Mount & gliders skins unlockable through content ?

I get that Anet makes their money off selling skins, and I'm fine with it. But they were already doing that before Gliders ands mounts were even a thing. They were selling gear skins, which didn't prevent them from also adding cool lookings sets in the game for us to unlock without paying, through fractals and other activities.

Why isn't this the case for mounts and gliders ?I understand that big shiny skins with lots of detailed and animated visual effects on them are store mounts, but more basic models like the Canyon Spiketail raptor skin could really have been in-game rewards.

I don't think adding a few options for gliders and mounts to the game would ruin Anet's business. Not only players would have more options without paying, but it would also make for more content : I could see mount skins locked behind questlines similar to the Griffon mount one, PvP activities, raids, puzzle jumps and so on.

There's a couple glider skins that exist that you don't have to get with gems (though I think they're all tied to legendary back items), but I agree; it's kind of annoying that all the new mount skins are gem store only. We already paid money for the expansion, and they want us to continue paying for stuff one would think we'd get by playing what we paid money for?

Did you see how much Money they are making with Mount Skins?Would be stupid to stop this.More Money = More / Better Content.

Why not farm Gold and tranfer them to Gems and buy the Mount you want?All ingame.

Did you see how much Money they are making with Mount Skins?Would be stupid to stop this.

Except I'm not suggesting they should stop making store mounts. I just said it would be nice and appreciated by the whole community if, IN ADDITION TO the shiny store mounts, they would also release a few basic skins unlockable in game. That's all.See my point about gear sets.

same reason u can't unlock copper fed salvage o matic, mining tool skins etc... they're premium content that dont give u any advantage... it's just for QoL and cosmetics

I'd love to see Outfits, Glider Skins, and MountFits earned as in-game rewards. I think it's reasonable to keep asking ANet for it. However, I don't think we can assume that it's practical for them to do so: we simply don't know enough about their financials.

@Aodlop.1907 said:I get that Anet makes their money off selling skins, and I'm fine with it. But they were already doing that before Gliders ands mounts were even a thing. They were selling gear skins, which didn't prevent them from also adding cool lookings sets in the game for us to unlock without paying, through fractals and other activities.

Why isn't this the case for mounts and gliders ?

The game wasn't making enough using their old monetization system. The original gem shop (near launch, during Living World S1) didn't generate enough revenue to maintain the game, so they switched to producing expansions in addition to the gem shop. That HoT+LS model apparently wasn't sufficient either, so they've changed to a smaller number of very expensive items that appeal to big spenders.

(We don't know any of that for certain, but it's consistent with what little they've told us and what we know of the history of GW2's income from stockholder reports.)

I don't think adding a few options for gliders and mounts to the game would ruin Anet's business.From the outside, it doesn't seem like it, does it? But we don't really know what their projections are and whether adding some skins from in-game rewards undermines sales of any gem shop skins... or whets player appetite for more. I'm inclined to believe ANet, since their business depends on getting that right... and frankly, if they get it wrong, well, they probably shouldn't be in the business.

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Incidentally, armor skins are now only introduced as in-game rewards and we've had a lot of that. Legendary, Triumphant, Mistward, Luminescent, Warbeast, Funerary, and many others. There's only been a single outfit released as an in-game reward, and that was currency based (the Hexed Outfit); the town clothes outfits were sourced from gem shop items originally. We've gotten a default glider and five default MountFits

I understand that big shiny skins with lots of detailed and animated visual effects on them are store mounts, but more basic models like the Canyon Spiketail raptor skin could really have been in-game rewards.Not only players would have more options without paying, but it would also make for more content : I could see mount skins locked behind questlines similar to the Griffon mount one, PvP activities, raids, puzzle jumps and so on.

Personally, I'd love to see each expansion offer a griffon-acquisition-like quest line that ended up rewarding a glider skin or outfit or Mountfit. I hope that's realistic for ANet to offer us at some point, sooner rather than later. And if it's not, I'd love for them to explain why not.

All the same, I don't think it's reasonable to expect that they can just offer us stuff in game without there being financial consequences.

@DanAlcedo.3281 said:More Money = More / Better Content.

Entirely debatable.I certainly didn't see any better content for SAB, certainly didn't see more of content with the last LS chapter either.

So no, sales don't directly equal more or better. It just ensures a status quo for people at the company because at the end of they day they too have families to feed.

I'm ok with them selling mount and glider skins and other cosmetics because they give away the actual content for free to the majority of people and sell it for a very low price compared to other game's DLC for people who missed the release window. If GW2 was like most games - charging everyone $5 or more for each Living Story chapter then yes, I would expect more of the cosmetic items to be included in that price.

