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Official Mount Adoption Feedback Thread [merged]


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I don't reply to the forums often, but when I do it's because I feel very strongly about something and therefore take my time to write out a long, detailed post. What's different about this mount fiasco is that it is such a letdown that I don't really care all that much about responding and so didn't for days. You know what they say is worse than hate... apathy.

This game's end content... is fashion. I raid, I do fractals, I do PvE, WvW, PvP, but what drives me to do that content.... fashion. It is Fashion Wars 2 and we all know it. Therefore, a cosmetic category being exclusively behind an RNG pay wall is damaging to my gaming experience. I bought the expansions, I even bought the Ultimate Edition. Mounts are to PoF what gliders are to HoT. A major new mechanic and fashion category. I can't even change a mount's colors adequately with the default 1-slot dye option to customize it for my character. Bad enough they are all gem store purchases, but then adding insult to injury and implying... "Nope, can't buy the one you want, sorry, pay us more than the entire Ultimate Edition of the expansion that you just bought for the one skin you want... or gamble," is messed up.

I've never been a fan of Black Lion Chests. I don't participate in them, because gambling makes me unhappy (Lucky me!), but they flew under the radar because they weren't so integral to a major game component. These mounts are. (So congratulations, you just put yourselves in the spotlight for a practice that is under more scrutiny now than ever).

There is no way to get these mounts but to gamble or pay an absurd amount of money for them, and support something sleazy while doing so. Not interested in semantics. Don't care about what is "legal," at the moment, or not. I do very much hope some legislation is passed to combat this type of practice in the future, for all gaming companies. In the meantime, I tried to ignore it. But guess what? I can't. I log into the game, and all the guilds I'm in are talking about it. So there is really no escaping or ignoring this one. This thread alone has over 50k views and it's in published articles, on reddit, and social media. Maybe ANet is hoping that bad publicity is better than no publicity? Well, you got it! But speaking for myself, every new post I read, or comment I see, makes me want to play less.... not more. I've currently reduced my playtime to once a week with my raiding group. Too bad a really cool mount skin isn't available for actually beating game content.

Luckily I have other games to play right now. Games that provide me positive feelings, not negative ones. shrugs

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@Wraith.1094 said:

@atomy.3817 said:

@atomy.3817 said:

Nothing "predatory" about this at all. That's just an exaggeration by inappropriately labeling something they don't like.

Right, they just want to trick people into spending much more on multiple attempts at winning the skin they want, rather than just letting them buy it outright. Nothing predatory about that. /S

They are letting players buy them outright if you buy the bundle. It's not cheap, but it's there.

And you could win the lottery if you just buy a ticket for every possible combination of numbers.

this. everyone arguing "it's not gambling because you can buy them all" is wasting time on pointless semantics. except for a tiny portion of dedicated collectors and/or whales, most people only want a handful of these 30 skins, not every last one. every skin they pay for but don't want is a lost dice roll. just because there's a fixed total number of possible times to lose doesn't mean it isn't gambling.

Call it gambling if you want, but this is nothing different than getting a random drop.

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@atomy.3817 said:

@atomy.3817 said:

Nothing "predatory" about this at all. That's just an exaggeration by inappropriately labeling something they don't like.

Right, they just want to trick people into spending much more on multiple attempts at winning the skin they want, rather than just letting them buy it outright. Nothing predatory about that. /S

They are letting players buy them outright if you buy the bundle. It's not cheap, but it's there.

And you could win the lottery if you just buy a ticket for every possible combination of numbers.

That's ridiculous and you know it. To compare 1:30 chance to 1:1,000,000+ chance is absurd.

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@atomy.3817 said:Anyways, you can't seriously argue that they expect the average person to buy the whole set. They know that most people will behave just the way I described, they'll buy tickets until they get the skin they want.

This burned me so bad on AION (another NCSoft game) that I quit and I don't gamble like that anymore. And considering that the reason I bought this game was to a) support ANet and b) mounts mounts mounts, I'm seriously pissed.

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@OtakuModeEngage.8679 said:

@STIHL.2489 said:Guys... think about it.Dyes are RNGWeapon Skins are RNG

Why is anyone surprised that Mount skins are RNG now too?

I mean personally.. I would have liked it better if it was divided up by Mount type, so, if I wanted, I could just get a Random Raptor Skin, or Random Skimmer Skin.. s opposed to any skin from any mount.

If they broke it up a bit at least, to that we could pick which mount we wanted the RNG skin for, that would be much better., IMHO.

There no gemstore weapons skins that are RNG.

Fir point, I was thinking more along the lines that the BL Claim Tickets and Scraps were RNG.

