Living World.....Gone?

[Ashantara.8731]

7 hours ago, Mungo Zen.9364 said:

Living World.....Gone?

On the contrary: they are now going to sell Living World content as "expansions".

So, not LW is gone but expansions are.

[Mistwraithe.3106]

Some details are still fuzzy but it sounds like a solid plan to me. Arena Net need to make money and I don't want them overly monetizing the gem shop so they need to have a source of funding outside that. More frequent but slightly smaller paid expansions (I'm figuring roughly yearly) seems like a good plan and also fairer than the living world seasons which ended up costing a decent amount too if you had to buy them with gems.

(Note that I gather many users managed to get LW for free which is great for them but also means either Arena Net make less money from LW or have to charge those who buy LW with gems a larger amount. Bundling LW into more frequent but cheaper paid expansions seems like it will deliver more reliable cashflow and that's what pays for development).

Edited February 13, 2023 by Mistwraithe.3106

[Arianth Moonlight.6453]

7 hours ago, Mungo Zen.9364 said:

So we won't be getting another Living World, and we will be getting smaller Expansions?

yay!

too bad we're starting in the Meme Sea... Couldn't care less for Cantha or this boring green blob of nothing.

[pallas.8150]

I don't mean to sound like a hater, but this is the same stuff they've been saying pretty much since like 2014.

[Einsof.1457]

23 minutes ago, pallas.8150 said:

I don't mean to sound like a hater, but this is the same stuff they've been saying pretty much since like 2014.

Cool story 

[AlenaVolkova.8179]

Aw, no more free living world contents on the day they're released 😔

[Einsof.1457]

18 minutes ago, AlenaVolkova.8179 said:

Aw, no more free living world contents on the day they're released 😔

Re-read the post.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

I have mixed feelings of this, which I won't address here, but I will say:

 

Players feel like ArenaNet will be selling Living World seasons as expansions. They always were; LWS3 was higher quality than Heart of Thorns which was rushed and incomplete and had to be massively patched for years after release (even if the map design was really, really good, the story and masteries fell flat), and LWS4 far exceeded Path of Fire both in story and in terms of map design and overall production values.

 

I think that players conflate the value elite specialisations brought with the expansions being "good", but if you take a close look, the overwhelming majority of content came with the Living World seasons--including all raids!

 

Expansions were mostly just a springboard platform to propel us into the next Living World season. This feels like the developers are just streamlining that so we immediately get launched into the good stuff, instead of having to weather mastery grinds, incomplete stories, rushed elite specialisations and dozens of bugs.

 

What I look forward to the most though is updates to old content, especially Fractals and WvW.

Edited February 14, 2023 by SoftFootpaws.9134

[Randulf.7614]

34 minutes ago, AlenaVolkova.8179 said:

Aw, no more free living world contents on the day they're released 😔

The equivalent ls updates remain free. They just will be short quarterly ones relevant to their paid expac every (presumably) 1-2 years.

13 minutes ago, SoftFootpaws.9134 said:

I have mixed feelings of this, which I won't address here, but I will say:

 

Players feel like ArenaNet will be selling Living World seasons as expansions. They always were; LWS3 was higher quality than Heart of Thorns which was rushed and incomplete and had to be massively patched for years after release (even if the map design was really, really good, the story and masteries fell flat), and LWS4 far exceeded Path of Fire both in story and in terms of map design and overall production values.

 

I think that players conflate the value elite specialisations brought with the expansions being "good", but if you take a close look, the overwhelming majority of content came with the Living World seasons--including all raids!

I disagree strongly ls4 was vastly superior to PoF. Kourna and Thunderhead alone were awful maps. The story had some great bits and some truly contemptible bits as well. 
 

The main correction here is that all raids did not come with seasons. The first raid launched a couple of weeks after HoT since HoT needed to stagger a few things and that was known in advance as part of the purchase. Season 3 was 9 months later than that. The raids were always part of the expansion not the season and the first three paths released before S3 E1. 
 

Otherwise, yes LS did a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of both content drops and replayability. 

Edited February 14, 2023 by Randulf.7614

[Firebeard.1746]

Also it's high time to fix de meta so you don't need to be in a pre-formed group that opens its own instance in NA. I suspect your sales will not be as high if you don't. Make the current version queuable in eotn and modify the ow experience. Not a single rando group i've tried outside of hardstuck has succeeded for me post nerfs, as recently as Saturday. Also a more experienced comm took over and organized roles fyi.

 

Anyone that doesn't do de in premades is going to be less than enthusiastic to buy your next expansion if that's the meta they have to look forward to.

Edited February 14, 2023 by Firebeard.1746

[mythical.6315]

It's pretty smart of them to increase the cadence of expansions so that players will spend more on the game.

[Ashantara.8731]

2 hours ago, SoftFootpaws.9134 said:

Players feel like ArenaNet will be selling Living World seasons as expansions. They always were; LWS3 was higher quality than Heart of Thorns which was rushed and incomplete and had to be massively patched for years after release (even if the map design was really, really good, the story and masteries fell flat), and LWS4 far exceeded Path of Fire both in story and in terms of map design and overall production values.

