Cost-Prohibitive to Returning Players

[ProtoGunner.4953]

I understand these posts. It's just not really customer friendly. They should add those either to the corresponding expansions or inform them and let them add it during the buying process with clear information like for 20-30 more you get everything. And for all the 'WOW IS MUCH MORE EXPENSIVE BLABLA" guys: depending on how you play, you are better off like the OP. 

[Klowdy.3126]

2 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Sure there are. Of course, besides free DLCs, those games offer also paid ones. Usually, a lot more of the paid ones.

Which ones? I tried to think, and couldn't come up with any, but someone did say PoE.

[Cuks.8241]

Grinding gold to pay for parts of the story is not the best marketing for new players. Sure makes sense from an experienced player pov. But if I was looking for a new game and people told me that parts of the story are locked behind paywall or gold grind I would probably not pick it up.

[kharmin.7683]

34 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

Grinding gold to pay for parts of the story is not the best marketing for new players. Sure makes sense from an experienced player pov. But if I was looking for a new game and people told me that parts of the story are locked behind paywall or gold grind I would probably not pick it up.

But you would have no issue paying a monthly subscription fee even if you don't have a character that can (yet) access story content?  Just curious.

 

[Cuks.8241]

21 minutes ago, kharmin.7683 said:

But you would have no issue paying a monthly subscription fee even if you don't have a character that can (yet) access story content?  Just curious.

 

I don't understand the "even if you don't have a character that can (yet) access story content". Monthly fee is something that the customer decides if it's worth it or not. Different games have different business models. Often you get enough of a period without the fee to decide if you like it or not. You also don't need to pay the fee if you will not play for a certain period. 

The issue that could happen with gw2 (I could be wrong, only Anet knows) that the upfront cost is just to high for a new player. A cost of 60-100 EUR (I don't know how much  to get all the story content actually is) is relatively high for a 9 year old game. Sure you get lot's of accumulated content but on the other hand you can buy a brand new exciting mmorpg for 40 EUR (New world for example). And if you don't like the game you lost 40EUR compared to 60-100EUR with GW2.

My point was that experienced players have a different view on the game. First of all they like it, otherwise they wouldn't play it. They know that it is good value (I don't argue that). A new player doesn't know that. Marketing is often bad from Anet, there is not much social media content. The LS model is not clear. And than you get hit with high upfront cost and players that tell you to grind. Not the best marketing.

Edited October 26, 2021 by Cuks.8241

[Flasterko.4087]

What I think is the problem with those Living Stories is their label. Lot of players coming from other MMOs and by thay experience they probably think they are buying just some story quests. 

 

I too came from other MMO - LOTRO and when I started to play this game I thought that I need to pay for some story so much. But it is not just the story, you pay for new maps, mastery abilities/skills, some more landscape bosses to kill... I bought LS3 and LS4 with real money when they were on discount 1 year ago and I didnt regret any coin. Only thing that I would not recommend is LS2, maybe Icebrood saga too but that goes now for free as others mentioned. 

[kharmin.7683]

20 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

I don't understand the "even if you don't have a character that can (yet) access story content". Monthly fee is something that the customer decides if it's worth it or not. Different games have different business models. Often you get enough of a period without the fee to decide if you like it or not. You also don't need to pay the fee if you will not play for a certain period. 

The issue that could happen with gw2 (I could be wrong, only Anet knows) that the upfront cost is just to high for a new player. A cost of 60-100 EUR (I don't know how much  to get all the story content actually is) is relatively high for a 9 year old game. Sure you get lot's of accumulated content but on the other hand you can buy a brand new exciting mmorpg for 40 EUR (New world for example). And if you don't like the game you lost 40EUR compared to 60-100EUR with GW2.

My point was that experienced players have a different view on the game. First of all they like it, otherwise they wouldn't play it. They know that it is good value (I don't argue that). A new player doesn't know that. Marketing is often bad from Anet, there is not much social media content. The LS model is not clear. And than you get hit with high upfront cost and players that tell you to grind. Not the best marketing.

