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Official Mount Adoption Feedback Thread [merged]


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@Elimyx.4536 said:

@joshc.3129 said:You all do realize when they "combine" one topic into one official thread that just means they are going to completely ignore it and all feed back on it. Nothing is going to change with it and by the grace of God they do start selling each skin be themselves, I want back the gold I used to get 6 contracts so I can actually get the raptor skins I want.

Given it's hit several "big name" (for a given value in their respective fields) game journalists already, I don't think they'll be able to ignore the skrittstorm forever.

"All publicity is good publicity" then they can pretend to 'care for and value their players views' and come out smelling like roses too, and just before Christmas. What luck. They cant let Blizz hogg the limelight after announcing a new ex pac and classic server.

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Let me preface this by describing the kind of player I am -

I'm not against spending money on this game. In fact, I do that rather frequently. I buy outfits. I buy upgrades. I buy all kinds of stuff. Heck, sometimes I even buy black lion keys. I buy dye packs, but I vastly prefer the ones that let you pick a dye over the ones that give you a random set, and prefer the ones that give you a guaranteed rare over ones that don't. I play Fashion Wars 2, because of course I do. I have Ascended gear. I'd like to have and am working toward legendary gear. I do fractals, quests, collections, and all kinds of varied play. I farm stuff. I generally, really enjoy this game.

I enjoy GW2 in particular because ArenaNet seems to care about its players. The game is easy to play, with a ton of quality of life elements that WoW has shamelessly copied over the years, and in general ArenaNet seems to revel in cutting out middlemen and distractions to allow you to just get to playing however you want to play. I think that's awesome and I want to reward that (and I like pretty Fashion Wars 2 because I'm a grown man who apparently likes virtual dress up dolls.... .... shut up don't judge me :P ). I like to put my money where my mouth is, and support people Doing It Right. ArenaNet Did It Right.

To put it mildly, the mount adoption licenses made me angry. I thought about it, though, and I was as angry as I was not because I was just mad about the cost or whatever, not because I wished it were cheaper... but because I was disappointed. I was let down. ArenaNet let me down. The reason is that you gave in to a monetization strategy that in increasingly popular in games these days, but is also underhanded and manipulative. It makes money for the same reason Vegas makes money. It is glorified gambling. I thought my game was better than that. I was really, really let down by ArenaNet, and my anger was just a way to express that disappointment.

But, rather than just dwell on that, what I want to focus on is what I'd like to see you do about it. This isn't a ransom note, I'm not going to hold my continued play time (as though your bottom line depends on one player - I know it very much does not) to you doing what I say, this is just what I think you could or should do to fix what I think you see clearly is a problem. So...

  1. Remove the adoption licenses from the game. Even if they come back in a similar form later, they are at this point tainted and I guarantee there will be players who close the gem store if ever they see adoption licenses go on sale or something.
  2. Add some non-gem store mount skins to the game. Add something you get from a collection, or achievement of some other kind, or whatever - something that's not just (or primarily) $$$.
  3. Take out the mount skins that were just filler. You know which ones I'm talking about - the boring, uninteresting ones that were the "lose" on the roulette wheel of the adoption licenses.
  4. Make mount skins able to be bought directly. It can be for 2 or 3 times as much as whatever is the random loot bag, that's fine, but maybe not 5 times like you have now? That's pretty damn ridiculous. That's $25 for a mount skin, when it is $7 or $8 for an outfit which is more-or-less the same thing.
  5. Then, and only then, should you put mount skin loot bags back in the game. Ideally, by a means that you can rarely acquire via in-game means, akin to BL Keys.

That is what I'd like to see. I hope to see that or something like it in the near future, and I'm sorry people have directed such hate and bile at you over this. I'm certainly mad, but I've tried to refrain from calling anybody names. You have earned some trust from me, and faith from me, and I have hope you will fix this. I also know SOMEone will argue and say I am just wrong and shouldn't be mad, but, well, I am. Telling me I shouldn't be isn't going to change that. I hope that you do something that does, though.Thanks,

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Not a fan of "Random" when spending money- even so I got the 10 pack and maybe 2 I like. I NEVER shop and let luck purchase for me. Random clothes? Random food? Random books? apply it anywhere you like---its not a great sales model. That said--some of the skins are very cool--others -- meh. So ---honest--very last Random purchase for me. Cheers,Sut