But as it is I don't mind buying the odd glider or mount skin since I'm not spending that money on the DLC (or permission to play the stuff I've already paid for in the form of a subscription) and I understand that for a game to be continuously updated and added to money has to come in from somewhere. (Plus I can always buy them with gold, or 1/2 gold and 1/2 real money if I want to.)

It's definitely a balancing act. If all new skins came from the gem store that would be extremely annoying, even for me and I'm one of the people who will play content just for the sake of playing through it without even thinking about what items I'll get. And I'm not going to buy skins I don't like or which I think are too expensive just because they've recently released an episode. Even I'm not sure there's a clear policy they can follow on when too much stuff is in the gem store vs. in-game, and that's just for me, if you tried to work out everyone's 'line in the sand' it'd be all over the place.

But at the moment I'm ok with the way Anet are doing things.

@SmirkDog.3160 said:There's a couple glider skins that exist that you don't have to get with gems (though I think they're all tied to legendary back items), but I agree; it's kind of annoying that all the new mount skins are gem store only. We already paid money for the expansion, and they want us to continue paying for stuff one would think we'd get by playing what we paid money for?

I would agree with you -if- we didn't have the option to convert ingame gold to gems. Play what you paid for, get gold -- convert said gold to gems and voila. You can now get them by playing the content that you paid for.

Also we haven't paid all that much at all, considering the amount of content we are getting for our money. There are MMO's out there, which i will not name out here that do not give even a fraction of the content of what GW2 gives you and they charge the same amount of money for their expansion on top of having ingame stores that do not offer the option to buy anything with ingame currency (only with real money) on top of having a monthly subscription.

For me imo, Guild Wars 2 business model is the best out there on the MMO market at the moment.

Careful what u wish for, they might give it to us (Mounts the cost of legendary weapons each are really not needed i think - we are better off using gold to gem and buy them directly.... or even buy gems directly. In my opinion this is a win/win for us and anet.).Personally I could have done without "mountgate" though, but the solution as is would have been even better for the first set of 30 mounts just sayin (if you want 5 skins)... but otherwise the system is totally fine and i bet you would never get mounts as cheap ingame even if they added an option.

This was a topic of discussion several times. My opinion is that the balance is just a bit out of place; we don't get one single mount skin aside the original skins outside the gem store which is a bit off. And no: one or two cool skins wouldn't hurt, as they shit out so much skins lately. But we may see - hopefully - some skins.

Imho it is a missed opportunity: many players play for a cool reward and I remember I played a lot of WoW just to get cool skins which were like 99% in game through cool quests with lots of lore etc. That's what me kept playing. I don't play GW2 often but I would if I could get cool mount skins.

This is a recurring topic and IMO ANet needs to stand firm or there's the risk of the slippery slope. Let's say they cave and give us just 1 mount outside of gem store. I can guarantee there will be some vocal minority complaining that they cannot access it as the content required to complete is "too hard". In addition there will be more demands for 4 mount skins (after all, we do have 5 mounts).Glider and Mount skins have consistently stayed in the gem-related section of the game. I believe some are available from BL statutes.Would it be interesting to have some quest/collection tied in with it? yes I guess so. Maybe make them a gold sink approximately equivalent to the value of the skin in gems (so a full set of 5 mount skin would involve a quest costing approx 600g). My main concern is if devs put all this effort into skin quests and only a minority actually appreciate the quest, whereas the majority would just grind through for the reward.

Except I'm not suggesting they should stop making store mounts. I just said it would be nice and appreciated by the whole community if, IN ADDITION TO the shiny store mounts, they would also release a few basic skins unlockable in game. That's all.See my point about gear sets.

But they already did. The basic skins are available to all players.

Nobody uses them, which is also a good indicator that if they were to add more basic skins obtainable to all through content, they probably also would not be used. People want skins to make their mount look unique, or as close to unique as possible.

Well, they've never yet had a glider skin that was available for 'free.' Except that some have been offered via Black Lion statuettes for 25 statuettes each. (If you put in the work , you can definitely get a few free keys each week.)

At the moment, some outfits that sell for 700 each are available for 30 BL statuettes.

So it's not likely to be any time really soon (since people who got unwanted RNG mounts would still probably be angry) but I think it's reasonable to expect that eventually, some of the less-premium mounts from the original collection might be added ad BL statuette purchases. I hope so, I would really like to add the Savannah Monitor and Coastal Spiketail to my raptor stable.

@"Biff.5312" said:

Except I'm not suggesting they should stop making store mounts. I just said it would be nice and appreciated by the whole community if, IN ADDITION TO the shiny store mounts, they would also release a few basic skins unlockable in game. That's all.See my point about gear sets.

