Something has to be done about living world season costs

[Pheex.8932]

I bought the base game for 60, all expansions for full price and nearly all living world full price (a few chapters here and there I had free from playing at the time) and I fully support lowering the price at least a bit over time.

 

The very reason I never started playing Guild Wars 1 back in the day was because I saw all these different boxes on the shelves with nightfall, factions, regular and it appeared as a massive barrier of entry to both purchase ànd catch up on, look into what was what etc.

 

And above all the skyscale is just too important. People could research into the entire living world thing and eventually figure out just which chapters they need and be relatively cheaply done but that again is a huge barrier of entry for someone completely new to this game.

[DeanBB.4268]

I don't get it. I mean, sure, it would be nice if things were cheaper. But you're (OP) talking about Steam players, where everything has DLC's. If I want to add civ's to my Age of Empires: $10 a pop, could drop $30 on a $20 game. Want to upgrade my Civ 6: over $150 of DLC's. How is Guild Wars any different than the norm?

[Miragen.6127]

Those games are generally not MMOs and it's optional content, not being able to play a certain nation in Civ 6 is not the same thing as not owning an expansion in an MMO.

Try playing the free trial of GW2 and tell me that there is no need to buy the expansions, tell me how fun it is to play in base game areas by yourself most of the time, where you cannot play with anyone else because they're all running around on mounts or roller beetles and they disappear within seconds.

Playing in empty zones, doing events by yourself very often because of the low player activity in those zones.

[DeanBB.4268]

I do that all the time, actually, on Core-only accounts. Been doing it for 10 years.

And yes, I have jumped off cliffs forgetting I have no glider a great many times.

[edit] But to the point, what's the difference? DLCs are DLCs, and part of the Steam Reality. And if I want to play Civ with my brother, I believe I do need to be on the same upgrade, so it isn't all Apples & Oranges.

Edited September 12, 2022 by DeanBB.4268

[Gadzooks.4687]

Its funny how this topic's response has evolved over the years.

 

It used to be followed up with things like:

- its only 1 (or 2) seasons, its not that hard to earn the gold to unlock them

- you dont have to buy them, just play them with someone else who has them unlocked already

 

Now... 4 (technically 5) seasons in, neither of those 2 things are true. Its quite costly to buy all the seasons (both from a gold or a $$$ perspective). Especially if you are someone who bought PoF 8 months ago, and EoD recently.

 

Most new players are going to want to play continuously through the games storyline. Not play through part, farm for a month to earn gold to buy the next part, play through that, farm for another month to pay for the next part, etc. Its a huge turn off for the game as a whole for many new players. Ive brought over multiple friends as well as my Son, and every one of them had this complaint about the game. Most of them left after beating PoF because they just wanted to keep playing the story (and were even willing to get EoD afterwards), but not if it required them to do a ton of grinding just to unlock them.

Its not about how much total you have to pay. Its about the difference between long term players who have spent a lot over a larger time period (easier to deal with), and those newer players who are being met with all these charges in a much shorter amount of time.

Its the one part of GW2 that has been a stain on its rep since early days, and its only gotten darker and nastier looking as more chapters have been release and end up unplayable by newer players.

Edited September 12, 2022 by Gadzooks.4687

[Sobx.1758]

50 minutes ago, Miragen.6127 said:

Try playing the free trial of GW2 and tell me that there is no need to buy the expansions, tell me how fun it is to play in base game areas by yourself most of the time, where you cannot play with anyone else because they're all running around on mounts or roller beetles and they disappear within seconds.

Now you're just complaining about a trial (a rather extended one at that) being a trial. New players have quite some content in core. If they like the game, they can buy expansions. Seems like that's kind of the point of the whole core trial in the first place.

 

11 minutes ago, Gadzooks.4687 said:

Most new players are going to want to play continuously through the games storyline. Not play through part, farm for a month to earn gold to buy the next part, play through that, farm for another month to pay for the next part, etc. Its a huge turn off for the game as a whole for many new players. Ive brought over multiple friends as well as my Son, and every one of them had this complaint about the game. Most of them left after beating PoF because they just wanted to keep playing the story (and were even willing to get EoD afterwards), but not if it required them to do a ton of grinding just to unlock them.

