I heard the complaint about wasting the golden key on the Bombcast, and how Gearbox should have put in multiple warnings about opening the golden chest in Sanctuary.

Really guys?

It's a chest that looks like no other chest in the game, it's gold with crazy skulls on it, and filigree ornamentation. Something should tip you off there that it is something special. Are gamers such magpies that are trained to snatch every shiny object they see to the point of ignoring the obvious extra decoration and conspicuous placement of this specific chest? Shouldn't they stop and think "Something is different about this one"?

Am I alone in thinking there is some serious blame-shifting going on here?

I haven't got that far in this weeks show yet, but it sounds like (From your description) that they did exactly what I did. I assumed that the golden key was something i'd picked up in game and that I would be able to find more. It's not 100% clear either way to be honest.

You get a pop-up that you have to click through telling you about the golden key if you've got one on you, if you didn't read it it's your own fault for wasting the key. It was pretty obvious what that chest was.

AND when you look at the chest a golden key counter appears on the screen, again, your own fault if you "wasted" the key.

I did the exact same thing. That chest didn't look that different to me, it looked big and the game kinda trains you to just mash open on all chests. I honestly don't remember any prompts and only after I had opened it did I realize that this must be the case that a lot of people were talking about. Each time you get a new elemental weapon etc there is a huge box on your screen with a timer before you can even close the prompt. Don't see why you wouldn't get a huge prompt telling you that this is a very unique chest with a YES NO choice.

Then again it's no big loss as you will gain a few levels and just switch those weapons out anyway.

I even knew it was a golden chest but I got fucking grenade mods.

@psylah: No, it wasn't obvious. In a game that has you opening thousands of objects including chests of *all* different shapes and sizes, I simply saw it and ran over and opened it. It wasn't until a later game session that I saw the chest again and thought it was strange, then figured out when I tried to open it again what had happened. And even then I had to go read somewhere what a golden key was and that no, I hadn't picked it up without noticing it during a firefight.

I also don't care, because whatever I'll still find plenty of loot. I would have waited until max level to use it, instead I got a grenade mod I used for 10 minutes then trashed for something better. In reality, it's simply poor design on their part for the style of game this is. Putting the onus on the player in this case was the wrong way to do it, because of the way the game conditions you regarding lootable objects. They should have given you the golden key in your stash or bank so people have to actually pick it up from there, as well as having a bigger prompt detailing what it is you're spending to open the chest.

You only get purple colored gear from it if I remember correctly, so no biggie. But if it would be possible to get orange gear from that chest, those complaints would be justified.

I can see the argument for situational awareness. It's kinda easy to stop paying attention for after playing 100 hours of Borderlands 1 and going into this I've been trained to just grab everything. No other mechanic in Borderlands requires you to examine your surroundings. Imagine if a stage in COD required you to stop and search through cracks in the wall like an adventure game all of a sudden.

@Icemo said:

You only get purple colored gear from it if I remember correctly, so no biggie. But if it would be possible to get orange gear from that chest, those complaints would be justified.

Nope. I got a shitty blue rocket launcher as Zer0. Fuck.

@Xolare: Well, shit. :/ I hope that blue-purple is the range for gear from that chest. Using your key and getting a green shield would suck so bad.

I definitely opened it up without realizing what I was doing, and I know several other people that did the same thing. When you're just running through Sanctuary, even thought it might be colored slightly differently, there in't anything there that would make me hesitate from immediately opening it the same way I run up to every other container and bang on the X button.

Chest that looks like no other chest...near the beginning of the game.

I think the complaint is completely justified. Think about how you spend your time in Borderlands and Borderlands 2. It's like 40% shooting guys, 30% traveling from quest to quest, and 30% looting things. In a game that's trained you to click on every box in the environment to get loot, it's completely understandable that a large group of people wasted their keys. I didn't have a golden key when I first got to Sanctuary, but as soon as I saw the chest, I thought, "Ooh, chest!" and ran over to it and tried to open it. The color didn't phase me at all; maybe it was a special color because it was in Sanctuary and could only be opened once or something, maybe it was a quest-related chest, or maybe it was a higher rarity of chest. You have no way of knowing, and before the golden key counter pops up to let you know you're spending a key, you've already clicked the chest to open it. It's just incredibly poor design; there should be some type of confirmation dialog every time you attempt to spend your key to open the chest, and they should also explain that you can't get keys in the game.

