Living World Episodes costs are going to get out of hand

[Kalocin.5982]

It should seem like a simple thing, that the more this game expands, the harder it will be for anyone to start without requiring old content to be able to understand anything going forward. As it stands, I'd love to get all of my friends on FFXIV to play this game but it's hard to sell it to them. I have no friends here anymore, they all quit and I guess I just want to find some easy solutions to make it more simple, and easy, and not more than Elden Ring.

 

However, the point of this thread though is that eventually this issue will not only become worse but unsustainable. Old content is valued the same as recent or current content and at a certain point you'll be competing with train simulator games or The Sims. Nobody should compete with the Sims. Currently most MMOs offer a full experience, and a month free for $60 give or take. When you ask that for GW2 it's a complicated question, it shouldn't be, but it is due to how many purchases are required to understand the story. 

 

Take yourself outside being a GW2 player, look at the Steam, or console releases. How do you equate the value by comparison? I use FFXIV as I quit ESO and WoW long ago but it's designed that I don't need to spend $20 constantly. It's an easy value for anyone who isn't invested into the experience.

 

With all that being said, I truly think the Guild Wars games have always been the side to the modern MMO. You can always come back to them, and nothing changes. The value is already there, there's no need to be stingy for new players.

Edited March 23, 2022 by Kalocin.5982
I was ranting when I posted this, I made it sound more coherent and less emotional

[Kalocin.5982]

If it helps, I bought my buddy Endwalker to play with me. He had everything available for him to play all of the patch content he missed, and I enjoyed watching him go through the story, especially for the expansion content. While I'd love to just buy him End of Dragons and call it a day, that's not possible, there's so much more that I need to purchase that makes in unfeasible. Sadly, that's the difference. I've played this game for years, I want it to succeed and with their recent posts I'm eager to see the future they're setting. Equally, I love it as much as any of you but the barrier to entry is way too high.

Edited March 23, 2022 by Kalocin.5982
Less ranty, more logic

[Sarius.9285]

100% correct, this is a big issue

[Labjax.2465]

Yep, this is a real problem. The set of expansions package deal should really just give you all the living story. It's absurd to expect that people will look at the cost and think it's a good deal. More likely they'll be tricked, thinking they were getting everything as most MMOs don't have hidden cost story behind restrictions other than expansions, and then they'll just be upset and want a refund. It's bad business.

My impression was always that they wanted to incentivize people to show up for living story, not just do the "consume content and leave" thing that people tend to do with MMOs. But that only makes sense for so long as an incentive before it's just nickel and diming that hurts them more than it helps.

It also means there are almost certainly newer players out there in the population of the game, who knows how many, who did buy the expansions (prob in a package deal), but can't even participate in the events in living story maps because they don't have the content to get them there. There may be exceptions where they can use teleport to friend, I dunno, but the point is these restrictions are very likely hurting population numbers specifically in living story maps. And there's a number of them that are all but dead.

[Westenev.5289]

It currently costs 4160 gems to get up to date on Living World.

 

For context, 4000 gems is 50 US dollars or 42.50 Pound. That's almost the price of the expansion.

 

Using in-game currency, 4160 gems costs approximately 1196 gold at current market rates. That's roughly 598 days of dailies, and 800 gold off outright buying a legendary weapon (Kudzu or Dreamer).

 

Using these figures, I can certainly see why newer players are daunted by the cost of living world. You're essentially budgeting to buy a second full price expansion, with any successive living world going up and beyond the full expansion price.

[Labjax.2465]

12 minutes ago, Westenev.5289 said:

It currently costs 4160 gems to get up to date on Living World.

 

For context, 4000 gems is 50 US dollars or 42.50 Pound. That's almost the price of the expansion.

 

Using in-game currency, 4160 gems costs approximately 1196 gold at current market rates. That's roughly 598 days of dailies, and 800 gold off outright buying a legendary weapon (Kudzu or Dreamer).

 

Using these figures, I can certainly see why newer players are daunted by the cost of living world. You're essentially budgeting to buy a second full price expansion, with any successive living world going up and beyond the full expansion price.

To add to this point, for some people it's even more than that. I remember one poster who lives in brazil and was saying 30 dollars is like 151 there due to currency exchange difference.

[Vayne.8563]

On the other hand, if you buy the $99 collection, it's everything that's come out so far, and less than half a year of WoW or Final Fantasy when you factor in the cost of the game. 

It may be prohibitively expensive for some people, but it's also not unreasonable as some here make it sound.

If you play WoW or Final Fantasy for 1 year, it'll cost you by constrast $180 plus the price of the game itself...assuming you don't buy an expansion in that time.,

Edit: Transparency is the real problem here. Anet needs to make a pack that has all the  living world and all the expansions for that same $99. That would solve a lot of the complaints.