Ok, let me try again.

GW2 new player who decides to shell out all of the up-front cost but doesn't have a character who is of level to play the content has paid for content that is "gated" or unavailable at the time of purchase.  Over time, the player will level and as they progress through the content (for which they already paid, up front) they will eventually realize the return on the initial investment.  They will have been able to play all of the content that they had purchased, up front, over the span of ... however long it takes to complete all of the content.

A new player in a monthly sub-based MMO isn't able to access all of the end-game content (yet!) because they won't have a character who is of sufficient level.  Over time (again, however long it takes and with monthly payments), they will be able to access that content.  The cost may well be almost the same -- over time -- in either scenario. 

What's nice about GW2, is that new players do not have to purchase all of the available content up front.  They can purchase/unlock it as they progress whereas sub-based MMOs hook players in for monthly fees whether they can access all of the content or not and over time, those monthly fees will add up.

I will not argue about the marketing angle.  I agree that Anet could be more clear about it.

[Tukaram.8256]

I bought the game when it first came out, and pre-ordered each of the expansions.  I paid a lot more $110 over 7 years.  But I am happy to support the development of a game I enjoy.

 

Sounds to me like you are getting a bargain. 😎

[Zentao.6314]

I agree that anet should inform the players, but the OP clearly stated that the $100 is expensive and not worth for these contents (which is absolutely ridiciolus).

For anet:
- separate HoT from PoF
- HoT should include LW2
- PoF should include LW3
- Complete package should include LW2 and LW3

The price should be like $15-20 / expansion

Edited October 26, 2021 by Zentao.6314

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

44 minutes ago, Zentao.6314 said:

I agree that anet should inform the players, but the OP clearly stated that the $100 is expensive and not worth for these contents (which is absolutely ridiciolus).

For anet:
- separate HoT from PoF
- HoT should include LW2
- PoF should include LW3
- Complete package should include LW2 and LW3

The price should be like $15-20 / expansion

So, give Living World Seasons 2 and 3 at no cost? (The HoT/PoF bundle is $30.)  Also, you must own Heart of Thorns to access Season 3, so with your model, the laments would be that new players paid for Path of Fire, but can't access the extra content because it is behind the paywall of having to purchase Heart of Thorns. 

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

1 hour ago, Cuks.8241 said:

I don't understand the "even if you don't have a character that can (yet) access story content". Monthly fee is something that the customer decides if it's worth it or not. Different games have different business models. Often you get enough of a period without the fee to decide if you like it or not. You also don't need to pay the fee if you will not play for a certain period. 

The issue that could happen with gw2 (I could be wrong, only Anet knows) that the upfront cost is just to high for a new player. A cost of 60-100 EUR (I don't know how much  to get all the story content actually is) is relatively high for a 9 year old game. Sure you get lot's of accumulated content but on the other hand you can buy a brand new exciting mmorpg for 40 EUR (New world for example). And if you don't like the game you lost 40EUR compared to 60-100EUR with GW2.

My point was that experienced players have a different view on the game. First of all they like it, otherwise they wouldn't play it. They know that it is good value (I don't argue that). A new player doesn't know that. Marketing is often bad from Anet, there is not much social media content. The LS model is not clear. And than you get hit with high upfront cost and players that tell you to grind. Not the best marketing.

As far as 'getting enough of a period to decide if you like it or not', there isn't anything much better than getting the whole Core game to play with no time limit and no cost whatsoever to decide if one likes it.  No...cost...whatsoever. 

Edited October 26, 2021 by Inculpatus cedo.9234
missed an important word

[Zentao.6314]

6 minutes ago, Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:

So, give Living World Seasons 2 and 3 at no cost? (The HoT/PoF bundle is $30.)  Also, you must own Heart of Thorns to access Season 3, so with your model, the laments would be that new players paid for Path of Fire, but can't access the extra content because it is behind the paywall of having to purchase Heart of Thorns. 