They probably should include a warning message given that the key can only be used once. They probably don't know about the extra SHiFT key you can get for signing up in-game....or the thousands of keys being given away on twitter.

The only way it could be a legitimate accident is if a person starts the game and signs up with shift and pays ZERO ATTENTION to the golden key reward and the fact that when the game starts it tells you that you are awarded with the golden key.

Aside from that there is no debating that everyone is responsible for ignoring the initial warning and then running up to a chest that is clearly different than any other chest and displays the golden key several feet before even reaching the damn thing. It's an issue of people not admitting they made a mistake when they ran to it and opened it.

I can understand the complaint. I knew what the chest looked like before I even started the game, and I still almost ran over to it and hit the button on impulse. Luckily I stopped and reminded myself what it was before I hit it. The game trains you to open everything that looks like a usable container. If you've played as much borderlands as some of us have then it just becomes auto-pilot to run around opening everything. Would have been nice if they added a confirmation pop-up when you try to open it.

Thankfully anything you can get from that chest can be found elsewhere. It just has more of a guarantee of better quality loot than other chests in the game. And there will always be more keys.

Lots of people tend to play Blands 2 very rapidly, especially in "co-op" where a lot of the loot is competitively distributed, creating a sense of constant urgency to be the best kleptomaniac.

That being said, I still think people who are blaming the game burn themselves drinking freshly brewed coffee.

As a counterpoint, the entire game teaches you to look for chests and open them up immediately. It also makes a point of having special chests that are much larger and have green lighting that rewards you with high quality loot. It further enforces opening up treasure chests immediately by having special challenges associated with them. At no point does the game try to reinforce with all these other chests that you should wait to loot them until you are a higher level. This is a mechanic specific to this one chest.

Granted, the point you made is completely accurate. The chest very specifically made to look unique and placed in a special location in a major hub location. Some people might infer that this means to take special care with the opening of this chest. However, the opposite inference is probably more common: that you need to open this chest immediately because of the reinforcement of this behavior you have received throughout hours of gameplay. Unfortunately for this chest, the entire game is meant to feed off a "magpie" mentality on the part of the player.

A lot of people just hammer on the open/pick up button and ignore popups. I tend to pickup everything until I am out of room and then sell or dump as needed.

Well, it happened to me so I understand it.

I don't look closely at every chest I open and I wanted to go somewhere so I didn't pay any attention at all. Why should I, I never paid attention to any other chest in the game. Got a useless blue shield. Yay. But it's not so bad, I don't really care.

I was half a button press away from opening it on impulse, then realized it was "gold" and stopped. Phew!

Some guys on Twitch opened it a bunch of times and level 50 by duplicating the key and seems like all the stuff inside wasn't even close to the gear they found elsewhere. They said to wait until DLC to open it, just to see if Gearbox acknowledges and beefs up the loot inside.

@GenocidalKitten said:

Here was my situation when I opened it.

I was playing split screen with a friend I had just got the game and both me and my friend were eager to play, I knew about the premiere club unlocking the arena and Mechromancer so I skipped past the premiere club pop ups. We played for a good 2 or 3 hours then stopped when we got to sanctuary. I started playing on my own later, the game spawned me near a chest I hadn't played the game for long so it didn't occur to me that the golden chest was different from any of the other chests I'd been finding.

I feel like more golden keys will be handed out so I'm not to worried about it but, it wasn't really my fault

Except it is your fault because you said you skipped the pop up explaining the golden key. Running up to the chest from across the room out of excitement or whatever and opening it without considering its a golden loot chest (trust me on the fact that no other chest looks like it in the first game or this one) for the key you have is also your fault.

It wouldn't be your fault if someone got on your account and opening it without your knowledge.