Let's be real, we don't use them because they only have one dye channel and share the same model as other mounts with 4 dye channels.

I think there's definitely room in the game for achievement or specialty-gated mounts. I'd love to see new mount skins/models that you can get only from building a stables in your guild hall and unlocking them. Further upgrades can unlock another mount of the same theme, or mounts based on the guild hall itself. Want the Windswept, Gilded, AND Lost precipice mount sets? Better work on making your guilds bigger and better places.

And what about mounts based on doing a specific dungeon, buyable with that dungeon's currency? Match your armor set to your mount for that chef's kiss of perfect flavor. Or how about mounts based off of world bosses? These wouldn't be full sets, but themed one-offs. they'll either have a low chance to drop from the chest, or after X times they become available. You can have it so that you can either wait out downing the boss like, 1000 times to earn it, or the ability to buy it for gems unlocks after you down the boss once. In fact even the dungeon mounts could work with that idea. Don't want to make the Ascalonians cry 100 times? sure, pay like 1600 gems for the themed set.

I know I'm going to get the "you're not a modeler, you don't know how hard it is to make new mounts" and... well yes and no. I haven't done character modeling in ages, but I do know the pain of making a new mesh vs altering or reskinning an existing one, and frankly? I'd be fine with mostly themed alterations and different dye channels. In fact little alterations or accessories would be really great for something like cultural mounts. These are cost efficient methods to make mounts that stand out and are worth earning, no breaking the bank needed.

@"Aodlop.1907" said:

Did you see how much Money they are making with Mount Skins?Would be stupid to stop this.

Ok. So lets say they creat 5 mount skins for ingame reward. ( One for each).Because the requirement for the skins cant be to hard , ( Because it is Gw2 and people would flame the kitten out of Anet) you gave the entire Gw2 community 5 free mount skins.

However , there is something called "taste".So only a small % of the community will like the skins.

And is just so happens YOU dont like the skins they put into the game.

What know? Put more Skins ingame?

How many skins should be ingame until everybody is statisfied?

How much money is anet going to loose in the prozess?

The issue with store mounts is not only that they are a paid thing to me.It's also the fact that, when I encounter someone with a great mount, I can't tell myself "woaw, he has THAT mount model, he has worked hard for it, this must be an amazing player", the way I do in WoW when I see someone riding the latest mythic raid mount, or a gladiator (top 0,5% of the ladder) mount.I like mounts being a "trophee", a way to show your achievements, but as of now, all I can say when I say a cool looking mount is "well, that guy spent 10€ on it, good for him!".

Again, I feel like I must repeat myself, but I'm 100% fine with Anet selling mount skins. It's OK, the game is great, it's not p2w, there's no sub so I'm totally fine with them doing that. I just believe that a skin or two per mount wouldn't hurt. As of now, the only mount model we get for free is the one with only one dye that doesn't even cover the whole body. :/

@DanAlcedo.3281 said:Did you see how much Money they are making with Mount Skins?Would be stupid to stop this.More Money = More / Better Content.

Why not farm Gold and tranfer them to Gems and buy the Mount you want?All ingame.

Wrong. They are losing players because of the cash shop. Why in the WORLD would players waste their time earning awesome gear when people with $ (not skill) can just go out and buy it. There is a reason this game is nick named Fashion Wars. Good luck enjoying new content with a dying population. Did you play Guild Wars 1 at all? Because they did perfectly well by earning cash through expansions. It wasn't until the end did they introduce microtransactions.

To be blunt. I actually was in the process of reinstalling this game until I saw this thread and the fact this was chosen as the answer is fundementaly flawed. This is why my entire guild left.

