Guild Wars 2

Qugi.2653:

We can see in this thread some people that like to make key run many time for ticket and easy gold for doing level 10 thing many time as they can. They post many time in thread about how this is bad over and over. Now these people are mad and say arena net is greed and want money only. Arena net is not charity. A business and point of business is to make some money. Sorry it got broke for you but I think arena net see that this was not what was intended way to make by doing newbie thing over and over. If you think it is okay to get skins and gold from doing such simple newbie task as many time as you want guess arena net disagree. No longer can farm thing while post on forum during cut scene or watch movie why doing for profit. Sorry for luck

Good luck.

I think it’s an absurdly bad decision, and I’ve only done enough of it to get 4 tickets in the years it’s been doable. Of course it’s about money, and companies do exist to make money. But that doesn’t mean every money-making decision ok, right, or acceptable to do. McDonald’s could start charging $50 for a hamburger because they aren’t a charity. But they don’t, because they know that would be a complete rip off and a stupid idea that would make them lose money. Anet, on the other hand, seems to think that putting the game’s primary (nearly only) source of new weapon skins behind a $30 paywall ($45 if you buy individual keys) is the right thing to do.

I think we’ll all see just how good of an idea this is after the next round or two of Black Lion weapon skins are added. Anet isn’t likely be to selling any more keys than they have been, and the weapons will be in short supply and costing 5x (or more) on the TP than the current 1-ticket weapons. No one gains anything out of this stupid decision, and the players lose out on having new weapons skins accessible. And a decision that does nothing but degrade your customers’ experience is never good for business.

I’ve been killing Teq at reset for quite some time, and this is the first I’ve seen of this bug. And twice within a few days, at that.

It also seems to be a map-wide issue, with everyone in my party and many in map chat reporting the same. With no one chiming in to say they actually got the daily login chest. Those that didn’t kill Teq the previous day did still get the full event rewards.

Had this happen a few days ago(and again today). No daily login reward till I changed map, and no exotic bonus or on-ground chest from Teq. The reset for Teq happened on change, too. I was able to redo Teq later for full rewards.

When it happened again today, I just left the map because I knew I wouldn’t get the full rewards for Teq. I’m not even the wasting time waiting before the reset run of Teq tomorrow.

jspencer.3021:

Behellagh.1468:

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

No dice. I made a proper non-farming alt earlier in the week and got a key as part of my regular progression through the PS. Then tonight (post-reset) I tried again with a fresh alt made specifically for a keyrun and did NOT receive one at the end of the first PS chapters.

So based on this one sample, the “once a week” limitation is by when you last got a key, not by the overall week… Blah!

The game’s weekly reset (excluding wvw) is midnight UTC Sunday. This is when guild missions and weekly gold transfer limits reset. So try again Saturday night/Sunday morning.

TJgalon.5012:

100%, there people go again, using numbers for their facts without something to back it up, hehe

If you’re referring to the post above yours, the word opinion is in the same sentence. I agree with that opinion, too. That this change is completely because of the gemstore. But that doesn’t make it any more of a fact, because we don’t know Anet’s reasoning for sure unless they tell us.

Behellagh.1468:

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.

It seems to fall a bit short. Going by the drop rate research on the wiki, it’s about 120 gem return per chest. If you ignore the value of the two worst offenders on the junk list (repair and revive, which are practically useless items), that drops down to 106 gems per chest. Take out the next big junk items (TP/merch/bank NPCs), it’s down to 91 gems per.

These are items that people are not buying, because are either useless or overpriced minor convenience items. 35-250 gems for something you can easily waypoint to for a few silver. It’s not a good buy, and a lot of players already have a pile of them they’ve gotten for free anyway. Their “value”(an arbitrary number Anet chose) doesn’t really mean much to a consumer.

And if we take out one of the few useful things on the list, the Black Lion Salvage Kit, because the game has been happily giving these away for 3 years we’re down to 80 gems. I’m sure some newer players don’t have an abundance of these (yet), but all of the vets I know sure do. You’d have to be burning them up salvaging rares to run out with the rate the game gives them away.

The bottom line. A key’s worth is questionable if you’re buying them in 5 or 25 packs. But if you’re buying a single key at 125 gems, it’s not worth it. Not even close.

In the interest of science and my own curiosity, I bought 5 keys. I’d like to be able to calculate a real value for what I got, but some of the items aren’t actually sold for gems. I calculated a gold>gem value for the applicable items.

Black Lion Chest Key x 1 (125 gems)

Mini Hawk – 1 (167g – Avian 3 pack cost/3)
Item Booster x 1 (100 gems)
Bank Access Express x 2 (70 gems)
Merchant Express x 1 (35 gems)

Claim Ticket Scrap x 1 (60gems – 1/10 the cost of a store skin)

Mini Mai Trin x 1 (3.9g – 18 gems)
Large Guild Discovery x 1 (60 silver – 1 gem)
Boost Powder x 4 (40s – less than 1 gem)
Unidentified Dye x 3 (2.3 gold – 10 gems)

Armor Booster x 1
Rejuvenation Booster x 3
Strength Booster x 1
TP to Friend x 1

The total value of the calculable items is 587 gems, and average of 33 gems per item(gems/18) rewarded. But it should be noted that I opened 6 chests, not just the 5 that I purchased for 450 gems. The final chest gave a 35 gem item and two incalculable items, and was opened using a 125 gem key. It is also worth noting that the ‘face value’ of the keys used is 750 gems.

I’m not really sure how that extra key should be counted, since it was consumed and isn’t an item I still have. Had I not opened the extra chest, and replacing that key with the average value, the end result would have been 460 gems in items.

I’m not sure how to put a value to the armor/strength/rejuvenation boosters, either. Their effects are comparable to some food items, which doesn’t make them carry much real worth at all. Just a few silver, so there maybe shouldn’t be any change in the overall numbers by simply omitting them.