Buying them through gold farm is just one of the options. What point are you even trying to make here? If it's not free content, it's bad?

 

As I said, I might understand argument about making s1/2 free because technically they don't open any new maps with content (other than the story instances still being content by themselves 🤔), I might understand discounts for content released years ago (although HoT was probably made to be a "free" addition to PoF mostly due PoF mobility mechanics trampling HoT mobility mechanics) but some of the complaints about more content being paid are pretty weird.

When your friends/son want to play through a story in another -maybe even single player- game, does he complains about it not being free too?

Edited September 12, 2022 by Sobx.1758

[Gadzooks.4687]

24 minutes ago, Sobx.1758 said:

Buying them through gold farm is just one of the options. What point are you even trying to make here? If it's not free content, it's bad?

 

Someone else said it better earlier in the thread.

 

The problem is that the additional purchases come in-between existing content that most people have already purchased.

 

For a new player who buys the bundle of HoT/PoF/EoD... they are going to expect to be able to play through the linear storyline without interruption. But nope, after each expansion, they will need to either cough up money or time in order to make the story experience feel complete and not completely disjointed and even confusing.

 

Thats a horrible way to tell a story... and plenty of people probably all out just skip the Living Story chapters, only getting to experience half of the story Anet is telling (probably with a lesser opinion of that story, and the game as a whole)

 

Imagine paying to go see a movie, and half way through, the movie stops and says, "The movie will now jump 30 minutes ahead and continue with the story at that point. If you want to know what happened during that 30 minutes being skipped, pay extra money now."

Edited September 12, 2022 by Gadzooks.4687

[Glacial.9516]

1 hour ago, Miragen.6127 said:

Those games are generally not MMOs and it's optional content, not being able to play a certain nation in Civ 6 is not the same thing as not owning an expansion in an MMO.

Try playing the free trial of GW2 and tell me that there is no need to buy the expansions, tell me how fun it is to play in base game areas by yourself most of the time, where you cannot play with anyone else because they're all running around on mounts or roller beetles and they disappear within seconds.

Playing in empty zones, doing events by yourself very often because of the low player activity in those zones.

While I immensely dislike seeing GW2 listed as 'Free' on steam (the free trial is a far cry from the game being free to play imo), GW2's Free trial is actually rather generous. Sure it's limited in what content you can partake in without buying the expansions but the actual gameplay limitation placed upon the player is quite lax. The notable ones imo are that Map-chat is rate-limited, Non-mutual friend whispers are restricted to once every 30 seconds, the BLTC limits what you can purchase, and you can't send items/gold. For comparison, in the FF14 free trial players cannot whisper at all or even form a party!

Anyway the point of the free trial is not to get the full game experience for free, it's to gain an understanding and feel for the general gameplay so you can make a more informed decision about whether to spend money on the game.

[Sobx.1758]

1 hour ago, Gadzooks.4687 said:

 

Someone else said it better earlier in the thread.

 

The problem is that the additional purchases come in-between existing content that most people have already purchased.

 

For a new player who buys the bundle of HoT/PoF/EoD... they are going to expect to be able to play through the linear storyline without interruption. But nope, after each expansion, they will need to either cough up money or time in order to make the story experience feel complete and not completely disjointed and even confusing.

 

Thats a horrible way to tell a story... and plenty of people probably all out just skip the Living Story chapters, only getting to experience half of the story Anet is telling (probably with a lesser opinion of that story, and the game as a whole)

 

Imagine paying to go see a movie, and half way through, the movie stops and says, "The movie will now jump 30 minutes ahead and continue with the story at that point. If you want to know what happened during that 30 minutes being skipped, pay extra money now."

So the solution here is to make it clear by making it a complete package including lws.