*cough* While we can agree that LWS4 was awesome, PoF was so much better than LWS3, really.

LWS3 had the worst writing in the history of the GW franchise and ruined not only the legacy of a hundreds of years old institution like the Shining Blade by making them a laughingstock, they also turned the legacies of Livia, Balthazar and Lazarus into a laughing matter. It was one big embarrassment, worse than the conclusion to the IBS.

But tastes in writing aside, I am not a fan of episodic releases of a story in an MMORPG. It is one thing to watch a weekly tv show and have to wait seven days until the story continues. Getting spoon fed small chunks of a story in an RPG, however, feels more like reading only 1-2 chapters of a novel, then putting it away for several months before reading another 1-2 chapters, and so on. You totally lose the feel for the story, the anticipation just fades away and doesn't fully return by the time the next small portion becomes available.

I prefer a full-fledged story that I can play at my own pace and don't have to wait an eternity to experience the conclusion to it. That really takes away from the excitement of a story told, at least for me.
 

Edited February 14, 2023 by Ashantara.8731

[mythical.6315]

2 hours ago, SoftFootpaws.9134 said:

Players feel like ArenaNet will be selling Living World seasons as expansions. They always were; LWS3 was higher quality than Heart of Thorns which was rushed and incomplete and had to be massively patched for years after release (even if the map design was really, really good, the story and masteries fell flat), and LWS4 far exceeded Path of Fire both in story and in terms of map design and overall production values.

It wasn't patched massively for years lol.  We had an overhaul to the meta reward system about six months later with other small updates to nerf adventures to the point that you could get gold for most without trying.

[Poormany.4507]

Merging and rebranding 2-3 Living World episodes as mini-expacs seems very risky to me tbh.

There is no guarantee those three won't end up like the second half of IBS. Imagine paying $20-30 for that and then getting fully reused 2012 models in copy-paste missions.

If Anet had a more consistent quality track record with Living World, this would sound great, but pretty much one out of every three to four LW episodes ended up being clearly rushed and generally disliked by the community (i.e, One Path Ends, Kourna, IBS). Imo, they need to do a strong LWS6 (especially the ending episodes) before introducing mini-expacs, or they risk losing a lot of the playerbase.

Edited February 14, 2023 by Poormany.4507

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

16 minutes ago, mythical.6315 said:

It wasn't patched massively for years lol.  We had an overhaul to the meta reward system about six months later with other small updates to nerf adventures to the point that you could get gold for most without trying.

Even if you don't count the entire year of bugfixes they had to release after the launch, all the elite specialisations had to be completely overhauled and aren't even remotely how they were in 2015. Some of them didn't even see major play until well after another expansion released.

Edited February 14, 2023 by SoftFootpaws.9134

[Mistwraithe.3106]

22 minutes ago, Ashantara.8731 said:

I prefer a full-fledged story that I can play at my own pace and don't have to wait an eternity to experience the conclusion to it. That really takes away from the excitement of a story told, at least for me.

Presumably the rate at which they can code the story remains roughly the same as before so you can achieve what you are wanting by just waiting until a suitably large body of content has been released. Eg, if they release a new expansion every year but you require two years of development effort to feel there is enough content to play then you could wait 2 years before buying both expansions.

 

13 minutes ago, Poormany.4507 said:

If Anet had a more consistent quality track record with Living World, this would sound great, but pretty much one out of every three to four LW episodes ended up being clearly rushed and generally disliked by the community (i.e, One Path Ends, Kourna, IBS).

I'm not sure why people assume these new expansions will be closer to LW than to the old expansions in terms of quality. Presumably the main difference between LW and expansions is that the latter is paid content and hence better funded than LW (which apparently many users are accustomed to getting for free).

The main gist of this announcement seems to be that they are going to be focusing on more expansion style content but in smaller chunks and, yes, there will be be a fee for playing it just like previous expansions.

Anyone who is complaining about LW season quality should surely be happy with that?

 

Edited February 14, 2023 by Mistwraithe.3106

[Carlos Netto.2051]

Paying for something in advance that I don't know what is it and getting the full content that I paid for months after.  🤔🤔

Mixed feelings about it. The only thing that I expect from it is some people who are seeing this change with fully optimism getting disappointed and coming here to the forums to complain about it when the "smaller expansions" gets introduced. As always happens...

Edited February 14, 2023 by Carlos Netto.2051

[Poormany.4507]

4 minutes ago, Mistwraithe.3106 said:

The main gist of this announcement seems to be that they are going to be focusing on more expansion style content but in smaller chunks and, yes, there will be be a fee for playing it just like previous expansions.

Anyone who is complaining about LW season quality should surely be happy with that?

Previous LW episodes were pretty much free (all you had to do was log in) and consequently, there was a much smaller quality demand, with the expectation that it's a one-off issue and the next LW episode/expac will be much better. Having to pay for LW with a considerable chance that it ends up being low-quality content sold as a mini-expac does not sound like an improvement - unless the price was much lower than an expac ($10-15), which I really doubt will be the case, since they specifically said "slightly reduced" cost (more likely $20-25 per mini-expac).