As much as I would love to have simple mount skins earnable in-game, wouldn't even need to be flashy ones and ANet could tie them to any currency/content of their choice, like mounts with Guild Emblems for Guild Commendations, racial mounts for Karma or Dungeon Tokens, It won't happen. It would add to the immersion, if I could go to some point in Vabbi, do a treasure hunt and catch my own mount(skin). It could be a fun little adventure, tied to the region where the specific kind of Raptor lives, there could be additional lore, NPCs to speak to, places to be and F's to press. Yeah, they could have done that, maybe some of the resikins/reshapes sold in the mountboxes would have made good in-game rewards which would have kept the ones with additional particle or sound effects for the gemshop.Maybe there willl be a legendary worthy grind to get some skins at some point, but I actually doubt that as well because mount skins are just that, a skin to change the look of an ability you allready have. With the backpieces/gliders, players get an item to go with it that gives the player an addional QoL upgrade exclusive to the item. Such an item is missing with the mount system as it is(a good thing).Going from how ANet handled the gliders, i.e. the ability and a basic skin are earned in-game, everything beyond that is either tied to the gemstore or one of three legendaries, I kinda knew they would repeat it with mounts but hoped that they wouldn't 100%Gemshop it. Same goes for other categories of cosmetic upgrades btw. There aren't that many finishers or mail carriers earnable in-game either as I think about it. Well see if skins can be earned through gameplay/achievements/currencies at some point but as I said I doubt it. They didn't introduce anything so far, if at all, I'd anticipate a handful of legendary collections rather than a Vendor who just sells the skins to you for some bits of karma.The mounts and mostly the skins need to pay for the next expansion so they need your money, preferably, or your playtime(to show how healthy the population is to get other people to invest and so on...). In the end it's just skins and since you're able to play the game, including the mounts with their abilities, save gold(not farm, you can of course, but you don't have to) and get the skin you want eventually ANet sells rather fair mountboxes. Yes I'd prefer a different system, No the current system isn't terribly broken.

@ProtoGunner.4953 said:This was a topic of discussion several times. My opinion is that the balance is just a bit out of place; we don't get one single mount skin aside the original skins outside the gem store which is a bit off. And no: one or two cool skins wouldn't hurt, as they kitten out so much skins lately. But we may see - hopefully - some skins.

Imho it is a missed opportunity: many players play for a cool reward and I remember I played a lot of WoW just to get cool skins which were like 99% in game through cool quests with lots of lore etc. That's what me kept playing. I don't play GW2 often but I would if I could get cool mount skins.They really should have had a skin for each mount available in-game, maybe had one of the blander skins (the ones that are just fully dyeable recolors of the base model) purchasable from the NPC that gave you the mount once you had maxed its mastery track, or something.

@Hyper Cutter.9376 said:

@"ProtoGunner.4953" said:This was a topic of discussion several times. My opinion is that the balance is just a bit out of place; we don't get one single mount skin aside the original skins outside the gem store which is a bit off. And no: one or two cool skins wouldn't hurt, as they kitten out so much skins lately. But we may see - hopefully - some skins.

Imho it is a missed opportunity: many players play for a cool reward and I remember I played a lot of WoW just to get cool skins which were like 99% in game through cool quests with lots of lore etc. That's what me kept playing. I don't play GW2 often but I would if I could get cool mount skins.They really should have had

a

skin for each mount available in-game, maybe had one of the blander skins (the ones that are just fully dyeable recolors of the base model) purchasable from the NPC that gave you the mount once you had maxed its mastery track, or something.

Or perhaps there is an extra quest (like the griffon collection) involving spending time and around 100-120g (per mount) to acquire this basic "upgrade" skin.

@DanAlcedo.3281 said:Did you see how much Money they are making with Mount Skins?

How much money do they earn on mounts exclusively?

@DanAlcedo.3281 said:More Money = More / Better Content.

Content is being released at same pace/quality as it was before mounts (season 3). I am pretty sure that mount money currently funds their new project that we gonna see during e3, not GW2.

@DanAlcedo.3281 said:Did you see how much Money they are making with Mount Skins?

How much money do they earn on mounts exclusively?

@DanAlcedo.3281 said:More Money = More / Better Content.

Content is being released at same pace/quality as it was before mounts (season 3). I am pretty sure that mount money currently funds their new project that we gonna see during e3, not GW2.

They are already indirectly unlockable through content. You get gold as you play, just convert it to gems and ta-da.

@"Kheldorn.5123" said:

@DanAlcedo.3281 said:Did you see how much Money they are making with Mount Skins?

@DanAlcedo.3281 said:More Money = More / Better Content.

Obviously we don't know exactly how much Anet made, but we can get a rough estimate from the number of them seen in game.

Even a fairly precise estimate is possible with a bit of time and maths:

• Stand in Lion's Arch for an hour or so. Count how many players you see and how many gem store mounts. (If you want to be really precise you need to record player names so you don't accidentally count someone twice.)
• Each 5-pack mount counts as 1,600 gems.
• For a low estimate each RNG box mount counts as 400, but you could average it out at a higher number on the basis that it's highly unlikely they bought just the one licence.
• Then double all your totals to allow for the other region.
• Then extrapolate based on your count of total players (both those on mounts and those who were not) to reported sales of GW2/active player numbers, whichever you prefer.

Or for a slightly simpler approach you could trawl through the forum topics for the number of people who said they bought each mount release. But then it gets harder to extrapolate that to the total population because you need to factor in things like the fact that people who don't ever spend money on the game beyond the purchase price (if that) are also unlikely to visit the forum.