Edited March 20, 2022 by Vayne.8563

[Labjax.2465]

30 minutes ago, Vayne.8563 said:

On the other hand, if you buy the $99 collection, it's everything that's come out so far, and less than half a year of WoW or Final Fantasy when you factor in the cost of the game. 

It may be prohibitively expensive for some people, but it's also not unreasonable as some here make it sound.

If you play WoW or Final Fantasy for 1 year, it'll cost you by constrast $180 plus the price of the game itself...assuming you don't buy an expansion in that time.,

Didn't you get living world at no extra cost though?

[Vayne.8563]

42 minutes ago, Labjax.2465 said:

Didn't you get living world at no extra cost though?

 Sure but I paid a lot more for each expansion.  Even if I just bought HoT and the core game for $60 each, that's $120.  That doesn't include PoF or EOD.  So new people get everything for $99  while I paid $60 just for the first game.  They get two expansions plus all the living story for about $40 more than I paid for just core.

Seems like a good deal to me. I should add that I bought the collectors edition, and spent $200 before the game came out.  Which means before launch I already spent twice that.

Edited March 20, 2022 by Vayne.8563

[Sarnai.8107]

Problem is not that much in a price, but that the Living World is positioned like an "optional" content when it's really not. There are YEARS passing in those, and you want to tell me those are "optional" and I can buy them if i want? As a person who joined only a month before EoD and went to check the plot, because that was my main interest - you really do lose a lot without LW updates. Those are a big chunks of plot that you will surely miss unless you want to pay twice the price of the game or sit and farm thousands of gold to buy them F2P. Even playing for as much time as I did (which is like 2 months or so) I only managed to buy 3 seasons and had to ask my friend for which parts of seasons aren't that important because I can't afford to pay full price, since it's the money worth 2 weeks of living in my country.

And when I went and played those "relevant" parts, it really felt like I was missing A LOT. What happened to Caithe? What's the egg? Who's Bangar? What's going on? And then you have to go and read wiki, just because you really can't afford to buy those ASAP and have to sit and wait till you get enough money.

And the Season 1, that was really important for EoD but was stuffed into 1 cutscene and then threw me into the pool with completely new characters that I now have to care about, even if I just met them and have no clue who they are. When Scarlet appeared and everyone freaked out I was just "meh" because I really didn't see what she actually did, I was only told that she awakened Mordremoth somehow and did bad stuff. 

TL;DR : Just add the LW to the main packs of the game or make some sort of subscription to have an access to those zones and plot so ppl can go to them when they need - or at least stop pretending that plot in this game is important, because if you keep treating LW as an "optional" content, then your plot will keep falling apart just because there are no bridges between expansion plots (and there are literally years passing in LW because they are "happening in real time")

[Labjax.2465]

20 minutes ago, Vayne.8563 said:

 Sure but I paid a lot more for each expansion.  Even if I just bought HoT and the core game for $60 each, that's $120.  That doesn't include PoF or EOD.  So new people get everything for $99  while I paid $60 just for the first game.  They get two expansions plus all the living story for about $40 more than I paid for just core.

Seems like a good deal to me. I should add that I bought the collectors edition, and spent $200 before the game came out.  Which means before launch I already spent twice that.

Compared to someone fully new buying them in a package discount yes. Not accounting for people who were here at intermittent times, who may have paid full price on this or that expansion and base game, but missed some living story episodes. Bottom line tho, if someone got living world for free, it's silly to be telling people it's reasonable to pay extra for it. Saying you paid for other stuff doesn't change that and whether you paid optional extra has no relevance to that point at all.

That said, products typically go through cycles with early adopters and as it goes on, the price goes down to get more buyers. No matter how much we play with numbers over whether it's technically a good deal on paper, the reality is that $100 is a lot to ask for catching up to a nearly 10 year old MMO. This game needs players, not attempts to justify its pricing for people who will never read the justification and wouldn't care anyway: either because they can't afford it, or because there are games that offer better deals and they have no reason to think this game will be better. They aren't fans of it if they've never played it, what does a 10 year old game have to offer them, ya know.

Like at the end of the day, it doesn't matter whether your argument about price makes sense or not. Either the price sells or it doesn't. If it doesn't, there's a problem. That's why cost goes down over time, is to get more people in. It's not supposed to go up, or have the appearance of going up via punishing you for not logging into an account during the right period.

If people knew upfront they were paying on top of expansion collection cost for living world zones that are half ghost towns at this point, it would probably sound like even less of a good deal. One of the ways cost going down over time makes sense to people is cause the people who got it early got all that use out of it others didn't. In this case, one of the benefits of being there for living world was being there at the height of its activity.