This whole thing is really stupid. The golden key means nothing and its whole importance was manufactured for marketing. Every piece of pre-order bullshit is either worthless or just helps make the game easier for you (thus cheapening the experience of the game you paid for), and the golden keys are a little of both.

You'll come across purple guns throughout the course of the game naturally, and, if it is anything like Borderlands 1, you'll be fuckin' swimming in 'em by the end of the game.

Why would you actually want the game to just hand you high quality shit just because you pre-ordered the game anyway?

 running up to a chest that is clearly different than any other chest and displays the golden key several feet before even reaching the damn thing.

@ajamafalous said:

@golguin said:

running up to a chest that is clearly different than any other chest and displays the golden key several feet before even reaching the damn thing.

Except that it's not clearly different than any other chest, when up to that point in the game you've seen about 5-8 chests total. Your first thought isn't "OH MAN THIS CHEST MUST BE SUPER SPECIAL," it's "Oh cool, another chest model." The second part of your statement is also simply not true, considering if I run up to the chest, I can hit E and open it before the prompt even shows up to let me know I'm spending a golden key to do so.

Actually, my first though was something along the lines of, "Woah, that's a crazy looking chest. OH! That's the golden chest that goes with my golden key. That's where it is." I then walked up to the chest, saw the key icon pop up, and walked away from it. I haven't been near it since then.

I imagine that everyone who didn't run at the chest and opened it without thinking had similar thoughts.

I have no sympathy for those who "accidentally" opened it. It's not so near the start of the game that you can mistake it for just another chest, it's in an odd location (are any other chests like that blatantly out in the open, without at least a boss encounter?) it brings up your key total when you walk up to it (you don't even have to be RIGHT up to it) and we were told from the start and on the title screen that the golden chest was in Sanctuary.

How could you mistake the big golden chest in the middle of town for anything else?

I was informed through the game's prompt that golden keys can only be used once. It pops up a big ass message.

Doesn't bother me either way, I never use pre-order equipment etc. to make a game easier than it ought to be. Chances are you'd get a disappointing grenade mod anyway.

@WinterSnowblind said:

I have no sympathy for those who "accidentally" opened it. It's not so near the start of the game that you can mistake it for just another chest, it's in an odd location (are any other chests like that blatantly out in the open, without at least a boss encounter?) it brings up your key total when you walk up to it (you don't even have to be RIGHT up to it) and we were told from the start and on the title screen that the golden chest was in Sanctuary.

How could you mistake the big golden chest in the middle of town for anything else?

I love that you put the word accidentally in quotation marks.

I have nothing more to add to your post.

I love the superiority complex of all these people who didn't open the chest and obviously would never fall for a such a ridiculous ruse like the rest of these plebs.

@Milkman said:

I love the superiority complex of all these people who didn't open the chest and obviously would never fall for a such a ridiculous ruse like the rest of these plebs.

That sounds like something someone who opened the chest would say!

Back of the bus!

I read the little pop up thing and was actively looking for it when I got to Sanctuary, so I didn't have that problem, but I can see how you could open it if you don't really pay attention to anything but the shape of it and skip the pop-up about the key.

But Mr. Pitchford keeps sending out codes to get more keys, so it's not that big of a deal.

The fact that so many people have had this issue suggest it IS a problem. I honestly don't even remember a popup about the keys. It should really ask you to confirm your choice seeing as you'll only have one or two of them.

Not like it's a problem. Pitchford has been giving out thousands of keys on his Twitter for the past couple of days, and if you pre-order you already get two keys.

@psylah said:

I heard the complaint about wasting the golden key on the Bombcast, and how Gearbox should have put in multiple warnings about opening the golden chest in Sanctuary.

Really guys?

It's a chest that looks like no other chest in the game, it's gold with crazy skulls on it, and filigree ornamentation. Something should tip you off there that it is something special. Are gamers such magpies that are trained to snatch every shiny object they see to the point of ignoring the obvious extra decoration and conspicuous placement of this specific chest? Shouldn't they stop and think "Something is different about this one"?