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@Sir Vincent III.1286 said:

@Wraith.1094 said:

@atomy.3817 said:

@atomy.3817 said:

Nothing "predatory" about this at all. That's just an exaggeration by inappropriately labeling something they don't like.

Right, they just want to trick people into spending much more on multiple attempts at winning the skin they want, rather than just letting them buy it outright. Nothing predatory about that. /S

They are letting players buy them outright if you buy the bundle. It's not cheap, but it's there.

And you could win the lottery if you just buy a ticket for every possible combination of numbers.

this. everyone arguing "it's not gambling because you can buy them all" is wasting time on pointless semantics. except for a tiny portion of dedicated collectors and/or whales, most people only want a handful of these 30 skins, not every last one. every skin they pay for but don't want is a lost dice roll. just because there's a fixed total number of possible times to lose doesn't mean it isn't gambling.

Call it gambling if you want, but this is nothing different than getting a random drop.

No, random drops aren't meant to exploit people's tendency to buy chances at winning things even though the odds are stacked against them.

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@Sylv.5324 said:

@atomy.3817 said:Anyways, you can't seriously argue that they expect the average person to buy the whole set. They know that most people will behave just the way I described, they'll buy tickets until they get the skin they want.

This burned me so bad on AION (another NCSoft game) that I quit and I don't gamble like that anymore. And considering that the reason I bought this game was to a) support ANet and b) mounts mounts mounts, I'm seriously pissed.

I was in LA and people were saying the hole loot boxes RNG is not bad....well it was fun while it lasted gw2 :(

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I really don't mind loot box skins, there is some enjoyment out of getting a really cool skin out of a box, but the price of these things are astronomical, 9600 gems is about 3000g with in game currency or over $100. The expansion is $30, is the anyway you can argue that these 30 mount skins are worth more than 3 Path of fire expansions. Most of these skins are just change the dye channels on the mounts. That is way over the curve of price for this games shop. Although it shouldn't be too hard of a fix. Anyone of the suggestions below would be enough for me to be satisfied with

  1. Drop the rng loot-box nonsense and just let us buy the mounts, just like gliders you can make the simple re-coloring ones cheap (400 gems maybe) and the really nice ones that change the shape and add effects could be more expensive (700-1500). I don't think they should be any higher than that, because you only use a specific mount for quite a small part of the game. 5 different situational mounts that can't be used in 1 of 3 main game modes and in pve it isn't allowed in fractals, raids, or even in combat in the open world.

2.Drop the price dramatically, almost everybody is going to have a favorite skin for each of the five mounts, that is probably the only one that will see any use. So people who want to guarantee that they have to spend 9600 gems or possible more if they try and gamble it. none of those skins you can get from the boxes are worth over $10 which is well beyond what you would have to pay now. On a similar note I think the reforged warhound skin is way too expensive, expecially considering i don't think it looks as good as some of the other jackal skins released, but this doesn't bother me as much because if i don't like a skin i don't have to risk buying it in order to get the one i want.

  1. Have a way to earn a limited number of boxes that can be earned through in game means, maybe little things like getting gold on a griffon adventure, or maxing out a mount mastery line, buy it from one of the mount hearts for karma, achievement reward, at least something to wet the appetite. It could also help playtime in certain areas if they can be earned there. They could also be given away like many gemstore thing s have been in the past, but it is not as satisfying as earning it.

  2. Make the skins trad-able on the TP. You do it with dyes and minis: nobody has a problem with it, if you want ocean dye you buy ocean dye, if you want a mini karka you buy a mini karka. People already buy gems just to turn into in game gold. If somebody buys a 400 gold skin with a week of playtime and 100 gems they converted to gold. it is pretty healthy for the game in my humble opinion. This will also attract some people who don't want the skins but just like gambling. I personally bought season 1 memory boxes for a slight opportunity to make a quick and sizable profit. I think this along with my 3rd suggestion go really well together, It feels extremely good to randomly get a huge high value drop anywhere in game, especially for new players who may have just bought the game and are struggling to make any money in it.

Something should be done about this, it is pretty disheartening to have something cool behind such an absurd paywall.

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@Sir Vincent III.1286 said:

@Wraith.1094 said:

@atomy.3817 said:

@atomy.3817 said:

Nothing "predatory" about this at all. That's just an exaggeration by inappropriately labeling something they don't like.

Right, they just want to trick people into spending much more on multiple attempts at winning the skin they want, rather than just letting them buy it outright. Nothing predatory about that. /S

They are letting players buy them outright if you buy the bundle. It's not cheap, but it's there.