I said $15-20, but the price and the content of the packages are just an example.

You need to own the living world seasons to understand the full story.

In an other thread I suggested an alternative that let everybody play the episodes but without any rewards (map currencies, new mounts, event rewards, etc.).

ANet should figure it out, it's their business afterall.

Everybody agree that the current business model is a trap for newcomers, because nowhere anet tells you that there are plotholes between the bought expansions if you don't buy the "extras".

Edited October 26, 2021 by Zentao.6314

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

I think ArenaNet has already 'figured it out'. 

And you did not address the problem with Living World Season 3 being bundled with Path of Fire. 

[kharmin.7683]

1 hour ago, Zentao.6314 said:

The price should be like $15-20 / expansion

And you know that this cost that you propose will satisfy Anet's financial responsibilities?

[Zentao.6314]

5 minutes ago, kharmin.7683 said:

And you know that this cost that you propose will satisfy Anet's financial responsibilities?

These prices and packages I wrote are just examples.
I know that if they won't fix this issue more and more newbies will be upset, this is an ongoing problem.

[Astralporing.1957]

4 hours ago, Klowdy.3126 said:

Which ones? I tried to think, and couldn't come up with any, but someone did say PoE.

The question was not MMORPG specific, remember?

[Rasimir.6239]

1 hour ago, Zentao.6314 said:

Everybody agree that the current business model is a trap for newcomers, because nowhere anet tells you that there are plotholes between the bought expansions if you don't buy the "extras".

Does your suggestion include the option to buy a living world season without an expansion? Else it doesn't make sense, since for example while season 3 sets up the PoF story, at the same time you CAN'T play season 3 without HoT, since a lot of the HoT masteries are crucial to get anywhere in the story instances and on the maps. Try playing Bloodstone Fen without gliding or mounts (since you're coming from the angle of wanting to play story in order), it's simply unplayable.

 

While each living world season's story leads into the following expansion, its mechanics are tied to the preceeding expansion. That's why access to season 3 is currently tied to HoT, and same with season 4/PoF . You can't sell PoF + season 3 unless you make sure people have to buy HoT too/have HoT included due to technical/mastery limitations, then have to add season 2 from the story point of view ... and soon you end up with only "everything up front", which in return drives away a considerable number of potential players that prefer to piecemeal buy only the parts they want to play now.

 

What about the player that doesn't care for story enough to pay real money for living world seasons, but buys the bundle because it is offered on the expansion purchase page, only to realize later that they could've easily gotten those seasons with in-game resources instead? Won't they be just as numerous and just as upset in your scenario as the story lovers that are irritated by the current model?

 

Of course ANet could offer all kind of packages on their purchase page ... the one for the story lover, the one for the feature fan that doesn't care for story and just wants their mounts, the one for the "I want to have it all up front" kind of person, the one for the picky shopper that picks and chooses each expansion/season/episode individually ... but you'd need a college diploma and a year's worth of research to even understand the difference between the packages. Somehow I doubt that we would end up with less complaints though ... different ones for sure, but not less.

[Zentao.6314]

9 minutes ago, Rasimir.6239 said:

While each living world season's story leads into the following expansion, its mechanics are tied to the preceeding expansion. That's why access to season 3 is currently tied to HoT, and same with season 4/PoF . You can't sell PoF + season 3 unless you make sure people have to buy HoT too/have HoT included due to technical/mastery limitations, then have to add season 2 from the story point of view ... and soon you end up with only "everything up front", which in return drives away a considerable number of potential players that prefer to piecemeal buy only the parts they want to play now.

Yes I'm know it very well that some of the expansions and living world seasons depends on the previous one.
I'm just thinking, my ideas aren't the best, just giving starting points to let the brainstorming begin.

One thing is sure, the buy page of End of Dragons is totally hide the living world series. Zero information that this is not the full content. Even the Collection Deluxe edition lacks all of the living world series, anet should warn people about this and/or make other packages that include these and call this COMPLETE EDITION.

