Is it ok to lock the Gryphon mount behind a gold sink collection.

[NoMaDhOoK.2958]

Oh no. God forbid there is a longer term goal. People seem to forget that this is a MMO. They need incentives to keep you playing. 250g is the sweet spot. Especially for those that are poor. It gives them a long term goal to work towards that isn't a legendary that can cost 8 or so times that. I don't get why people don't want to play the game. Trust me it'll feel good once you save up enough for it

[Eloc Freidon.5692]

Considering you absolutely need it to get at least one achievement and mastery point, this is by definition pay to win.I'd rather pay 1 million karma.

[Ellisande.5218]

No it isn't ok. The only people who claim it is ok are the people who already have enough money. Those people should not be the ones dictating what is and is not ok because this cost is not an excessive burden for them. They are just trying to proselytize to us from up in their white towers. The people actually affected, ie those who can't afford it now, should be the ones who decide whether this is ok or not, about whether it makes sense for us to have to wait just because we play differently.

When a world event only pays 2 silver, then the huge gold expense is not ok. Either dramatically increase the rewards for events or else lower the cost of everything to be commensurate with the pay from world events.

[ElderNewt.5840]

Yes.250g over the course of x time isn't a lot.This is a MMO.. not everything is, will be or should be unlocked instantly

[TexZero.7910]

@Ellisande.5218 said:No it isn't ok. The only people who claim it is ok are the people who already have enough money. Those people should not be the ones dictating what is and is not ok because this cost is not an excessive burden for them. They are just trying to proselytize to us from up in their white towers. The people actually affected, ie those who can't afford it now, should be the ones who decide whether this is ok or not, about whether it makes sense for us to have to wait just because we play differently.

When a world event only pays 2 silver, then the huge gold expense is not ok. Either dramatically increase the rewards for events or else lower the cost of everything to be commensurate with the pay from world events.

Fractals = ~ 20g a day (just for the dailies)SW chest farm for ~1hr = ~20g8 Unique dungeons = 5g (+ whatever liquid gold those paths give + token conversion)

and there's many other ways to get gold....

Gold is effectively cheap. You can get it several ways for little to no effort. 250g as outlined really isn't that long and would only take you ~13 days assuming you make no other gold. Also keep in mind that you don't just drop 250g at once, you drop it in 10x25g increments.

[Vyrulisse.1246]

Also to be clear, it's not 250 gold upfront, it's 25 gold per item you have to buy. For a lot of players (probably most) that's called progression and earning something. I've talked to a lot of people who think you need 250 gold up front to get the Griffon and that's not the case. It's meant to be done in steps. You can also use Griffons once you begin the journey. Each PoF map has a roost you can "borrow" Griffons from whenever you want and you can still do the other parts of the collection while you save the gold up. I'm not really understanding the issue here that people have with this.

[RoseofGilead.8907]

After finishing up the various steps for getting my new, shiny griffon mount, I still say the price is fair. As others have said, you don't have to pay a lump sum of 250 gold right away; you can split it up into 25g increments whenever you can/want to spare the gold. Then you can farm up the next 25g, while doing other things you enjoy doing in-game.

[Sylv.5324]

This is sort of like a legendary mount, and I think it should stay as it is.

[Galgamos.1467]

Yes, I find it to be a massive problem, but the gryphon mount is only the visible tip of the problem. Ever since the Living Story season 1, there has been a problem with equipment availability and playstyles being locked behind a massive farm wall that essentially requires you to play a different playstyle until you have enough money to afford the one you want.Thinking back to Guild Wars 1 and the original release of Guild Wars 2, everything was easily available to everybody. You could run any stat combination you wanted with very little investment. You looked very silly while doing so, since the cheap equipment didn't exactly look badass, but you were just as efficient as everybody else who had invested hundreds of hours into farming. The economy was based off of the weakest link in the chain.What we see here is a problem that started with the sentinel gear. Suddenly they didn't lock looks but rather stat combinations behind a rather large investment wall, effectively making specific playstyles unavailable for people who simply couldn't invest a considerable amount of time or money into the game. When the original sentinel gear came out, our group's tank (yes, we had one) decided that it would make for a better equipment alternative than his current soldier gear. However, when he saw the prices that the building materials were sold for, he simply quit the game and didn't play any MMOs until ESO came out. The game actively scared him away because it required more investment than he could offer, due to him working a time consuming job.The problem grew more apparent with the release of Heart of Thorns, where a lot of interesting equipment (such as viper or trailblazer) was locked behind a massive wall of quintessential investment. Just to name an example, maguuma lillies aren't cheap or easy to come by, even nowadays, and a lot of them are necessary to make a full set of equipment.Path of Fire continues to accelerate the problem by not only locking stat combinations but rather an entire gameplay mechanic behind such a massive grind wall.The very same tank as well as our long time healer thought of really getting back into the game with the new expansion, but when they heard that they'd once again need to invest more time than they could, they simply went back to ESO. The problem is not the price of the gryphon mount, but rather that the game's mechanics are only available to the game's most rich players.