And you could win the lottery if you just buy a ticket for every possible combination of numbers.

this. everyone arguing "it's not gambling because you can buy them all" is wasting time on pointless semantics. except for a tiny portion of dedicated collectors and/or whales, most people only want a handful of these 30 skins, not every last one. every skin they pay for but don't want is a lost dice roll. just because there's a fixed total number of possible times to lose doesn't mean it isn't gambling.

Call it gambling if you want, but this is nothing different than getting a random drop.

In a way. Most good random drops come at the end of some sort of content though. A dungeon, a raid, a chain of quests or a world event. Low probability of getting what you want in those instances is to slow down or time gate rewards and content to encourage more play time and thus used to manipulate people in sub based profit models for the most part or to make buying the item with real money more desirable. The beauty of making items exclusive to the cash shop is you don't need to bother making the content to play through in the first place.

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@Sir Vincent III.1286 said:

@Wraith.1094 said:

@atomy.3817 said:

@atomy.3817 said:

Nothing "predatory" about this at all. That's just an exaggeration by inappropriately labeling something they don't like.

Right, they just want to trick people into spending much more on multiple attempts at winning the skin they want, rather than just letting them buy it outright. Nothing predatory about that. /S

They are letting players buy them outright if you buy the bundle. It's not cheap, but it's there.

And you could win the lottery if you just buy a ticket for every possible combination of numbers.

this. everyone arguing "it's not gambling because you can buy them all" is wasting time on pointless semantics. except for a tiny portion of dedicated collectors and/or whales, most people only want a handful of these 30 skins, not every last one. every skin they pay for but don't want is a lost dice roll. just because there's a fixed total number of possible times to lose doesn't mean it isn't gambling.

Call it gambling if you want, but this is nothing different than getting a random drop.really?That's ridiculous and you know it. To compare 1:30 chance to 1:1,000,000+ chance is absurd.about as absurd as comparing a random drop to something that costs $5.00? I could join a farm and get hundreds of random drop chances per hour. who's paying you 1000$/hr to play GW2?
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@Sir Vincent III.1286 said:

@atomy.3817 said:

@atomy.3817 said:

Nothing "predatory" about this at all. That's just an exaggeration by inappropriately labeling something they don't like.

Right, they just want to trick people into spending much more on multiple attempts at winning the skin they want, rather than just letting them buy it outright. Nothing predatory about that. /S

They are letting players buy them outright if you buy the bundle. It's not cheap, but it's there.

And you could win the lottery if you just buy a ticket for every possible combination of numbers.

That's ridiculous and you know it. To compare 1:30 chance to 1:1,000,000+ chance is absurd.

The fact that the system exists is ridiculous. Let people either buy the one they want, and/or buy a pack by mount type, and/or make them tradeable on the trading post, so whales like me can buy the whole set with a clean conscience while players with a smaller budget can set smaller but specific goals.

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@Vlad Morbius.1759 said:I would say that several thousand posts between here and Reddit, along with several supporters on You Tube and and various gaming sites denouncing this should be enough feedback to warrant some response by Anet. Frankly i am not certain what more they need before they try and fix this and push back the tide of negative publicity this has garnered, to me the silence is the disconcerting part of this after two days.

They are probably silent because the decision to deliver mounts this way was likely made by someone really high up who has little contact with the public and no one else at ANet who is closer to the customer base knows how to respond or may have been told not to respond. They could also be afraid to respond to it. I'm sure most of the people at ANet had little to do with the decision to deliver mounts as RNG.

I doubt there will be a response until this gets picked up by larger new organizations like CNN in an article about the spread of gambling in the computer gaming industry. I'm surprised there hasn't been coverage by big new outlets since children play games also. I guess it's lost in all the political news.

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@troops.8276 said:

@Wraith.1094 said:

@atomy.3817 said:

@atomy.3817 said:

Nothing "predatory" about this at all. That's just an exaggeration by inappropriately labeling something they don't like.

Right, they just want to trick people into spending much more on multiple attempts at winning the skin they want, rather than just letting them buy it outright. Nothing predatory about that. /S

They are letting players buy them outright if you buy the bundle. It's not cheap, but it's there.

And you could win the lottery if you just buy a ticket for every possible combination of numbers.

this. everyone arguing "it's not gambling because you can buy them all" is wasting time on pointless semantics. except for a tiny portion of dedicated collectors and/or whales, most people only want a handful of these 30 skins, not every last one. every skin they pay for but don't want is a lost dice roll. just because there's a fixed total number of possible times to lose doesn't mean it isn't gambling.

Call it gambling if you want, but this is nothing different than getting a random drop.

