Official Mount Adoption Feedback Thread [merged]

[Cyber Locc.9836]

@Fallesafe.5932 said:

@Freakshow.1809 said:I'm one of those no lifers that drops big money each payday on GW2. Out of slight embarrassment I won't mention the amount i've dropped since release but it's a lot to say the least.Anet, I still have some faith in you to come around. You are usually very good about communication with the community and making changes based on feedback. But I need to ask...

Did you really think players would be okay with this? I mean I know you guys had meeting discussing this before it's implementation. Did anyone ever bring up...

"Do you think the majority players will be okay with this?""Are you sure this doesn't seem like we're taking advantage of their support?""Is this addition going to make the game better for the community or worse?"

I'm personally struggling to understand why you guys choose to go in this direction. If find it difficult that you would choose to go with this kind of marketing knowing your reputation for not wanting to be apart of the norm. Instead of being a WoW copy cat, you chose to try to be your own game. Instead of trying to take the ideas of other games in the genre you tried to come up with your own, very unique way. Your mounts are like nothing else any other game has to offer, no just a mere speed boost but unique and adds to core gameplay.

What changed Anet? Why Are you suddenly turning away from your core defining unique gameplay philosophies to follow this Lootbox Trend? You were so much better than that. What happened?

Because they understand their players very well. If 100 people are in the market for these skins, then:

-50 will just buy them and not care.-30 will buy them with some apprehension.-10 will scream bloody murder, and buy them anyway.-8 will vow to quit, but come back in a week, and buy them.-and 2 will actually boycott the gem-store or quit.

So, they made a great decision here.

Oh no, not at all didn't you read the above post? Of statistics?

[Hell Avenger.7021]

wow, I have not login in for a long time. WTH ANet, this is complete BS! RNG GAMBLE BOX? You take me as a KID to fall for this predatory practice?

[PacoXI.7690]

I dont like the rng skins and wont buy them because i dont like the business model but they arent pay to win. Even WoW sells mount skins...for more...and you need a sub to play that game. You do realize Anet has been selling skins for money since GW1 right? Slowest slippery slope in the industry I guess.

[crosknight.3041]

considering the context being lootboxes. i think the use of "Predatory" is justified.lootboxes exist in kinda a legal grey area. while not legally considered gambling (atleast not yet hopefully), it uses all the same tactics gambling does to hook people with addictive personalities onto it. because of this it would be predatory imo.the AAA lootbox craze is only going to get worse and people are going get more pissed off. it's a major talking point around the entire gaming industry and personally i'm on the side who is against lockboxes.

[Tasida.4085]

@Swagger.1459 said:We are not entitled to anything for FREE, but we do get a ton of FREE updates to the game. You want FREE optional cosmetic items that have zero impact on gameplay? Exchange your in-game gold and get them for FREE.

Don't know where you are drawing the parallel of vanity items to "p2w" items. Sad.This!!!!!

[Cyber Locc.9836]

@Conncept.7638 said:

@Cyber Locc.9836 said:

@Conncept.7638 said:

@Erasculio.2914 said:I don't think anything has changed. ArenaNet knows people are willing to accept loot boxes - the Black Lion Chests have been in the game since release, and not only you don't see people complaining about them, they also sell. A lot, based on how often ArenaNet updates them.

It was the fact players were willing to accept loot boxes that allowed ArenaNet to push the concept further with the RNG mount skins. Unless players vote with their wallets and give strong feedback about this, ArenaNet will not stop.

That's just the thing, statistically most people are not willing to accept loot boxes, have never bought one, and will never buy one. Lootboxes are only profitable by leeching off a handful of irresponsible lifeless whales among the playerbase that spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on anything and everything, and in doing so making it profitable to leave most of the playerbase hung out to dry.

It's a business practice for those who don't give half a crap about their players, creating a community, or even making a good game, and a lot of us thought ANet was different, above that, and in running their business like a whaling ship, they're proving we were wrong.

Hmm I would like to see where you got those statistics, because I can for an absolute fact tell you, YOU ARE WRONG.

And yet, you provide no evidence, so apparently, you can't factually say anything.

http://www.adweek.com/digital/infographic-whales-account-for-70-of-in-app-purchase-revenue/

A poll of 450 million users from one of the largest mobile game platforms in the world shows that on average 70% of a games income, comes from 10% of its playerbase. It's a well known fact, as this is far from the first poll on the subject, and it took literally two seconds on google to find it, two seconds which you could have taken yourself.

Key word there "A Poll" IE meaningless, people like, especially when approached on spending habits on frivoulous things.

