A Message About the Mount Adoption License

[Palador.2170]

@Mike O Brien.4613 said:(stuff)

Well, Mr O Brien, thank you for the answer. It's not the answer I was looking for, and it's a day later than I expected, but it's an answer. And if I'm honest with myself, it's the best I could reasonably expect. So, I guess I now should put my money where my mouth is. I said I'd eventually buy them all as randoms if they resolved it, and I guess that's kinda happened. So, won't buy them all now, but I'll spend what gems I have and pick up the occasional one as time goes on. Honoring my words, and all that.

But there's a few things we (meaning I) want you to know:

First, we'll be watching. Don't pull this stuff again. You might want to stop it with the BLTCs, too. Weapon tickets are bad enough, but stuff like the current glider that can only be gotten that way needs to end.

Second, watch your price levels. The Forged skin on the Jackal may be impressive, but it's just an outfit for a mount instead of a player. A bit of flash on the teleport doesn't make up for how much easier it is to make it for only one race and gender. We're not stupid. ... most of us are not stupid.

And finally, remember that the game lifts the cash shop. The game HAS to come first. If people stop enjoying the game, they'll leave and it won't matter what you sell in the gem store any more. Get at least one skin for each mount into the game, to be earned by NORMAL players. Not raids, or extensive PvP/WvW. And not PvE only, either.

Thank you.

[InkTide.1908]

It is really disappointing to hear this from someone who wants me to do his advertising for him.

And when you asked, I was happy to do it. I wish I still was, Mike.

I can't recommend the game to anyone at this point. Just another casualty of out-of-touch businessmen in suits lusting after gambling addicts.

[artisticMarauder.7849]

I thoroughly enjoy the fact that you guys are willing to try new things, push in unexplored directions, and seriously take feedback into consideration. There will be bumps here and there but it's all a learning process.For me, all the skins look wonderful (bravo, artists!) and I've been having a blast trying out different dye combinations. This expansion has been the most fun I've had with this game thus far and I cannot put to words how enjoyable the mounts have been. Their animations, how they control and feel, VFX and all - I can tell a lot of attention and love have been put into them. I'll admit I won't be sad to see the skin RNG factor go, but thus far they have been worth my every penny!Thank you for this post and all the hard work you and the rest of your team put into this game. I look forward to what the future holds.

[Rauderi.8706]

Thanks for the explanation of the thought process, MO. To be honest, I would've guessed this was the case, but it means a lot when a developer comes forward and admits that it was hurtful or unsavory.

To be honest, I'll be a little sad if the only way to get new skins through price gouging, though.

A 2000-gem pack, even for 5 skins, is more than I'd want to spend to get just a few that are in it. 500 each would still end up saving me 1000 gems if I only buy the two I actually use on a regular basis.

And 2000 for a single mount skin is out of line, no matter what the market study folks told you by looking over WoW's shoulder. And yes, I noticed that the price is exactly equivalent. For a particularly spiffy, work-intensive mount, I'd honestly cap at 700-800, parallel to an Outfit. Granted, I'm lacking a decade of market research and tons of background data, but as a player who has actually spent cash on some cosmetics I was willing to buy, I consider it good faith to tell ANet what I'd be willing to pay.

[JaddynnStarr.5201]

@Fire X.5184 said:yeeeah no. I will say good that you will change your ways (we shall see about that) but at the same time you can't change the system with existing license? Are you kidding me? here I will fix it for you. Make it that we can choose the mounts we want and give the gems back. Don't give a money refund just give the gems back and take away the skins. Then they can choose the skins they want and at the same time they have gems left over. You keep the money and we get the skins we want everyone is happy.

They will never do this.... it would equal a net loss of overall funds as those gems would be used to buy future content that they intend to sell. THEY KNOW THIS WILL LOSE THEM MONEY ergo they will not do it. Folks, its clear.... its become all about the money for these people. your refusal to reverse this system for the sake of losing some funds is, in the end... going to cost you everything. If you dont fix this now, Say hello to the beginning of the end here.... mark my words.

[SaffronCity.3402]

If this is seriously the attempt to win back the hurt players and to make everyone happy then EVENT FAILED. You don't even get a bronze participation for that lackluster attempt to alleviate the issue.