Am I alone in thinking there is some serious blame-shifting going on here?

Your description of the chest proves how instinct would be to immediately run up to and open that badass-looking chest to get that hot loot!

At first when approaching the chest and seeing it took a key, I couldn't open it because I was playing when the game came out and the dlc or shift stuff wasn't working yet. I wish I'd cheated myself tons of keys before the patch, though honestly there will be a trainer or something for that soon if not already anyways so I'm not exactly worried if I feel the need to get more keys. I still have 1 left over, I got 3 from the dlc and shift stuff and from the glitch on release day cause of having the dlc owned but not installed (cause it wasn't working) so the game credits you on both it seemed. The guns I've seen so far have been vastly superior for their lvl, and a great help.

I did the exact same thing, and honestly, it's so early in the game, there are so many different chests that are new, that you can't be blamed for making the mistake. The Golden Key icon isn't as obvious as it should be, and there was no prompt for me, so I have no idea what people are talking about, making that point.

Besides, loot is broken in the game, it's almost impossible to get a decent gun that is useful until you're nearly level twenty, and even the gun I got from the golden chest was easily replaceable by another random gun I just picked up from a dead enemy. I think the bigger issue here is that the game is vastly inferior to the first in terms of loot and that factor alone means that this 'special chest' that requires outside influences to open is utterly useless. If anything, it should be removed, because it serves no real purpose beyond annoying people and wasting a key that won't benefit them in any way.

did anyone else get another message saying they recieved another gold key when they started a new character like i did? why not just level up that guy and get some level 50 loot there?

Nope, I'm with the crew on this one. The problem is that my mind is trained to see chest, open up. Which is a nice way of saying I'm stupid. Didn't even notice the details before I opened it. Once I hit level 50 I'm giving myself a key.

@DJJoeJoe said:

At first when approaching the chest and seeing it took a key, I couldn't open it because I was playing when the game came out and the dlc or shift stuff wasn't working yet. I wish I'd cheated myself tons of keys before the patch, though honestly there will be a trainer or something for that soon if not already anyways so I'm not exactly worried if I feel the need to get more keys. I still have 1 left over, I got 3 from the dlc and shift stuff and from the glitch on release day cause of having the dlc owned but not installed (cause it wasn't working) so the game credits you on both it seemed. The guns I've seen so far have been vastly superior for their lvl, and a great help.

If you're going to cheat, why not just go all out and give yourself a gun with max stats?

@rebgav said:

@TheDudeOfGaming said:

Nope, I'm with the crew on this one. The problem is that my mind is trained to see chest, open up. Which is a nice way of saying I'm stupid. Didn't even notice the details before I opened it. Once I hit level 50 I'm giving myself a key.

WHY?! When you're lvl50 you'll either have or get a bunch of purple loot at that level, especially if you use that character to raid Terramorphous or go hunting legendary loot. When dlc comes out it'll inevitably have higher level weapons too. I don't understand what people think they gain by saving the keys up.

You really haven't seen my loot drops have you? I even started a new character to get to sanctuary so I can get a Vault Hunter's Relic on Zero, which I stupidly sold, it actually does help a bit. I'm pretty sure that either my game is bugged somehow, or more likely Gearbox decided that people who like to solo are second class citizens. I'll do some boss runs in my futile hope that I might get a legendary item (I've only gotten 6 in like 50 hours). But If that doesn't work out, I'm cheating.

I raided it just like the guys without realizing it was the super-eeky-eeky-no-bad-touch only openable by keys. Course I only play the game in co op and that speeds things up and hinders judgement a bit.

If it's so "obvious," people wouldn't be complaining about it. I didn't have a problem, but a couple of my friends and brothers had their experience. It's not super obvious and it's not something you can just get more of. It also doesn't explain that it pertains to your level inside in the game so it thinks it's very fair for them to add a small pop up.

Tons of people did that. When I ran up to the chest it was still "melting in" and I had to force myself to take a second and go "wait, something isn't normal about this." The game trains you to run towards these things and open everything. Maybe a dialogue box wouldn't be the worst thing.