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It's been said many, many times throughout the ~40+ pages of comments before mine here, but really... it's hard to imagine a (realistic) scenario where this could have come off looking more surprisingly greedy and manipulative (at least for Anet, obviously other developers have taken the loot craze and RNG much further). You've consistently tested the willing within your playerbase with various gem store items and bundles over the years, slowly but surely upping the ante, but (as is apparent from the mass outcry) even if many were readily expecting the continuing of such trends, boy did you surprise the vast majority of folks with all of... this. Dropping a bomb of 30 new skins the player is forced to gamble for, skin-by-skin? With zero new skins currently earnable through in-game content? $25 for a SINGLE mount skin is plain laughable (even if it's more than just a re-skin and there are some updates to the model). I find it hard to believe that all of this was imagined to play out well...

My wife and I have dropped our fair share of time and money into the game the past 5 years, and as veteran players just want you to know how shameless these practices and prices appear. This will definitely be a hard hit to the community's goodwill.

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I will not spend gems on the RNG mount system. I would spend gems on mounts if and only if I have a 100% chance of getting the mount I want. 2000 gems for the Reforged Warhound is reasonable imo because (1) it adds new visual effects to the engage skill and (2) it's a substantially remodeled (same rig, though, which I don't mind). 400 gems for a reskin and more dye channels is not worth it, especially with the RNG.

Mounts are arguably more useful than Gliders. I haven't purchased a glider because I don't use them as much as I do mounts. I am interested in mount skins, but the RNG and somewhat high price outweighs my interest and will to buy skins.

0/10 for the implementation of mount skins.

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making the RNG Mount skin based, would still make it rng, I DON'T WANT TO PAY RNG for the mounts, neither do a GREAT amount of people, black lion chests are one thing, but mounts are another that should be selectable, i'm really saddened with the state it got, how much more will we have to endure, the tyrany of RNG, i suggest you guys remove the RNG factor from the mount adoption tickets, and make it mount selectable, and tone the Forged jackal price to 700-1000gems ;x

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My problem is that there is no other ways to get skins any way, except a double dip into the paid pool: a RNG lootbox AND a 25$ single skin. Put like 2 of each mounts baser skins in the game for achievements, and either going forward do one of the 2, the adoption RNGness or the priced single bundles. Both is a bit overboard.

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@Greiger.7092 said:

@JaddynnStarr.5201 said:

@whiteaden.7842 said:I'm sure something along these lines has been mentioned a few times already, but since I currently don't have time to go through 40+ pages of comments I'll add my own to the mix. (so much negative space inbetween comments, but that's a different kind of feedback)

What concerns me the most about this giant box of RNG skins is the total price tag, and how the only way to get
all 31 of the skins
through the discounted box (9600 gems); that's 152$ Canadian; that's
more
than I paid for the ultimate edition of PoF; this is not something that makes me want even try to gamble for this.

Instead, I think this RNG box would do way better if it was cut into the (currently) 5 different mounts... this allows us to gamble with a one-in-six chance to get the skin we want for our mount of choice; instead of one in 30 chance. I appreciate the guarantee that we will unlock one we don't have yet. however that's diminished by the sheer size of the RNG; if I get all 6 raptor skins in a row; I can still only use one at a time, being able to
choose
which mount the RNG skin is rolled for at least gives us the opportunity to choose some of our choices.

Gambling for 1 of 6 skins is gives us a reasonable "expected result"; if I get lucky I only need to gamble once for the mount skin I like; if I get unlucky I'll gamble 6 times to get the one I want.

To increase the incentive for us to gamble; I would suggest making the "Black Lion Raptor Stable Licence" a growing stable of mount skins, so that our chances decrease every time a new mount skin is added; (4 more raptor mount skins; 1/10 chance, unless you already unlocked some raptor skins) This incentivizes early adopting of the mount skins since your chances remain better with each previous unlock (if I have 3 raptor skins unlocked, my chances are 1/7 instead of 1/10. if I bought all 6 of them early; I'll have a 25% chance to get one of the 4 skins that were added, etc)

this also means that adding mount skins can be done on a mount-by-mount basis; instead of requiring them being released as packs of one-of-each instead. and community suggestions can be taken into account (Kormeerkat is an excellent example of community participation; think of the possibilities of a Community Mount Design Contest)

this is exactly what I'm talking about here... why are we cutting our own throats by telling Anet what the best way is to squeeze more money out of us? I'm not picking on the person here, but this idea of settling for the lesser of 2 evils when there is a third choice of no evil at all, just boggles my mind!

