Hmm. ANet's
response isn't all that surprising, I guess. It sounds like they'll be going the route of the Halloween mount skin bundles and the forged skin just released, which means more expensive overall.
I feel like this entire thing would have gone over better if they had just done a few simple things. Namely, given us mount skins as rewards in game already with multiple dye channels as well as having the default skins have multiple channels.They also should have separated each mount type into it's own license. Either as a separate license item entirely or a second selection that lets you choose the stable to try at. No one wants to try 10 times and get 7 skimmer skins, two springer skins and a texture swamp raptor when all they want is a griffon skin.
I like the idea of a large bundle to save money, but the skins in said bundle need to be very different from the default skin. The spooky mount pack was 1600 gems, which is the slightly less price per skin as the license at full price (320 vs 340). The license just has way too much in it with too large a chance to get nothing I want out of it for a price that's not even cheaper than what they did before. The spooky pack is the way to go to make most people happy, but they're probably going to start selling things individually a lot too for 2k gems a pop like the reforged skin is.