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Living World Access To New Players


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@mercury ranique.2170 said:I think most confusion is cause originally it is given for free to existing players as a thank you for the loyalty. I have played from launch and have an investment that is considerably higher then someone who starts now with the gameThe original game: 60 euro/USDHeart of Thorns: 50 euro/USDPath of Fire: 30 euro/USDTotal: 140 euro/USD

Currently, when buying all this you pay:The original game: free to playHeart of Thorns: 20 euro/USD (when bundled with Path of Fire) Path of Fire: 30 euro/USD Living world season 2: 19 euro/USDLiving world season 3: 12,50 euro/USDLiving world season 4: 600 gems = 7,50 euro/USD **+***Total: 89 euro/USD or 50 euro and a some farming in game.

Often these go for a 50% sale, so if you wait a bit, it is extra cheapcan be bought with gold in game, it can be farmed bit by bit there are 5 episodes so far. The last one is for free for new and existing players. The second is currently also for free. This price is aimed for that you missed last week give-away for episode one and IF they do not continue in the next two weeks to give away episode 3 and 4 for free as well

My point is that you get things allready a lot more cheaper.However! and this is a big however. I think your point should not be that you should get it for free, but that you should be told about it more clearly. This is a puzzle with many MMO's. I once looked into buying WoW and it is also very unclear what you need to buy. I think marketing could and should solve this by selling bundled packages instead of stackable packages.

  • Again my complaint has nothing to do with price - please read my post carefully, you're arguing against a point I've not made.
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@Turin.6921 said:

@"Cisaro.3169" said:

And it is actually pretty attainable: currently the exchange is like 37 gold for 100 gems. Thats about two days of gold farming (if you know what to do) per episode. And if you buy the pack its a bit less. By the time you finish HoT you should pretty much know everything you need to farm gold efficiently.

Expecting new players to gold farm after playing content so they can go back and play content to give the content they've just played context is a ludicrously inelegant solution

Not really if gold farming includes actually playing the content you already have access to.

". Going completely conservatively and just doing SW farming , which is easy to do, its sth like 4 hours a day. And this reduces a lot if you are skillful in the game and know how to do fast t4 runs and dungeons runs or raid full clears. And you can mix by adding istan and HoT metas for some variety."

  • I think you proved my point about expecting new players to gold farm is silly. Not to mention it's terrible game design.
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@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@"AlexxxDelta.1806" said:A MMO is supposed make new players feel welcome in various ways, in order to "hook" them, especially if it's an aging one. Throwing a bunch of narrative paywalls on them, is not my idea of welcome.

How would you change things, without hurting ANet's bottom line?
  • Charge more for the expansions?
  • Charge veterans for the Living World too?
  • Charge a subscription and include the episode as part of that?

There aren't all that many alternatives and each alienates someone.

  • I think I've already said this - it's not a cash issue it's visibility on content issue. Just tell me upfront or increase the price and throw it all in so there are no surprises.
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The issue is in the presentation. You're experiencing sticker shock because you thought you had it all, but you didn't, and now there's something else you need to buy for the full experience.

I believe some of the expansion options offer gems along with the purchase price; if you chose one of those options you can purchase the LW stories with those gems. But an "everything" option up front would be good.

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@Blude.6812 said:You want them, buy them. Simple.

  • I didn't know I wanted them because I didn't know about them - that's the issue. I'm not begging for LS content for free, I'm letting them know my CX was poor because they didn't give me visibility on what I should buy upfront.

There are a lot of responses from people that either hasn't read the post properly or haven't got the point I was trying to make, if that's the latter it's my issue and I'll improve the original post. Your comment, however, is completely unhelpful but thank you for your time.

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@Cisaro.3169 said:

@mercury ranique.2170 said:I think most confusion is cause originally it is given for free to existing players as a thank you for the loyalty. I have played from launch and have an investment that is considerably higher then someone who starts now with the gameThe original game: 60 euro/USDHeart of Thorns: 50 euro/USDPath of Fire: 30 euro/USDTotal: 140 euro/USD

Currently, when buying all this you pay:The original game: free to playHeart of Thorns: 20 euro/USD (when bundled with Path of Fire)
Path of Fire: 30 euro/USD
Living world season 2: 19 euro/USD
Living world season 3: 12,50 euro/USD
Living world season 4: 600 gems = 7,50 euro/USD **+***Total: 89 euro/USD or 50 euro and a some farming in game.