[Fire X.5184]

@JustTrogdor.7892 said:

@Fire X.5184 said:yeeeah no. I will say good that you will change your ways (we shall see about that) but at the same time you can't change the system with existing license? Are you kidding me? here I will fix it for you. Make it that we can choose the mounts we want and give the gems back. Don't give a money refund just give the gems back and take away the skins. Then they can choose the skins they want and at the same time they have gems left over. You keep the money and we get the skins we want everyone is happy.

Sound good on the surface but I am fairly sure Anet has stated that it is not possible to remove account unlocks without rolling an account back. So that won't work.

Then sadly I am done with gw2. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice...wait they did not fool me twice so I am good. I will think twice before recommending gw2 to anyone.

[highlandish.9784]

while we're at it, how about not locking outfit and weapon skins in the blc, let us buy them outright! so many stories of ppl buying 40+ keys and not even getting uncommons, let alone rares. btw the mount skins shouldnt have cost more than a blc key

[Kellsey.2698]

It's a start, and a very welcomed statement, although not all the important problems were covered, like :

• Prices of some mounts ( 25$ when the whole expansion is 30$, does the work of 200+ ppl during month worth as much as 3 days of work by 2-3 artists ? )
• Fluorescent sparkly ugly extremes apparences of dyed mounts ( lots of people feel some visual discomfort with these ).
• Account bound RNG Black lion items like balthazar helmet, bubble backpack/glider, etc.They just stopped the bleeding, nothing is healed yet.

[nonavaith.2463]

I'm sorry to say, but you lost a player thanks to this update.

[deatine.2498]

@"Mike O Brien.4613" said:Individual sale is a mechanic that works with a few, flashy skins. Using a grab bag mechanic gives us leeway to create skins to suit a wide range of player tastes while offering a lower price per skin.

What is the meaning of that. Why would you think individual sale works with flashy skins but not simple ones.If you say it like that, it sounds like you know/think most people would not buy the simple skins if given an exact choice. Yet you decide to "make" people buy 15 of those skins on average, by leaving the player no way to directly get the one they want, and by creating a relatively low threshold of 400gems, which is not actually accurate because statistically, you'll need to buy half the batch at about 6000gems to get what you want, which conveniently many people will of course not understand before buying.

And we're talking about monetizing the extremely popular idea of mount skins here, not some random items that might or might not be nice to have.

You see how that strategy might turn out unpopular on the buyers' side.

A big issue in this specific case might also be that a player will likely have no use for all the skins they had to wade through to get the ones they wanted. In case of Black Lion Keys, you can get a variety of items that can be useful and will likely be used up. But I don't know many cases for which you'd want five raptor skins unless you're a completist.

So the "variety" argument does not seem to make much sense to me.

I mean, I still can't be bothered to really care either way, but I am kind of confused and maybe impressed, so those are my thoughts.

[Sulfarius.1756]

Here's what you could do to make sure no investment has gone to waste:

1. Remove all Mount Adoption License's skins from wardrobes and give people new Mount Adoption License equal to the skins they had unlocked.
2. Make the Mount Adoption License pick whatever you want. Now people can get the skins back they had, or pick the ones they really wanted.
3. Allow people to make a ticket to refund any Mount Adoption License they no longer need if they had bought many to get specific skin.

I think this would solve most, if not all, issues with the Mount Adoption License. It might not be something you can do in 2 seconds, I understand removing stuff from wardrobes and then giving back the items would be a diffecult task but I'm sure people will be happy to be patient if they knew they could at the end of things get what they actually wanted.

[spellchekc.5409]

@Sulfarius.1756 said:Here's what you could do to make sure no investment has gone to waste:

1. Remove all Mount Adoption License's skins from wardrobes and give people new Mount Adoption License equal to the skins they had unlocked.
2. Make the Mount Adoption License pick whatever you want. Now people can get the skins back they had, or pick the ones they really wanted.
3. Allow people to make a ticket to refund any Mount Adoption License they no longer need if they had bought many to get specific skin.

I think this would solve most, if not all, issues with the Mount Adoption License. It might not be something you can do in 2 seconds, I understand removing stuff from wardrobes and then giving back the items would be a diffecult task but I'm sure people will be happy to be patient if they knew they could at the end of things get what they actually wanted.

he is very clearly is saying they're doing nothing about this

[Sky Fell.7604]

So nothing is changing. They didn't rule out doing this again in the future. We get a blatant PR non-response.I know I won't be spending another dime on this game outside of actual expansions. Gold to gems only for me from now on.

