Please include Living World Seasons in Expansion purchases for the Steam release

[zallesz.1650]

Dear Anet,

 

I created a similar post on reddit the other day, where it gained some traction. It's one of the top posts recently, has been viewed by almost 90k people in in the first 48 hours, and we have already almost 400 comments debating this super important topic: LINK

 

I think this is already a pretty nice sample size to see what the general playerbase, and especially, the newcomers think about the subject. Please read them. The Steam community has a lot of power, and they are super vengeful. The last thing you want to do is either make them confused (by stating on the Steam page that all content is unlocked with the expansion purchases), or outright angry by hiding some additional paywalls. A review bombing could essentially kill the Steam release, and can greatly hinder the future of the game. So I respectually ask the devs to take a look at what people have to say about this. I am sharing the post here as well, so that people could discuss, but the reddit page already has tons of comments directly coming from confused new players. Please do not let them down!

 

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The content of the post:

 

One of the worst things I occasionally hear or read is when a newcomer realises that even after purchasing the expansions, they still need to buy like 3-4 living world seasons if they want to experience the entire story.

 

It is understandably a HUGE turnoff.

 

Knowing that a big chunk of the playerbase probably did not spend money on these seasons (you get them for free during their launch), I would guess this is not the biggest moneymaker for Anet.

It would be such a nice gesture to include Seasons 2, 3, and 4 in the expansion purchases (HOT & POF), and maybe add Icebrood Saga to the EOD purchase. The new players would not immediately feel ripped off. It would boost the overall morale of the steam release, it's really good outlook for the game, I'm sure a lot of media outlets would write about it, generating extra exposure.

It obviously takes away from potential revenue, but how many newcomers do you think would spend extra money on buying old story content in order to fill in the gaps between expansions? I'm guessing not a lot.

 

It's a marketing investment, but it looks much better than a free ingame outfit or a gw2 themed plastic cup giveaway or a bubble team subscription or whatever it was they were doing.

Please, please consider the consequences of adding sour taste to tens of thousands of new players' first time in gw2. Please also consider the "wow that's so awesome of the devs" factor that the inclusion of LW seasons could bring.

 

UPDATE: Since then it was suggested that Season 2 become free, because it has a nice buildup in terms of story for HOT. Players can play for free up until that point, where they encounter the first paywall. So, accordingly, an ideal bundle system would look like:

 

1. Vanilla & Season 1 & Season 2 free for all players
2. HOT & Season 3 & POF & Season 4 Expansion Bundle
3. Icebrood Saga & EOD Expansion Bundle

•  
• (Maybe with an increased pricetag)

 

Thank you

[Randulf.7614]

This isn’t a new suggestion for the steam launch by any means and usually crops up every few weeks. I don’t have any issue with this at all and in fact welcome any clearer packaging, bundling of a ten year old game which has done a awful job of that so far.

However, either it is in their business plan or it isn’t. They aren’t going to look at these forum posts and suddenly change their packaging for seasons. This should have been done years ago and it wasn’t. That suggests their metrics show a very different picture to what we logically think should be changed.

Lets see what happens, but I wouldn’t hold my breath

[kharmin.7683]

Yeah, been asked for several times.  Forums search is fantastic for finding similar threads.

[Ashen.2907]

Remove the bundling of expansions so they can be sold individually. If PoF is bundled with HoT for $30, then split them up and sell them individually at $17.99 each but include the relevant LW season with each. Advertise the expansions as, "includes LW Season X DLC for free," or something of the sort. Increase the perceived value of the individual expansions.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

Indeed, there has.

Well, the post that was directly above this one has been removed, so this one makes little sense...now. 

Edited July 30, 2022 by Inculpatus cedo.9234

[Elden Arnaas.4870]

Yes, so it has been brought up again because it's still very relevant and hasn't been addressed. And the whole point of the steam release is to open GW2 up to a new segment of the market, not poison a new segment of the market against it. This weird, misleading pricing/packaging is g a good way to stir up a lot of ill will among new players.