And then we can wait for complaints since "if I knew I could buy it with ingame currency, I wouldn't buy it on steam with moneyz" 🙃

[DeanBB.4268]

Steam users already have that option. Apparently, some are choosing the "HoT+PoF Only" option instead, then complaining of buying more. Maybe I'm just an old dude, but I figure out what I'm buying before I buy it. *shrug*

[Voltron.1043]

On 9/9/2022 at 9:02 AM, Crono.4197 said:

I paid 60 euros for base game, 50 euros for HoT, 30 euros for PoF and 30 for EoD. Total: 170 euros

Yet you don't see me whining on the forum about it. Base game is now free, expansions are super cheap.

I think paying for Living Story is fair and if you don't wanna pay real money, then convert gold to gems.

Either use your time to do everything in-game or use money to buy them. What's next, wanting for the whole game to be free?

If they decided not to buy, no worries, it means they didn't like the game enough. Same people that don't wanna invest in Guild Wars 2 because something is "too expensive" would pay 500 euros for X game from their favorite Y company.

One last idea: they could buy Season 2 and 3 and while they play those, also do side events, metas etc and get money for Season 4 and 5. But it seems this won't work as they're either not too interested in the game or they're in a rush (which I don't really understand) to go at lightning speed through all the content. Enjoy the game. Explore. Do all the events/metas/content. I'm pretty sure they have enough stuff to do in the main content while they would gather gold for the Living Story.

You paid more becasue you played early - you paid more than new players becasue you got more hours of the game, you accumulated more goods/knowledge/experience and you paid for it when it was NEW. You paid for new stuff when it was new.

Now it's OLD. It's 10 years old game. You all are talking here "100 Euro + LW costs" is great value for 10 years of content. For new players it's not like that, they don't have nostalgia/loyality behind them that ties them to game. They simply think "how much for 10 year old game?".

You don't expect to sell 10 year old car for same you bought it right?  Not to mention LW content was free on release for players that play it at release. Yet it's new players that are expected to pay for content that was free in first place. It doesn't really add up.

For me it was also part of reason why I didn't buy expansions when I got informed I don't get LW seasons with Expansions, where LW seasons are story (+ content) THAT LEADS to expansions, ties them together.

For new player like me (even if I played 10 years ago on release I now think of myself as new player) it's just predatory way of trying to do "gotcha monetization".

If I bought expansions (glad I didn't) and only later (let's say during HOT/PoF) realized that I didn't get everything but I missed LW paid content - I would be FURIOUS. Even if Anet thinks for some reason that prvious free content should be paid (lol) - at least bundle them for slight increase to expansions. This is riddiculous monetization method.

Edited September 12, 2022 by Voltron.1043

[Sobx.1758]

2 minutes ago, Voltron.1043 said:

You paid more becasue you played early - you paid more than new players becasue you got more hours of the game, you accumulated more goods/knowledge/experience and you paid for it when it was NEW. You paid for new stuff when it was new.

Now it's OLD. It's 10 years old game. You all are talking here "100 Euro + LW costs" is great value for 10 years of content. For new players it's not like that, they don't have nostalgia/loyality behind them that ties them to game. They simply think "how much for 10 year old game?".

You don't expect to sell 10 year old car for same you bought it right?  Not to mention LW content was free on release for players than play it at release. Yet it's new players that are expected to pay for content that was free in first place. It doesn't really add up.

New players or not, that content is still being played/replayed as it was. The value didn't magically go down because you're unlocking it later. 

This is content expansion for the game, not a car, this content doesn't get somehow worse, because newly released content uses less fuel or accelerates faster. So... useless strawman.

[Voltron.1043]

4 minutes ago, Sobx.1758 said:

New players or not, that content is still being played/replayed as it was. The value didn't magically go down because you're unlocking it later. 

This is content expansion for the game, not a car, this content doesn't get somehow worse, because newly released content uses less fuel or accelerates faster. So... useless strawman.

It doesn't matter if it's played or not. Games with time gets lower price, that's how it works. It's not new (not matter what it is): the price goes lower. Plus the fact remains: LW was free content on release. It doesn't make sense for it to be paid one for new players. New players pay lower for old Expansions because this is old content, that's how games work. But why do they pay for content that was free? You can try to justify it here on Anet forum among people that love this game but for new players it just won't seem fair at all. That's how it works. No matter how you look at it: it's 10 years old game for everyone newly interested.