There will be an another angry train before/after EoD will be released.

Edited October 26, 2021 by Zentao.6314

[Shining One.1635]

2 minutes ago, Zentao.6314 said:

One thing is sure, the buy page of End of Dragons is totally hide the living world series. Zero information that this is not the full content. Even the Collection Deluxe edition lacks all of the living world series, anet should warn people about this and/or make other packages that include these and call this COMPLETE EDITION.

It's reasonable to ask that a seller list all of the things included in a package. It's unreasonable to ask a seller to list all of the things not included in a package. There are hundreds of items on the Gem Store not included with any package. Should ArenaNet add a disclaimer listing of all of those items individually as not included?

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

27 minutes ago, Zentao.6314 said:

Yes I'm know it very well that some of the expansions and living world seasons depends on the previous one.
I'm just thinking, my ideas aren't the best, just giving starting points to let the brainstorming begin.

One thing is sure, the buy page of End of Dragons is totally hide the living world series. Zero information that this is not the full content. Even the Collection Deluxe edition lacks all of the living world series, anet should warn people about this and/or make other packages that include these and call this COMPLETE EDITION.

There will be an another angry train before/after EoD will be released.

Living World Season/Episodes were mentioned in all previous purchase pages, and even included more information via 'fine print' before the current End of Dragons page.  I'm guessing they aren't included now, as there is no current Living World Season live. 

[Naxos.2503]

25 minutes ago, Shining One.1635 said:

It's reasonable to ask that a seller list all of the things included in a package. It's unreasonable to ask a seller to list all of the things not included in a package. There are hundreds of items on the Gem Store not included with any package. Should ArenaNet add a disclaimer listing of all of those items individually as not included?

I think what they mean is that the choice is not clearly presented. Their idea seems to be that : There should be the same current situation, where expansions can be bought seperately under different editions, but there should also be editions that include the living seasons tied to said expansions. The main issue many have is that when you look for "Buy guild wars 2" or "Play guild wars 2", the expansions are mentionned everywhere, including the website, but the living season episodes are not mentionned in the same place. Hence why people buy what's in front not knowing there is more behind. By that token, one should also be able to buy the living world seasons seperately and read a recap of what is contained in each season (which is a common practice, for most other MMos)

The simplest solution is to change the way the website shop is displayed and while the expansions being detailed and with all of their different additions each have their own pages, there really should be a similar page for living world seasons in the same fashion which there isn't. When you go deeper into the website shop (which very few people do on account of it being much more nicely presented in game) you can find them, but again I doubt that part of the website shop is used frequently since it is kind of tucked away. I wouldn't even be able to give directions to it without looking it up first. What is required is not "Making content permanently free" or "Lower the price", but "Display it the same way you do the expansions". And potentially revamp that awful web store. Everything should be given the same detail the expansion pages do.

Edited October 26, 2021 by Naxos.2503

[Cuks.8241]

3 hours ago, Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:

As far as 'getting enough of a period to decide if you like it or not', there isn't anything much better than getting the whole Core game to play with no time limit and no cost whatsoever to decide if one likes it.  No...cost...whatsoever. 

Yeah very true. But here is actually where I was a bit confused. Maybe it was just me and my play style, because I like to play the first time without spoilers and any outside help. I went through the main story on a f2p game, I decided I like it and bought Hot and Pof at the time. I was under the impression I bought all the content (minus skins and qol). Didn't buy the deluxe because skins are not my thing and that was my impression on the gem store so I decided I don't care about gems at the time. I start the expansion story and bam, cough up extra euros if you want to play story chronologically. Now I didn't care that much, because my main interest is end game and pvp modes and the core story was not something to write home about.

If these were some side stories, totally fine. But it's the main plot. Hot is a mess without LS2. That is why I would give LS2 for free with Hot, it. At least you're not hit with extra cost right at the start.

Now I need to stop posting because we're running in circles.