In the end, counting the key, I got lucky and came out ahead. Without it, I am just slightly ahead of breaking even. But that is also counting the coin value of items that I could just as well bought directly ingame.

As far as it being worth it or not, I’m still going to go with no. I could have bought the valuable/useful items I received for almost the same cost. Actually lower if I purchased only the ones I really wanted in higher discounted quantities. The only real rewards I got from these chests are the scrap and mini hawk, as I can’t get them anywhere else. And the only thing prevent a big loss is the fact that I bought a key bundle, and not individual keys.

edit
One thing I forgot to mention is that the mini hawk is account bound, and from a previous gemstore 3-pack. It’s a pack I never bought, so I did get a new mini out of. But if I had bought that pack previously, that mini would just be another 167 gems wasted on a completely useless duplicate item.

Behellagh.1468:

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.

That stuff was no less junk in 2012 than it is in 2015. The fact that we knew it was junk, and that Anet knew it was junk, is the reason they kept putting other prizes in the chests. There were contracts, and I think some skins, in them way back in 2012. They had to keep sweetening the pot to keep any chance of a few suckers actually buying the things.

And anyone that bothered to do their dailes in 2012, already had a nice pile of the same pieces of junk.

To put it plainly, buying a BL key has never been worth it. And it likely never will be.

I do feel bad for Anet’s art team in this mess. Because they’re going to put their talents (and they really do have some awesome artists) into making weapons that no one will ever see outside of the preview window. And all the ones they’ve designed to date will fall into the obscurity of obscenely priced reminders of what used to be.

Bomber.3872:

Behellagh.1468:

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.

No. Because malicious hardcore grind keyfarm f2p was possible for the bad people. Bad people did this in f2p, because there is no risk.
As soon as bad f2p people gain hundrets or thousands of keys/tickets without risk they can upgrade their f2p account and $$$$$.
Thats the problem. Thats why we all had to get this restrictions. Thats why its only f2p’s fault.

PS: If this gets deleted again then I serioustly have no idea how to explain it to someone. I wonder why it seems to be not allowed to explain the real reason why we all got these restrictions.

Even if people were using free accounts and later upgrading them to offload the items, putting this new restriction only on free accounts would still have prevented it. They would them have to buy an account before they could even start farming, which massively increases their risk and overhead. There is no reason to have restricted paid accounts because of F2P abuse.

Any leftover F2P accounts that were waiting to be upgraded could easily be flagged and banned. Anet can easily track which F2P accounts are amassing keys.

The only difference/advantage free accounts had was being able to earn the keys with no risk of lost money if the account was banned. If this type of abuse was the reason for changing the key rewards, Anet would have simply removed the entire key reward for F2P accounts or put even heavier restrictions on only those accounts.

Solandri.9640:

mrstealth.6701:

As far as the BL weapon skins are concerned, it’s just a system to sell weapon skins at $30/150 each. The 33% drop rate on scraps doesn’t make it much of a lottery that you can win. It’s a fairly high chance, and all it does is set the average number of keys you’ll have to buy in order to get a weapon.

You’re only getting 33%? I’ve farmed/found about a dozen keys over the last month. Nearly every one has given me a scrap. And one of the ones which didn’t give me a scrap gave me two tickets. The chest drops guildmates have linked in guild chat have almost always included a scrap too.

The scraps used to be a lot rarer (I saved up 40 keys last year and opened them all at once – only got a dozen scraps). But right now they seem to be very close to a guaranteed drop. The tickets seem to be a lot more common too, as I’ve gotten 3 from the dozen recent keys. Several guildies linking their chest drops have gotten tickets as well. I only got one ticket the previous year from probably 150 chests.

The 33% (average .33 key per chest) figure is from the chest drop rate data on wiki. I thought it was more like 20-25%, which is what older data stated, and about what I’ve always seen from it. I was fairly surprised to find that the average was so high.

Ashen.2907:

I would not be surprised if this is a means to reduce the likelihood that free players can use key farming to avoid the gem cost of keys. Whether or not free players can trade these I am sure that Anet would rather they be a source of revenue.

The F2P business model is not just about attempting to encourage people to buy the game, some people never will, it is also about encouraging people to make microtransactions.

If F2P players were the reason for the change, then it would have only restricted those accounts. This was applied to everyone, when it could just as easily been only for F2P accounts.

Maybe the idea started off as a way to prevent F2P accounts from getting free gemstore stuff, but Anet made the decision to go ahead do this to everyone.

Scraps should be a guaranteed drop, in addition to the chance of more scraps. With this, skins would be around 7-8 keys/630-720gems/$8-9/130-150g average. That’s about the upper limit what a skin should cost in gems/cash.

Dinks.2478:

Behellagh.1468:

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.

No, its not like that at all. The main reason people buy McDonalds is for food. People don’t buy BL Keys for worthless boosters and other worthless stuff. They know what they want out of it. This is 100% on anet, not the people.

Yeah, the McD’s contest is just an added bonus thrown in with your food purchase. You’re buying the food, unlike with BL keys where you’re buying the ability to open an RNG box. The keys are closer to a lottery ticket, or a raffle where everyone gets a little something with a chance at a jackpot.

And even the “junk prizes” in McD’s game are more valuable. You can win free food or drinks. And there no losing to bad RNG, because you still get the food you wanted, and paid for.

As far as the BL weapon skins are concerned, it’s just a system to sell weapon skins at $30/150 each. The 33% drop rate on scraps doesn’t make it much of a lottery that you can win. It’s a fairly high chance, and all it does is set the average number of keys you’ll have to buy in order to get a weapon. The only way to “win” with a BL chest is the small chance to get complete ticket, or the tiny chance of getting one of the more valuable gemstore items or an NPC service contract. And “losing” with the BL chest means getting items that are inferior (boosters) to items that are already sold at a lower price in the gem store, or getting something that is completely worthless(armor repair/res/powder).