In a way. Most good random drops come at the end of some sort of content though. A dungeon, a raid, a chain of quests or a world event. Low probability of getting what you want in those instances is to slow down or time gate rewards and content to encourage more play time and thus used to manipulate people in sub based profit models for the most part or to make buying the item with real money more desirable. The beauty of making items exclusive to the cash shop is you don't need to bother making the content to play through in the first place.

Look at it this way. I played for a week running the same content hoping for the mount I want to drop from the boss, after several others drop, I got it. Now I played for a week in GW2, make enough gold to convert to gems and randomly got other skins until I get the one I want. Different path, same result.

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How about this as a potential solution.

Charge 800 Gems for a "Premium Adoption License" that lets you choose which mount you want.

Let the people that want to RNG do so for 400 per chance.

The people that want all of the mounts will still pay the $100+ for them, and the people that want a few specific ones will pay a premium per mount skin and end up paying as much or more than the RNGers as they get tired of the ones they have.

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Tons of feedback here that I simply haven’t got the time to read through, so I’m sure I’ll be repeating other oft mentioned comments. Here’s my take:

Arenanet has to monetize the game resources somehow. I don’t begrudge them trying to position new, highly requested options at a price they thought the market might support. I’ve seen multiple posts from individual players requesting certain features at insane prices - gems or gold, sometimes in excess of 5000 gems or 10000 gold - just because they wanted the features that badly, I guess. I think we can point to those players as the scapegoats for the current mount prices.

Why didn’t Anet sell these skins individually? I think they knew some were totally meh and people would only want the super cool ones. Offer all of them at premium gem prices - even 600-700 gems - and everyone would only buy the “cool” ones, and the unimpressive skins would be a waste of design resources. Everyone would be running a pyroclast jackal or a star bound griffon. The attempt to diversify mount aesthetics would be a failure. So force the less impressive skins into the mix and maybe people will use them anyway.

Still, I think the pricing for the current offerings is way off. As a loot box gamble, adoption licenses should only be 200-250 gems. Maybe they’ll correct the pricing with a sale in 3 months. I can only hope. The reforged war hound is way too expensive. 800 gems is a far more reasonable price. Maybe 1000 since it does have exclusive effects to set it apart from the rabble. But it’s only a jackal mount skin and I can’t imagine a large number of people will prefer jackal travel for the majority of their wanderings. Yes, there are some, I’m sure, but I don’t see the majority primarily hopping on a jackal. Maybe that’s just me. In any case, $25 US is crazy expensive for a fashion wars statement in my opinion.

I trust Anet is learning from this but I have to wonder why it was a lesson to learn in the first place. Didn’t they already cover this ground with glider skins? They’ve settled on a reasonable and sustainable pricing strategy with gliders. How is this different? The differentiation of mounts have very little bearing on the marketability of specific skins. It seems to me that the pricing for gliders would’ve been an ideal model for mount skins. Maybe someone can explain to me how it’s different.

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Another thought about how this could work (caveat: this is not my preferred method, which would be no RNG aspect to buying the mount skins at all, but that horse, I mean raptor, has left the barn and I doubt it's coming back) -- what if ANet announced new skins and said, "Here they are, you can buy them randomly or in one big expensive honkin' package and be the first to own them BUT in two (four, whatever) weeks' time they will be available for purchase individually in the Gem Shop." This way the whales and gamblers and impatient could get them first, and those of us who have more patience than money could wait.

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@Sir Vincent III.1286 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Sir Vincent III.1286 said:Call it gambling if you want, but this is nothing different than getting a random drop.

If you had to pay real world cash for every random drop, i bet you'd see the difference really fast.

Which is not the case here.

so is it the same as a random drop or isn't it? at this point you're arguing with yourself

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@Sir Vincent III.1286 said:

@atomy.3817 said:

@atomy.3817 said:

Nothing "predatory" about this at all. That's just an exaggeration by inappropriately labeling something they don't like.

Right, they just want to trick people into spending much more on multiple attempts at winning the skin they want, rather than just letting them buy it outright. Nothing predatory about that. /S

They are letting players buy them outright if you buy the bundle. It's not cheap, but it's there.

And you could win the lottery if you just buy a ticket for every possible combination of numbers.

That's ridiculous and you know it. To compare 1:30 chance to 1:1,000,000+ chance is absurd.

You're right, the lottery isn't nearly as bad because people can more intuitively understand how little of a chance of winning they actually have; it's essentially nothing. Here, if you spend 6000 gems on skins you still only have a coin toss chance of getting the skin you want, which to some people might actually seem like a "good deal".