Often these go for a 50% sale, so if you wait a bit, it is extra cheap
can be bought with gold in game, it can be farmed bit by bit
there are 5 episodes so far. The last one is for free for new and existing players. The second is currently also for free. This price is aimed for that you missed last week give-away for episode one and IF they do not continue in the next two weeks to give away episode 3 and 4 for free as well

My point is that you get things allready a lot more cheaper.However! and this is a big however. I think your point should not be that you should get it for free, but that you should be told about it more clearly. This is a puzzle with many MMO's. I once looked into buying WoW and it is also very unclear what you need to buy. I think marketing could and should solve this by selling bundled packages instead of stackable packages.
  • Again my complaint has nothing to do with price - please read my post carefully, you're arguing against a point I've not made.

You are not really reading what I was saying. The discussion is often about price and why new players do not get the same benefits of existing players (the living world for free). I am argueing that the price is reasonable lower compared to that of existing players, but the problem exist in the way it is presented and bundled. So We actually agree there. the overview over the prices then and now is to illustrate it is not about the money, but about the presentation of the bundle (to which I agree, this scould be done better

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@Cisaro.3169 said:

@"AlexxxDelta.1806" said:A MMO is supposed make new players feel welcome in various ways, in order to "hook" them, especially if it's an aging one. Throwing a bunch of narrative paywalls on them, is not my idea of welcome.

How would you change things, without hurting ANet's bottom line?
  • Charge more for the expansions?
  • Charge veterans for the Living World too?
  • Charge a subscription and include the episode as part of that?

There aren't all that many alternatives and each alienates someone.

  • I think I've already said this - it's not a cash issue it's visibility on content issue. Just tell me upfront or increase the price and throw it all in so there are no surprises.

Yes, I think there's widespread agreement that the presentation is poor. I'm not even sure that anyone disagrees strongly with that.

What appears to have happened is that the thread's title, "Living World Access To New Players," gave the impression it's an accessibility issue, throwing the discussion in a different direction. The post to which I responded called it a paywall problem, which is why I mentioned costs.

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@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:Two interesting ideas which I'd like to call out:

@AlexxxDelta.1806 said:I'd make LS more like spin-off side stories so players without them wouldn't be left with narrative gaps.It's too late in their planning cycle for LS5 to work that way and perhaps even for LS6; it might be soon enough for LS7 (or the expac that some hope for).

@sorudo.9054 said:add 1 episode with the expansion so you have kind of a lure,This is something ANet could do today.

On the other hand, ANet would probably argue that (a) there are already plenty of lures to purchase LS episodes, (b) the are already connected in lore, and © they have to draw the line somewhere, so why not at the start of the season instead of after the first chapter.

Worth thinking about, even though I expect ANet's already considered both and decided against.

in contrary, there is to little in-game lure nor any lore to answer a really small but important question, why should i buy the expansion when i see no reason too?the LS adds lore and anyone already owning the LS episodes know why they should buy the expansions, anyone who doesn't knows nothing so have no reason to buy them.

i own all of it because i have bin playing 7 years ago, new players know nothing and should be expecting to wonder about allot of things.GW2 is horrible at connecting events and at letting ppl know what they missed, a link to wikipedia pages and making video's about them is the lamest thing anyone can ever do.it doesn't teach anything but how bare this game really is, there is absolutely nothing in-game that tells me what happened.

leaving out the LS for new players is already a horrible idea, not adding crucial LS episodes out of an expansion pack is like simply ripping out the first1/3 pages out of a book.

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@Cisaro.3169 said:

And it is actually pretty attainable: currently the exchange is like 37 gold for 100 gems. Thats about two days of gold farming (if you know what to do) per episode. And if you buy the pack its a bit less. By the time you finish HoT you should pretty much know everything you need to farm gold efficiently.

Expecting new players to gold farm after playing content so they can go back and play content to give the content they've just played context is a ludicrously inelegant solution

Not really if gold farming includes actually playing the content you already have access to.