Ok I Did It.2854:

Odokuro.5049:

How did I know this thread was going to be created, ANet never intended for people to get keys so easily, maybe instead of boosting a toon to 10 and getting a key, you all can now start playing the game and perhaps one will drop?

This statement may hold weight, if they had removed the keys when key farming became mainstream, fact is its been in game well over a year, and now it gets nerfed, seems kind of strange, was there really that many key farmers upsetting the balance….doubtful, its pretty clear its a use gems to get keys, like its been stated before they should have made the keys cheap, maybe 25gems each, and they would have seen the sales come in, but 125 gems for a key that gives crap from a chest, come on.

It’s even worse, because Anet has acknowledged the key farming and said they were fine with it. They even intentionally left it in when they did the last set of NPE changes to story rewards and pacing (locking chapter 1 till level 10).

Behellagh.1468:

Hey I’m with you on that. It’s humorous that EVE had protests over an $80 cosmetic item and here it’s roughly $25 of gems on average, although RNG will still statistically create unlucky players, per ticket and at back when they were available, fused skins cost 7 tickets.

Today’s 1 ticket skins, Dwayna’s, can be bought off the TP for 90 gold. 90 gold will roughly buy you 5 keys and with 5 keys you have less than a 1 in 8 chance for a ticket.

Today’s prices won’t stay, though. They are that price because the primary supply was key farming. With that gone, the supply of existing ones will begin to dry up and future weapons will have much lower supply. Players aren’t going to let a skin go for 90g when they had to put in 2500 gems to get it.

Future weapons will likely be around 500g, if the gem rate is similar to what it is now. Which will increase to several times that cost after the introductory 1 ticket price.

Behellagh.1468:

And when won’t you all understand that Ticket Skins were cosmetic rewards for players who primarily purchase keys with gems as a reward for buying a metric ton of blind boxes. Players who could generate loads of gold to dump into the exchange or cash to spend on gems.

Even ignoring the overall issue with encouraging spending via what is essentially ingame gambling, there is a huge problem with Anet’s assignment of value to these items.

Gem exchange or not, Anet has clearly laid out that they feel a single weapon skin is worth $30-150 (average, depending on ticket cost). Is this supposed to be considered an acceptable cost? This isn’t a new game, a or even a DLC/season pass, or some sweet collector’s edition swag. It’s a single…kittening…weapon…skin. $150 for something they’ve proven they can easily churn out a full set of every month or two.

And then we have the fact that this has, for the most part, been the only manner in which new weapon skins have been added to the game. Outside of BL tickets, we’ve seen few new skins added. And even many of those are now BL ticket skins.

Maybe this wouldn’t be such a problem if the keys/skins weren’t so ridiculously overpriced, or if they actually bothered to add some skins that didn’t involve these stupid $30-a-pop claim tickets.

StinVec.3621:

I’m almost afraid to log in and look at the prices of some old skins I had bids on.

As it is, Monday, a full day before this patch was released and nobody outside of ANet should’ve known what was coming, the Chaos Dagger Skin suddenly jumped from lowest sell of 294g to 1,200g

After being at a relatively steady supply of the mid to high 20s and a stagnant price of the high 200s since April, midway through September 12th the supply of skins being put on the TP for sale stopped and the available supply suddenly dropped due to regular purchasing not being countered with additional skins being put up for sale. Even more telling of leaked info and of people taking advantage of insider information, the night before the patch, the supply suddenly drops down to 10 skins available with the lowest being 1,200g! No additional supply being put up for sale in the 2 days prior to the patch, and the existing supply basically being bought out the day before the patch tells me of some shady dealings.

And this is just one skin that I was watching as I had a bid for one in place before this shadiness started. Take a look at others and the days leading up to the patch.

It could just be a coincidence, and some aggressive attempts at price gouging, but it is a bit suspicious. There are several skins that seem to take a sharp jump in price over the last couple days.

Certainly not the first time I’ve heard of such shenanigans with Anet staff. It happened at least a few times in GW1.

chemie banger.9624:

Atlas.4509:

Good, I’d much rather have a chance at getting keys from doing content I enjoy than mindlessly grinding the same story instance.

Yep same.
Good move.

As for skins … bah They need to fix their code first so so many players don’t have to run on minimum graphics

A boring grind it may have been, but at least you actually got a key for it. It will likely be months before any of us (in this thread) actually see a key drop.

Bob F It.5701:

Daddicus.6128:

I bought a bunch of keys during the sale (63 gems per key, buying 25 at a time), and kept track of what they netted me:

> 64 gems per chest, and
> 37 silver per chest.

These figures do not include items which have no purchase cost and no selling value (like account bound stuff.) It also does not include crafting bags (I was too lazy to calculate these.)

If I had paid regular prices for 25 keys (84 each), I still would have netted 43+ gems and 37+ silver per key.

Does that gem value include all the boosters that we consider useless?

Yeah, it’s not much of a value when the items are a bunch of junk you would never have even considered buying otherwise.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

As to supply drying up, I think it’s going to take a couple of new BL weapons sets. There are bound to be a lot of people who have one or two tickets stashed away. It’s after those are gone that the supply shortage is going to hit the trading post. So a couple of months from now is when I think the prices will really go up and supply goes down.

It might start to have an impact sooner if people see what is happening, and hold onto their tickets for a later weapon they actually want. Plus those that will keep them to wait for prices to reach insane levels.

I think we’ll see some fast shifts from holdouts and speculation, but the full effects will be a couple months head, like you said.

