Anyone seeing statistically low drop rates from the Black Lion Chest?

[Thorynn Maelstrom.9468]

100 keys yielded nothing above common. I always open 100 at a time and have never seen anything less than a 10% (if not more) drop rate of uncommon or greater. Statistically, I'm curious. Personally, I am disappointed. Those keys cost a lot!

[Witch of Doom.5739]

I had a run of bad luck a few months ago, but today I had quite good luck. Three of ten chests gave me an uncommon or rare. It really is RNG.

[Bloodstealer.5978]

Well with the teal boost trash and the statuette, you only get 2 chances of anything reasonable now.. but they are congested with hair style kits, teleport to friends, and other trash like that so I don't expect anything less these days.. in fact last month I got duplicated guaranteed unlocks.. stuff I had unlocked like 6yrs ago, so put a ticket in and got a refund of the keys.So I wont be bothering to put any more coin in for a whiles now until things improve with the chest loot tables.

[IndigoSundown.5419]

I'm guessing I have opened somewhere between 100-200 chests (with free keys). I've only ever gotten one uncommon item. While I am sorry for your disappointment, I don't think that a sample size of 100 is significant. This instance could just be an outlier result, just as my experience likely is.

[Tzarakiel.7490]

I miss the old times where there was a 50% chance of the chests having more keys in them. If I was lucky I could open over 50 chests with only 25 keys.

[NanoEliteSixSixSix.8935]

@Tzarakiel.7490 said:I miss the old times where there was a 50% chance of the chests having more keys in them. If I was lucky I could open over 50 chests with only 25 keys.

I remember that. I thought it was so neat that I was able to chain-open six chests off only one key because they kept spitting out more.

[Hybarf Tics.2048]

@Thorynn Maelstrom.9468 said:100 keys yielded nothing above common. I always open 100 at a time and have never seen anything less than a 10% (if not more) drop rate of uncommon or greater. Statistically, I'm curious. Personally, I am disappointed. Those keys cost a lot!

That should tell you something about Anet's RNG practices. Avoid them at all cost. There's an old saying in the shopping world if something is over priced don't buy it, if only to send a clear message to the business owner. B)

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

@Thorynn Maelstrom.9468 said:100 keys yielded nothing above common. I always open 100 at a time and have never seen anything less than a 10% (if not more) drop rate of uncommon or greater. Statistically, I'm curious. Personally, I am disappointed. Those keys cost a lot!

The average rate for uncommon or better is 10%, based on my collection of data from several 1000 chests (across different contents). That's average, not your actual mileage.

The chance of opening exactly 100 and getting 0 uncommon or better is low, but not improbably low: 0.0027%, or about one chance in 38k. That's bad luck, even extraordinarily bad. It's just not bad enough to wonder whether there's an actual change to the drop rates.

aka needs more data

[InvaGir.9158]

I'll agree on one thingLately those chests started to be very unrewarding considering they cost real money and they used to give good dropsFor every update they released with some awesome skin under the uncommon category I got plus plenty of items even on the rares.But its getting pretty lame and rare to get even those now.

Anet lost their mind about the chests and I've been opening these for years and I always got the goodiesNow I just don't bother with it because I get nothing and its a waste of money.

I got a super rare recently too but I guess its a win of a lifetime and will never happen again

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

I encourage people to only purchase keys (in bulk or individually) if they genuinely enjoy the anticipation before opening them.

• If the item is tradeable, it will always be more economical to buy on the TP.
• If the item cannot be traded, you can wait and it will eventually be offered in some other fashion (typically: BL statuettes, although sometimes other mechanics ... or both).

As with any kind of lotto: the odds are never in your favor.

[Ok I Did It.2854]

@Thorynn Maelstrom.9468 said:100 keys yielded nothing above common. I always open 100 at a time and have never seen anything less than a 10% (if not more) drop rate of uncommon or greater. Statistically, I'm curious. Personally, I am disappointed. Those keys cost a lot!