". Going completely conservatively and just doing SW farming , which is easy to do, its sth like 4 hours a day. And this reduces a lot if you are skillful in the game and know how to do fast t4 runs and dungeons runs or raid full clears. And you can mix by adding istan and HoT metas for some variety."
  • I think you proved my point about expecting new players to gold farm is silly. Not to mention it's terrible game design.

I have no idea why you think this proves your point. It is silly and bad game design to allow players that already reached level cap to buy non-free DLC content with in game money with 8 hours of farming? And to reduce this time if you actually have knowledge of the game? And all this by doing activities that actually count as playing the game they already have access to?

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  • 4 months later...

It is pretty unfair to new players. and returning players that missed out.For older players that missed it, I see the argument that it should be a form of punishment for not being active, but you don't know if that could be due to anything from loss of interest, to school, work, hospitalization, etc... I think it is a pretty judgemental and exclusive mindset that doesn't consider how those players and new players alike feel.

Especially if you did pay the money to buy the expansions which the story seems to continue off from the Living World referring to NPCs and stuff (for me, I ended up having to tune out most of the story of both HOT and POF due to being lost). It wouldn't be much problem if they did include it with the expansions, or had a pack with all the story combined, then it wouldn't have felt unfair or like an incomplete product that you bought.

I have no idea who these NPCs are, but I didn't have much choice since I really really wanted a glider and the mounts to help with the core PvE exploration of the world and core story. There is that huge gap of missed story because either someone doesn't feel it is fair (the game doesn't exactly advertise that you must buy parts of the story), or because they can't easily afford it.I've played for years and still don't have enough gold, either. I'm a casual player so for me it seems impossible since I also need gold for updating equipment and can't grind endlessly without getting tired of a game.

But yeah, overall, the problem is less about the price and more about the fact that it's like a "hidden fee" they don't tell you about when you start the game or returned to the game if you played before LS and came back after. You can't fully enjoy the product (expansions) you paid real money for to the fullest potential that it was intended to be enjoyed, because to do so required to play LS, which cost money or required you to be there at the exact time to be lucky and get it free.

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@Kouki.5260 said:It is pretty unfair to new players. and returning players that missed out.For older players that missed it, I see the argument that it should be a form of punishment for not being active,You've got this the wrong way around. GW2 isn't punishing anyone by removing DLC access. Unlike other games though, it does give those that play longer/more regularly a bonus in the form of free DLC access. If you miss out on the free bonus that's unfortunate, but even then the episodes aren't that expensive if you compare them to DLC prices of similar games.

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@Cisaro.3169 said:

And it is actually pretty attainable: currently the exchange is like 37 gold for 100 gems. Thats about two days of gold farming (if you know what to do) per episode. And if you buy the pack its a bit less. By the time you finish HoT you should pretty much know everything you need to farm gold efficiently.

Expecting new players to gold farm after playing content so they can go back and play content to give the content they've just played context is a ludicrously inelegant solution

Not really if gold farming includes actually playing the content you already have access to.

". Going completely conservatively and just doing SW farming , which is easy to do, its sth like 4 hours a day. And this reduces a lot if you are skillful in the game and know how to do fast t4 runs and dungeons runs or raid full clears. And you can mix by adding istan and HoT metas for some variety."
  • I think you proved my point about expecting new players to gold farm is silly. Not to mention it's terrible game design.

in that case there is bad news for you. GW2 is all about farming for gold or materials. E.g. the narrative part of a living story episode is easily played through in 1 or 2 short evenings, then it is weeks again farming maps for some irrelevant skin or achievement. It is not completely without appeal, but in GW2 you don´t go on adventures, you scrounge the majority of your time. Relaxing, sometimes entertaining, rarely exciting.

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@Algreg.3629 said:

And it is actually pretty attainable: currently the exchange is like 37 gold for 100 gems. Thats about two days of gold farming (if you know what to do) per episode. And if you buy the pack its a bit less. By the time you finish HoT you should pretty much know everything you need to farm gold efficiently.