MashMash.1645:

mrstealth.6701:

Anet is about to learn the same lesson other game devs/pubs, the film industry, and the music industry have learned (or failed to learn in many cases). Someone getting a product for free, does not equal a lost sale. A lot of pirates would have never actually bought a game/song/movie, just like a lot of key farmers will never buy a BL key.

Anet can try to strong-arm us into buying keys all the want, but they’re going to find out that they’re the ones being strong-armed when the players simply refuse to bother with their RNG box weapon skins. Unfortunately, for us and them, Anet doesn’t like to back down from their dumb decisions, so we all get to suffer the consequences. They still won’t get any money out of keys, and we’ll never have BL weapon skins obtainable after the existing supply dries up.

They won’t dry up completely. But they’ll become more expensive.

I don’t expect them to completely gone, but I do expect what is left (especially future ones) to be well beyond an attainable price for the vast majority of players. The players that do eat the cost and buy keys are probably less likely to be doing so with the intention of selling the weapon.

Overall, I expect the number available on the TP to be very small and extremely expensive.

Anet is about to learn the same lesson other game devs/pubs, the film industry, and the music industry have learned (or failed to learn in many cases). Someone getting a product for free, does not equal a lost sale. A lot of pirates would have never actually bought a game/song/movie, just like a lot of key farmers will never buy a BL key.

Anet can try to strong-arm us into buying keys all the want, but they’re going to find out that they’re the ones being strong-armed when the players simply refuse to bother with their RNG box weapon skins. Unfortunately, for us and them, Anet doesn’t like to back down from their dumb decisions, so we all get to suffer the consequences. They still won’t get any money out of keys, and we’ll never have BL weapon skins obtainable after the existing supply dries up.

BrooksP.4318:

One per day would be fine, one per week is silly. Looks like I won’t be getting that extra character slot, and after other recent actions, debating if spending any money or upgrading is worth it. Anet just doesn’t seem to care anymore.

Yeah, this is just another mark on the “reasons to not buy HoT” list. Anet’s decision-making has been really bad lately, ranging from just plain stupid to blatantly anti-consumer. This one manages to get high up in both of those categories.

Agemnon.4608:

As for number 3 those players were exploiting, and it’s surprising how long the key farm thing lasted. I knew they’d eventually do so. I never got around to doing it myself though

Actually, Anet stated (multiple times) that they were fine with the key farming. And even commented that they didn’t want to kill it when they made the NPE changes, and locked the first story chapter until level 10.

This is a complete 180 on a position Anet has confirmed, and reconfirmed a few times over the last three years.

mtpelion.4562:

mrstealth.6701:

mtpelion.4562:

azyume.6321:

seabhac.5346:

mtpelion.4562:

mrstealth.6701:

seabhac.5346:

I too saw this change coming and also wondered why it didn’t happen sooner.

Although, I would have to question the effectiveness of this restriction on keys generated through F2P accounts. A F2P account can be deleted each time a key is farmed, thereby circumventing the weekly restriction. What this restriction will cause is an increase in F2P account generation and deletion. I can’t imagine what that database churn will look like!

The weapon skin/gold would be stuck on the free account, as they have no way to transfer them to another account. So doing that would be pointless.

Unless/until you acquire enough items of value to offset the cost of buying the game at which point you pay to unlock the full game and liquidate.

True on both points. I edited my earlier post after thinking about it a bit more.

Since F2P accounts can buy/sell items on the TP, can they sell their ‘lucky’ skins? Again, I think it would be pointless because of the gold restrictions.

So all in all, a good change for anet’s bottom line without a huge impact to the game world.

Free to play accounts cannot buy/sell any of the black lion skins nor precursor. They can only buy and sell from a very small list that contains a couple of gear from each tier. I might be wrong but think the Primordus set are the most expensive one they have access to.

If you got a lucky drop (one of the contracts) or tons of skins saved up on your multiple free accounts, you could then pay to convert them into real accounts and sell the lucky expensive things.

RMT gold sellers could potentially use this tactic, which is probably part of the reason why the 1 per week restriction was added.

If this was really about f2p account abuse, they would (most likely) have just removed the key drops for free accounts. That fixes that potential issue with a more simple fix, and doesn’t impact paid accounts in any way.

This was a targeted hit to key farming.

Which is why I said “part of the reason”.

I’m sure they also didn’t like the fact that the players who really wanted keys weren’t buying them.

Maybe they thought it was taking out two birds with one stone, but I don’t see it working out the way they want. Of all the people I know that have farmed keys, none of them are going to buy them.

My prediction is a negligible increase in key sales (if any at all) and BL weapon skins sky-rocketing to absurd prices. Future BL weapon skins will be a rare site, because so few are willing to pay the price. And that’s just the people that can actually afford to buy one.

mtpelion.4562:

azyume.6321:

seabhac.5346:

mtpelion.4562:

mrstealth.6701:

seabhac.5346:

I too saw this change coming and also wondered why it didn’t happen sooner.

Although, I would have to question the effectiveness of this restriction on keys generated through F2P accounts. A F2P account can be deleted each time a key is farmed, thereby circumventing the weekly restriction. What this restriction will cause is an increase in F2P account generation and deletion. I can’t imagine what that database churn will look like!

The weapon skin/gold would be stuck on the free account, as they have no way to transfer them to another account. So doing that would be pointless.

Unless/until you acquire enough items of value to offset the cost of buying the game at which point you pay to unlock the full game and liquidate.

True on both points. I edited my earlier post after thinking about it a bit more.

Since F2P accounts can buy/sell items on the TP, can they sell their ‘lucky’ skins? Again, I think it would be pointless because of the gold restrictions.

So all in all, a good change for anet’s bottom line without a huge impact to the game world.

Free to play accounts cannot buy/sell any of the black lion skins nor precursor. They can only buy and sell from a very small list that contains a couple of gear from each tier. I might be wrong but think the Primordus set are the most expensive one they have access to.

