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Official Mount Adoption Feedback Thread [merged]


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I found myself not wanting to do anything in the game other than getting money. My last 500 or so hours were sw farming which is something I'd still do if I wanted gold. But I don't. Cause anything you might like is locked behind the gemstore and the game is just a way to farm the required money or to get bored with it and pay real money. When I got to the end of the base game story I was furious. All the changes, the excellent combat for an mmo, the beautiful art and yet killing zaithan is pressing 1 and 2 from a turret. I find the living world a broken concept. It is like going back to regular tv from netflix while the same show also feels like it is worse. This is just how I feel, maybe I just can't find what I loved in the 1st game and that makes me bitter. I do not care how many hours I got from each game for my money, mmos are timesinks. I still love the 1st game and finished the 2nd for good. And not just because of the lootcancer.

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In my opinion, 400 gems (5€) for a skin is a good and fair price.I like many of the skins that were added in the adoption licenses, so I am still weighing the pros and cons of buying a 20€ worth of these.

But here's why I think the term "adoption" is unfitting:

! Think about it, you go to an adoption store that has 6 hamsters, 6 dogs, 6 cats, 6 parrots and 6 geckos. You tell them you're looking for a hamster. They grab an animal and give you a gecko instead, saying "well, sorry, that was bad luck."! But you really want that hamster, so you try again, and end up with an ugly, slobbering dog. Not at all what you wanted.! Trying again, you get a second gecko. Yay. Where is that hamster?! That's not really how adoption works, isn't it?

And here's why some people are not always guaranteed a skin they can actually use:

! Quite a few people do not yet have a griffon, or are not even interested in buying one. In their case, 1/6th of the adoption contracts is worth much less than the rest, because to use it, they would need to unlock end-game content. And be honest, the griffon is pretty much a legendary mount. It IS end-game content. Don't force these people into a gamble that will give them 1/6th of a chance of gaining something that they cannot use!! 250g of ingame money plus a lot of time invested is not something every player is willing to do. (I played 2 weeks to get the griffon, and I played a lot during those 2 weeks, plus I borrowed ingame money from a friend and needed another 2 weeks to pay it back, because to me 250g was a lot of gold. And that's fine, because, as I said, the griffon is end-game. It needs work put into it.)

Let's see what I would consider reasonable pricing:

  • 200-400 gems for a simple repaint of a current skin. (Coastal Spiketail, Savannah Monitor, Tawny Hare, Windy Spot, ...)
  • 400-600 gems for a repaint with slight model changes. (Striped Tri-Horn, Canyon Spiketail, Desert Lop, Elonian Jackalope, ...)
  • 600-1000 gems for particle effects and new sound effects. (Flamelander, Storm Ridge, Primal Hare, Arctic Jerboa, ...)
  • 1000-1600 gems for a complete re-mesh, new effects, new animations (idle animations), etc. (Forged Warhound and later on maybe things like Hippogriff or Pegasus for Griffon, large cats or other dog breeds for Jackal, a frog or some kind of kangaroo for Springer, a moa for Raptor, and I ran out of ideas for the Skimmer ^^. For next Halloween maybe consider designing real skeleton skins for the mounts. They would probably sell pretty well.)

Considering this, 400 gems for a random skin looks pretty good in my eyes. This is more or less what I would consider the expected value of a random skin in there.

However, you must also consider the following:

  • to a player, two raptor skins are worth less than one raptor skin and one skimmer skin
  • to players who own a griffon or plan to own one, griffon skins are worth a lot, whereas to players who don't own a griffon and don't plan to get one, griffon skins are worthless
  • getting two skins of the same tier and animal reduces the average value of both skins drastically
  • getting two skins for the same mount will reduce the value of the less preferred skin, since you cannot use both and will only use the cooler one
  • getting a skin for a mount that you don't use frequently makes the value of that skin drop too

Here I am only talking about the value of a skin out of the viewpoint of a player actually obtaining them.One skin is always better than no skin, but two skins for the same mount that don't differ much makes the second skin quasi worthless. I.e. if you get Coastal Spiketail, you might consider it worth 300 gems. If you draw Savannah Monitor next, the total worth of both skins will lie at 350-400 gems, since the difference in them is very small, and you can only use one of them at a time.

