And I don’t just mean artifiacts. Consider this.
Weapons chests in this game are depressing for loot enthusiasts, who I would argue make up a good amount of the players in the game. In the last maybe 100 chests of any type that I’ve opened, common, basic weapon chests, red chests or Eridium sealed chests, I’d say I’ve found maybe 5 to 10 blue items. Everything else is green. I’ve actually hit a point where I am reflexively not even looking at those chests, because I feel like I know I’m going to be disappointed, and have to force myself to go open one and wait to see what’s in it before inevitably walking away without touching anything. How does any of that pertain to Eridian weapons, shields and class mods?
You need to play through at least the first ‘act’ of the game to get into those chests sealed with eridium crystals. They’ve apparently been there for who knows how long, sealed by a substance that most people can’t break (if the playable characters reactions to trying is any indication; I have no idea how the COV end up bringing so much of it to Troy later in the game if it’s so hard to shatter). You smash through the thick coating to get to the ancient chest underneath and find… green COV weapons?! …huh? Aren’t the COV like… 5 years old or so? How did their weapons get into a centuries old chest?! …And this is a Torgue gun! Is Mr. Torgue immortal?! o.o;
No he’s not. 
Ancient, eridium sealed chests should contain ancient Eridian weapons. Not current day weapons that are not only commonplace, but not even kinda special in any way. I mean… not even blue weapons. It would make sense that those chest contain items from the people who made the chests and then sealed them there. Even if you assume that some Guardian or other Eridian created lifeform placed that chest and sealed it, wouldn’t they seal things they considered useful in those chests? Have you ever seen a Guardian using a COV weapon? No? There’s a reason for that, right?
Let’s approach this from another angle. HOW many guns did this game claim to have in it? Was it just referring to the variables on the maybe 100 or so guns I’ve seen in the game so far, cause I don’t think I’ve seen very many more than that, if only based purely on some really rough RNG. I feel that having more types of weapons would raise the bar a bit closer to where it claimed it was already. And adding a new base set of weapons to the game specifically for those chests along with shields and class mods would make searching for them and finding them a LOT more interesting and exciting, and would MAKE MORE SENSE since the Eridian or Guardian or what have you that is most likely to have placed that chest would absolutely NOT fill it with crappy, common, low level weapons. Or if they DID put low level weapons in the chest, they would be low level ERIDIAN weapons.
As to the grade of weapons found in those chests, I feel like blue should be the lowest grade you can find in one. Some chest tucked into the back of a bandit camp? Sure, fill it with greens. An ancient, mysteriously powered, high tech chest that was secured with a layer of nigh unbreakable material to keep people out? …Why bother if it’s lower quality stuff than you can get from shooting some random skag wandering the wasteland?
I understand (in part; these events have drowned us in gold weapons so I feel like saying ‘…but we want to make the search for better weapons one of the draws of the game!’ to be kinda silly) the concept of not just handing over the best guns in the game on a regular basis. Maybe an idea to make this work better is to not have those Eridian chests be static; have them randomly move around each time a player enters or leaves a zone. Limit how many can be in a zone at a time and always have them be in a spot you have to search for to make people work for it. I feel like a lot of the people who play this would enjoy that challenge and feel rewarded for figuring out where the chest is and getting the weapons inside, especially if those weapons were cool AF or very unique and fit their playstyle or class well.
But if these chests exist, they should have cool, decent quality, unique seeming Eridian weapons inside. Not low grade weapons made by a group that’s maybe 5 years old.