If you got a lucky drop (one of the contracts) or tons of skins saved up on your multiple free accounts, you could then pay to convert them into real accounts and sell the lucky expensive things.

RMT gold sellers could potentially use this tactic, which is probably part of the reason why the 1 per week restriction was added.

If this was really about f2p account abuse, they would (most likely) have just removed the key drops for free accounts. That fixes the potential issue, and doesn’t impact paid accounts in any way.

This was a targeted hit to key farming.

seabhac.5346:

So all in all, a good change for anet’s bottom line without a huge impact to the game world.

It probably won’t help Anet’s profits any, because most people still won’t be wasting their cash/gold on keys. All they’ve done is make the only source of new weapon skins an overpriced mess that no one will bother with. The only reason those skins actually exist in the game/TP is because we’ve had a semi-reasonable/viable way to obtain them ingame.

They might as well just put the weapon skins into the gemstore for 25,000 gems each, with a 4000 gem “introductory price”, because that’s what it costs(at average scrap drop rates) to get them.

seabhac.5346:

I too saw this change coming and also wondered why it didn’t happen sooner.

Although, I would have to question the effectiveness of this restriction on keys generated through F2P accounts. A F2P account can be deleted each time a key is farmed, thereby circumventing the weekly restriction. What this restriction will cause is an increase in F2P account generation and deletion. I can’t imagine what that database churn will look like!

The weapon skin/gold would be stuck on the free account, as they have no way to transfer them to another account. So doing that would be pointless.

thisisit.6954:

CorrynnStarr.7942:

so much gamble in this game… black lion chests… dyes… mystic forge… brakktun globs… I think anet has stock in vegas… they keep pushing us to gamble to get us addicted i think…

I actually thought there were laws in many states to stop gambling/underage gambling, even if it is under some “rng disguise”.

I think the reasoning is that it’s technically not gambling since there is no chance of loss. Just a chance of getting a really crappy prize.

Aidenwolf.5964:

CandyHearts.6025:

Aidenwolf.5964:

CandyHearts.6025:

Cichol.7856:

I feel what they should’ve done is just restrict F2P accounts from obtaining keys via keyfarming (or atleast 1 key – per week). Them doing this to vets is another kick in the teeth, I still feel salty I have to pay for the game twice (and no i didn’t receive the free character slot Arena-net feels can make up for this). I love the game but each time they scheme makes the game more and more of a turnoff.

I really don’t believe f2p is the issue here. I think the sale we just had was them testing the market. When they put up keys for a crazy price even then very few people bought them. They then placed blame on key-farming rather than the BL chests themselves and decided to do something about it. Their fail logic is a bit silly this time. It’s the chests that are the problem, Anet. If the keys were WORTH buying, we would.

Free to play comes in and they change a 3 year old drop rate? Of course they’re connected.

How would it have anything to do with f2p when they can’t do anything but purchase the weapons? It’s not like they can affect the market. And if anet cared about people getting keys easily they wouldn’t of kept it that way for 3 years. It wouldn’t be just to SPITE f2p. I am fully firm on it having to do with the sale. Logically it’s the only thing sound.

Free accounts can farm keys
Free accounts can buy skins
Free accounts can mail those skins
A hub account (paid) can sell them

This is how

Free accounts can’t send items in the mail.

Aidenwolf.5964:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Seems like an awesome change to me. Key farming was never intended, keys are supposed to be a major contribution to their gem store sales, but were being significantly undermined by key farming.

Hopefully with the restrictions in place they can increase the drop rates in the chests now so people will buy keys again.

Why do players hope a company sucks micro transaction dollars from players? Is the game buy to play or free to premium in your mind.

I don’t care what they put in the stupid chests, I’m not spending money (real or virtual) on crappy RNG boxes.

I could at least defend this (somewhat) when the keys were attainable ingame in a semi-reasonable manner. But now it’s just not acceptable for nearly every weapon skin added to the game since release to essentially be exclusive to the gem store keys.

CandyHearts.6025:

Anet. . .rather than taking away a way to get them; why don’t you take a look at why no one wants to buy them and fix that.

-I get boosters. And no, I don’t really want them and I don’t know anyone who was happy to open a chest with them and ever said YAY. It was more like “really? screw this”.
-I get minis I already have and can’t do anything with it but throw it away. (And I pay for something I HAVE TO THROW AWAY)
-I get “Teleport to a Friend” because that’s just super useful. (That was sarcasm)
-I get unidentified dyes! (Why are they in there? You know you’ll click it and get a 1 silver dye. RNG in an RNG box. Reaaaaally?)

Unless the price of keys is around 50 gems each or the contents change I wont buy them. I’ll just farm once a week. That’s more worth it imo.

They also need to take a good look at the key drop rates, scrap/ticket rates from chests, the number of scraps to make a ticket, and the ticket cost of the weapons. Right now, it’s an average of 50 keys for a 1-ticket skin and 300 keys for a 5-ticket skin. That’s $60/$300 or 950g/5600g, for a single weapon skin.

With the key farming, the price of a BL weapon skin (the current, 1-ticket ones) was pretty much in-line with gem store weapon skins. Most have been 600 gems, which you can currently buy for 130g. Compared to direct gemstore skins, the 5-ticket weapons are already several times more expensive. With key farming gone, the TP prices are going to jump to insane levels without another viable method.

I really doubt they increased the drop rate enough to make 300 keys an attainable goal. So expect the only way to get a 5-ticket BL skin to be dropping $300 or 5600g on keys. Unless you really want to complete about 900 maps.

It’s a bug.

The first raid will be released Oct 23, with HoT.

And raids are not replacing fractals in any way. Fractals will continue to be the end-game 5-player content.