You see, the expected value of each new random skin will therefore sink, as the probability to get a skin for mount type X that is worse than your best skin of said mount type that you already own increases.The first ticket might therefore be worth 400-500 gems. The next ticket will on average be worth less, and less, and less, with each new ticket.One idea for pricing the adoption tickets would be the following:

! 500 gems for the first ticket.! 490 gems for the second ticket.! ...! 230 gems for the 28th ticket! 220 gems for the 29th ticket! the last ticket for free, as a big thank you for spending a total of 10'000 gems (125€) on these skins.! and for the whole package of all 30 adoption tickets, a total of 8'000 gems (100€)However, even that would probably still be rejected and frowned upon by the community, and it would make little sense to actually change what's on the market and has been sold quite a few times already for a higher average price.So let's take a look at some better ideas:

My proposition: Make mount-specific adoption contracts and mount contract bundles:

  • 400 gems for the current adoption contracts. (Changing their price would outrage those who already bought them, unless you would want to reimburse them.)
  • 500 gems for a raptor adoption contract. (Containing any of the 6 new raptor skins (obv. without duplicates))
  • 2500 gems for all 6 raptor adoption contracts. (If none unlocked, i.e. "pay for 5 raptor skins, get the 6th free")
  • The same pricing for springer-specific, skimmer-specific and jackal-specific adoption packs.
  • 600 gems for a griffon adoption contract. (Griffons are end-game, and it is okay to make their skins more expensive.)
  • 3000 gems for all griffon adoption contracts
  • 2500 gems for a set of one raptor adoption contract, one springer adoption contract, one skimmer, one jackal and one griffon adoption contract
  • 2000 gems for a set of one adoption contract for all mounts except the griffon mount

So you, ArenaNet, will still get the RNG factor, and we Users will get the ability to choose which mount we want to gamble a skin for.The other alternative would obviously be to put each skin in the Gem Shop separately for the "reasonable pricing" that I mentioned above.

Thanks for reading this through. I really don't like the whole flame and hate that came with this update. The community seems unnecessarily toxic, which is really sad.After all, we can be happy to have gotten these amazing mounts with their awesome skills and animations. They are lovely, and you did a great job there, just so that this is said.It is time to stop the flame and start bringing constructive criticism.

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Let me see:

  • After 3 years the most rewarding open world event is still SW
  • I have more than 35k APs and every 5k I get 30 golds and 400 gems, nothing more than that
  • Collections are giving 3 to 5APs and not many titles or skins
  • Doing most of the open world metas is pointless, still better farming fractal 40 or SW CFI don't think I need to go on, this list alone is self-explanatory :)
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Other than the RNG part its just lame that we get 30 skins to buy with real money while the expansion itself does not have a single skin linked to a quest or achievement. 2 weeks after the expansion was released i was back at doing what i did before the exp. Was there. Other than the bounty hunts there is nothing that the new maps have to offer that the old maps didnt. Had they implemented atleast a few of these skins to actual PoF ingame rewards i wouldnt be pissed as much as i am now.

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Leave the gambling option in for those that like those odds. For those of us who don't want to gamble, price up the skins individually - the simple skins at say 600 gems, the more complex around the 800-1000 gem mark. I would quite willingly pay more to have the choice of buying the mount skin I actually wanted though how much I'm willing to pay does have it's limits. Anything more than 1000 would be to me excessive unless it was a dragon that breathed fire, ice, lightening, could carry a passenger in addition to the owner and it had improved flying abilities over the Griffon. That would be totally a must have! ;D

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@Dukotje.4382 said:I love how everyone panics so much about mounts, when in fact there are more BL skins, Glider skins you'd be getting for a much more expensive way if you want to collect them all. just because they released them all at ones doens't mean they are more expensive then other skin like things from the BLTP.

i think anet did a fine job making OPTIONAL skins for the fashion wars and yes, the game is 5 years old, wil probably not sell as much as it did at launch, and yet they have the heart to keep developing and creating stories and expansions and every other feature and bug that is currently in game. Have some decency for them since all they want to do is make a living creating something we all love... kitten 9600 gems for 30 mount skins... THIRTY!! get your act together because Nothing in life is free. These are optional and if you want them, you'll have to gamble for it.

Anet devs. Nice work on the skins, tho the coloration might be a bit too horrible xD. But i bought a few adopt licenses and got a nice jackal one. I like it, keep this up ^^

Sure, getting all outfits or all glider skins is more expensive than getting all mount skins. But most of us don't want all skins. We only want one specific skin. For gliders or outfits we just pay whatever the skin costs. No problem. But to get the one mount skin we want we can either fork over 9600 gems at once or up to 12000 (6000 average) gems license by license. And that's definitely too much for a single wanted skin.

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@Zenaide.3046 said:

They chose to make them all available at once which I think is cool. More diversity.

Almost 15 out of 30 skins don't even fit to be named as a proper set of skins. You're paying for 4 dye channels laid out in various patterns. You can't even tell most of them apart from each other without a side-by-side comparison.