[Fire X.5184]

@JaddynnStarr.5201 said:

@Fire X.5184 said:yeeeah no. I will say good that you will change your ways (we shall see about that) but at the same time you can't change the system with existing license? Are you kidding me? here I will fix it for you. Make it that we can choose the mounts we want and give the gems back. Don't give a money refund just give the gems back and take away the skins. Then they can choose the skins they want and at the same time they have gems left over. You keep the money and we get the skins we want everyone is happy.

They will never do this.... it would equal a net loss of overall funds as those gems would be used to buy future content that they intend to sell. THEY KNOW THIS WILL LOSE THEM MONEY ergo they will not do it. Folks, its clear.... its become all about the money for these people. your refusal to reverse this system for the sake of losing some funds is, in the end... going to cost you everything. If you dont fix this now, Say hello to the beginning of the end here.... mark my words.

I'm going to get in trouble for quoting this but at this point I could careless at this point. I agree with you 100%. They treated the community with disrespect by adding this system and will not fix it. Not fixing this is unacceptable, yes the other skins will be sold like the outfits and that's good but not fixing the existing problem tells me this was about money and using the people's feelings against them aka gambling. I was disappointed with you anet but now I see it's just numbers, nothing more.

[Elear.8459]

@Khaldris.9026 said:

@"Mike O Brien.4613" said:

• You’ve requested variety, and this is a way to support variety. Individual sale is a mechanic that works with a few, flashy skins. Using a grab bag mechanic gives us leeway to create skins to suit a wide range of player tastes while offering a lower price per skin.

But you can't "suit player tastes" by creating a system that

actively prohibits player choice.

.

So. Much. This.

I can understand everything else in message, even agree with some of it, but this right here makes me question honestly of whole message. Or, no offense, ability to think logically of person that came up with it. Wide range of player tastes means that everyone should find in there one or two, or maybe even 5 mounts they like, which is good, yes. But because of random nature, by buying single license at low price you are almost certain to not get something that suits your tastes. It does not matter how discounted price is when essentially you have to buy it many times over just to get something you like.

[spellchekc.5409]

@Kyvrn.4209 said:I'm sorry to say, but you lost a player thanks to this update.

Yeah, after I see the fallout from the rest of the community I'm out as well. I've been playing since friends and family release too.

[Fire X.5184]

@Hecate.2891 said:If this is seriously the attempt to win back the hurt players and to make everyone happy then EVENT FAILED. You don't even get a bronze participation for that lackluster attempt to alleviate the issue.

Right?

[Tachenon.5270]

Yes, thanks for taking the time out of your busy schedule to so eloquently blow smoke in our faces. The random adoption thing, of course, remains the same pile of steaming mount excrement it was before, but now we can rest assured that you have no intention whatsoever of cleaning it up. So, yes. Thanks.

[Geminx.3789]

I'm sorry but that's bullshit. Skins locked behind rng systems have been hated by the community since October 2016 with the revamp of Black Lion Chests. You just acknowledged mount skins cause it generated an incredible shitstorm, without giving a crap about the feedbacks we gave, being angry for both systems and about the fact that the mounts we bought with the expansion had to be cosmetically subpar so that you could sell us 30 reskins less than 2 months from the expansion, with some being basically the base version with 4 dye channels.

I'm sorry to say this, but I'll take my money to another company, I'm done with this.

[Aedelric.1287]

So, what does this mean? All mounts from now on are going to cost two thousand gems? I hope not!

I can not be optimistic as currently nothing has actually changed and we only have a vague promise that things will be done differently in the future. Considering the amazingly bad judgement the team has had so far in regards to mounts, I will take that promise with a pinch of salt.

[Kahrgan.7401]

@Jaskar.3071 said:

@Kahrgan.7401 said:In summary: "Please continue to shovel money our way, I'm sorry you feel that we were in the wrong"

Story time: My roommate's boyfriend, whos never played guild wars 1 or 2, was asking me about the "mount loot box" as he saw the huge upset it created, and after talking with him he said that he was thinking about picking up the game but will not now due to this.

You push more people away with bad decisions like this. The bad press from mount loot boxes cost you more than you gained short term.