Because this isn't a perfect world, for all we know it's corporate politics forcing the devs to implement a system like this. It would be a lot easier for the devs to print this stuff out to show their overlords things that show a meaningful attempt at a compromise than half a million 'lol no' posts.

You are kidding yourself if you think that the people who pushed for this don't already know about how much players would hate the current implementation. Complaining about it and saying just get rid of the rng isn't going to happen cuz guess what,
they would have done that if they could
. You don't invent a new system when the current one is working fine. Meaningful alternatives might actually DO something.

I understand it isn't a perfect world... but when did "no... we wont tolerate this" get pulled off the table as an option here? Are other ways and ideas good, yes, to a certain extent.... but all I'm saying here, is there is a third option available to us. Don't give them a dime until they change their policy. I sure as hell wont....

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Logging in just to say that I'd be fine with the lootbox skins if there was some way to also get different skins in-game. Even if it wasn't the skins in the lootboxes, why is it that we have no skin rewards in-game for mount use? Or completing metas, or challenges, or anything besides just throwing down cash? We don't get rewarded for playing the game, just for spending money on it.

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When the game first started, Anet was determined to make it so that nobody had to "grind out" for anything that any other player had. They wanted to make a game that was for the casual player, and allowed all players to put in the time and be able to get the "end game" gear that was necessary for level 80 content.

Now, it's become a game of grinding IRL for extra money in order to get to our new endgame: Fashion Wars.

The game no longer has content that gives us a REASON to play it. There is nothing in the game at this point that stacks up to the amazingly detailed, and great looking skins that can be bought from the Gem Store using your money that you make outside of the game. Not even some of the Legendary Weapons and Armor look as good as some of the Gem Store items that we have (War Forge weapons, Outfits, any of the singular pieces of Armor you can get from the gemstore now)

At this point, why even play the game when you can just work for an extra 8 hours, and purchase all of the cool looking perks, instead of wasting your time in the game.

Of course, this eventually leads to the death of any MMO, but for now at least Arenanet is making money. I try to be optimistic about Arenanet, especially after quitting the game for nearly a year after HoT came out, but this just kicks me down another notch and makes me not want to play the game anymore. I know I'm not the only one that feels that way.

Arenanet to me no longer seems to want to give us reasons to play the game. They nerf any sort of way to gain in-game gold and fortunes, and make it exceedingly hard to grind for any end-game content that we feel we want, and consistent nerf rewards for most things (See: PoF Meta Events, Diminishing Returns, Daily-Only/Time Gate Events).We're forced into completing things over and over for no apparent reason other than to "make us log on everyday" which seems to be a bolster to your stats, but not actually add any FUN to the game.

If Arenanet truly wanted to make the game FUN and give us incentives to revisit old content in the game, and to keep the playerbase alive and healthy, they could follow a few suggestions:

First off, make unique skins a rare drop from any number of the 1000s of unique bosses in the game. Fractals, WvW lords, World Bosses, PvP Reward Tracks, or even just from ambient mobs. The possibilities are endless.

If you wanted to give players a reason to go back to the starting zones of Tyria, and slay the Fire Elemental in Metrica, give them a 1/100 chance of getting a Unique Fire Skimmer skin.Want to get them to do more Fractals? 1/100 chance of a Mossy Raptor, for killing the Bloomhunger.Want more people to do WvW? 1/100 chance of a Air Elemental Griffon while killing the Air Keep Lord.

Any of these things are possibilities that Arenanet could do, simply by modifying the drop tables of a few things, and they would give people a reason to continue playing.

Instead they take the simple way out, and introduce a Gem-Only RNG based System for $120 to get 30 Mount Skins.