This makes it a *VERY* good time to revisit a confusing, misleading pricing/packaging policy. Make it *clear* what you're paying for at what price. Make good package deals. This is probably one of the easier hurdles to clear for the Steam release. Just put good, *clear*, wording on the web pages. And get marketing to do a few good promotional deals. Then document those clearly on the web pages.

[Sunchaser.9854]

Coming from other MMORPGS, it's not the cost i mind but just the fact that all main expansions story come with holes missing. If gw2 was a segmented story, it'd be fine. But it's story is so obviously designed to be linear.

 

Aurene for instance, is a major part of later POF and Ls4 / EoD and i think you miss out on them even being BORN without LS3 or the Aurene puppy moments without Ls3:3 that make you bond to them. Otherwise you have no clue why this dragon you don't know appears and almost dies within 2 minutes of knowing them in later stories or even likes you so much or care about their death without the puppy moments where they play hide and seek and want to bond with you. There's a dramatically different payoff in something you care about vs someone you barely even have known for 2 minutes. It's such a minor point i don't even know if it makes it into the lore recap video.

 

But it's enough to make you realize you were probably supposed to get to know the characters in a linear fashion to get attached to them. otherwise they're faces you don't really know you don't care about if they die or live and POF glint is dead within 2 minutes of you meeting them without learning much of who they are. 

 

Making a linear story cut into pieces. Is like selling a book that was written and meant to be read in order, but then had parts cut out for dlc. It's like selling a book of Harry potter or LoTR, where 100 pages you went, 150 were cut out for dlc for 2$ for 50-60$ of dlc total. But some parts are dry, so you go "Do i really want to spend 2$ just to get the Voldemort was born dlc, or the Harry did absolutely nothing at privet drive dlc?", so you try to skip to the needed parts of the story in most critical order. Only to realize you had no emotional investment in any of the characters ever built up. {But still feel like 2$ for the harry doing absolutely nothing dlc would have been a poor value. } 

 

In this case, the monetization model can easily cannibalizes the story into a incoherent mess. 

 

As far as things go, i feel like less of the frustration is in that 10$ for 5 maps isn't a bad value in most other games. It's just that sometimes i feel like the monetization model will INCENTIVIZE you to skip the story.  Or, at least unlock the more rewarding parts in order (Ls4:1-6 for skyscale /Beetle, Ls3:3 for Ring/1 Accessory/Backpack) 

In this case, you're picking what you want, some people are story first, while i've been mostly using youtube recaps for content i'm told was either inaccessible (LS1-3 Lore recaps. I found it a MAJOR help. But you still want to experience story, not listen to a lore recap. But it was almost needed just to make the core expansion experience make sense. And i feel the animator did a great job. But still wish the story did more to make itself more accessible.

 

Like if it's money, if i spend 100$ on a game, why couldn't i just unlock the story for free like the people who got it free last year? If you say, spent 100-150$ on Gw2 for the ultimate collection / 3 character slots / 1 salvage o matic. Why do i have to pick between character slots i need or story if i want to experience the game or make alts!? Why do i need to spend 5$ just to change my hairstyle or Charr's Fur from stripes to spots? Instead of pushing me towards the content, it makes me feel like i shouldn't waste my money unless there's a sale otherwise i could be burnt out and waste limited gems by missing a refund period by just 1 day again which happened to me when I bought pof full price and 4000 gems and Prime day happened and i missed out on 1500 gems by a single day... 

 

 )  

 

From what i can see. Without experiencing the stories in order. You end up with a disjointed story where you're thrust into a world with dead emotional payoffs. Very minor things like the bonding with Baby Aurene in Ls3 might not seem story relevant, but without it, you never really bond with Aurene as much. I think it's one of the examples how speaking for the character, makes you feel like your own character feels like a puppet meant to play the role of Aurene's best friend and the story quickly becomes. "Use aurene to defeat the evil dragon possessed with evil magic who was once secretly good!" followed by "Use aurene to defeat the evil dragon possessed with evil magic who was once secretly good, again!"