CureForLiving.5360:

Atlas.4509:

Good, I’d much rather have a chance at getting keys from doing content I enjoy than mindlessly grinding the same story instance.

Well lets hope they up-ed the key drops by at least 1000% (maybe more… honestly I think keys are almost as rare as precursors…).

If I include the mystic forge, I’ve actually gotten more precursors than BL key drops. Without the forge, they’re equal.

So much for Anet saying they were ok with key farming a long time ago. Unfortunately that thread is in a now removed part of the forum, and I had no luck finding it in archives.

And so much for any claim that black lion weapons are reasonable because you can get them ingame. Unless the drop rate on keys has increased massively (I’ve had 3-4 in the 3 years I’ve actively played), the only viable way to get those weapons now is to shell out an average of around $60 for current weapons or over $300 for older/5-ticket ones. They need to be dropping at least as often as exotic gear to keep BL weapon acquisition from being completely absurd.

I really don’t see the increase in drop rates to be anywhere near making up for the nerf. Not that I expect it to be equal, but weapons that need 300 keys on average to obtain need some sort of viable method that doesn’t include spending $300 cash (or gold>gems) on a single weapon skin.

edit
I did the math on the exchange rate. It’s about 5600g (on average) to get a 5-ticket weapon. This is the amount Anet considers their skins to be worth based on gemstore key acquisition. Of course, we’ll have to wait and see what the new drop right is. But in any case, Anet’s concept of value for these weapons is severely out of proportion.

They do a weekly pass and add the bonus character slot to qualifying accounts at that time. It’s mentioned in the slot offer details on the pre-purchase page.

All accounts that become eligible by July 9 will have their free character slot applied by July 10. Eligible accounts that are upgraded with a pre-purchase serial code after July 10 will receive their slots on a weekly basis after that.

It’s intended behavior, but that doesn’t mean it’s correct behavior. It’s overly simple, and could probably be improved somewhat without ridiculously complex changes.

For AoE/DoT damage fields already on the ground, existing fields could be changed to not trigger reveal. Only have this change triggered on initial stealth application to prevent further stealth stacking from covering later casts. The basic functionality for that already exists in the game. Skill attributes can be altered by might or other stat changes after they’ve been cast. And a previous thief trait (gaining initiative on stealth) prevented triggering its effect while already in stealth.

There are also plenty of traits that only trigger in combat, so would it be any more complex to have some traits not trigger while in stealth?

Dealing with auto-attacks already in-progress and in-flight projectiles would probably be the most complex to attempt to deal with. Even if those were left unchanged, the others could still be a big improvement.

Reviera.5183:

the Topic. if you ask me, armors are just the same as outfits, the only difference is, the armor is more flexible then the outfits. XD stop whining, the 2 are the same but require different methods to ware them.

The big difference for some of us is acquisition. Armor obtained ingame provides something to work for, or get as a reward for content. Putting an outfit in the gemstore is asking us to simply put down money for it, whether it be our real world cash or gold earned ingame. I’m not against charging for cosmetics, but there really should be at least some that are available outside of that.

The excess of gemstore outfits and lack of ingame armor sends a message that they are more interested in that quick cash grab than trying to provide players with a better in-game experience to keep them playing (and spending). They are a business, and they are here to make money, but customers usually hold a business to some standards of offering consumers a sense of value/appreciation/respect in the product and not just asking for money at every turn. This seems to be much less prevalent with gamers for some reason, which just encourages the behavior from devs.

(edit)

Even the last set armor added ingame is still soft-walled (at least partly) behind the gemstore. Anyone not actively playing during all of the season 2 releases will have to buy those chapters in order to complete the Luminescent set. And I’m fairly certain at least one piece (leggings) of the Carapace set is only available after completing one of the LS chapters. The other pieces of that can be obtained from Silverwastes drops, but they are still fairly rare. The primary, straight-forward acquisition is via the LS chapters.

There also aren’t many added weapon skins that are free of monetization. The majority are currently only acquired through BL tickets. Even though you are able to buy them on the TP or buy BL keys through the gem exchange, they are still monetized items.

Shockwave.1230:

Masteries sound like the Guild Wars 1 implementation of Contextual Character Progression Titles. It’s something they’ve done since Factions, and I liked it in GW1.

No complaints from me for bringing it into GW2.

Most of the complaints about them in GW1 were because they were quite time-consuming/grindy, and were (except allegiance) character-based. Masteries seem to already be much better from the start.

Not that I don’t see potential problems, but it just depends on how these are implemented and integrated with other content.

I think decisions like having the raid boss shown at PAX require multiple levels in glider mastery are a bit questionable. To me, that is a lot less understandable/reasonable than having the same requirement to reach a point for world exploration, or accessing hidden areas by having the necessary lore mastery to unlock them.

Are raids, or any other content requiring these, going to have upfront disclosure that you will not be able to complete them without a certain level in some masteries? It would be a pretty awful game experience to find out the hard way that some of your party lacks a mastery needed to continue.

How bad (or not so bad) this really is will depend on just what the requirement is, and how much time and effort it takes to meet it. But I do think using mastery levels as such a hard-line barrier within content that appears open without them is a mistake.

Draknar.5748:

You aren’t wrong. The masteries are new things that characters can work on at 80 to “progress” your character. I think you’re wrong about the ‘increased level cap’ comparison. None of those masteries make you any stronger as far as I know. In most cases they apply to HoT exclusive content, meaning if you don’t have HoT, then the masteries do you no good anyway.

That’s true for most of them. The majority seem to be based on gaining abilities to explore or unlock access to new areas.

Exalted mastery does have a couple to improve effectiveness vs mordrem, so that is limited to HoT areas and perhaps Dry Top/Silverwastes if the mobs still count as the same types. Pact Tyria mastery has a buff to crafting XP. The Fractal mastery line’s description on the HoT site mentions unlocking “powerful new abilities” as well as infusions.