Then we look at reality.https://www.google.com/amp/s/venturebeat.com/2014/02/21/report-finds-free-to-play-microtransactions-make-up-79-of-u-s-app-store-revenues/amp/

Then we can look deeper into Reality, got to games with gamble costumes, and see how many people are wearing them. Look at the mount skins right now, as I walk through Lions arch, I don't see a player with a base skin, nor a Halloween skin. Sorry, your "Facts" are wrong. Even if it is only 10% it doesn't matter, it's how they will make the most amount of money. Don't like it go without, end of story.

[Devildoc.6721]

I disagree because there's only a few skins I want, most of them I don't want and will never use, so for me , I have to filter out all the skins I don't want and then the price is like $40-$60 a skin that I want. Unfortunately my not buying these licenses won't dissuade anet from making similar decisions in the future because of whales that will buy all the skins even if they only want 1 or 2 of them. I'd like to buy the skins I want individually, but not at what amounts to about $60 for the 2 skins I for sure want and would use. but instead of offering items to the market that people like myself represent, Arenanet will instead market to whales, and hope that non whale customers will give up and take their chances anyway, and the sad thing is, it'll work, just as it has with chests (though thankfully you can get some keys for those through personal story and drops and as long as you have a spare character slot you can get 1 key a week with just a little effort due to how many tomes of knowledge the game throws at you)

[Just a flesh wound.3589]

@Adenin.5973 said:

@"Ayumi Spender.1082" said:I say no. Those people should not have supported this type of practice to begin with.Early adopters are early adopters.

You mean Anet should punish those people who supported them with money and award those that cried and kitten on the forums?

They would make it even worse for everyone. Those people who were desperate or crazy enough to spend 9000+ gems made that purchase under the reasonable assumption that this would be the only way to get the mounts. Anet now changing terms completely would be a big fu** you to all those who supported them. Why the hell should they do this? So that people like you get their pleasure out of the thought of it?

Unlike you they don't want to punish unreasonably generous players.

Edit: I find this argument in particular funny that when I think back to GW2 going f2p or things like that, the same people would cry about Anet "not caring about the veteran players" and that they want free stuff because now the new players get all the free stuff.

If someone buys a cosmetic item that means they’re happy enough with the price and the terms. Why should they get a a special deal later if the price and the terms wasn’t a problem for them? They got to use the items when they were still rare and expensive. That’s their reward for buying early.

[Tasida.4085]

@Ayumi Spender.1082 said:

@Natto.5819 said:

@Ayumi Spender.1082 said:

@Natto.5819 said:We are all paying players. I think we're entitled to good items because we've paid money into this game. We should get mount skins for free , but if Anet is going to step into Asian MMO luck of the draw content, they should just go full throttle. Bring out 2,000 Gem swords with x2 damage, or 400 Gem tickets that give a 0.5% chance at x4 damage weapons. Just like peeling off a bandaid, do it fast or it'll hurt. When I was an addict, I was forced to go cold turkey or I might not be alive today. If Anet does this RNG content too slowly, the players will be feeling the pain longer.

I don't know... when I used to wear bandaids, I used to wear them until they just slowly came off.

You mean when it would get all black and rot away because you just left it on? That's not a good analogy for this game.

IF people are truly not just vocal and speaking with their wallet and deciding not to fund anything on the gem store anymore and even taking a break from the game and going elsewhere?I think the "black until it rots away" could be the perfect analogy.

I'm not one of those people though, as I'm still bloody waiting for my kitten Jungle Explorer Outfit.

But so help me Grenth if they somehow made a RNG outfit item or something that I have to spend 400 gems to RNG to get that outfit when every other outfit that they made so far I don't like at all (except partially the Pirate Outfit), then I'm completely out.

See ya!!! Leave me all your stuff.

[goji.4172]

yeah this is really disappointing,,, i didn't even have a forum account before tonight but i felt i had to comment on this specifically. RNG is exploitative and unethical and i'm disheartened to see Anet joining in on that.

as far as suggestions go--it would be so much better if we could choose which mount we were grabbing for, at the very least. also, almost 50 bucks for 10 skins? that's.... a lot of money, man. that's more than the expansion base pricei'm not going to be buying any of these until they comment on the feedback, i know that much

[TheUndefined.1720]

@Beshbaliq.3724 said:First and foremost: I agree. It's not a bad deal.

From my point of view, each of these skins had to be worked on. Some longer than others, that's for sure. Seeing all the effects (visual and sound effects, mind you) they added to some of them just reinforces this. Now I know lots of people tend to forget this, but the people who recolored the "simple" skins had to do that, too. Even if the easy ones took only 10 mins each, the special ones like Lightning/Ice/Fire/Stars will have taken a lot longer than that. And these people sure as hell didn't do it for fun, kicks or free. They want to get paid for it. That's a fact. So if I can get 30 Skins total or 5 for each mount for 120 bucks, I'm in.