It might be a minor point, but the fact that you can seemingly skip the entire character being born(???) while being able to like, skip the parts they bonded with you at all is a very bizzare mmorpg story. I wouldn't say it's anything too much to get worked over, but if i have to pick between mounts and story and gear or basic qol. I'm picking permanent mounts and gear, but i really don't see why it has to punish you or make you pick. 

 

tl;dr While 10$ for 5 maps isn't much, the problem is, for 15-100$ of spending, there's still PLENTY of things gw2 tries to make you divide it between.  To the point that mounts, resources, and gear can all compete for resources. Making it easy for the monetization model to cannibalistic to understanding of the story. Like if every 100 pages, 150 pages of Harry Potter or LOTR was cut out. Instead of just feeling incentivized to experience the full story.

 

You feel strong pressures to just.. Skip it. And that's the problem that turning a linear story into a dlc has for me imo. If experiencing boring content costs money, it becomes a chore you have to pay for instead of a experience. So then if you just never buy it, what money are they making? 

 

So you're just left with a story ex: where you'd miss out on Harry potter's birth or Voldemort's origin story. And you're aware something was supposed to happened but you experience a story where Harry potter was never born, SKIP, has 3 friends suddenly SKIP, missed the climax SKIP, is at the end of school and never beat the main villain or knew they were born... 

(You still experienced "half" the content in "The Ultimate complete collection that leaves out half the story". But not in a way that makes any semblance of sense... Unless you pay 2$ for the Voldemort gets born dlc, followed by the 2$ harry potter does nothing at Vermillion's house dlc. Linear stories aren't designed to be cut into parts and sold. The monetization model cannibalizes the coherence, imo. And incentivizes players to miss the story on limited funds instead of making sense. + you can't loot some strike chests without Iceblood, for some inane reason that only shows up AFTER completing the content. 

 

It really just feels like a sour experience having to pick daily use items that last forever just to have a temporary story make sense. And im not complaining about picking mounts and gear first. NOT at all. Im just fully aware i've been waiting for a dang sale forever and there's supposed to be a anniversary sale in a week or month.. But a week or month can be a long time in experiencing a linear story completely disjointed and out of order. 

[Linken.6345]

34 minutes ago, Elden Arnaas.4870 said:

Yes, so it has been brought up again because it's still very relevant and hasn't been addressed. And the whole point of the steam release is to open GW2 up to a new segment of the market, not poison a new segment of the market against it. This weird, misleading pricing/packaging is g a good way to stir up a lot of ill will among new players.

This makes it a *VERY* good time to revisit a confusing, misleading pricing/packaging policy. Make it *clear* what you're paying for at what price. Make good package deals. This is probably one of the easier hurdles to clear for the Steam release. Just put good, *clear*, wording on the web pages. And get marketing to do a few good promotional deals. Then document those clearly on the web pages.

Steam is one of the biggest places were they are used to additional dlcs in games tho so Im quite sure it would not make as many waves as people seem to think.

[robertthebard.8150]

1 minute ago, Linken.6345 said:

Steam is one of the biggest places were they are used to additional dlcs in games tho so Im quite sure it would not make as many waves as people seem to think.

These threads always strike me as sort of amusing, because it seems like Steam is both the most important platform in gaming, and full of complete morons.

[Xerxez.7361]

Yes, because everyone's first thought will be to go for the $120+ bundle instead of being scared away.

Edited July 30, 2022 by Xerxez.7361

[Cronospere.8143]

Here is the most recent of similar threads.. 

Found multiple others also.

 

9 hours ago, kharmin.7683 said:

Yeah, been asked for several times.  Forums search is fantastic for finding similar threads.

