Crescelle.9783

A tempest glider skin, in the style of the tempest weapon set, as well as other glider skins to go along with old Black Lion weapon sets.

I'm especially hoping they add new asura hair soon because I want to change up my looks before starting season 4!

Hair bow headpieces, flowers for your hair, and tiaras that are made just to look cute without having to fit into the lore.

New hairstyles for Asura -- some cute updos with bangs, and also maybe some with longer ponytails! Just because I'm short doesn't mean I don't want hair that goes all the way down my back like a Norn's.

Random small accessories like earrings, priced for like 50 gems. When I buy gems to get other stuff, I generally have 50-150 left over, and wish there were more small things I could buy with them instead of just converting them to gold. Asura especially have such big ears, it'd be nice to be able to get some cute earrings to go along with my outfits! Heart earrings, snowflake earrings, earrings made to match different outfits, gemstone earrings, you can bet I'd buy every one of them. (It'd be double-nice if they were visible with outfits on). More cute dresses for asura girls! This is so important to me and I would spend so much money on these! I'm tired of getting only the male skins for everything. As much as I love the carapace armor as-is, the lack of butterflies for my adorable, girly asura absolutely breaks my heart! The winter outfit is cute, but not satisfying. I need more frills, lace, and bows! Butterflies and flowers and hearts, on poofy skirts with cute shoes and cute headpieces. It'd be extra nice if they were sold as armor pieces and not outfits, so I could mix-and-match, but it doesn't matter as long as I get to look cute~! Some more simple auras would be cute too, like the bat one and winter's presence, but from the gem store. Maybe even just some sparkles around the character -- doesn't even need to be dye-able, but it could be.

Agreed, it would be much better for it to just put you back in the playable area instead of entirely removing you from the instance, specifically as newer content tends to have more opportunities for these accidents to happen. Season 3 had plenty of parts in Bloodstone Fen where you could accidentally fall off or get knocked off a floating island and lose all your progress, and Path of Fire now has mounts, which serve their own part to make it a bit too easy to get out of bounds. Considering how long and difficult some story missions can be, it'd just be so much more convenient! Alternatively, add in an optional checkpoint system like some jumping puzzles have, where if you get kicked from or leave your story in the middle of it, you can choose to restart the whole mission, or continue from where you left off.

I see people defending the system with a couple different arguments. I'd like to make my case against some of those. 1: It brings in more money to Arenanet, allowing them to create more great content for us. Does it though? As I mentioned in my previous post, most people can't afford that. If, instead of Guild Wars 2, I played an mmo with a subscription fee, that mmo would have made far more money off of me by now than gw2 probably ever will. Does that mean that subscription mmos have a better business model in regards to making money off of me? No, because I don't play those, I play gw2. I can't afford that, and neither can many other players. In the same way, I can totally afford to drop some money on one cool skin -- maybe I'll even ask for it for Christmas or my birthday, as I've done in the past. However, putting what I want behind an RNG system that will most likely take quite a bit of money before giving me what I want just means I won't get it at all. It's not the difference between players spending more or less money to get what they want, it is, for many of us, the difference between players bothering to buy what they want at all. 2: This stops everyone from just immediately getting the "coolest" one and swamping Lion's Arch with a billion people all running around on only the lightning raptor or fiery griffon. Well if the fiery griffon is the only mount skin that people want, why not let them have it? A key practice of a good business is figuring out what your customers want, and giving it to them. We're all paying players, if we want our griffons to be on fire 24/7, there's no good reason to say we shouldn't all be able to buy that. I'll bring up the topic of gliders again. Think of your favorite glider skin. Now, is that glider skin EVERYONE'S favorite? No! Of course not, there are all sorts of types and styles of gliders, and when a squad jumps off a cliff, everyone doesn't pull out the same glider. If there's really only one skin that's the "coolest", maybe Arenanet missed the mark of what players want with their other skins. RNG isn't how you "diversify" what skins players use, making many more cool skins is. And, well, if they make a bunch of cool skins and everyone still thinks the lightning raptor is the best, is that really so bad? It's what the players want, and they're still supporting the game by buying it. If you don't want your character to ride that mount, that's your choice! You can have a different mount! 3: Now you have something to work towards, instead of just something to buy. You're not "working towards" it though. Working towards something implies a stream of steady progress based on your own time and effort put into it. This isn't that, it's a gamble. It's not "instead of something to buy", because it still IS something you buy, it's just not guaranteed that you'll actually get what you want. The only sort of thing you could possibly be "working towards" is completing your collection of mount skins, and if that's what you want to do, you'll probably do it regardless of how mounts are "packaged" in the gem store. If you want something to work towards in the game, legendaries and collections (think of the griffon collection!) fill that niche much better, and perhaps more of those should be requested -- mount skins locked behind achievements or collections would be a better way of implementing that sort of thing. 4: You can just buy them with gold if you don't want to spend real money. Well that rather takes away from the whole point about supporting Arenanet, hm? While this is true, my earlier point is still relevant. Players might not necessarily have that much gold, especially if they're new to the game and are just starting to throw themselves into the vanity showcase that is Fashion Wars 2. And if they do, just like with real money, they might be willing to trade it for gems if they knew they were getting what they wanted, but if you're guaranteed nothing, why even bother? Even with gold, it's still not just worth it for many players who otherwise would have gladly purchased skins. In conclusion, Arenanet's time and money will be most profitably spent giving people what they want, without pulling any RNG tricks, and players' time and money is more likely to be spent on guaranteed rewards.

Interesting. I agree with the general sentiment I'm seeing here. The dye packs work because you can buy and sell them on the trading post. Black lion chest keys can be found normally playing the game, and make for a fun surprise, especially as most of the items in them are available on the TP anyway. Black Lion Chests already cover the "fun random chance at expensive skins" mechanic without forcing themselves as the ONLY way to get black lion weapon skins. We don't need more of that, we need more guaranteed customer satisfaction. Mounts should be done similarly to how glider skins were, sold individually in the gem store for reasonable prices (although I think a few mount skins that you could get through in-game achievements and the like would be quite welcome)! I think I started out with all of about one glider skin I wanted? Then, as more were released that I liked, sales came and went, and as I designed characters that I realized would look much better with a certain correspondingly themed glider skin, I bought more and more skins. There's just something satisfying about finally deciding to make that investment to buy that glider skin you really love. Something exhilarating about clicking the button and seeing your mailbox light up, knowing that yes! You just finally got that cool item you've been drooling over! Loot boxes entirely rob you of that experience. If I see a cool item that I want, then see it's only available from a random loot box drop, I'm going to instantly forget about it. I have neither the time, nor money, to continually spend gems on a random chance at an item, and though some players might, most don't. I'll probably see other players running around with cool mount skins, and I'll wish I had them, but I'm not going to buy the adoption certificates if I don't know what I'm actually getting. Other games may pull all sorts of shenanigans like loot boxes and subscription fees to keep draining money out of their players, but Guild Wars 2 players are here because we don't want that kind of game. I want a game where when I pay for something, I get it, whether that be my account itself being mine and not needing constant monthly fees to stay so, or the mount skin I paid for actually being the one I want. I love Guild Wars 2 and will continue to play it, but I'm not exactly rich and won't be spending money on it unless I'm sure I'll get what I want. However, the gw2 devs are awesome and clearly want to know how their player-base feels about all this, so I expect we'll soon end up being given the option to choose which mount skins we're buying!