We've had lottery in Form of the BLC-Skins/Drops since this game launched and this "Gamble" here has way better odds of me getting what I want. 1/30 is pretty nice, especially if you consider that the odds only improve, since you can't get duplicates. You will get the skin you want at some point, even if you buy em one by one by exchanging gold to gems.

That couldn't be said for BLC-Skins. If you had really bad luck you could have opened hundreds of those and not get that Glider/Backpack-Combo or that Sword you so desperately wanted, without your chances of getting it improving with each chest you opened.

So while this may be a gamble, it's a pretty harmless one compared to what we have since launch.

Let's be honest, the only thing that freaks people out is the huge pricetag if you just buy the whole collection.

I completely agree! I think the price is steep, period. I don't think anything in any game should cost more than the price of the game itself. However, for the quantity, I get it. There is value to these skins regardless of subjective opinion, b/c someone charged a fee to make them. Was that fee comparable to the ingame price? That's subjective for sure, I mean, that's going into the price of art. Still, they do have value, it's just personal opinion what that value is per person.

Thanks again for your post :D

[Ayumi Spender.1082]

@Tasida.4085 said:

@Ayumi Spender.1082 said:

@Natto.5819 said:

@Ayumi Spender.1082 said:

@Natto.5819 said:We are all paying players. I think we're entitled to good items because we've paid money into this game. We should get mount skins for free , but if Anet is going to step into Asian MMO luck of the draw content, they should just go full throttle. Bring out 2,000 Gem swords with x2 damage, or 400 Gem tickets that give a 0.5% chance at x4 damage weapons. Just like peeling off a bandaid, do it fast or it'll hurt. When I was an addict, I was forced to go cold turkey or I might not be alive today. If Anet does this RNG content too slowly, the players will be feeling the pain longer.

I don't know... when I used to wear bandaids, I used to wear them until they just slowly came off.

You mean when it would get all black and rot away because you just left it on? That's not a good analogy for this game.

IF people are truly not just vocal and speaking with their wallet and deciding not to fund anything on the gem store anymore and even taking a break from the game and going elsewhere?I think the "black until it rots away" could be the perfect analogy.

I'm not one of those people though, as I'm still bloody waiting for my kitten Jungle Explorer Outfit.

But so help me Grenth if they somehow made a RNG outfit item or something that I have to spend 400 gems to RNG to get that outfit when every other outfit that they made so far I don't like at all (except partially the Pirate Outfit), then I'm completely out.

See ya!!! Leave me all your stuff.

Where the hell did I say I was leaving?Or are you Arenanet and know 100% that they're going to RNG outfits

[troops.8276]

I'd say its from a much older term used to describe the actions of advertising, often false, towards 'vunerable' groups like kids, addicts, ignorant or desperate people. As in preying on (the weak)

[Lpfan.3578]

You can say the 'individual price' isn't bad, but it really depends on how many of the skins you want and how many licences it takes you to actually GET them.

I want 5 of them and would happily spend 800 gems each on them. With how this is set up, I am very very likely to spend more than that for the 5 I want... likely to spend over DOUBLE that per skin when you average it out. Possibly less, yes, but likely not.The problem isn't "$4 per skin" the problem is if you only want a few skins you end up paying closer to $20 for them, possibly even more!I can't imagine how terrible it looks/feels if you only actually want 1 or 2 of the skins... it looks bad enough when you want 5.

Even if $20 isn't bad compared to other games, other games are WAY over priced and Anet going that direction is sad :(Giving me 26 skins I don't want at all doesn't make it okay to over charge me for 5 I do want.

[Devildoc.6721]

I'd easily pay 1000 gems for mount skins that I want (2000 is kind of pushing it, I mean the skeletal mount pack was 2000 but that was a skin for each mount), but anet has decided to market to whales instead.

[Coulter.2315]

I don't like the model Anet have chosen for this set of mount skins. I think they are experimenting on models with this new product; we've seen a set for 1600 (marked as on sale from 2000), a single skin with more elaborate design for 2000 and random skins from a pool of 30 for 400 each. Hopefully they will get some good feedback and come up with a decent system in future, I personally liked the glider model - fixed price with some released into BLTC (would be happy to see themed sets again too).

Bringing the "gambling destroys lives" debate into this discussion on mount skin price model is wrong and merely trying to sow two different issues together. The maximum you can possibly "gamble" over your entire life on these mounts is £127.50, this is not a bottomless pit where you mortgage your house. I realise you're trying to pick a topical issue and bring it into the current discussion but you're making an error.

As for the "gambling destroys lives" debate I would rather people had the right to gamble than surrender that right to someone who knows best, I also think there is a general trend in the world where people will try and take things from you for the safety of others which is unhealthy (people exercising power and feeling virtuous about it should always be feared - zealotry didn't die with religion).