Yep. 

 

57 minutes ago, Xerxez.7361 said:

Yes, because everyone's first thought will be to go for the $120+ bundle instead of being scared away.

If you actually say that you have multiple packs.. then this is actually not scaring people away. 

For example:

Core: free

Core + Expansions: 80

Gameplay all-in package: 120

Just be clear with what they include and also what isnt included. 

I personally think its better for the company to advertise with an gameplay all-in then the current option in which they loose some money from players who convert gold into gems just to buy the living story seasons.. (To be clear, i dont say gold to gem shouldnt exist), so i dont understand why they wouldnt do it like this. Coding issues maybe? 

Edited July 30, 2022 by Cronospere.8143

[Linken.6345]

5 minutes ago, Cronospere.8143 said:

Here is the most recent of similar threads.. 

Found multiple others also.

 

Yep. 

 

If you actually say that you have multiple packs.. then this is actually not scaring people away. 

For example:

Core: free

Core + Expansions: 80

Gameplay all-in package: 120

Just be clear with what they include and also what isnt included. 

I personally think its better for the company to advertise with an gameplay all-in then the current option in which they loose some money from players who convert gold into gems. (To be clear, i dont say gold to gem shouldnt exist), so i dont understand why they wouldnt do it like this. Coding issues maybe? 

How do they lose money since all the gems you buy with gold was once bought with cold cash and turned from gems into gold by other players?

Do you even know how the gem-gold, gold-gem system work at all?

Hint they dont lose any money and they combat ingame inflation at the same time.

[IndigoSundown.5419]

ANet may have already decided to do something different with the Living Story Season bundling once the Steam release hits.  They may have decided to keep things as is.  They may rerelease the "return to" for the Steam release, tying free access to season stories to logins.  Doubtless, there are other options available to them.  Alternatively, Net may not have made a decision.

 

It's not like they're going to announce what will be ahead of time, right?  Why be transparent when you can just keep mum and present the player-base with a fait accompli?

 

Regardless, the existing verbiage saying "everything you need" is misleading, and will bite them if not changed.

[Cronospere.8143]

16 minutes ago, Linken.6345 said:

How do they lose money since all the gems you buy with gold was once bought with cold cash and turned from gems into gold by other players?

Do you even know how the gem-gold, gold-gem system work at all?

Hint they dont lose any money and they combat ingame inflation at the same time.

Oh i love your friendly feedback lol. 

Its the advertising, if you dont know you can buy ingame story content with ingame currency. Which is most likely because the person buying gw is a new player. 

He/she will buy the gameplay all in. 

Currently there is no game play all in buy option. 

So after buying what there currently is and playing the game the player isnt new anymore and possibly knows he can use its gold to buy something which he could have bought with real cash. 

Thats a loss for Anet 

I bought gems yesterday. Turned some of it into gold. Now someone else bought living story with gold while he could have bought it with real money in the first place.. so instead of getting €40 euro, anet now got €20 euro.. what is wrong with what i am saying? 

Edited July 30, 2022 by Cronospere.8143

[Linken.6345]

52 minutes ago, Cronospere.8143 said:

Oh i love your friendly feedback lol. 

Its the advertising, if you dont know you can buy ingame story content with ingame currency. Which is most likely because the person buying gw is a new player. 

He/she will buy the gameplay all in. 

Currently there is no game play all in buy option. 

So after buying what there currently is and playing the game the player isnt new anymore and possibly knows he can use its gold to buy something which he could have bought with real cash. 

Thats a loss for Anet 

I bought gems yesterday. Turned some of it into gold. Now someone else bought living story with gold while he could have bought it with real money in the first place.. so instead of getting €40 euro, anet now got €20 euro.. what is wrong with what i am saying? 

Yea no that guy might have never spent cash for gems in the first place so it would still only got 20 euro.

And if there were no gem to gold exchange you might have bought less then 20 euros of gems since you could not get any gold for them.

