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Official Mount Adoption Feedback Thread [merged]


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If I could choose which skin to buy instead of a random one, I would actually spend money on it. This would end well for both of us, me with the skin I want and you with money. And aren't both of those reasons why you made these skins?

Thanks for listening to our comments.

Edited by Deuteragonist.1238
YEAAAAAAAH BOOOOOOI
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I have played this game since week one and this is the first real time I felt like its all about the money and not about us as customers. I know mounts are cool but I would not pay over a hundred dollars for them all and certainly not for a chance and just a chance to get one that I like. Seems really horrid from the customers point of view. You are dangling something in front of us that we just cant spend on a chance. I have the money and I would feel horrid if I spent it on something like this. I will not be buying them unless you do something to fix this situation. But that is just me, i am sure others would love to spend money on them. Just wanted to share my two cents. I know everyone worked really hard on this path of fire and it was fantastic but this seems like a money grab from higher ups who do not have to deal with customer issues. Maybe remind them of who pays their bills.

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I just hope this scam of rng purchases stop asap in gw2 and anet. the reason i play and support and promote gw2 to everyone i know is cause anet used to be fair and was respectful of all the customers, poor and rich. now i'm a guy on the poor side of things, i would GLADLY pay up for a full round of mount skins like one i like for each mount.(cause that is all i can afford, sorry anet). your lootbox style prevents me from that and leads me to not buy any and not support this. So instead of 400 times 4 dollars comming in you get none. Probably other ppl wont mind that but i'm just pointing out that there are more ppl playing your game than JUST money whales.Sure you are one of the few out there letting us do ingame gold to gems but that's not special either since gems prices are out of control. At this point i will just vote with my wallet and hope for the best.

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@Sarge shot Grif.6450 said:

@Loosifah.4738 said:What do you have against mount skins?

It's not the skins, it's the method by which they're sold. They're making them random so we buy more to get the skin we want (like loot boxes). This is the kind of crap that's gonna push me away from this game to go find another.

Could not have put this much better myself.

I used to tout gw2 as the best example of b2p done right. Now it is simply on track to be another cheap f2p.

Whatever happened to mike O'Brien claiming that b2p was totally viable, and sub's aren't needed. He sure wasn't assuming gambling slot machine gaming practices when he made that comment! How the mighty have fallen.

So angry at Anet right now.... Don't buy any of those random skins, people. Tell them you hate this business practice!

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I have spent so much money on this game since PoF pre-release. Now I feel like I have Anet screaming in my ear: YOU HAVE NOT SPENT ENOUGH- NOT BY A LONG SHOT!

The will to play this game has been draining away from me since yesterday. I feel pretty disgusted by this move, the gamble mount skins + a skin (not a mount, a skin) for 2000 gems. I'm with others who have suggested those who invested in pre-release PoF, esp. those who bought premium packs, should have gotten one/some mount skins (like w/ the glider skin & HoT). IMO, mount skins should be treated like glider skins, with similar pricing, with perhaps some premium skins commanding a slightly higher price. Not 2000 gems, lol.

I have not gotten the Griffon mount, and perhaps I never will. What about players in that boat? How is it right those players should be forced to pull from the griffon skin pool of the gamble mounts? This whole thing feels like a big fat mess. This just doesn't feel like something the Anet I thought I knew would pull.

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Yeah, it seems like they implemented this stable system in perhaps the worst way possible. I've been happy to buy things from the gem store whenever I had a little extra cash and some time to invest in the game. If I'm about to start a new character to test out a profession? Might as well buy them an outfit that looks nice. If I want to avoid some of the hassle managing my salvage kits? A salvage-o-matic is a great item to fill an account-bound inventory slot with. I buy plenty of stuff that looks nice or offers a decent convenience when I know what I'm getting.

The recent uproar around RNG systems in games is difficult to avoid at this point. Whoever suggested the stable system had to know they would be ruffling some feathers. The most annoying thing is that you can't even pick what mount type you get a skin for; don't have a griffon but get a griffon skin out of your RNG roll? Too bad! Offering mount skins just like outfits would be fine. We're all used to that. Have some cool reskins at a lower price point and then sell some of the really fancy stuff for a bit more.

I'd like to think ANet cares about fixing this mess, but I honestly don't know what they could do after they've already shot themselves in the foot. If they individually price each skin in the gem store, people who have already bought into the lootbox system will be upset. Unless they were offered refunds, I guess, but there's no way in hell ANet would do that. All I know is that I definitely won't be buying into these adoption licenses, and I'm kinda sour on the thought of buying gems in general now. I guess that depends on what they do. Whatever their plan is, their only hope for keeping goodwill is to make some changes fast.

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I think it got lost in the chaos but even Dulfy spoke out on this.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/7bonqt/jim_sterling_about_gw2_lootboxes/dpjmgpy/

That says a lot. Yet Anet remains silent aside from Gaile, who I feel bad for as she tries to deal with the backlash. Given how big this is someone that was a part of this decision should step up and make a statement instead of letting the community coordinator flounder. It isn't fair to the GW2 community and it isn't fair to Gaile to expect her to handle this when it most certainly had nothing to do with her.