Anyone bringing children into this is ridiculous, stop giving your kids your credit card.

[Legendary Grenth.3561]

@Erasculio.2914 said:I don't think anything has changed. ArenaNet knows people are willing to accept loot boxes - the Black Lion Chests have been in the game since release, and not only you don't see people complaining about them, they also sell. A lot, based on how often ArenaNet updates them.

It was the fact players were willing to accept loot boxes that allowed ArenaNet to push the concept further with the RNG mount skins. Unless players vote with their wallets and give strong feedback about this, ArenaNet will not stop.

problem with this statement is that there are QoL items in the chests in that people hope to get. These are skins, pretty useless stuff that is just cosmetic, and like most consumers we're picky about what we get. What I dont get is why they decide to throw this crap at us when gamers are starting to realise that lootboxes are cancerous and are already being heavily criticized for the relation to gambling and what not.

[Gaile Gray.6029]

There are a lot of conversations about the mount adoption option that was released today. Many of the comments in the individual threads repeat ones made by the same person in another thread. We very much want to hear your feedback, but have found that a single feedback thread offers the best opportunity for you to share your thoughts and for us to review it in the context of a wider set of feedback.

So here's a thread into which you're invited to post your thoughts on the subject of the Black Lion Stables Mount Skins.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

[Gaile Gray.6029]

There are a lot of conversations about the mount adoption option that was released today. Many of the comments in the individual threads repeat ones made by the same person in another thread. We very much want to hear your feedback, but have found that a single feedback thread offers the best opportunity for you to share your thoughts and for us to review it in the context of a wider set of feedback.

So here's a thread into which you're invited to post your thoughts on the subject of the Black Lion Stables Mount Skins.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

[Jumpin Lumpix.6108]

They should start doing this with food. Oh you want a cheeseburger, here's a pizza, and maybe your friend will get a pretzel or perhaps you might end up with breakfast instead of dinner, what a fun experience... Oh there's a specific meal you might want, well then you better order one of everything on the menu to get the one you want, the rest of the food will go to waste though...

[Cyrin.1035]

I would remove the random mount skin factor, let players choose the skin they want when they purchase a license, and all will be well.

[Vyrulisse.1246]

Oh boy the dreaded merged thread where conversations get mixed and matched so they are unable to be followed by anyone and eventually die off. Are we ever going to get a response from A.net on this issue, Gaile? The reaction is pretty clear and heated. Personally I'm very curious as to how your company can justify going down this road and I'd like it without using the same tired and debunked arguments we see the likes of EA use.

Like what happened? You started Mount Monetization on such a good foot with the Halloween skins. They weren't too cheap nor were they too expensive and you got exactly what you wanted when you bought them. It gave me hope for the future of this system but today you just destroyed all that with a skin dump behind hated lootbox mechanics.

I can say that I'm a person that has commented in a lot of these threads because I feel strongly that these practices should be called out often and loudly. Rather offended you mentioned such things in a negative light and so dismissively as well.

[Dunroy.1058]

It's the lazy look to them that bothers me most. I thought 2k gems for a single mount skin was steep, but at least it looks vastly different to the base skin, even if I don't personally like the look of it.

These licence skins look like the equivalent of a retexture. But since we can dye our mounts, they couldn't just to a retexture, so had to make minor changes to the shape. They don't feel like cash shop skins to me, they feel like the equivalent of a common reward drop from an event in most other games.

I'm sure that there were some artists and devs who did put time and effort in to these skins, but it just doesn't look like it in game. RNG loot boxes or no, my main plea here is for Anet to please not try to rush out 30 lacklustre skins at once again. Please just focus on one at a time, so that they actually look nice.

[inriver.9813]

Since there is no way to reach you other than than through a forum (i dislike public drama myself) -> here is my first (well, second, i discouraged someone from buying PoF in another thread 10 minutes ago) and likely last post:

I have used an amount of real life money on your gemstore that my friends/colleagues would consider a sign of addiction. I have gifted gemstore stuff for other players and financed my guildies with less disposable income to obtain HoT and PoF. There has been a slow decline in quality since vanilla GW2. Now with your latest patch demonstrating that i am clearly not one of the customers you care about (not to mention your recent shenanigans in WvW on SoS), I will no longer be making any purchases from your gemstore and will be gradually withdrawing from the game (i unfortunately still have good friends in game so i cant do an abrupt disappearance).

I hope the people whom you supported through this patch make up for the income loss.

[Witch of Doom.5739]

OK, ANet, here's my feedback. At first I thought "Awesome!" until I read they were random, so I will not be buying any, as some of the skins are not anything I want. Please either make it so players can choose the one they want or so they can sell one(s) they don't want on the Trading Post. Also, how about making some of the more subdued skins cheaper, and the flashier ones more expensive? Thank you.