[Picante achievement bugged?]

Agreed, I ran into the same issue. Bought a Metal Legion shirt and didn't get any credit towards Picante. Bought an Ash Legion banner and got 100 Chilis counting towards the achievement. Annoying. :(

[The Grove - Missing Rock]

In the Grove, next to Caledon Waypoint, facing south from the Vista, there's a magic waterfall with a missing rock texture.I thought you'd like to know, maybe someone accidentally deleted it xDScreenshot at https://imgur.com/a/oFFhqm2

[Official Mount Adoption Feedback Thread [merged]]

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.