The lack of response is making a bad thing look even worse IMO. I'm starting to get the impression it has been filed under, "People will stop talking about it soon enough. Let it go."

Then again maybe this was an attempt to get free publicity through negative social media chatter. Get more people talking about the product even though what people say is bad. It will get people that never knew it existed to look at it. It worked for some games and products.

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I love all the new mount skins. I hate how the Gem Store is stealing content from the game. These mount skins belong as rewards earned in the game, NOT as something walled off behind a paywall.

For the item itself - I absolutely love it, and I've bought 20 for myself, and 1 for a friend. For the most part, I love all the skins - there's a good variety of them for all sorts of tastes - Subdued, natural ones, a few jokes (Jerboa and Shiba), and then the nice sparkles. Being a skritt-brained whale, I bought them all because I want them all. But I can see how others find it predatory, because it's impossible to buy just the one you want, if you only want one. And, the price attached to them change the thrill of "EEE! IT'S CUTE!" of getting a random pet to "I Just wasted X money trying to get what I want, and can't", which really hurts the item.

However, I have two big issues. First off - These contracts need to be pirated and scattered throughout the desert, as a possible reward for Bounties, Map Completion, Treasure Hunting, Event Completion, and other rewards for actually playing the game.

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Selling a lot of skins in a bundle is fine, and mount skins are a great cosmetic to offer with good potential for monetization, but COME ON, Anet. There's no need for this kind of pointless randomisation! If the skins are good, players will buy them. Sell the flashier ones for a higher price if you must, and the pallete swaps for less, but the method chosen here is just insulting and clearly designed to prey on people with addictive personalities.

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I'm going to say this.

I think there's just a bit too much overreaction going on. I've read comments everything from 'This has ruined my gambling addiction avoidance for 5 years' to 'This game should be labeled A for Adult now for the gambling influence'. I'm aware these are fringe cases, but I can't help but feel like many folks are really, really taking this too far with their reactions. I personally didn't mind the price or even RNG, sure it would be nice if skins were released that required in-game work to gain, or if skins cost a flat amount on the gemstore.

The thing is, none of us can pass judgement on if this was the only answer to allowing Arenanet to make a profit or not. I'm not going to underestimate anyone here, I'm willing to gander that at one point Arenanet saw that putting 30 skins on the Gemstore for flat costs would be a huge negative in their gains. This could have been the only option for these skins. Or perhaps you guys are correct, that Arenanet is simply going more predatory.

Imho, for a company that still has one of the most flexible and customer friendly 'in-game stores' across all the MMOs, I'm willing to give them more credit given all the advantages they've given us so far. And while I can understand frustrations, I'm a little bit disappointed in the community right now than Arenanet.

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Aside from the obvious initial backlash, I think the most damning thing of all is that this stinks of desperation. We just had a big content expansion recently, so ANet should be riding high and convincing the existing playerbase that the game is still going strong. Instead, they cave to the "Year of the Lootbox" mentality that hit everybody else earlier in 2017, which just makes me worry that the game is doing so poorly they have to stoop to such a low level just to be profitable.

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Any RNG in microtransactions is predatory and unethical.

Over the course of the last few years, ANET has consistently been restricting visual customization available in the base game and expansions, by locking more and more of that content behind paywalls. These paywalls have increased in price, and the products sold have decreased in actual offering.

For the mount-passes specifically, there are 3 reasons why I find them unacceptable:

1) They are yet another RNG gambling mechanism that preys on people with inhibition and spending problems (serious mental issues) to keep spending money until they get the skins they want. In short: ANET is specifically targeting sick people to take advantage of them.

2) The visual customization offered by these skins dwarfs anything available in-game at the moment for mounts. The base skins have 1 dye channel each, and while not as pot-ugly as the base glider was, create an unmistakably generic, bland look for the typical player. This serves to highlight the disparity between them and players that pay more money, making "normal" players feel like 2nd-class citizens. While this disparity is acceptable in open-world content for F2P players and people who have bought expansions, it is utterly unacceptable that such additional flaunting of wealth, and not achievement or dedication via legendary equipment (for example), exists between mutual paying players.

3) The base price for mount skins is ridiculously high already. Over the last few years we have seen more and more customization be locked behind the gemstore paywall. The amount of items offered in packages has gone down - whereas complete armor sets used to be sold for 400 gems, we now have incomplete sets being sold for triple the price. Gliders furthermore underlined this issue - and were much more drastic in terms of its tiering (addressed in the point above), being insidious in driving players towards spending. Mount skins further cement this, with a preimplanted demand for visual customization due to low default availability and their incredibly high price-point underlining the increasingly exploitative nature of the business model ANET chooses to employ.

I am speaking as someone who has spent over $1k on this game.

I have spent my last cent.

No more gathering tools. No more convenience consumables like repair canisters and revive orbs. No more "premium" character customization. No more rename contracts. No more bag slot unlocks. Not more gold-for-gems. No more outfits. No more gliders. No more armor skins. No more expansions. No more minis. No more dye packs. No more intruments. No more weapon skins. No more home instance nodes. No more area passes. No more Home Portal Stones. No more shared inventory slots. No more.