Edited September 12, 2022 by Voltron.1043

[Sobx.1758]

1 minute ago, Voltron.1043 said:

It doesn't matter if it's played or not. Games with life gets lower price, that's how it works. It's not new (not matter what it is): the price goes lower. Plus the fact remains: LW was free content on release. It doesn't make sense for it to be paid for new players. New players pay lower for old Expansions because this is old content, that's how games work. But why do they pay for content that was free? You can try to justify it here on Anet forum among people that love this game but for new players it just won't seem fair at all. That's how it works.

It does matter, because you're trying to argue the value/devuation of content due to time. And the fact that it's still played and replayed by both old and new players shows there hasn't been much of the devalue you're trying to use as an argument here.

Edited September 12, 2022 by Sobx.1758

[Voltron.1043]

Just now, Sobx.1758 said:

It does matters, because you're trying to argue the value/devuation of content due to time. And the fact that it's still played and replayed by both old and new players shows there hasn't been much of the devalue you're trying to use as an argument here.

It does not matter. Game is always losing value. Got F2P in 2015 because it lost value (base game). HOT got bundled with PoF (which is now lower price) becasue it lost value. EOD will get lower price soon and probably be in future bundled with HOT + POF becasue it's losing value. LW was free content on release, why it's paid now by new players? I have no idea. They should be part of expansions.

[Miragen.6127]

1 minute ago, Sobx.1758 said:

New players or not, that content is still being played/replayed as it was. The value didn't magically go down because you're unlocking it later. 

This is content expansion for the game, not a car, this content doesn't get somehow worse, because newly released content uses less fuel or accelerates faster. So... useless strawman.

 

Value really doesn't hold infinitely, you can't say that games from 10 years ago are as valuable as they were at the time because it's the same experience.. would you buy a Playstation 1 for full retail and pay $60 or whatever for games because it offers the same experience as it did back then? No, because that experience is tied to the time period it was released in, it was the peak of gaming at the time, but now has been surpassed by everything and it's dated.

 

Guild wars 2 in 2012 was more special, FF14, ESO, New World and all those things did not exist.. WoW was probably at it's peak and GW2 offered something new, different and fresh compared to what was out there.. however in 2022 what it offers really isn't as special.

 

[Sobx.1758]

6 minutes ago, Voltron.1043 said:

It does not matter. Game is always losing value. Got F2P in 2015 because it lost value (base game). HOT got bundled with PoF (which is now lower price) becasue it lost value. EOD will get lower price soon and probably be in future bundled with HOT + POF becasue it's losing value. LW was free content on release, why it's paid now by new players? I have no idea. They should be part of expansions.

No, it didn't "get f2p because the game lost value", it got "f2p because the other model wasn't working too good for it".

And the content isn't old, the game overally is "old" because it released 10 years ago, but that's also why you can start a free core trail and decide whether or not you like "that old game". Then you either want more or not. The content expansions are old for players that already played through them a lot, but that content is still new for players that don't. And, again, considering the L3/4/ibs content is still consistently player and replayed by both new AND old players proves it didn't devalue as opposed to what you're trying to repeatedly and baselessly claim (because for now all you've tried basing it on is "[original] game released 10 years ago!" and "but cars irl!" which does nothing to what is being discussed here).

6 minutes ago, Miragen.6127 said:

Value really doesn't hold infinitely, you can't say that games from 10 years ago are as valuable as they were at the time because it's the same experience.. would you buy a Playstation 1 for full retail and pay $60 or whatever for games because it offers the same experience as it did back then? No, because that experience is tied to the time period it was released in, it was the peak of gaming at the time, but now has been surpassed by everything and it's dated.

 

Guild wars 2 in 2012 was more special, FF14, ESO, New World and all those things did not exist.. WoW was probably at it's peak and GW2 offered something new, different and fresh compared to what was out there.. however in 2022 what it offers really isn't as special.

psst, core game is 10 years old, expansions and LW are not. The "but old playstation!" is exactly the same irrelevant strawman attempt as the one with "but old/new car!" was. It has nothing to do with expansions/LWs here. If the console/car are modernized, the old ones are left behind. If anything in gw2 is modernized, you have it just like everyone else.