It just doesn't make sense to me anymore. I understand that a business is a business, and in order to thrive they need money; but at this point it just seems that Arenanet as a whole just doesn't care about the players anymore. They care about making money, and giving us a "high" of a poorly implemented GAMBLING system into the game, and give us a false sense of "success" when we drop $40 and RNG our single skin that we wanted.

If you truly wanted to:-Make Money-Make Your Players Happy-Add New Content

The very LEAST that you could have done was to make each of the skins purchasable as their own. Not a gamble.

I appreciate you taking the time to make this post Galie, and it does truly give me hope that Arenanet is listening; but if this is the path that we're looking to continue down, I will not be continuing with the game.

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It's simple really...

If you keep the loot boxes, you will lose your player base, and their trust in you.... and all credibility you ever had as a game developer/publisher.

Is this what you want Anet?

I am currently boycotting ALL games which introduce a gambling method involving items which cannot be traded in game, or acquired, in game through simple grinding.... if you want to join my boycotting games list, then keep your loot box system.Trust me though, you won't ever get another penny from me, or from anyone else who is like minded.

Personally, I don't think I will be able to forgive you for jumping on the "lets rip our player base off, because we are greedy" band-wagon... like so many other game companies have done.

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I buy gems. I buy stuff off the gem store. I won't buy a random chance at a mount skin I want, with >$100 to get the one I want.

Here's some options for making this better. Any of these would be fine:

  1. Make them tradeable. Make them like gem store dyes where you open the random pack, and then sell the result on the TP if you get one you don't want. That way I can just pay for the exact one I want with gold, or take my chances on a random one if I choose. I don't want to buy all 30 at the current price and I don't want to be stuck with a dumb one if I open one I don't want.
  2. Lower the price per chance to 100 gems, and remove the non-unique skins from the options. By non-unique, I mean the ones that are just the regular skin with more dye channels. Those shouldn't be in the gem store. Either let us have more dye channels by default, or let us earn the fancy version in the game, maybe by getting 1st place in the mount races. They're not good enough to sell for $$$.
  3. Remove the random element and sell each individual skin for 400 gems, except for the non-unique ones. Again, those shouldn't be on the gem store in the first place. Either give them to us or let us earn them in-game. Or if you really must put them in the gem store, add them as a random drop to BLTC chests (and if you do that, make them tradeable).
  4. Make them a random drop from BLTC chest (at a reasonable rarity) and then make opened skin tradeable. Random + not tradeable = bad.

Any of the above options would be less outrage-inducing that what you gave us. I had left the game for a bit but the expansion brought me back. Don't drive me away again with this kind of nonsense.

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I'm a return player and I've been back for a little over a month. The Black Lion Trading Company offers many things that I can see myself investing in. I am something of a nomad when it comes to MMOs and I make occasional purchases. As such, I feel like I have a strong grasp on the value of typical cash shop items in MMOs. The first thing that hit me about the Trading Company's stock after returning was that the prices were shockingly high. There are likely reasons for this that aren't purely money-grubbing(I hope), but it raises the expectations of quality and fairness from the Black Lion Trading Company.
I play Maplestory from time to time. Maplestory is infamous for its exploitation of RNG to drain its players of their money. The game is a bundle of fun, but their business model just feels skeevy. They compensate for this by keeping the prices low(for most things) and regularly distributing items from the cash shop during events. If you wait long enough, you can probably get more than what you need without spending a dime.Based on what I've said so far, the cash shops of Maplestory and Guild Wars 2 are reversed, but consider that the Black Lion Trading Company has contained RNG chests since the beginning, if I remember correctly. This too has been hand-waved away with the promise of quality, but many will find it grating as, despite legal definitions, it is perceived by many players as gambling and, ultimately, unfair.Based on this knowledge, we can infer that the Black Lion Trading Company and its patrons have had two unspoken contracts of sorts: Price for Quality and RNG for Quality. This balance held steady because the two rarely overlapped(or so I am led to believe by the posts of others and my memories). When both of these contracts are needed for a single purchase, however, tensions become strained. With the random mount skins, many players seem to feel that they are paying a heavy premium for a chance at an item that appears to be lacking in the quality they have come to expect. This perceived breach of etiquette is what I believe is the core behind the outrage over the mount adoption system. Including an expensive(2000 gems) mount skin only serves to fan the flames.Hopefully, I was clear without stepping on any toes. I'm finding Guild Wars 2 to be fun and I'd hate to antagonize powerful people.