[Mistwraithe.3106]

21 minutes ago, Poormany.4507 said:

Previous LW episodes were pretty much free (all you had to do was log in) and consequently, there was a much smaller quality demand, with the expectation that it's a one-off issue and the next LW episode/expac will be much better. Having to pay for LW with a considerable chance that it ends up being low-quality content sold as a mini-expac does not sound like an improvement - unless the price was much lower than an expac ($10-15), which I really doubt will be the case, since they specifically said "slightly reduced" cost (more likely $20-25 per mini-expac).

It really depends on the quality doesn't it?

If LW were free for most users then that limits the resources Arena Net could spend on them as it was essentially unpaid work. Whereas the proposed smaller but regular expansions are paid so more resources can be spent on them.

That's no guarantee I guess but assuming they are running a normal business where developers/artists/etc have to be paid somehow it strongly suggests the new expansions will be higher quality than LW episodes were.

[mythical.6315]

53 minutes ago, SoftFootpaws.9134 said:

Even if you don't count the entire year of bugfixes they had to release after the launch, all the elite specialisations had to be completely overhauled and aren't even remotely how they were in 2015. Some of them didn't even see major play until well after another expansion released.

You're looking at practically every elite spec in the game which gets overhauled.  You're also making the assumption that other content doesn't receive bug fixes well after it's been released. All that I'm seeing is a biased view.

[Aelin.9317]

2 hours ago, Firebeard.1746 said:

Also it's high time to fix de meta so you don't need to be in a pre-formed group that opens its own instance in NA. I suspect your sales will not be as high if you don't. Make the current version queuable in eotn and modify the ow experience. Not a single rando group i've tried outside of hardstuck has succeeded for me post nerfs, as recently as Saturday. Also a more experienced comm took over and organized roles fyi.

 

Anyone that doesn't do de in premades is going to be less than enthusiastic to buy your next expansion if that's the meta they have to look forward to.

I have done maybe 20 runs of DE now and 19 of those were just random ones I jumped into in the morning. Only one failed! Although I am EU.. surely NA players cannot be that much worse? x)

[Firebeard.1746]

27 minutes ago, Aelin.9317 said:

I have done maybe 20 runs of DE now and 19 of those were just random ones I jumped into in the morning. Only one failed! Although I am EU.. surely NA players cannot be that much worse? x)

Ask Sneb. 

[Demonhead.7584]

Does this mean that we could potentially have a "smaller expansion" that just releases Tengu? I ponder this, as whatever they release in these "smaller expansions" can't have any game-breaking changes or advantages, lest we venture into pay to win territory (exluding e-specs of course)

Edited February 14, 2023 by Demonhead.7584

[Ashford.8540]

13 hours ago, mythical.6315 said:

You're looking at practically every elite spec in the game which gets overhauled.  You're also making the assumption that other content doesn't receive bug fixes well after it's been released. All that I'm seeing is a biased view.

 

I don't think it's biased to point out that it took ANet 5 years to release a new expansion and not only was it worst expansion behind HoT, it had less content than HoT, and less things to do to the point the maps are empty/abandoned.

 

The fact players haft to wait for peak hours to do a meta either for the story or to get a useless turtle (and that's if the meta doesn't fail) and that's if your lucky says alot on how much players trust ANet to release smaller expansion when EoD is one of the smallest and performance intensive expansions to date.

 

If Anet can only produce something like EoD in a 5 year span what makes you think these "mini expansion" aren't just going to be  a years worth of LW seasons repackaged into an expansion to try to FOMO players into paying up for lower quality content? After all, this is coincidentally happening as the NCSoft CEO is being booted and under new management so not entirely surprising for a new CEO to be looking at their studios on how to increase monetization(nickle and dime) to keep investors happy. Just saying.

Edited February 14, 2023 by Ashford.8540

[Linken.6345]

19 minutes ago, Ashford.8540 said:

 

I don't think it's biased to point out that it took ANet 5 years to release a new expansion and not only was it worst expansion behind HoT, it had less content than HoT, and less things to do to the point the maps are empty/abandoned.

 

The fact players haft to wait for peak hours to do a meta either for the story or to get a useless turtle (and that's if the meta doesn't fail) and that's if your lucky says alot on how much players trust ANet to release smaller expansion when EoD is one of the smallest and performance intensive expansion expansions to date.

 

If Anet can only produce something like EoD in a 5 year span what makes you think these "mini expansion" aren't just going to be  a years worth of LW seasons repackaged into an expansion to try to FOMO players into paying up for lower quality content? After all, this is coincidentally happening as the NCSoft CEO is being booted and under new management so not entirely surprising for a new CEO to be looking at their studios on how to increase monetization(nickle and dime) to keep investors happy. Just saying.

Where do you get 5 years of EoD development from?

When we got the icebrood saga annuncement (August 30, 2019)they said no expansion was planned we got that instead.

So yea your 5 year development span is off, its more like abit over 2 years.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guild_Wars_2:_End_of_Dragons