Out of those, the only one I can see causing a problem is the Fractals line. If these “new abilities” are usable in all levels of Fractals, then that line needs to be accessible to all players (to my knowledge, they’ve not confirmed either way) and be fairly quick to unlock. If this is locked off behind HoT’s paywall, then it could cause a split where those without access to these new abilities are unwanted in groups. I’m guessing they are probably only for higher levels that are only unlocked with HoT/mastery, but it’s something that we do need more info on.

Diovid.9506:

mrstealth.6701:

Again, that is called power creep, not vertical progression. It is an issue of the skills themselves being unbalanced/more powerful, not an indication that more options equals more power. Having more options only gives you more possibilities. It doesn’t make those possibilities inherently better. It does increase your chance of finding a particularly powerful combination, but that is the result of more possible combos being more difficult to balance.

Power creep that is the consequence of something that is supposed to be horizontal progression, is de facto vertical progression.

In those cases, the two do have the same end result, a more powerful character. But power creep coming from intended horizontal progression is a side effect, often resulting from carelessness or adding too much to be able to balance. You can have horizontal progression without increasing power. That is the goal with that type of progression.

Vertical progression is directly and purposefully increasing power. You can’t have vertical progression without increasing power, because the entire purpose of it is to do just that.

Coulter.2315:

mrstealth.6701:

Coulter.2315:

mrstealth.6701:

Coulter.2315:

Ascii Red.4029:

Ignoring the price of HoT and the fact that F2P accounts can now lvl to 80 and go anywhere (both of which I find insulting) I have a serious question with respect to the level cap.

lvl 80 is still “maximum” however it seems clear to me now that masteries are the new “maximum” and if your char does not have them (or cannot because you are F2P/have not bought HoT) then you are not done yet in terms of “getting your char to maximum”.

GW1 never raised the level cap during expansions, your older lvl 20 chars never became “underpowered” because the “maximum” stayed at lvl 20. Sure extra char classes and content was added but what you had was not de-valued.

I think ANet are being sneeky and de-valuing existing chars/accounts in order to force people to buy HoT, masteries are being sold as new-content when infact they are the new level 80.

Thoughts? (keep comments on-topic or take your worthless troll-opinion elsewhere :p)

GW1 introduced new skills with each exp, you were never at maximum with just the core game after their release.

They need to provide some sort of progression with new exp.

Adding new skills at the same level increases the number of options, but it doesn’t increase character power or allow them to do anything they couldn’t already do. That is horizontal progression.

Masteries are more similar to the title track lines/skills added to GW1. They increase character effectiveness in certain situations, and allow access to new areas and items. It’s a less vertical progression than adding more levels or gear tiers, but it’s certainly not only horizontal.

The main factor that makes me mostly ok with it, is the fact that masteries are account based and don’t have game-wide effects. But that could change after seeing the details of each mastery.

Sure, go play HA Mesmer without PD.

I don’t see what one popular/meta skill has to do with this. Some skills are always going to be more suited for a given situation for others. That that in no way means that adding skills is adding vertical progression. It doesn’t even mean that skill is more powerful than another. It’s just better suited for one build/purpose.

A number of the skills added in GW1’s later campaigns were (initially, at least) quite powerful. But that is power creep within skill balancing, not vertical progression. It is caused by the individual skills being unbalanced, and does not equate to more skill options adding more power. There were even more skills added in those same campaigns that were underpowered.

I was being kind to you by offering a simple example on Mesmer (who barely changed any skills over the years I played the first game). Since you failed to understand my point I’ll broaden it.

Unable to take /A (there go your runners), /Rt (there goes a lot of Necros), /D (oops no farming for you), /P (looks like your Hero got rupted).

Want to join SFway?
Want to play GvG monk?
Want to play GvG ranger?
Want to play Icy Shackles?

etc.

Saying “no increase in power level” completely ignores the fact that powerful builds becoming available IS an increase in power level..

Every MMO increases the power level of its player base with an expansion, Guild Wars is kinder to its players than most BUT saying you weren’t more powerful after an exapnsion when you had access to many other skills and second professions is a joke.

Again, that is called power creep, not vertical progression. It is an issue of the skills themselves being unbalanced/more powerful, not an indication that more options equals more power. Having more options only gives you more possibilities. It doesn’t make those possibilities inherently better. It does increase your chance of finding a particularly powerful combination, but that is the result of more possible combos being more difficult to balance.

And listing a bunch of meta builds doesn’t really mean anything to that point. It’s not as if those were the only, or even the best options. As much as people stuck in a meta mindset might think otherwise, they are just that…options. Popular options, and popular because they are effective. But they are not a requirement, nor proof that other equal options don’t exist, with or without added campaigns.

The reason this power creep was an issue in GW1 was the fact that every player, no matter their class, had access to every professions’ skills. And the fact that there were hundreds of skills for those classes. By the time EotN was out, there were something like 1500 skills in the game. You end up with powerful combinations because it’s not feasible to predict and balance that many possible builds.

In contrast, GW2’s skills are locked to single professions, and there are a lot less of them. It is many magnitudes easier to maintain balance while adding more options to that mix. This doesn’t mean there won’t be any power creep, but it does make it easier to avoid that happening.

ProtoGunner.4953:

Ascii Red.4029:

GW1 never raised the level cap during expansions, your older lvl 20 chars never became “underpowered” because the “maximum” stayed at lvl 20. Sure extra char classes and content was added but what you had was not de-valued.

I think ANet are being sneeky and de-valuing existing chars/accounts in order to force people to buy HoT, masteries are being sold as new-content when infact they are the new level 80.