I reported this issue months ago, and got shot down in flames on the forums with people shouting RNG, i used to do ALOT of keys, and the drops have been getting worse for the last year, i didnt buy any keys for about 5 months and picked some up the other day because they where on offer, and waited until tonight when the chests updated to try them, and it was all trash, you would think Anet would want to encourage people to buy keys, but i will be informing everyone in my guild to stay away from them again until Anet address this,

It was around this time last year the chests degraded in returns, last Jan/Feb/March they where decent, from 50 keys you may have yielded 5 or 6 weapon skins, now you use 100 keys and get 0 skins,

Its very clear Anet has skewed the drops of these chests to make them as bad as ever, idk why they would do that, other than pure greed and wanting people to buy more and more keys,

I will leave it another 6 months or so and try again if the keys come up on offer, but as it stands the BLK are 100% not worth doing at all, the drops are just bad.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

@Ok I Did It.2854 said:I reported this issue months ago, and got shot down in flames on the forums with people shouting RNG,The data we have doesn't support the assumption that there's a change. Your experience (and that of the OP) is just one data point among tens of thousands, perhaps even millions.

as it stands the BLK are 100% not worth doing at all, the drops are just bad.This is as it always has been. If you want the drops, buy them (if possible) on the TP or wait until they become available outside of RNG.Only buy the chests because you truly enjoy that frisson of excitement that happens before the chest is opened.Some people get lucky; most get around average luck; and some people get unlucky.

[mindcircus.1506]

@Ok I Did It.2854 said:It was around this time last year the chests degraded in returns, last Jan/Feb/March they where decent, from 50 keys you may have yielded 5 or 6 weapon skins, now you use 100 keys and get 0 skins,

I used 4 keys last week and got 2 skins.You can invent a hundred reasons why it isnt RNG. You invoke your power as a consumer and tell Arenanet you are an inluencer all you like.It's still RNG.

[Daddicus.6128]

"Statistically significant" is an imprecise term in an already-imprecise science. But, there is a concrete definition to the fuzziness:

Statistically significant can only be stated if one also states the level of significance. If the number of data points outside the confidence limits is high, then it is called significant.

Unfortunately, I can't totally recall the formulas any more (it's been over 40 years since I took those classes.) But, I think Excel can calculate them.

• Put the counts per 100 into a column.
• Use the STDEV.P function over that range of cells.
• Multiply by 3.
• Get the average (of the same range of cells) with the AVERAGE function.
• Subtract three times the standard deviation value from the average.

If that number is greater than zero, the rates may indeed have dropped. There is a 0.3% chance that they did not. More likely, though, your calculations will end with a number less than or equal to zero, which means it's still in the realm of normal.

Example: I used a set of values including an 8, 9, two 10s, two 11s, and a 12. The std. dev. is 1.25. Three times the std. dev. is 3.74 The average is 10.14. The difference is 6.41, a positive number.

Then I changed one of the 10s to a 4 and one of the 11s to a 16. This changed the numbers to 3.42, 10.27, 10, and -0.26, respectively. Thus, a zero value was outside that tight range I created, but inside the range when only two data points were changed.

In other words, the first example would show a way-higher-than 99.7% chance that something changed. The second example is "normal", even though only two numbers changed.

[Cragga the Eighty Third.60]

Sometimes I have incredibly good luck, getting the special item within a few tries (or even on the first!) Sometimes I have incredibly bad luck, like when I spent more on keys trying to get the Shrine Jackal skin than the actual skin would have cost. This time I used 19 keys, got nothing much. Not bummed about it because 1. Shrine Jackal taught me not to spend real money on keys, just farm them: and 2. I didn't really care about the chest drops, just wanted enough statuettes to buy an outfit.

[Turkeyspit.3965]

This isn't an argument against opening BL Chests as much as it against buying BL Keys. To be sure, there are players out there who get keys en masse and make a decent return, but like all 1%'ers, they will be the minority - not everyone is going to open 250 BL chests and walk away 1000s of gold richer.

For me, I decided long ago I would never purchase a BL key from the gem store, neither with real $$$ or gems converted from gold. I subsist with keys earned in game via weekly key toons, map completions, and the 1-2 per year that randomly drop for you.

Last chest series had nothing of interest for me, so I had 23 keys waiting on Tuesday. Sadly, the back pack / glider and available weapons don't interest me, so I think I might have opened 7 chests in total.

Got 2 self-style kits (seriously ANET, you trying to tell me something?), 4 dye kits (3 common, 1 rare I didn't have), 3 mini eggs (all common, 1 I didn't have) a wardrobe unlock, an armor unlock, T6 material bags, a teleport to friend, a tyrian voucher. All in all, completely worthless; the dye was worth 3g50s, but figured it would just be better to add it to library.

But I got 7 more BL statuettes, and 7 Mini Skyscales (used 4 of them, sold the other 3), so given my keys cost me nothing to acquire, I made a little bit of profit.

as @Illconceived Was Na.9781 says repeatedly, BL keys are for those who like to gamble. If you are trying to earn profit, you might be successful, but you have a greater chance of failure. Like in all gambling, only spend the amount of currency you are prepared to lose.