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I haven't read all the comments, so I don't know if this has been touched on, but PoF is very bare. Bigger maps are always more difficult, because you have to put more shit in them. Two months in, I'm bored. I don't have any amazing skins to work towards, no collections I'm hyped to finish, and I spent ten bucks to get two adoption licenses and one was a skin I'll never use, because I genuinely don't like it. What do I do with it now? Know that if I ever put money into the game that I'll never get it again? Screw that. I'm sorry there were people that spent time on those skins, but I don't want them. I want to sell them on the tp and save up to actually buy the skin I want. It's not as if we paid for a damn expansion with NO SKINS IN IT. For an expansion that boasts the introduction of mounts has very little to do with them.

Give me a collection to work towards that gives me a skin. Give me a gold sink. I'll buy the gems to get gold. Give me the ability to choose. I'd pay ten bucks for the damn skin I want.

Give us something other than this crap.

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I could probably eventually swallow the price tag, some of these skins are really detailed and incredibly well done. The guaranteed new skin unlock saves the whole getting duplicates to put on tp wherein the skins people want likely drop at 0.05%. However, that pill I could swallow if I had a say in the matter, random loot doesn't have that. If I'm putting that kind of money up for this I want to pick the skins. Put them in BLC if you have to, so long as there's a few (albeit simple ones) in the regular game the rest can be in the BLC for all I care, if I really want them I'll find a way to get them with the methods previously in place. A new RNG box? It's too much, sure you dumped it right on a personal windfall but this kind of thing only works once. This is it, I'm mad at myself enough for having even considered it. Fool me once, shame on me. This time I found a way to justify the cost, I know there won't be a second. There will NOT be a second.

Just, please, random chance is the worst reward for paid content. I could stomach the cost up front for choice. I can live happy grinding away to get the gold to get the gems eventually if I really really want it. But 7 day limit on the reduced cost? It's a 30pk, that's the kind of thing one keeps in a bundle sale in perpetuity. What now? Build on the skins by adding more and more to the random adoption or grossly expensive individual skins? For premium items, just leave it as: I want X, X costs X, I pay X. Sure, eventually I could get the skin(s) I want in the new iteration, but if I'm going into the premium store, I should be able to see the cost of an individual item and get it directly. These aren't trading cards, there isn't a collector's market, I don't go to the grocery store and pay for a random chance at the ramen I want, I buy the ramen I want.

If it's going to be gem store exclusive, either make it a direct buy or put it in the BLC with a few in the game world itself. The Gem Store should be a clear and upfront catalogue, not a roulette table.

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I don't post in the forums, basically ever but.....when I am buying something I want to know what I am getting. I have no problem buying micro-transactions to support a game I enjoy but the random stuff needs to GO! This loot box bull needs to stop. I am running out of game companies to support that don't practice this very bad behavior promoting what in all reality is gambling is not an acceptable practice and just begging some government do-gooder to come and regulate the living crap out of this industry. Which will end up good for no one.

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@zeronatras.3280 said:

@Myrdreth.6829 said:What happens if you already got a certain skin and get it again?

You will get nothing probably, at least in OW and HOTS you get shards/gold which you will use to buy skins.

Nope. Read the description all the way through. It states that you'll get a random skin from among the ones you don't already have. You won't get duplicates, you'll just get one you don't already have.

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You'd probably see less hate if there were any other ways to get mount skins. Mounts are new. People have been waiting for ways to customize them. It's reasonable to expect that playing the game might reward some skins. But the only way to upgrade the defaults is with a credit card and some RNG.

I find it hard to believe you didn't see this coming, ANet.

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@Ayumi Spender.1082 said:So I'm in Lion's Arch where a ton of people have those random skins.From what I'm seeing from this bunch? I'm not seeing a single good mount skin.

Is there a way to see what choices there are without buying the thing? I know the thing say I can right click to see but I kind of refuse to pay for one. Next is, if what I'm seeing are the choices, that is also even more of a reason I would never buy one as they all look atrocious at the moment.

Go into the dropdown and take a look. All of them are now there with padlocks, just like dyes or minis. Click on them to see what they look like.

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