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Just going to throw in my two cents..I'll admit I did fall in to the RNG trap and bought a couple of the single mount adopt slips just to see what I would get, and while I wasn't thrilled with the skins I got, I did accept that this is what I got for having a bit of a gamble!There are several skins that I would really love to get my hands on, personally I would prefer to buy exactly what I wanted from the gem shop rather than have to gamble on silly RNG boxes again, and I would be happy to pay more to get the exact skin I wanted, from the whole batch ANet decided to release all at once. However, we all know that's going to be a very unlikely thing to happen at this point.I would also be satisfied it ANet released all these skins at once but at least separated the mount skins into different packs, so I can buy as many RNG Raptor Skins or Griffon Skins so I could at least get one that I'm going to get a lot of use out of!

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@Praxos.6129 said:I seriously do not see an issue with the state they implemented. They have a good way to introduce even more mount skins to the roster and for more mounts in the future.More mounts added onto an already thirty size contract, you don't see an issue with this?

It can clearly be build upon and the price is fine.I don't see many people arguing that the price is bad, more so that it is completely RNG. I want one single mount skin, that is a 3.33% chance. So i'm supposed to RNG til i get the only thing i want? At over 100g a chance? What?

People need to seriously remind themselves that they can also convert in-game gold into gems. and 400 isn't an outlandish goal..This is a bad excuse for this situation. 119 gold isn't easy to obtain in the short-term and what if you don't get a mount skin you like, for a mount you use, get rekt? It's not as if you can choose to roll for a contract for ... skimmer only, hopper only, griffon only ect. Imagine if you have no interest in getting a griffon, you raise 119 gold and boom, griffon mount, lol.

This even gives people who don't want to pay for these skins with real money a decent farm long term goal.Gambling is fun, kids.

AND on top of all that, they ensured you will not get duplicate skins, This is RNG and lootboxing done right.The one saving grace, that if you get a bad skin, a skin that you don't want, it'll increase the odds you'll get something you do like.

and Anet should honestly be thanked for how this was done.o_ 0

If anet didnt do the RNG thing they likely would've made the costs on the mounts different. you think the for example, electric raptor, celestial jackal and the starbound griffon would cost 400 gems or less you gotta be kidding yourself.The one thing that you've said that makes sense and people have accepted this. I would certainly pay extra to guarantee i get the mount that i desire, i am fine with RNG contracts so that those who're ballsy or lucky can get said mount cheaper. What i don't like is getting a mount skin that i will never, ever use. If i bought all 6 Jackal contracts and got my desired skin last, i wouldn't be so annoyed, because at least it's controlled RNG.

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Anet, here is your solution.

  • Within the short period of time make an announcement to the public that certain percentage of the money that player purchased the Black Lion Mount Adoption License will be funded for charity / donation to the selected organization to those people in needs.

  • For Player: We know part of the money we paid are for charity / donation even though the price (RNG loot) are quite unreasonable. No more complain for the price but only RNG loot obtained by player.

  • For Anet: You may continue making money while increase your reputation from the public and of course implement more different kind of RNG system for player to ~~gamble~~ Ops... i mean for charity / donation.

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In the last years I have gladly spent money on this game, since it doesn't have a monthly fee and since I know the people of Arenanet can't live just from love, air and positive reviews. A company needs to make money, simple as that. However, the last gemshop update disappointed me a lot and I have decided to not support it with a single cent. Here we go:

  • 2k Gems for a single mount is way overpriced, no matter how sparkly.
  • Out of 30 Skins I am only interested in 10. I am not gonna gamble, it's just a big no. My problem is not RNG in general (even tho RNG sucks), my problem is how we're not given any alternative besides "if you don't like RNG, just buy them all". I am not gonna spend more than a 100 bucks and basically pay for 20 skins that I am not even remotely interested in, just to get the 10 I actually like.
  • I would price them roughly 400 for a random skin, 500 for a skin of your choice. You could even make an option for 450, where you get three random skins and you can choose your favorite out of those three. Every now and then you could toss in a really awesome new mount skin and make it 700-800 gems. This would be my preferred solution and hell I would spend a lot of money on this - but on stuff that I want, not on the chance to have stuff that I want.
  • If you do stick to the rng-lootboxes only, at least make the skins not account-bound, so we can sell them at the TP, trade them and give them to friends, if we got a skin they desired and we don't want it anyways. Let the community/economy decide which skins are worth how much.
  • Another option: Make the lootboxes obtainable in game, just as in Overwatch or Hearthstone where you get them simply for playing. This way you can still get everything, it will just take some patience. The eager people can still pull out their wallet to buy more lootboxes for real money.