[Warlord.9082]

@Thorynn Maelstrom.9468 said:100 keys yielded nothing above common. I always open 100 at a time and have never seen anything less than a 10% (if not more) drop rate of uncommon or greater. Statistically, I'm curious. Personally, I am disappointed. Those keys cost a lot!

Yeah I am experiencing the same, bought 50 keys the other day and got absolutely nothing. It is ridiculous how low the yields are. Now personally, I like gambling but at the currrent rate I am better off playing roulette in a casino. At least those odds aren't this atrocious.

[Cerioth.7062]

My key opening has not felt any different from usual.

[Nemezijus.6851]

Lately I usually allow myself to buy 25 keys per month from my paycheck just for that short thrill of opening them. Might as well call it my guilty pleasure, and also the way to support the game. I have been doing this for the past two years. So I have opened around 600 chests in the last two years.Majority of times I get both exclusive items from uncommon category (gliders, mount skins, wepon skins etc) from monthly 25 chests.I have received a bundle of 3 golden black lion chest keys three times in total.On average I get 5-6 cases out of 25 when I receive 5 items. Most of the times they are weapon skins.I have never received a drop of glyph.I have got two home node drops.And luckily enough I have received 2 permanent contracts - bank and repair.

[Rauderi.8706]

Had uncommonly (ha) good luck on my last batch. 8 keys, got a dragon weapon I don't have and the branded wings/back. I was hoping for the dragon package, though. ;-;

[Doggie.3184]

I'm just sad that wardrobe unlocks are marked common but I only recall getting one out of the 73 statues I have currently. By my luck they are marked rare and continue to punish me for buying/collecting all the cheap skins. I been getting a lot of dye kits lately with dyes I already own that are worth 1 silver, which is funny cuz wardrobe unlocks can unfortunately give dyes too, except it'd skip the ones you own already. Can you just stop.

[Holgarf.6581]

@Thorynn Maelstrom.9468 said:100 keys yielded nothing above common. I always open 100 at a time and have never seen anything less than a 10% (if not more) drop rate of uncommon or greater. Statistically, I'm curious. Personally, I am disappointed. Those keys cost a lot!

And this is why they will continue to do such things. It's not true RNG. Everything is given a percentage and of course Rare get stupidly low percentages and Super Rare items get percentages so low that that it's almost a null value. Nobody should pay for 100 keys and get nothing decent to show for it... then again, nobody should buy 100 keys. I've seen people do this before and exclaim in map chat how they got nothing. It's a common occurence. I think I've had maybe 20 keys purchases over the last few years. Gambling sucks. I would prefer to buy things outright for reasonable costs personally. One way to remedy this is to guarantee a rare item of some sort with every set number of chests opened - a skin perhaps.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

@"Daddicus.6128" said:"Statistically significant" is an imprecise term in an already-imprecise science. But, there is a concrete definition to the fuzziness:"subtracting three times the standard deviation" is used to answer the question: what's the likelihood that the rate we see is the actual rate

That's a different question than: "if we know the drop rate, what's the chance that this outcome would occur?" That chance is 38k:1, which is horrible luck. It's entirely human when suffering awful luck to presume that means that the odds are worse now. The bettor's belief that the odds are rigged isn't, by itself, evidence.

The problem with using the OP's data set is: we already know that (whatever the truth is) the OP's results involve bad luck. So it's not a representative sample. That's because the OP didn't come to the forums (or the wiki) to state their results every other time they opened 100; they only presented them today. That data is self-selected; it's not 100% random any more.

Note further that the very first response is from someone getting 3 uncommon from just 10 chests.(edit: and note again: many other people have gotten average and better than average results from their small data sets)

The best way to check is to collect as much data as possible. Over the last 18 months or so, I've done as best I can with that, scouring reddit & youtube for people who show all their data from a single set, hopefully of 250 or 500 keys (just because it's a pain to document, each individual having very unique presentation styles).I don't have any from this particular chest. For the ones I do have (four sets with the last 18 months), the odds have remained the same: 10% chance of uncommon or better.

If anyone has links to full results, I'd be happy to add them to my collection. And, as always, I'll report on the data I have, not how I'd like to see it.

Until then, the evidence I see doesn't support the claim that the odds have changed significantly.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

Don't we get the "drop rate has changed" every time someone uses a bunch of keys and get nothing they wanted?Too bad we don't get threads claiming the "odds have improved" every time someone does get the drop they wanted, no?

[Excursion.9752]

On launch day I opened 25 chests got 5 skins and a Glyph along with the new Dragon Back/glider Item.Rng is Rng last time I opened 25 chests I got only one skin and that was it. I've started to count to 3 before I open the next one because most RNG is based of system time so I give it a second to change a little haha.. Its just in my head I think.