain and when pressed, kept changing his story as players tried to help him. He had an ax to grind about the exchange and popped in to complain but instead was met by help.