But I am not only disappointed by the choice to lock mount skins behind lootboxes:

  • I think it was a cheap move to release the original mounts with only 1 dye panel.
  • It upsets me massively how there have been a great total of 36 mount skins available in the gemshop, but not a single one can be obtained in game (yet), not even the very simple skins which just have a different fur-marking. This gets even worse looking at the feedback for PoF, because quite a lot of people complain about having nothing to work towards anymore even tho the expansion has only shipped a few weeks ago. Making some skins available in game could have been a great goal to work towards for lots of people.
  • It upsets me even more that you can get mount skins of legendary quality (e.g. Starbound) in the gemshop, instead of getting them as a reward for a finished collection, as an achievement for successfully managing a somewhat difficult content or maybe even crafting them. There are tons of possibilities. If I have a fancy mount skin like that I want to feel like I earned it, and I want other people to know that I worked hard for this skin. I want to be proud to have this sparkly mount skin unlocked. So it feels like a wasted opportunity to have epic skins like that on the gemshop and the only thing needed to get them is a full wallet.

Arenanet, please reconsider the choice you've made. I have recommended Guild Wars 2 to quite a lot of friends as a customer-friendly game with reasonable monetisation. It's the reason I myself chose to play this game instead of WoW. Please don't make me regret playing, advertising and spending money on your game - it would be such a shame, since so far I've really loved the experience.

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I have never had much of an issue with the premium store. They don't charge a monthly fee and you can earn gems. It's always been a nice way of doing things. But I have also always been able to buy the skin or product that I want. Anything that is gambled (like the black lion chest, or the dyes), I have been able to sell things I didn't want to the TP. I think if this had been a smaller gamble, say just the griffon mounts, or just the raptor mounts, it'd be less infuriating. At least I'd be getting a skin for the mount I use. In the end though, I think everyone would much prefer if we could have the mount that we want. This is lootboxing on an EA/Ubisoft style and that is never a good thing. I think this level of gambling is despicable and it definitely preys on the consumer. And £20 for the Reforged Warhound, really? They've always run prices quite high on the Gem store, but this is just.. eurgh. No Arena Net. Just no.

I hope they listen to the community on this because it is just disappointing. And from what I gather, that is what most people are feeling. Disappointment.

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PoF barely has any rewards already and you decided to take the newest addition to the game (mounts/mount skins) and lock them behind RNG predatory lootboxes?

What a joke. If you had priced these skins as $5 per skin on the gem store, people would eat them up. Hell, you should have tossed some of them into rewards for actually playing the game considering a few are extremely lazy recolors. Instead you decided to get greedy and you've lost all credibility.

I was really hoping buying the expansion was going to be worth it. It's been nearly two months and we still have completely broken pvp, wvw, no new dungeons or raids or fractals. Your priorities are all wrong and I can only assume you seek to sucker as many people out of their money as possible before you drive this game into the ground for good.

It's sad that the company which made such a wonderful and engaging game has reduced it to an Asian MMO gold farm.

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400-700 gems per skin just like outfits, weapons, backpacks and gliders is a reasonable price to ask for. Without RNG of course. I would gladly purchase 3-4 skins that way, but I will not buy any loot boxes.Also many people don't even have the griffon or plan to get one, why on earth would they want to gamble over some skins they can't even use at the first place?Please reconsider this decision and continue to offer goods like you have been doing for the 5 past years.

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Yes. but probably because I'm using reward in a different way to how the OP intended. I still can't get my head around this idea of playing a game for the purpose of obtaining in-game items. I understand needing some items to be able to play and wanting others because of how they look or what they do, but to me that's a step in the process, not the end goal. The end goal is to have fun playing the game.

In that sense I find GW2 very rewarding specifically because I don't need many items to be able to play. I can focus on doing what I want instead of getting the items I need to be able to do what I want. Even with reward items - for example I made a legendary so I could enjoy using it (which is why I made one that shoots unicorns, it's hilarious) not so I'd have a legendary item because someone had designated it as the "end game" reward to aim for. If I don't like an item and I don't think I'd enjoy the process of getting it then I'm not going to get it no matter what it is or how special someone else has decided it should be. My priority is playing content I enjoy.

I have fun playing GW2, and there's many parts I will go back and repeat even after I've finished it because I enjoyed doing it and want to do it again. (Everything from the Personal Story to big meta-events like Dragon's Stand.)

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Anet dont mind all these people that are complaining and want you to remove RNG. Imo this form of mount skins is acceptable the only change i would make is to let the people choose mount type(raptor griffon etc) and leave RNG part as it is because it makes you some money and is fun for some players. Luck is part of every game and even part of life so complaining about it is pretty pathetic.

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i will not going to buy or gamble with stupid loot-boxes , and this made me never ever to buy anything from the store this is just pure GREED anet you milking us way to much , i understand you need money and all but COME ON get real with your self sorry im out

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