Expecting new players to gold farm after playing content so they can go back and play content to give the content they've just played context is a ludicrously inelegant solution

Not really if gold farming includes actually playing the content you already have access to.

". Going completely conservatively and just doing SW farming , which is easy to do, its sth like 4 hours a day. And this reduces a lot if you are skillful in the game and know how to do fast t4 runs and dungeons runs or raid full clears. And you can mix by adding istan and HoT metas for some variety."
  • I think you proved my point about expecting new players to gold farm is silly. Not to mention it's terrible game design.

in that case there is bad news for you. GW2 is all about farming for gold or materials. E.g. the narrative part of a living story episode is easily played through in 1 or 2 short evenings, then it is weeks again farming maps for some irrelevant skin or achievement. It is not completely without appeal, but in GW2 you don´t go on adventures, you scrounge the majority of your time. Relaxing, sometimes entertaining, rarely exciting.That may be your way of playing this game, but I can assure you that it's not universal :) .
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@"Kouki.5260" said:But yeah, overall, the problem is less about the price and more about the fact that it's like a "hidden fee" they don't tell you about when you start the game or returned to the game if you played before LS and came back after. You can't fully enjoy the product (expansions) you paid real money for to the fullest potential that it was intended to be enjoyed, because to do so required to play LS, which cost money or required you to be there at the exact time to be lucky and get it free.Then i have some good news to you. Although it won't be fixed retroactively, that problem is going to disappear for all future content, because there don't seem to be any plans for new expansions anymore. It will be only LS now. So, no conflict like this will appear again.

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@Algreg.3629 said:in that case there is bad news for you. GW2 is all about farming for gold or materials. E.g. the narrative part of a living story episode is easily played through in 1 or 2 short evenings, then it is weeks again farming maps for some irrelevant skin or achievement. It is not completely without appeal, but in GW2 you don´t go on adventures, you scrounge the majority of your time. Relaxing, sometimes entertaining, rarely exciting.Really? Because I play GW2 for the fact that I don't have to farm at all. Almost all content PVE and PVP is accessible.

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When I first got into the game I encountered this. It greatly effected my experience. When I bought HoT the website advertised it as unlocking all content related to HoT. That is an implication that I would get the full Living World 3 season. Since I complained it was removed from the site, but they still do not address Living World at all as needing further purchases for all the content.

Any arguments of "you can buy them with gold" will be disregarded.

Anet needs to be outright clear that buying the expansions is NOT the full game. Besides, Living World shouldn't be charged anyways since what makes them the real money is the repeat purchases in the Gem store. If selling LW chapters for Gems was really that important, they wouldn't be giving them away to anyone.

If anything, a current season should be unlocked in full if you are active during it at all. Missed full seasons can be sold. I was fine with purchasing Season 2.

tl;drI am actually a bit burned, because when I bought HoT it informed me that I would get all content involving it. Only to find that I had to pay another fee anyways. Anet fixed the purchase page, but I still got burned by Anet being really poor at word choice.

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Path of Fire: 30 euroHeart of Thorns: 30 euroSeason 2: 1280 gemsSeason 3: 960 gemsSeason 4: 960 (most likely) gemsTotal 3200 gems

You can either buy 2800 gems for 35 euro or 4000 gems for 50 euro, no option for 3200 gemsThis means you'd need to pay 110 euro to have access to everything in the game when you begin playing, and have some left over gems for a single outfit or a gathering tool.

This makes Guild Wars 2 a very expensive game to start. And each expansion will make this worse.

Maybe, just maybe, they want to rethink this strategy and that's why they didn't announce an expansion, but LS 5.

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@"Eloc Freidon.5692" said:When I first got into the game I encountered this. It greatly effected my experience. When I bought HoT the website advertised it as unlocking all content related to HoT. That is an implication that I would get the full Living World 3 season. Since I complained it was removed from the site, but they still do not address Living World at all as needing further purchases for all the content.

Any arguments of "you can buy them with gold" will be disregarded.

Anet needs to be outright clear that buying the expansions is NOT the full game. Besides, Living World shouldn't be charged anyways since what makes them the real money is the repeat purchases in the Gem store. If selling LW chapters for Gems was really that important, they wouldn't be giving them away to anyone.