Edited September 12, 2022 by Sobx.1758

[Voltron.1043]

9 minutes ago, Miragen.6127 said:

 

Value really doesn't hold infinitely, you can't say that games from 10 years ago are as valuable as they were at the time because it's the same experience.. would you buy a Playstation 1 for full retail and pay $60 or whatever for games because it offers the same experience as it did back then? No, because that experience is tied to the time period it was released in, it was the peak of gaming at the time, but now has been surpassed by everything and it's dated.

 

Guild wars 2 in 2012 was more special, FF14, ESO, New World and all those things did not exist.. WoW was probably at it's peak and GW2 offered something new, different and fresh compared to what was out there.. however in 2022 what it offers really isn't as special.

 

I agree with this. I don't think GW2 did good job with trying to catch new players with EOD + Steam release. No Anniversary Sale (10 years!), hidden LW cost that they had to update in last minute so players at Steam kind of know what they miss (though do they reall know what exactly they do miss by not buying LWs?). I don't think extra 10$ for PoF would hurt them to include LW in it.

[Sobx.1758]

6 minutes ago, Voltron.1043 said:

where you can't really find any argument.

Quick reminder that I'm not the one avoiding what you said here. How it went? Copium is over the top here? 😄 

And don't try to overdramaticaly compare it to some "pulling out old twitter messages", I simply remembered you from your topic I was also participating in, barely a few days ago. I literally was there yesterday: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/120982-old-player-thinking-about-returning-did-game-became-less-grindy-towards-stuff/page/3/#comment-1752780 so no worries, there was no "going through your posts" here. Simply hey, I remember you from recent thread.

Edited September 12, 2022 by Sobx.1758

[DeanBB.4268]

40 minutes ago, Voltron.1043 said:

...Now it's OLD. It's 10 years old game. You all are talking here "100 Euro + LW costs" is great value for 10 years of content. For new players it's not like that, they don't have nostalgia/loyality behind them that ties them to game. They simply think "how much for 10 year old game?"...

Except you are getting the game at reduced price. Do you know how much I paid for the Core game plus each expansion? A lot more than $100. And now you can get everything for $100. Seems like a bargain to me.

[Labjax.2465]

30 minutes ago, DeanBB.4268 said:

Except you are getting the game at reduced price. Do you know how much I paid for the Core game plus each expansion? A lot more than $100. And now you can get everything for $100. Seems like a bargain to me.

No one who is new to this game will think that paying $100 for a 10 year old game is a bargain. That's the kind of price people pay as a premium for special editions of new games or new expansions for games they already like and paying that much usually comes with incentives (in-game store currency worth part of the extra cost, special items you can't get any other way, that sort of thing).

Edit: And to be clear, I'm not saying no one will pay it. Some people blow thousands on cash shops in a week, game monetization is truly beyond the pale. But the standards of video game pricing mean anything above $60 for a new game is viewed as a premium kind of deal. And that's for new games, just released. The expectation is <$60 for older games and even games that added DLC over time will usually make a bundle later on that is <$60 and includes the DLC that was released throughout the game's life.

Whether this is reasonable or not for the studio or for the customer is something we can argue pointlessly if we'd like to. I'm just describing the standards as best I understand them, from what I can observe. And the standards are what people go off of, not some internet arguments about pricing and value.

Edited September 12, 2022 by Labjax.2465

[Sobx.1758]

6 minutes ago, Labjax.2465 said:

No one who is new to this game will think that paying $100 for a 10 year old game is a bargain. That's the kind of price people pay as a premium for special editions of new games or new expansions for games they already like and paying that much usually comes with incentives (in-game store currency worth part of the extra cost, special items you can't get any other way, that sort of thing).

Still easly less than a year of subscruption of other mmo titles 🤷‍♂️

If someone just wants to play through the story instead of playing an mmorpg then sure, I'd say stick to single player storytelling games.