I will not buy any more things to support this game.

It is clear that whatever good-natured people there are at ANET, their executive staff is driven by pure, unfiltered greed.

Whatever claims at "customer friendly pricing" ANET may have had in the past have died with this exposure of their incredibly evil exploitation scheme.

Black Lion Chests were already pushing it for me - but the historic lack of BLC exclusive items, and general worthlessness of them being widely acknowledged by the playerbase were enough for me to turn an inner blind eye towards them. No longer.

I am done.

Atrocious missteps in class design had already put me on the edge. The disregard for feasible class builds across game modes was a significant turn-off, resulting in me playing less and less as of late.

I'm think I'm done for good now. I enjoyed my time with the game, and liked the experiences I shared with others in it. And I will miss the game Guild Wars 2 was.

But I would rather see it die now, before it becomes even worse.

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I don't get why I've spent $3000 on another game, but 25x less on Guild Wars 2. Why does ArenaNet seldom put anything sought-after on the Gem Store? I have the money, but what's on the Gem Store has generally been super undesirable.

While I don't like the look of ANY of the mount skins, here are my thoughts:

  • The price on one mount is too much. 400 gems is too much for a skin that is extremely close to the base model.
  • More people would buy these if it was a smaller set. Rather than one box with 30 options, it should be six boxes with five options. This is how other games do it - also with no duplicates - and no one complains. This would be only be reasonable at current real money prices if Path of Fire was free, though.

Alternatively, this will never happen, but ArenaNet could add duplicates and allow players to unbind unlocked skins to sell them on the trading post. Players always prefer when you can sell the old item to replace it with a new item, because you'll essentially never use the old one again. Guild Wars 2 has a lot of collection stuff, but people do prefer the trading in Dota 2 to the cosmetics in League of Legends.

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Look, the reason people were OK with the dye packs and the Black Lion Chest was because you could get the items found in the boxes in game elsewhere - they weren't restricted to the loot boxes. If you wanted to blow some cash to speed things up, then fine. I've talked GW2 up to all my friends for ages specifically because of how the game was monitized; if you wanted a specific cosmetic, you could buy it in the store directly. No borderline illegal gambling BS aimed at a game that children play, and no banking on the few people with terrible money management or those actually with the cash to burn. I've played GW2 off and on since launch, and played the original GW before that, and this ridiculously expensive gambling box goes against everything that made the GW games worth playing. Stop it. If you couldn't tell, public opinion is RAPIDLY turning against the loot box mechanic. Yes, it will likely take a few years before financial impacts will be really felt by the publishers of games incorporating aggressive loot boxes, but you really don't want to be on the wrong side of this fight in the long run. For Pete's sake, just make them 400 gems a pop in the store and the controversy will go away.

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@Nocturn.8904 said:Aside from the obvious initial backlash, I think the most damning thing of all is that this stinks of desperation. We just had a big content expansion recently, so ANet should be riding high and convincing the existing playerbase that the game is still going strong. Instead, they cave to the "Year of the Lootbox" mentality that hit everybody else earlier in 2017, which just makes me worry that the game is doing so poorly they have to stoop to such a low level just to be profitable.

I doubt there is a "being profitable" problem here. But the sales may have been lower than expected and it may be a (IMHO) really bad decision to compensate for that to the shareholders. Sadly I think that sullying the trust with you customers is the worst way to try to solve a problem as it bites the hand that gives you food in the long term.

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Well, they now have two days of feedback on this. I'd say that if we don't hear something on day 3 (tomorrow, Thursday the 9th), then nothing's going to be done.

The longer they wait, the more of a hassle it will be to deal with the purchases already made, and the less damage to their reputation and good will they'll be able to prevent. So, tomorrow or nothing.

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@ConnerPlays.2310 said:I'm going to come out and say "Good Job on the mount skins, Anet"I mean that, not in a sarcastic way, but sincerely .You guys could have just as easily jumbled the skins into the BLTC and just be done with it, but no, it's a separate purchase that guarantees a skin you don't already have, yes, it ultimately means you have to pay $120 for all the skins. But why would you need all those skins?

That's entirely the point though? I don't want all 30 skins, I just want 5. One for each mount that would give me more dye channels. I want the plain versions of each of them - the celestial griffon would be wasted on me as I don't like it a bit. Same with the husky jackal. I just want dye channels. Why would I need those skins if I'm never gong to use them? Because that's the only way to get them as of right now, that's why. And that's entirely the problem.

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Also, as someone who takes great pleasure from beautiful and unique GUIs, I'm extremely disappointed that ArenaNet made a brand new interface with animations for this stable thing, but they can't be bothered to make proper menus for gizmos like the portal tome, or unique UIs for interactive puzzles in the open world or instances (like in RuneScape). I don't think making a new animated interface for this will noticeably increase profits, and reusing the Black Lion Chest interface would have worked. Don't waste the dev time of Duncan Kay & al. by making them work on ridiculous marketing additions. This isn't being entitled or nitpicky, I just find it really unprofessional compared to the interface design in MMOs from 15 years ago.

It's strange when I would actually pay real money for a new modal window than any mount skin.

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