This is an attempt to view the silver key and lockbox system from OOO's perspective, try to figure out what went wrong, and how to fix it. It's not just yet another rant and I confess that I have no idea whether or not the things said here have been said before and how frequently they've been said.

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I think OOO's original intent with the silver key thing was for the auction values of the common accessories to be much, much higher than they are. If you look at equipment, you'll see that nobody is really willing to sell any weapons or armor for less than the price they cost to make. That includes unbinding fees on items that must be unbound.

The cost to make a Maid Headband is 750 CE, so Maid Headbands should go on the auction house for that much. That way everybody wins: the cost of buying silver keys is effectively zero because you can just trade for what you want and people will be encouraged to buy them for a chance at getting something good. And the CE cost will encourage people to buy CE with real money.

And maybe they'd go up for 700 CE's worth, or 650. It's a bit of a gamble then, but still not too bad. If everybody opens one lockbox, a lot of people will lose a fairly negligible 100 CE's worth, and some lucky winners will make a nice profit. Or hopefully equip their shiny accessories and make others buy more lockboxes in their lust.

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Obviously none of that happened. Maid Headbands go for <100 CE. What did OOO get wrong?

1) They overestimated demand. In order for the price of an item to stay high, people have to want it. OOO did a pretty good analysis of which accessories would be the most desirable and then made those the most rare in the lockbox opening chance. Their oversight was assuming that people would actually want common accessories like Maid Headbands. Nobody does. So as more lockboxes are opened, Maid Headband supply increases further and further and there is no accessory-sink to clear them because nobody wants them on their helm. And the price falls.

2) They misjudged exactly how people would open lockboxes. They'd have loved it if everyone in the game spent 750 CE on a silver key and then swapped accessories around. But that's not how it happened. A small portion of players opened a lot of lockboxes and a large portion of player didn't. So if you're one of the ones who did, obviously you have plenty of Maid Headbands and you don't want any more. If you're one of the ones who didn't, you're now given the opportunity to buy them on the auction house for 750 CE's worth of crowns. An item that a) provides no combat benefit, b) isn't visually appealing to you, and c) does not exist in finite supply and is thus not collectible. You're not going to buy that, and the price falls.

So instead of everybody losing a little, you have the most dedicated players losing a lot.

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Tens of thousands of CE is a whole lot to a single player. To OOO, it's not. And the forbidding 750 CE cost does not make silver keys accessible to new and mid-level players who would much rather get better equipment. So the people who bought a ton of silver keys are relatively few and OOO looks at their lockbox purchase rates and sees that not enough lockboxes are being opened.

So they introduce shadow lairs. They were probably planning to introduce the shadow lairs and shadow keys anyway, and decided that the lockbox system was a great way to get the keys out there and keep them elusive.

But OOO is still operating under the delusion that everyone's going to buy one or two silver keys and the few lucky newbies with no use for a shadow key will put the keys up for auction and the unlucky ones will otherwise be happy with their common accessories.

Low-level players are the most likely to still be f2p and are also the ones who cannot afford to toss around CE on things that don't provide combat benefits.

Lockbox opening rates remain low from OOO's perspective and outlandishly high from the perspective of the small percentage of players who are actually buying them. Shadow key supply remains lower than anticipated. People are angry that they can't enjoy the shadow lairs. OOO gives in and sells shadow keys instead. And in the meantime, Maid Headband supply has already increased further and still, nobody wants them.

Now that they've dealt with the lack of shadow key supply, OOO goes back to trying to get people to open more lockboxes. So they put some rare accessories up for auction in hopes that people will equip them and all the other players will get jealous and try their luck.

It's possible and probable that OOO does realize how badly their original lockbox plan has failed, and that the accessory auction is a poor attempt at trying to fix what they did wrong.

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The situation is basically unfixable at this point. OOO's going to have a hard enough time re-engineering their lockbox system to be more functional in the future, much less make amends to the players who have already wasted a ton of CE on worthless lockbox opens. The fact that accessories are bought and sold on the auction house for rates below 750 CE basically means that anything OOO does is going to end up with some people coming out ahead and some people coming out behind.

If you accept that you cannot make amends to the players who already engaged in the system, what needs to be done is this:

1) Improve the accessories. Nobody wants Maid Headbands, so why should they exist? Accessories should be things that look good and things that people actually want. Take the common undesirable accessories that exist now and stop giving them out of lockboxes. That way, the people stuck with them will at least have collectible items that can't be obtained otherwise. Or at the very least, try to change how they look so that people actually want them.

2) Flatten the drop rates. Let player demand take care of what's worth more and what isn't. Don't try to make the things that are already going to be in high demand in higher demand by making them super rare. Lockboxes are not love puppies. Love puppy drop rates can be egregiously low to create high demand items, but as rare as love puppies themselves are, they are still going to be more common overall than lockbox opens. And love puppies are free. So the <1% chance of rare item drop mentality is just not going to work with lockboxes. It would have worked if Maid Headbands were selling for 750 CE, but they're not.

3) Drop the silver key cost so that more players are willing to buy them without balking at the expense. I'm thinking 250 CE. Unfortunately, this also increases supply and doesn't really increase demand.

The problem is that OOO wants more people to open lockboxes, and in order to get more people to open lockboxes, they need a lower accessory supply. And in order to have a lower accessory supply, they need less people to open lockboxes.

I really don't think it was OOO's intent to create a gambling system. In fact, I think they're averse to doing so. They don't want to have lockbox prizes that are basically "here's 500 CE, you lost 250 CE!" But every player who's pulled a Maid Headband out of a box would rather have the 500 CE.

So OOO needs to accept the fact that they have a gambling system and do one or both of the following to decrease accessory supply:

1) Make accessories sellable to vendors for 2/3 the price of a silver key. This creates both a price floor and an accessory sink, but getting a Maid Headband is then just "you lost 1/3 of your CE! lol" and that's gambling. Doing this is also probably their best shot at making amends to the people who opened a lot of lockboxes short of refunding 750 CE to all of them, although anyone who's sold their accessories on the auction house still loses out (and that's no small portion of people).

2) Give out non-accessory items from the lockboxes such as Krogmo Coin Boosters, Mist Tanks, Weapon Slots, etc. People know how much these things are worth and they know that it's less than the cost of a key, i.e. gambling. But this reduces the accessory supply. This way they can also include some lockbox-only equipment and increase lockbox demand. Costumes, for example, would be great. But all the accessories are just pieces taken off of models that already exist in the game, so expecting OOO to do new modeling for costumes may be out of the question.

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At the end of the day, I don't think OOO is evil and I don't think their intent is to allow this system to continue to screw people over because a) they want people to like their game and b) it's not profitable to them (one of the core problems with the system is that people aren't buying silver keys at the rate OOO wants them to). Hopefully this provided some alternative perspective to the few people who actually bothered to read all of it and I sincerely hope OOO is thinking along the same lines before they attempt further knee-jerk responses to the issue. Adjusting the drop rates alone is not going to fix anything.