Short sighted as always.

if that roommate's boyfriend doesn't start this game because of some OPTIONAL skin-set (that admitedly is rng and bad) he is missing out all the rest of the game that is very awesome indeed and well done and so far without even a glimps of "pay to win"

i personally am satisfied that there will no further skins be on the rng-table and i m looking forward to the skins that can be purchased directly

it's about loot boxes in general ruining online gaming.

[Kalibri.5861]

Uhh, no.

@Mike O Brien.4613 said:We hoped that the design of the Mount Adoption License would be reassuring.This is unbelievable. I literally cannot and do not believe that you could be so collectively ignorant given all of the coverage this issue has received recently.In this case, we made some missteps:

• At a time when there’s a lot of debate about random boxes in gaming, we should have anticipated that a new system with a random element would cause alarm.How could you possibly not have anticipated it? You admit you know this has been controversial. Your 'whoops' is nonsense. Your engineers, and designers, and managers are not stupid people, and you shouldn't act like they are. It makes you look foolish, Mike.
• We released mount skins with three different purchase models, but with the majority of skins released so far through the Adoption License. It’s easy to perceive this as intentionally channeling you toward randomization.'Perceive'? You forced people into RNG. Why are you being slippery about it? You say 'we made some missteps' but then you put it on players for 'perceiving'?
• The Adoption License is a large set at 30 skins. We stand by the work our artists put into each skin, but it’s understandable to see this as pushing down the odds of acquiring any one skin, and to worry that we might add more skins to lower the chances further.Your artists did great work! Everybody says so. Which is why it's such a shame that you tacked their efforts onto this loathesome piece of garbage.

Here are some of the benefits we had in mind when designing the Mount Adoption License:

• You get a brand-new, unique mount skin every time, for a substantial discount versus an individual purchase price.It's not a discount just because you say it is. There have been plenty of discussions of value over the course of the past few days. 400 gems for a random skin that has no value to you is a waste of 400 gems. 400 gems wasted means your product is discounted trash. If it's literally worthless to a player then you're taking them for a ride and they get that, which is why people are angry. You're apologising now because people see you, so stop trying to defend this.
• It uses a progressive mechanic. Every license gives you a new skin to use and increases the odds of acquiring any remaining skins.
• You’ve requested variety, and this is a way to support variety. Individual sale is a mechanic that works with a few, flashy skins. Using a grab bag mechanic gives us leeway to create skins to suit a wide range of player tastes while offering a lower price per skin.How about you ditch your ridiculous policy of artificial scarcity in the gem store and just publish everything to the shop? Design a properly good and useful interface for it, make it searchable and filterable (like, hey, the trading post), and let people buy what they want. By using a grab bag, what you're actually doing is forcing people to accept things that you may not otherwise be able to sell, or which may not sell as well as you'd like. Here's a better idea: TALK. TO. YOUR. PLAYERS. Advertise designs. Use your media outlets to hype cosmetics. Gauge customer response, and use that information to focus efforts on profitable work. Be thoughtful and considerate, not exploitative.

Microtransactions can be polarizing, and we’ve received both positive and negative feedback on the license. We won’t change the existing license in a way that would invalidate the investment players have made, but I want to confirm to you that our next planned mount skin releases will focus on individual sales like the Reforged Warhound and bundles like the Spooky Mounts Pack. We will not add any skins to the currently available Adoption License, thus not pushing down the odds of acquiring any one skin in that set.

We appreciate the thoughtful feedback many of you have provided, and that you hold us to high standards for monetization. It’s been a challenging but wonderful goal to support live development and Living World purely through optional microtransactions, and it’s your support that’s made that possible. Thank you.

~ MOInsufficient, Mike. This is a bunch of manipulative, soft-skills PR marketing tripe and you know it. I've genuinely cared about your games, so much, for years. I've been an advocate, and a good player. I love my characters, I'll miss the world, I don't want to go, but for now I'm out. I hope you guys find a way to make this work better for everyone. Good luck with the game. ??

[Alga.6498]

I will support and I will gladly purchase gemshop items, no matter what. If I like it of course. But I bought the 9,600 gems mount skin license contract because I love the variatons and the skins!

[Moontalon.2618]

While I didn't expect any changes to the mount adoption license because it was unfortunately too late the moment it was released into the wild, I hope you guys reconsider your price point as well because the randomness was not the only issue. If future individual purchase skins cost as much as that reforged jackal skin you'll be missing the mark yet again. 2,000 gems is entirely too much for one mount skin, even one that drastically changes the mount's appearance such as that one.