[AusarViled.7106]

On 10/25/2021 at 12:58 PM, ShadowCatz.8437 said:

Actually if you play this game a lot each day you will gain enough Gold which you can turn into Gem and purchase items including Story parts for Gems. This is a better deal then other MMOs have as you now have access to that content on ALL of your characters and as long this game will be having running servers from ANet. So comparing MMOs where people pay a sub fee each month and very often also feel a pressure to play because their time is counting down to next payment period isn't fair.

As an old ESO player I can also add that ESO had a lot of down time every time they made an update or maintenace, down time which where sometime longer then they expected (could last up to 6 hours or more). In GW2 when we have updates of client it is often a very fast update that don't take more then a couple of minutes and you are ready to go and don't loose any play time. For a game you don't have downcounting since last payment of sub fee it is much better deal and also you will not miss out of oppertunity to play as you could in ESO where planned and unplanned down time could happen.

ANet even compensate player when accidents happen like last week during beta testing of WVW and gave us 20 ticket for Skirmishing Claim and 20 WvW Reward Track Potions: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/103555-update-on-eu-wvw-reward-issue/

Costumer Support are also rather fast to respond to issues in this game compared to my experience with ESO.

ESO have also been giving away free items including event where they gave a way older DLCs for free (meaning even when you did not pay any sub fee you would still have access to those DLCs content) and sometime compensated player when there have been large enough complaints, so this isn't to make any of those two games look bad, but ANet with GW2 have in general better responce and less of cost as you can play this game without loosing uptime from servers going down for maintenance.

As for @WelkinDust.8764 it seem you don't really want to wait to get your story parts for a reduced Gems Store price (they have been on regular sale before each pre-EoDs "Returning to..." which now give an in game email item that unlocks for free that part of story, something that have been going on now for some time. If you actually care about this game you could also just farm Gold during Festival events like running Halloween Lab runs which isn't too demanding as long you have at least one decent character at level 80 in exotic gear and sell you Candy Corn Cobs or do any other major events which often have farming trains, so you don't really have an issue to gain Gold to purchase those episodes that you might need to unlock.

For the future at least make sure to read your mails from ANet/NCsoft for events that give away free items and add at least a social media network like Facebook or Twitter to Guild War 2, so don't miss out of these oppertunity. Reddit is also a good source to keep an eye (you don't need to have an account there if you don't want). There is more ways to keep up to date what is going on in this game then just emails.

 

 

Not really- i played ESO and i was able to get nearly 4M gold with the launch of black wood and traded that gold for all expansions and content in ESO in less then 2 WEEKS LMAO. I grinded the purple rings and sold 4 purple rings for 1.3 M gold.

 

I then converted those to gems and have every expansion in eso in 11 years? unlocked. I would need to play GW2 for what a year to buy the living seasons with gold- I MAY BE WRONG I HAVE NO CLUE HOW TO FARM GOLD, it may be just as easy as ESO or swtor to get gold, i am not sure. But if there is a way i have not found it. 

[Minjin.8259]

Out of all the games I have played, and that is a large number...this game is quite generous, not RNG based, and has great content for the most part.  They have tons of different ways to keep players engaged, you don't have a true weapon leveling system that can fail or break.  If you want a costume you buy it outright and it's good for all the characters on your account.  And they allow you to convert gold into gems.   I think having to pay for expansions is very little to ask to be honest.  Now I understand it's a lot of money for some people.  I can respect that.  But lets keep in mind all games are still businesses and they have overhead to pay for and employees who like to eat and live in homes.  I honestly think if you haven't played in 7 years and you have to pay again to play expansions now that isn't such a huge request.

[Klowdy.3126]

3 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

The question was not MMORPG specific, remember?

Lol, are you trying to outwit me? I'm just trying to get information. We're obviously talking about games most similar to the one in question (this game), and not the sims. I was genuinely asking if there are any. There's no need to try to spin my words against me. 

 

To rephrase (since I guess asking a question begs for debate), are there any MMORPGs that hand out DLCs for free. So far I have PoE.