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@TheQuickFox.3826 said:WoodenPotatoes - MountGate

Ohhh no, people are actually using that phrase for this? God. Gamers in general really have to get over the fad of using x-gate to describe things.But I like WP, time to see if he's any more rational about this whole thing than a depressingly sizeable cross section of people here are.

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So, I wanted to give it some time to simmer before I speak out so as not be too emotional, but I've basically been fuming these past 2 days, and if anything I'm more angry now than before. Still, I'm trying to be as reasonable as possible in this post.

Warning: I'm going to be using the dehumanizing sealife terms that marketeers use, but that's only because I'm trying to view this from a typical sociopath marketeer's perspective. I, personally probably fall somewhere in the upper layer of the "dolphin spectrum" for reference.

Anet really seems to have shot itself in the foot here with their grand master "mount monetization" scheme.

The argument goes that this will make them more money, because whales make them more money with this, and they can also squeeze out extra cash from dolphins, more than enough to make up for the dolphins and minnows leaving in disgust and giving negative word of mouth. This begs the question though. Firstly, the idea that whales would give them more money in this particular case. There's a ceiling to the amount of gems you can spend on this. 9600+2000 gems gets you everything. If they removed the RNG component, it would cost you instead... 9600+2000 gems... This scheme does not get them more money from the highest spenders. Let that sink in for a bit before we move on. Whales can not be the target for this, because they'd spend the exact same amount to get everything anyway.

Which leaves minnows and dolphins. Minnows don't count. They don't spend. RNG or no, they are not factored into the equation here.

It's the dolphins. The majority of the paying playerbase. They're the target here. They want 5 skins, let them buy 15. The ones who won't pay anything now, where they would have paid X amount if it was à la carte, are more than compensated for by the dolphins who spend double, or even triple the amount they would have spent. The idea being that any negative feeling they had, by not immediately getting what they wanted, evaporates once they ride around on their shiny new mounts. And they'll fly around on their flashy mounts, being a living advertisement for the dolphins who are on the edge of buying but needed just that little bit more encouragement, that frisson of envy, to buy in too. And then they go on-line, like the good little GW2 players they are, spreading the word like Mo asked, and bring in even more potential dolphins and whales! Genius!

Except... it kinda blew up in their face didn't it. All those many dolphins are so angry, they not only refuse to spend on the new skins, they're boycotting the gemstore entirely, or even leaving the game! And there's much more of them than they probably anticipated. Much, much more. Their word of mouth is now extremely negative. Sites dedicated to MMOs are reporting on it. Reddit is on fire. Youtubers, including Anet affiliates are against it. The people who fly around with their new mounts are called names and harrassed! That's awful, but it's actually happening. The friendliest online community I've ever been a part of turned abolutely toxic overnight! Have fun showing off your new mounts.

What's that you say? You are fine with the RNG? That's cool, but think about it. Say you wanted to roll for 5 skins and it didn't matter what you got, you're just happy to get 5 new skins... well, you would have bought and gotten 5 skins without the RNG roll as well. Anet didn't get extra money from you with this mechanic. That's the thing here, the whales who buy everything, and the dolphins who just want a certain amount of skins, doesn't matter too much which ones, aren't bringing in more money with this scheme. They were banking on the dolphins who want a certain number of specific skins and who just keep rolling until they get a few or all of them. They were banking on there being enough of these to make up for the dolphins leaving in disgust. That's what's now massively blowing up in their face here.

I'm really hoping this serves as a wake-up call. Either way, my respect for Anet just took a nosedive, and I don't know how much I'm willing to sink into their gemstore, even if they completely remove the RNG aspect from the mount skins. Their affable, customer-friendly mask just fell off, and what it revealed was very ugly and not soon forgotten.

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@atomy.3817 said:

@atomy.3817 said:

@atomy.3817 said:

Nothing "predatory" about this at all. That's just an exaggeration by inappropriately labeling something they don't like.

Right, they just want to trick people into spending much more on multiple attempts at winning the skin they want, rather than just letting them buy it outright. Nothing predatory about that. /S

They are letting players buy them outright if you buy the bundle. It's not cheap, but it's there.

And you could win the lottery if you just buy a ticket for every possible combination of numbers.

That's ridiculous and you know it. To compare 1:30 chance to 1:1,000,000+ chance is absurd.

You're right, the lottery isn't nearly as bad because people can more intuitively understand how little of a chance of winning they actually have; it's essentially nothing. Here, if you spend 6000 gems on skins you still only have a coin toss chance of getting the skin you want, which to some people might actually seem like a "good deal".

You must have an extremely bad luck if you can't get the one you want after 10 tries with a 1:3 chance -- and I highly doubt that you only want 1 skin.

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