If anything, a current season should be unlocked in full if you are active during it at all. Missed full seasons can be sold. I was fine with purchasing Season 2.

tl;drI am actually a bit burned, because when I bought HoT it informed me that I would get all content involving it. Only to find that I had to pay another fee anyways. Anet fixed the purchase page, but I still got burned by Anet being really poor at word choice.

Buying Skyrim doesn’t entitle me to the DLC content. Buying ESO, and it’s expansions, doesn’t entitle me to the DLC maps. Unless it’s specifically mentioned that the Living Story seasons would be included, it’s the players’ fault for making that assumption and not researching what they’re buying beforehand.

Tl;dr Living Story seasons require an expansion (except LS2) but they are not part of the expansion.

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@"Eloc Freidon.5692" said:When I first got into the game I encountered this. It greatly effected my experience. When I bought HoT the website advertised it as unlocking all content related to HoT. That is an implication that I would get the full Living World 3 season. Since I complained it was removed from the site, but they still do not address Living World at all as needing further purchases for all the content.

Any arguments of "you can buy them with gold" will be disregarded.

Anet needs to be outright clear that buying the expansions is NOT the full game. Besides, Living World shouldn't be charged anyways since what makes them the real money is the repeat purchases in the Gem store. If selling LW chapters for Gems was really that important, they wouldn't be giving them away to anyone.

If anything, a current season should be unlocked in full if you are active during it at all. Missed full seasons can be sold. I was fine with purchasing Season 2.

tl;drI am actually a bit burned, because when I bought HoT it informed me that I would get all content involving it. Only to find that I had to pay another fee anyways. Anet fixed the purchase page, but I still got burned by Anet being really poor at word choice.

You did get every content involving heart of thorns.Season 3 is content that happens after heart of thorns leading up to path of fire so inbettwen the 2 expansions.

@maddoctor.2738 said:Path of Fire: 30 euroHeart of Thorns: 30 euroSeason 2: 1280 gemsSeason 3: 960 gemsSeason 4: 960 (most likely) gemsTotal 3200 gems

You can either buy 2800 gems for 35 euro or 4000 gems for 50 euro, no option for 3200 gemsThis means you'd need to pay 110 euro to have access to everything in the game when you begin playing, and have some left over gems for a single outfit or a gathering tool.

This makes Guild Wars 2 a very expensive game to start. And each expansion will make this worse.

Maybe, just maybe, they want to rethink this strategy and that's why they didn't announce an expansion, but LS 5.

Well you can get it cheaper than that but not much.Path of fire ultimate 79.99 euro added hot 20 euro that inludes 4k gems in the ultimate so 99.99 in total.

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Well ... other games with more expansions are even more expensive. For example WoW. While they seem to have a complete collection which is cheap compared to full prices for each expansion ... old players probably had to buy all the exansions when they came out. Plus the subscriptoin fee. New players have to pay subscription (after free month) as well.

So I wouldn't say GW2 is expensive. They seem to have higher overall cost with expansions staying at a higher price (probably even with more expansiosn coming out later) ... then again you can start for free and you don't need to pay a subscription.

In fact it makes sense. And I like to play it in order of release. I have my old paid account without expansions back then from relaese and after a long break I'll continue with season 2 first (should it go on sale - i hope soon) then HoT. (Even though some people recommend getting PoF first then going quickly for first mount for convenience.) So I can have the story in order and won't have too much content at once. (First doing some maps of the first expansion. Then the next one.)

And not forced to buy both at the same time. (Even though it seems a lil bit cheaper if you buy the package with both.)

Edit: In the calculation example above: Let's say you buy 2800 gems for real money. Trade the remaining ones for gold or get 400 from a achievement chest every 5k. Since you don't need everything at the start you don't need to play all the money at once. I have about 13000 AP just from core game which I played from release until end 2013. Then break and back to GW2 in June 2019. Requires you to do a lot of different stuff though. I guess 5k should not be that hard since personal story and stuff ... first completion they give AP. Later it gets more limited (dailies until reaching cap and some harder/grindier stuff until I get expansions and map related stuff on new maps which gives a new set of easy to obtain AP).

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