Thoughts? (keep comments on-topic or take your worthless troll-opinion elsewhere :p)

You had the title tracks in GW1 and without them some builds were rather hard to maintain. This was a huge grind, especially the Luxon/Kurzick title.

And as if progression in an expansion is bad? What is bad about this? Why sneaky? You see demons where there no are. Don’t put the devs into a shady light, it’s just unfair.

To someone not buying HoT, masteries don’t really change anything. It doesn’t force me to buy HoT when the mastery is useless without HoT. Only two of them have any effect outside of HoT-only maps, and I don’t think we even have a solid confirmation that those two masteries are restricted to HoT buyers.

The biggest chance for an actual problem I see here is if the fractal mastery adds some additional agony resistance or other combat boost for fractals. If it adds that and is HoT-exclusive, then there is a definite issue where players not buying HoT have a distinct disadvantage.

Coulter.2315:

mrstealth.6701:

Coulter.2315:

Ascii Red.4029:

Ignoring the price of HoT and the fact that F2P accounts can now lvl to 80 and go anywhere (both of which I find insulting) I have a serious question with respect to the level cap.

lvl 80 is still “maximum” however it seems clear to me now that masteries are the new “maximum” and if your char does not have them (or cannot because you are F2P/have not bought HoT) then you are not done yet in terms of “getting your char to maximum”.

GW1 never raised the level cap during expansions, your older lvl 20 chars never became “underpowered” because the “maximum” stayed at lvl 20. Sure extra char classes and content was added but what you had was not de-valued.

I think ANet are being sneeky and de-valuing existing chars/accounts in order to force people to buy HoT, masteries are being sold as new-content when infact they are the new level 80.

Thoughts? (keep comments on-topic or take your worthless troll-opinion elsewhere :p)

GW1 introduced new skills with each exp, you were never at maximum with just the core game after their release.

They need to provide some sort of progression with new exp.

Adding new skills at the same level increases the number of options, but it doesn’t increase character power or allow them to do anything they couldn’t already do. That is horizontal progression.

Masteries are more similar to the title track lines/skills added to GW1. They increase character effectiveness in certain situations, and allow access to new areas and items. It’s a less vertical progression than adding more levels or gear tiers, but it’s certainly not only horizontal.

The main factor that makes me mostly ok with it, is the fact that masteries are account based and don’t have game-wide effects. But that could change after seeing the details of each mastery.

Sure, go play HA Mesmer without PD.

I don’t see what one popular/meta skill has to do with this. Some skills are always going to be more suited for a given situation for others. That that in no way means that adding skills is adding vertical progression. It doesn’t even mean that skill is more powerful than another. It’s just better suited for one build/purpose.

A number of the skills added in GW1’s later campaigns were (initially, at least) quite powerful. But that is power creep within skill balancing, not vertical progression. It is caused by the individual skills being unbalanced, and does not equate to more skill options adding more power. There were even more skills added in those same campaigns that were underpowered.

Lethality.1732:

There really has to be a sense of progression and customization going forward, given the genre of the game. If not levels, if not gear… this seems like a great alternative.

I don’t think progression is necessary, at least not in any vertical sense. Customization usually falls under horizontal progression. You can add more content, more rewards, more activities, all without any actual character power progression.

The limited power progression added to GW1 in Nightfall and Eye of the North became major points of contention in the community. Enough so that Anet eventually capped their benefits to a rather low, and much more easily attained, level. I just hope they still remember that lesson today.

However, when that progression is so easily attained, there is little point in having it at all. It’s better to simply focus on other, purely horizontal progression and throw out the token vertical bits.

While masteries are certainly a lot a better than having a new level cap and new gear, they could also be done without having any impact on character power/combat effectiveness. Anet has shown their willingness to go down the power increase path in the past (wvw masteries) and we already know that at least one HoT mastery (Exalted) does it to some degree.

Coulter.2315:

Ascii Red.4029:

Ignoring the price of HoT and the fact that F2P accounts can now lvl to 80 and go anywhere (both of which I find insulting) I have a serious question with respect to the level cap.

lvl 80 is still “maximum” however it seems clear to me now that masteries are the new “maximum” and if your char does not have them (or cannot because you are F2P/have not bought HoT) then you are not done yet in terms of “getting your char to maximum”.

GW1 never raised the level cap during expansions, your older lvl 20 chars never became “underpowered” because the “maximum” stayed at lvl 20. Sure extra char classes and content was added but what you had was not de-valued.

I think ANet are being sneeky and de-valuing existing chars/accounts in order to force people to buy HoT, masteries are being sold as new-content when infact they are the new level 80.

Thoughts? (keep comments on-topic or take your worthless troll-opinion elsewhere :p)

GW1 introduced new skills with each exp, you were never at maximum with just the core game after their release.

They need to provide some sort of progression with new exp.

Adding new skills at the same level increases the number of options, but it doesn’t increase character power or allow them to do anything they couldn’t already do. That is horizontal progression.

Masteries are more similar to the title track lines/skills added to GW1. They increase character effectiveness in certain situations, and allow access to new areas and items. It’s a less vertical progression than adding more levels or gear tiers, but it’s certainly not only horizontal.

The main factor that makes me mostly ok with it, is the fact that masteries are account based and don’t have game-wide effects. But that could change after seeing the details of each mastery.

butch.8136:

Ark.6839:

Exactly why I’m asking if they’ll be putting more armor sets in or not… because at the moment, it just seems way too little, more like a living story type of release (armor wise) than a full blown expansion 50€ expansion.

They’ve stated we won’t see armor sets in the gemstore anymore. So they’ll all be obtainable in-game now by playing.
Expect new ones with the Living Story releases too.

Anet has been fairly consistent in showing that they are more interested in adding new skins via the gem store and BL chests than actual in-game rewards. So they’ll likely continue mostly ignoring armor and keep adding armor-ish costumes to the gem store.