[Crono.4197]

8 hours ago, Voltron.1043 said:

You paid more becasue you played early - you paid more than new players becasue you got more hours of the game, you accumulated more goods/knowledge/experience and you paid for it when it was NEW. You paid for new stuff when it was new.

Now it's OLD. It's 10 years old game. You all are talking here "100 Euro + LW costs" is great value for 10 years of content. For new players it's not like that, they don't have nostalgia/loyality behind them that ties them to game. They simply think "how much for 10 year old game?".

You don't expect to sell 10 year old car for same you bought it right?  Not to mention LW content was free on release for players that play it at release. Yet it's new players that are expected to pay for content that was free in first place. It doesn't really add up.

For me it was also part of reason why I didn't buy expansions when I got informed I don't get LW seasons with Expansions, where LW seasons are story (+ content) THAT LEADS to expansions, ties them together.

For new player like me (even if I played 10 years ago on release I now think of myself as new player) it's just predatory way of trying to do "gotcha monetization".

If I bought expansions (glad I didn't) and only later (let's say during HOT/PoF) realized that I didn't get everything but I missed LW paid content - I would be FURIOUS. Even if Anet thinks for some reason that prvious free content should be paid (lol) - at least bundle them for slight increase to expansions. This is riddiculous monetization method.

Games don't always lose value just because they're old. It's just that you're looking only at the games that do lower their value.

You also forget that games which are old and drop in value are mostly the single player ones. This one is an on-going game, not a game which no one plays anymore. Games drop value when people are not playing them anymore and the devs have nothing to lose if they sell it at low value. Again, single player games. MMOs that are cheaper, are subscription games and of course they can afford to sell their games cheaper, since they will eventually get their money of of that sweet subscription fee. This game in comparison, is a buy to play game.

So in the end, tell me, what's your solution? ArenaNet should give the whole content for 20-30 euros or even for free just because the game is old? A lot of crying for a game that you consider to "have no value", eh?

[Labjax.2465]

18 minutes ago, Crono.4197 said:

Games don't always lose value just because they're old. It's just that you're looking only at the games that do lower their value.

You also forget that games which are old and drop in value are mostly the single player ones. This one is an on-going game, not a game which no one plays anymore. Games drop value when people are not playing them anymore and the devs have nothing to lose if they sell it at low value. Again, single player games. MMOs that are cheaper, are subscription games and of course they can afford to sell their games cheaper, since they will eventually get their money of of that sweet subscription fee. This game in comparison, is a buy to play game.

So in the end, tell me, what's your solution? ArenaNet should give the whole content for 20-30 euros or even for free just because the game is old? A lot of crying for a game that you consider to "have no value", eh?

As myself and others have stated multiple times in this thread, there is a part of MMOs that perceivably goes down in value over time for being old. Things like being there when content is most populated, being there for this or that promotion, or simply the experience of being there as the game evolves, which is a huge part of what the MMO experience is. If anything, you've got it backwards. It's the perception of an MMO as a single player game, is where people contradict this way of looking at it by claiming that you are in essence getting what others got before you, but for cheaper; looking at it purely as encapsulated content itself, rather than as a living MMO community/experience. And in GW2's case, there are concrete examples of this, not just nebulous feeling. Although they are bringing back LW1 as instanced content, someone who missed the original LW1 as it came out will never get to go back and experience that in any way like it was then. That is essentially lost content, which was the intention at the time, for it to be a fleeting, "living world" experience.

And once again, this is not about a specific person lodging a complaint against price. This is about looking practically at how customers in video games are likely going to react to a product and what anet is likely losing by sticking to this model (and what we know they are losing based on the stories we hear about people who try to get their friends to play the game, or for the people who do that, what they see happen firsthand).

[kharmin.7683]

3 hours ago, Labjax.2465 said:

 

And once again, this is not about a specific person lodging a complaint against price. This is about looking practically at how customers in video games are likely going to react to a product and what anet is likely losing by sticking to this model (and what we know they are losing based on the stories we hear about people who try to get their friends to play the game, or for the people who do that, what they see happen firsthand).

It's the percentage of customers that matters.  I'm guessing that Anet's statistics show that percentage to be negligible while still making a profit for shareholders with the current model.