After opening 235 of them, I got nothing of any value what so ever. So I put in a ticket only to be told that DEVS control this and that I should post on the forum. So, here you go.
As we need yet another reason to find a new game and leave for good. Don't be fooled, saving VIP keys does not help. I'm living proof of that. I certainly will NEVER buy any either. I will not spend one dime period...
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I did 1200 one day and 800 another day during summer sale of 2016. I got 2 epic pulls from 2K worth of keys. A friend got 2 legendary from 50 keys. It is total RNG. That same player left for a few months, came back and got another legendary with only 20 keys. It is total RNG and from what I can tell it seems certain accounts have higher odds of pulling better items from the LB.
I saved my VIP keys too as well from coupons/sale to open mostly during 2x RS. So far 14 out of 20 times with an average of 200keys ,I have gotten legendary mount.
I know others who used hundreds of keys without decent rewards as well as other who use less than 50 and got legendary.
Bottom line, open lockbox with no expectations so if you don’t get anything good, oh well. However if you do get that legendary mount, oh happy day.
If you buy VIP only because of the lockbox key and expect a grand prize, I feel sorry for you.
I believe someone did a test (in the preview server) long time ago. The odd of a legendary mount is about 1 in 1000.
The bad news are, there's only a certain amount of older lockboxes left, and at some point every player will be forced to either let their daily ViP keys rott or use them on the newer lockboxes...
And the ugly news are, that the newer lockboxes are designed to flood our inventory with mostly use-/worthless HAMSTER, so that all players will have to spend real money at some point to get more ViP/keys.
On the bright side, when you run out of older lockboxes, there's no reason for buying more keys beside the ones you get from ViP. I'm pretty sure someone at Cryptic is patting themself on the back for this newer lockbox design, not realising that in the long run they only shot themself in the foot... again.
Anyway, i've probably gone through several thousand keys this far and pulled 2 legendary prizes from lockboxes over the years, and the last time i spend real money on this game was for the epic account-wide Winter Festival companion, they haven't given me a good reason for spending more money since then.
I allways save at least 30 keys for one great lockbox opening session every month, and i've enough older boxes banked for several years, i still hope that they'll change this cancerous lockbox design into something better, but i bet they'll only make it worse... again.
This leads me to the obvious question...will I see value in going for a VIP subscription? Do you get anything from it other than keys that basically allow you to play a version of a lottery?
I now have about ~800 unused VIP lockbox keys. I don't feel particular excited opening lockbox. I also collect EVERY single lockbox I encountered since mod 3. I have enough old lockbox to open if I care ... one day.
I get VIP because of its Qualify of life value: bank portal, travel portal, seal vendor (for selling stuff for gold), no AH posting fee, AD store discount, etc. The QOL thing was the reason I got VIP 12 since there was VIP. Not because of lockbox key which is icing of the cake for me.
If your subscription lapses, you lose the use of these things but the rank you've achieved remains should you buy it again.
It is fairly indispensable to most people who have it.
235 is nothing. Could you get something? Yes. Is it likely you'll get a legendary something? Not really.
RNG is RNG and everyone knows this and yet people still see some value in opening lockboxes and selling their contents while hoping for the big payday of a legendary.
While you're upset yo got nothing with 235, somewhere there's someone giddy that they used 1 lockbox key and scored a legendary (we all hate this person by the way so don't tell us).
That means you have around 50% chance of getting a Legendary mount after opening 700 lockboxes.
Good luck!
And BTW.. I have had VIP more or less since they introduced it, and I spend my key every day. I have seen no Legendary drop.
there are some lockboxes protected by jibberish ( aka trash ) that are virtually guaranteed to drop nuttin.
it does matter which boxes you open and many are worse than others. A few gem boxes are very valuable on the market for this reason alone
i also played Star Trek, it isnt even better. "Elite" ships are harder to get and now they add or moved to R&D *Research and Development" crates for tier 6 ships, new lockbox in STO are full of junks, no one wanted those and they flooded Exchange (AH's version). and on Sept 10th recent patch, they nerfed most of ships weapons and consoles, days of "PEW PEW" are over and now we get "pew pew" in smaller amounts of damages and longer fights.
why bother upgrading those ships' consoles?
used to be excited when we get "60%" crit hit weapons looted or from lockboxes, or from duty crew on away missions, and now we have "20%" crits hit chances, and captain skills nerfed same way as we have on Mod 16.
Its not a waste of time -its a waste of money.
I started to actually getting something out of a LB (from VIP) in exactly same moment I stopped to buy them.
Those few from VIP are good enaugh if you got lucky (got 1 Leg T-rex in them and NO leg drop in any I bough in addition to VIP keys)
Besides back in mod lets say 10 - legandary mount like Tenser was worth about 30kk ADs.
Now LB are 50% more expensive (750 AD :1 ZEN ratio) while legendary mounts are 8kk ADs on average.
On top of that back then even an epic mount was worth about 1kk ADs and epic companions or even artifacts got some value. Now anything but legendary drop is worthless.
All that taken together makes lockoboxes worst possible idea to spend your ZENs on.
And IT IS AS BAD now as @wylonus described above, and NO it was not like that before.
(To be honest - back in MOD 9-10 if you bought 1000 keys on sale (like BF, christmas or jubille) and waited for lets say double enchants event (to open enchantment boxes taken out from LB, then waited some time to all that event pass - you always were able to get not only your money back but also get nice profit - even without legendary drops).
So lockboxes in general - take free one from your VIP, and never bother trying more than that.
Obviously RNG is used on some level to handle the trash, aka 99.99 of drops, but I suspect these boxes are something like, get one legendary in the first 50 or so openings for the vast majority of people, then absolute rubbish for the rest of days. Certainly of the people I have talked to, that is what's happened.
They are a shocking waste of money and I long ago stopped buying keys. Even with the 40% discount coupon, once you have your allocated legendary, they are worthless.
Vast majority do not even get one legendary regardless how many times they try.
I also know few lucky people who got many. Few get 2 in a row multiple times. Of course, they are tiny minority.
Certainly a few lucky get positive RNG and multiple legs. Those are just part of the con.