TL;DR Yes, it is a problem that gameplay is locked behind such a massive time investment. While I definetely agree that there needs to be interesting endgame content, it should not be at the cost of gameplay. Let people play what they want while giving them silly looking equipment, and give those who are ready to invest time or money the badass-looking stuff.

[Ameepa.6793]

I was just surprised it was that cheap :)

[Ayumi Spender.1082]

I still not okay with it. I did it because I wanted it. I have fun with the griffon, but I keep remembering that 250 gold for... what was it? 10 lame contracts...?

[Nightshade.5924]

@Menadena.7482 said:

@Nightshade.5924 said:

@Mitzarin.2963 said:

@Pifil.5193 said:Is fine, a 250g sink is fine for this, most vets probably have far more than this (I've sank a lot more gold into cultural armour and got much less out of it) and those that don't have that much gold can make it over a few weeks or months and treat it as a longer term goal.

That's a fair point; but the achievement and title for cultural armor doesn't have an effect on game-play, the Griffon does. It replaces the glider as a more effective version of it that also travels fast - additionally, it locks mastery experience behind gold (or real life $$) which has not been done before and in my mind sets a dangerous precedent. ONE time is OK, but when people are all like whatever, it's fine, that's when in the third expansion, we're potentially paying 500 gold just to progress.

My thing is... I just paid for an expansion. SO WHY AM I EFFECTIVELY PAYING TWENTY MORE DOLLARS FOR A MOUNT THAT IS PART OF THAT EXPANSION? 100 Gold, at most, would have been reasonable. That would make the entire mount line about 130 gold. That is a much more sane and reasonable gold sink. 250 gold is almost what you would pay for a commander upgrade... more/better functionality, granted, but it bears saying again... this is an EXTRA COST HIDDEN in the expansion. Bad form, Anet, Bad form.

Strange, I did not notice much of an upgrade when I got my commander tag.

I would GLADLY pay 250 gold for the griffon if that is all it was. I decided against it the moment I heard the quest involved jumping puzzles. Suddenly I lost interest in completing the story because then I would feel I had to get the griffon and knew I would not enjoy the quest.

I guess you missed my point. The commander tag is a VANITY item. It HAS no real extra functionality. So charging 300 gold for it is NO big deal. It's not special or particularly useful and has no cool mechanic. The only real reason to get it is VAAAAANNNNIITTTY!! But the griffon HAS functionality. It HAS cool abilities. And YET I have to pay 250 gold for it. That's effectively $20 more for the expansion, HIDDEN IN THE GAME. 100 gold would be more reasonable, more sane, more in keeping w/ the progression of the REST of the Mount line. 50 gold would be even better, making it only 2 1/2 times the cost of the jackal. But NOOOOOOO... ANet decided to make it a gold sink.

A much easier fix to remove gold from the game is ... take away the 2 gold award for the daily. Change it to a random item/group of items, items that can be TRADED AND SOLD on the BLM. A second fix would be to cut all the monetary rewards for PvP and WvW in HALF.

If ANet had REALLY wanted this to be a vanity item, they should have gated it behind a quest series like that required to attain a precursor. Not doing so is a slap in the face to ALL the customers who paid for the expansion and now have to PAY MORE to use it all.

[Draygo.9473]

I am confounded by the idea that gaining gold isn't progression and that it has no place in a MMO.

If the Gryphon quest had you do any 40 fractals or dungeons would you complain?

But that's what 250 gold is, roughly 40 fractals/dungeons with selling loot. Ascended weapons and armor are also not free, they are quite expensive. Just because a lot of players harvest the mats themselves doesn't mean they are any cheaper (opportunity cost), should you just be given a free ascended set just because?

Gaining gold in game is a form of progression, and 250G is not an excessive amount of gold. The majority of people I run into that cannot afford it have enough materials in the material storage to instantly get to 250g (this was me). I just sold a few mystic coins, leather stacks, iron, t5 and t6 crafting items, tons of ingredients etc to get the gold. 250G is not an amount of money that is going to require you to change your play style to earn. It will just take some time.

Its fine to have goals in the game, or reasons to play. If you give everyone everything then people simply stop playing.

For those that have trouble visualizing this go here:

https://gw2efficiency.com/account/materials

Put in an API key and at the top it will show your mat storage value if you sold everything that you can sell. Or the overview page - Liquid Gold(sell).

If you played the game for than 60 hours total, you probably have 250 gold.

I think one of the odd effects of this game is that it never really feels like you are earning a lot of gold, when you in fact are earning a lot of net worth. The game constantly pays you in pennies for stuff, but then gives you a free car here and there, but for some reason we always undervalue that car because the car isn't money, even if it can be sold for money.

[Noa.7490]

250 gold is far from being a sink. If it would have been 2,500 gold then I would agree with the statement, but not with 250 gold, which can be earned in a reasonable amount of time.

[Hevoskuuri.3891]

The collection in itself is already very time-consuming and somewhat challenging, so the additional 250g paywall feels like a big middle finger slapped on top of it. They could have implemented the 250g as a shortcut to get the mount right away and skip the collection, but not make it mandatory to get the mount. Especially when you can't even reach the max mastery level without buying it.