[Super Hayes.6890]

You don't need to buy them all at the same time 🤨 There is zero reason to rush through all the content. I'm not saying there can't be a discounted package but you do not have to buy it all at once. It is a ton of content that can't be played in a day anyway.

[Vayne.8563]

40 minutes ago, Labjax.2465 said:

Compared to someone fully new buying them in a package discount yes. Not accounting for people who were here at intermittent times, who may have paid full price on this or that expansion and base game, but missed some living story episodes. Bottom line tho, if someone got living world for free, it's silly to be telling people it's reasonable to pay extra for it. Saying you paid for other stuff doesn't change that and whether you paid optional extra has no relevance to that point at all.

That said, products typically go through cycles with early adopters and as it goes on, the price goes down to get more buyers. No matter how much we play with numbers over whether it's technically a good deal on paper, the reality is that $100 is a lot to ask for catching up to a nearly 10 year old MMO. This game needs players, not attempts to justify its pricing for people who will never read the justification and wouldn't care anyway: either because they can't afford it, or because there are games that offer better deals and they have no reason to think this game will be better. They aren't fans of it if they've never played it, what does a 10 year old game have to offer them, ya know.

Like at the end of the day, it doesn't matter whether your argument about price makes sense or not. Either the price sells or it doesn't. If it doesn't, there's a problem. That's why cost goes down over time, is to get more people in. It's not supposed to go up, or have the appearance of going up via punishing you for not logging into an account during the right period.

If people knew upfront they were paying on top of expansion collection cost for living world zones that are half ghost towns at this point, it would probably sound like even less of a good deal. One of the ways cost going down over time makes sense to people is cause the people who got it early got all that use out of it others didn't. In this case, one of the benefits of being there for living world was being there at the height of its activity.

Rewards for loyal players are a thing. Encouraging people to log in is a thing.

Saying that some people get stuff while other people aren't playing happens in every MMO I've ever played. Maybe it's just skins, but it happens in all of them. It's a strategy used to keep  people logging in but also to reward loyal players.

So what you're saying is, it's not cool that a brand new person who is just starting has to pay about 6 months of what it would cost him to play WOW, or Final Fantasy (or SWToR if you want to play it as an MMO, or most of the other games with "optional" subs, or they can go to those other games and once they hit the six month mark, spend more.

And you know for ultra casual people, it's even better, because they don't need that stuff right away. It might take the a month to level and then they can buy Season 2.   It might take them time to get through that, and then they can buy Season 3.

Not everyone even cares about story and some people will just buy the current expansion and play that.  And on top of all that, some people will find effective ways to farm gold, mostly younger people, and they'll grind it out and not pay anything.

Most other games only give you the option to grind in real life.

 

You're unhappy with the game right now and you complain about every single thing that's posted. You agree with the negative posts and you disagree with the positive. You're in that place right now.  It's not a lot for 10 years of a game full stop. It just has to be marketed as Guild Wars 2 Story Edition or something and you'd see it wouldn't be a problem.

The real problem is the transparency.

[Danikat.8537]

I still think they should offer a package that actually gives you everything in the game (instead of just claiming it does) - core game, HoT, PoF, EoD and season 2 - 5 for one price.

Players won't have to buy it of course but offering it would allow those who do want to buy everything in one go to do that and at least forwarn others that there's more to buy beyond just the expansion.

It also seems odd that first the core game and then HoT was included at no extra cost in other packs but they haven't done that even with season 2. Yes they had it free for a short time, but that doesn't help anyone who got the game later on.

[Killer.4360]

And what's wrong in that? 

You weren't there when they launched, now you pay for it, fair.

[Fuchslein.8639]

For me it's the fact, that the lw is hidden for a new player. At least it was for me. On the site it sayed nothing about the Episodes you need to buy and how am i supossed to google something i don't know about?

My friend at the time gave up on the game because he felt it was a scam. It's not only about the story, but also about content that is partly important to get things so you don't get left behind.
We were not concerned about the price, but simply Anet's way to share this. There was the time as POF came, when this was written in small print on the X-packs in the shop when you hoverd your mouse over them. Which for me is just a crappy trick and one of the many reasons why I haven't put any money into GW2 for years and I'm still waiting to see if I'll actually buy EOD.

I love this game and i love the people i found trough it. But some things are just overkill on anets side ...

[Peterson.5172]

1 hour ago, Vayne.8563 said:

It's not a lot for 10 years of a game full stop. It just has to be marketed as Guild Wars 2 Story Edition or something and you'd see it wouldn't be a problem.

price-wise i agree it's not much, but the price for entry to gw2 is starting to stack up

destiny/destiny 2 had this problem years ago, when it was starting to cost 150 dollars to catch up to everyone for a new player, they recognised that as a problem and essentially made a lot of it free

now i'm not saying we should give out all LW for free, but we should recognise it's a barrier to entry for new players

[mythical.6315]

On 3/18/2022 at 10:52 PM, Kalocin.5982 said:

If it helps, I bought my buddy Endwalker to play with me. He had everything available and I enjoyed watching him go through the story. I can't just buy him EoDz I need an expletive amount more. That's the difference, and if you can't see the issue then I don't know what else to say. I want this game to succeed, I love it as much as any of you but the barrier to entry is way too high. Even Wooden Potatoes talked about this.