For you  to buy gold with your gems someone else must buy gems with their in game gold.

Because the gold you got for your gems was made by another player and deposited into the gold that can be payed out for gems pool by some player.

Anet lose nothing.

If no player was buying gems with gold you would not get any gold for your gem after the pool dried up.

You would most likely stop way before when spending 800 gems neted you less then 40 gold I would bet.

Edit

Look at it this way if alot of people buy gems and turn into gold.

That dries up the gold swimming pool in game so the exchange for people selling gold to Anet give them more gems that people like you have already paid for.

It works the other way around if people buy alot of gems for gold it drive the price up on gem so you gain more gold when spending your gems turning them into gold.

And it is taxed both ways aswell no matter if you use gem to get gold or gold to gems you removing gold from the ingame economy.

Edited July 30, 2022 by Linken.6345

[Sunchaser.9854]

POV 1: You've built up what you wanted to be a epic story, and now bring the characters you've come to know and love together to fight the final boss!

The players actually know who the characters are, and are hyped up for every single moment like a epic showdown is going to occur giving them all the excitement and conclusions they were waiting for!

 

Pov 2: You sold the plotline as DLC, and now new players have NO idea what's going on or who any of these people ARE or even why they're here or fighting who they are. But they know there's supposed to be a story... They just can't afford it, so they make up their own Jojo Spongebob Squarepants Dora Parody AMV to try and get some more insight into the lore.

Since that's all the sense the story is gonna be making when half of it is locked behind a dlc experienced out of order.

 

Edited August 1, 2022 by Sunchaser.9854

[Ashen.2907]

On 7/30/2022 at 2:04 PM, Linken.6345 said:

Steam is one of the biggest places were they are used to additional dlcs in games tho so Im quite sure it would not make as many waves as people seem to think.

Are the DLC in other games part of the main linear story without which purchased expansions are nonsensical?

[mythical.6315]

On 7/30/2022 at 4:44 PM, Linken.6345 said:

Yea no that guy might have never spent cash for gems in the first place so it would still only got 20 euro.

And if there were no gem to gold exchange you might have bought less then 20 euros of gems since you could not get any gold for them.

For you  to buy gold with your gems someone else must buy gems with their in game gold.

Because the gold you got for your gems was made by another player and deposited into the gold that can be payed out for gems pool by some player.

Anet lose nothing.

If no player was buying gems with gold you would not get any gold for your gem after the pool dried up.

You would most likely stop way before when spending 800 gems neted you less then 40 gold I would bet.

Edit

Look at it this way if alot of people buy gems and turn into gold.

That dries up the gold swimming pool in game so the exchange for people selling gold to Anet give them more gems that people like you have already paid for.

It works the other way around if people buy alot of gems for gold it drive the price up on gem so you gain more gold when spending your gems turning them into gold.

And it is taxed both ways aswell no matter if you use gem to get gold or gold to gems you removing gold from the ingame economy.

It’s not a 1:1 but you’re mostly right. 

[Sunchaser.9854]

This anniversary sale can't come fast enough. If they're gonna charge I'd really like to at least be able to buy it anytime so I don't feel like unneeded stories like ls2 experienced way past relevance or out of order are needed without the lore recap videos. Which are like the only thing that keeps the expansion only semi coherent missing hot setup, aurene's birth, Joko's and Krattorik's end. Oh and you flat out just can't loot certain iceblood strike reward chests without iceblood because the game puts a flipping anti no dlc lock on it. 

 

It's long term cheaper than wow yes but something about the sale structure being so sparingly and some of the living world being like mediocre story only for 50$ on top of maybe 50-100$ spent on the game makes it a lower priority but I'd still like to know if everyone got it last year for free. I don't see why they couldn't do a free rotating episode each week or at least per month.. Or at least more frequent rotating sales so people didn't have to wait 1 year for it to go on sale while the story's relevance fades away.