Well, no point ranting about it, it is what it is. I'm personally not that interested in the mount itself, since it feels a bit clunky with the high starting points and complicated maneuvers (and I love my Jackal too much to switch it into anything else), but I'm paying the gold because my inner perfectionist wants those mastery levels maxed out.

[Ayakaru.6583]

Yes, its okay, because its not necessary to play 99% of the game.I think the general idea is that the average player takes 3-4 days to get 25g if they dont rush lootent, which means it takes 2 months to complete for casuals, 1 month for active players, and 1-2 weeks for people who know how to grind

[Faaris.8013]

@Noa.7490 said:250 gold is far from being a sink. If it would have been 2,500 gold then I would agree with the statement, but not with 250 gold, which can be earned in a reasonable amount of time.

It worked great for making people put their hoarded mats on the market. ArenaNet could give us numbers of how many resources moved from hoarders to cash cows after PoF launch. It was a one-time gold sink, and I think it worked great. Prices for materials dropped heavily because people are flooding the market to get cash. The materials will end up in other players' storages, gold flows from those players to the sellers and then into the sink. After the first run is over, the buyers will put their materials back on the market, at higher prices. Those who had no cash before and sold their stuff will earn gold again to basically buy back their resources.

The people who had thousands of gold before PoF are the winners here, those who hoarded mats but had no coin are the losers. Millions of gold have been removed from the economy and millions of materials have changed ownership. If that's what ArenaNet wanted, they are a winner too.

[Dondarrion.2748]

Got the Griffon, love it, completely worth its cost; but I still love my Jackal even more!

[PopeUrban.2578]

@Killerbot.8645 said:Its a gold sink for richer players and a goal to work towards for poorer players, I don't see the issue really.

You don't really need the Griffon for anything, there's (I think) only 1 Mastery point thats made much easier with it but the other 4 mounts(especially rank 3 Springer) can do everything without much trouble.

Also note: You don't need to OWN a griffon to get that MP. I used a borrowed griffon to get it. It's pretty easy to fly from the griffon roost over the tombs even with the basic loaner griffon.

[PopeUrban.2578]

Yes, its fine. Selling stuff and doing collections for the griffon was one of the best experiences I've had in GW2 because its one of the only pricey items I actually wanted.

Legendaries: They give QoL that I'm unlikely to use, and a skin. I was happy and even entertained to do collections for legendaries, but every time I finish a collection set and run up against that price tag I lose interest again.

Anything from the Gem Store: Just no. Listen. If I want something in the gem store, I'm not going to grind gold for it. If I think its overpriced in real money, I'm just not buying it. I'm damn sure not spending insane amounts of time farming gold to buy it. It'll still be overpriced.

Most collections: No thank you. The vast majority of collections offer weapons. Weapons that would replace my black lion skins that I paid good money for. The few that offer armor (which I may actually use) I can get on board with until you ask me to collectathon six million things with no narrative (I'm looking at you blue glowy armor collection) I'll collect a handful of things, but I'm not spending seventeed years checking guides and doing the same fetch quest for a skin. There are other skins, and this one doesn't remind me of any epic battle i had. Just a bunch of alt-tabbing.

Griffon: Hold up, you mean there's a thing that DOES something none of my other stuff does. Doesn't REPLACE stuff I already love, Takes me to INTERESTING places to do INTERESTING events, has PERMANENT EFFECTS ON THE WORLD as I complete it, and costs a REASONABLE amount of gold which I can get by doing WHATEVER I FIND FUN?

AND it unlocks more content to play?

Well I signed right up for that, and now I have this cool thing with a great backstory and actually feel like I accomplished something AND got a useful reward for it, which is an extremely rare feeling in GW2.

The game needs MORE things like this. Useful things that aren't simply cosmetic that involve a quest that leaves a lasting mark on the world, that require a dedicated effort by the player to achieve without feeling like their cost makes them completely out of reach. The Griffon's cost and gameplay to obtain is IMO one of the best gamplay/reward structures the GW2 team has designed. I only wish the entire game felt like it.

[InsaneQR.7412]

I think its fine. It feels so kitten rewarding after all the farming and questing to get the griffon.I had about 40G starting PoF and with smart crafting and selling i am now at about 250G and i already have completed the mount quest.The rewards in the expac are great too and help gathering coin.

[Vodyara.4608]

Far too expensive. Most players will have to grind gold for months, on top of grinding the achievements, before they're able to buy the mount.

Something like 50 gold would have been the best price tag.

[Sobx.1758]

You need other mounts to progress or '100% maps', you don't "NEED" the griffon for anything. So yes, it's ok, because it's just an "extra" and nothing you really need.

[Dredg.4890]

@Eloc Freidon.5692 said:Considering you absolutely need it to get at least one achievement and mastery point, this is by definition pay to win.I'd rather pay 1 million karma.

Which Achievement, which MP?

Also, are you saying you cannot reach either with a loaner Griffon?

[Daffan.8924]

@Malediktus.9250 said:It is completly fine. 250g is nothing nowadays.

I wish i could be like that (but i'm new haha) So I'm still trying to afford bank tabs /=