 

Confuse emote me all you like but this game will die if nobody pays for it

The story content between expansions is fairly small relative to GW2. The GW2 living seasons are pretty much an expansion minus some of the features. 

[Grunim.9034]

I returned to the game in late November and missed out on most of the free LW opportunities.  I purchased HoT, PoF and EoD expansions and I was surprised they didn't include LW as well.  You would think you are buying complete packages, but this was not communicated well. 

I still don't even own the LW packages necessary to begin the grind for Skyscale.   So I tend to play a lot of old content such as WvW where the mount is not locked behind a gem store paywall.  I am holding out on a gem store sale before buying my missing LW stories. 

[Klowdy.3126]

On 3/18/2022 at 11:39 PM, Kalocin.5982 said:

It's a simple thing, the more this game expands the harder it will be for anyone to start without spending a ton. I already can't get my friends to play because they don't want spend over $100 to get the full story. While it may not matter to you, for many people they want to do it all properly and not buy it later or grind gold for it. End of Dragons came out right next to Elden Ring, compare the costs and tell me how to convince my buddies to buy EoD instead. 

 

The point of this thread though is that eventually this will get worse to the point of unsustainable. Nobody would pay full price for any other MMO expansions and patches alongside the current one when every other MMO is offering a full pass with a single purchase. I understand GW2 has no monthly fee, however, from my experience most people I know stopped playing MMOs monthly and it's a better experience. Take FFXIV, use the free trial to 60 and then buy the expansion and the game with the free month. You'll probably do it all in a month, it's a lot like a single player game purchase. Now multiply that by 3 and see how many would bother.

 

Take yourself outside being a GW2 player for once, look at the Steam launch they want to do. If I was on Steam and saw how much I had to pay next to a heavily discounted game or the current top played game, why bother here? It's insulting to assume that the average person needs to research and love this game to understand the value. They just want to play the game and know their time and money is worth it. Speaking of which I think I need to buy Eldin Ring and suffer like the rest of my friends instead of grinding for 250 kale

They regularly give the episodes out for free. Let your friends know when that happens.

[Grunim.9034]

7 minutes ago, Klowdy.3126 said:

They regularly give the episodes out for free. Let your friends know when that happens.

 Regularly as in how often does this occur?  I know it happened last Autumn but when were they given out before then?  Thank you.

[JustTrogdor.7892]

I think a fair middle ground for new players since HoT is free with PoF would be for Anet to include all living world episodes up to PoF for free for those that buy PoF or the EoD plus PoF and HoT collection.  So that would include living  world 2 and 3.   That way it isn't  giving away everything because I understand that content takes money to make.   I think that would go a long way toward attracting new customers and goodwill without the surprise of  "you also need to buy this all of this if you want everything"  and gets them going on the living world up to PoF as they play the game. 

Also I do think they could be a bit more clear on what and what isn't included on their sales page and maybe offer a "Total collection"  for lack of a better term that includes the expansions and all living world episodes at a slight discount if purchased at the point of sale. 

Edited March 20, 2022 by JustTrogdor.7892

[JustTrogdor.7892]

10 minutes ago, Klowdy.3126 said:

They regularly give the episodes out for free. Let your friends know when that happens.

They have done it once during the "return to" last year that they did as a place holder leading up to the EoD.  I would not call that regularly.    But if you mean by regularly it is free when if a player logs in during the episode then yeah then it is free.  But I don't think the later  is what people are talking about here.

[medivh.4725]

I have a idea. Just get them on the free version. Then if they want to. On their own account. And if the game is good for them. Like they actually enjoyeed it. They will purchase expansions at their own pace. You didn't have to do the selling. Let the contents speak for themselves. No pressure to spend this much money as well!

[Cuks.8241]

2 minutes ago, medivh.4725 said:

I have a idea. Just get them on the free version. Then if they want to. On their own account. And if the game is good for them. Like they actually enjoyeed it. They will purchase expansions at their own pace. You didn't have to do the selling. Let the contents speak for themselves. No pressure to spend this much money as well!

Yeah but the first thing they ran into when they finish the f2p part is LS2. Extra cost and not very good also. 

That's why I advocate they give LS2 for free. Maps are already free anyway. Then players have the whole LS2 and Hot to decide if they want LS3. And they actually get to experience some expansion content which is higher quality.