What?

[Holgarf.6581]

6 hours ago, jokke.6239 said:

I know. Worst part is people using it against them.

"Now we have to PAY for living story episodes"

Instead of appreciating the generous free content they have gotten

Except it wasn't generous free content. You also forgot to mention the massive amount of technical neglect, a decade+ of QoL & fixes ignorance. I've even had people come out with the most bizarre defences for the lack of game polish, fixes and QoL.

"Dev's gotta eat" - oh please.

If there was a subscription model tomorrow, that offered a few skins a week, some perma tools, free teleporting to anywhere, and a few other naff things thrown in, people would readily throw money at it and defend Anet against any justified criticism. Just a somewhat amusing/tragic, but small example... remember when they charged 1600 gems for a jade bot skin? xD - this is fine because it's optional, yet if you buy things like this your support goes into back pockets rather than real development or game engine improvements, fixes, etc, in which case someone will say purchases are optional. It goes round in a bizarre circle of excuses that contradicts itself.

Already getting less and effectively paying more, for content that is rushed, coupled with the foot-dragging over the last 11 years is unacceptable. People are effectively giving the green light on sloppy work. No wonder every other aspect of the gaming world has been ruined in recent times.

Anet aren't your friends. They are a business like all of the rest.

*Yes react confused when really it's used for mocking reasons*

Edited July 24, 2023 by Holgarf.6581

[Batalix.2873]

21 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

It's not even that. It's much simpler. If two people were to make a product of the same quality, but one of them worked twice as hard as the other to get the same result, which of them two would you value more?

I'm presuming you mean as the employer/holder of capital. And yes you are correct, if the same sales can be achieved with less investment, every company trends that way. Consumer quality and labor class be damned.

Also I think bashing the devs is somewhat merited, as it is really our only interface with the company. They have voluntarily allowed themselves to be the primary medium through with the company communicates updates, so even though it would be much better for us to have access to lambasting upper management to their faces, we don't and must settle for the company's chosen scapegoats.

(And, no matter how systemically the problems exist, the devs are still failing to execute, and trying to damage control by themselves spectacularly poorly. If nothing else the PR doublespeak absolutely deserves criticism.)

On 7/23/2023 at 3:25 AM, Holgarf.6581 said:

It is episodic content under the guise of an expansion and it comes with a reduction in the full expansion price tag, although since you get significantly less and the discount not significant, I wouldn't really consider it cheaper. It's a calculated decision based on player interaction, active numbers, trends and a boost in revenue of course (that's actually the primary driving force). But again, I'll forever be pointing to where most of our money really went (back pockets) and point to how neglected the game engine is and lacking significantly in QoL updates / polish despite *supporting* ANet through heinous microtransactions . It's a business, I get it and my justified and pin-point whining isn't here to encourage others to feel the same. It is merely observation. However GW3 is likely to be much of the same as GW2, so I fear there's little reason to go to it, especially since my contribution didn't get me any improvements that I wanted - it went to rushed third major expansion and constant skin development. After thousands of hours spent, maybe at that point (if GW3 ever did come) it'd be time to try something new?

And as I said before, this so-called expansion is stuff that would likely have been free as part of the expansion experience of episodic content, perhaps monetised in some form, optionally, but not directly and as brazenly.

With the speed at which this content was made... giving how rough End of Dragons was... everything from Open World / Living World events, restricted NPC dialogue, dialogue references, NPC population, interactions with NPCs and the environment, event design, texture placement, spawn points, poor map design leaving swatches of permanently unvisited areas, poorly accessible areas, horrendous difficulty/population event scaling, outright dead maps and population limits, event bugs, no reason to revisit most of the maps, lack of diverse event types, botting zones, yada yada yada..., including introductions of core systems (fishing) that directly go towards encouraging further real monetary spending... then I have a massive concern with how rough SotO is going to be considering how short of a development time it has had.

One of the major things Anet need to stop doing is creating content that once completed, has little appeal and I feel SotO is going to be much the same. Nearly all of the world maps are this way, and it means that unless you're rushing to catch up, or if you're a late comer and skip to that latest release, coming back 6-12 months later or at your own pace means you're going to have a hell of a time trying to find people to do things with - and I don't care if people say "I can find someone in 5 minutes" or "ask a guild", it isn't always that simple. It quickly makes an MMORPG feel like a single-player world with terrible difficulty scaling (not that the game is difficult, but hopefully some of you understand my meaning). And address the DPS everything mentality! GW2 was meant to be about throwing away with traditional MMO tropes (something I shunned for a long time), but instead GW2 has landed in this awkward half-half approach of it's own, mixed with tradition, which then further varies depending on the content in question and it makes a mess. Presumably this was done to further increase equipment and build slot sales?

IBS had some interesting aspects in it, that didn't focus solely on DPS content where everyone was rotating their entire array of skills.

And AoE. It seems to be the default for all player skills and mob rushes and mob AoE bombs seem to be the choice for enemy design - this has been the case for years. Imagine single target weaponry now lmao. This game has slid so far off of the scale, it's unreal. Anet designers remind me of the ardent and ignorance of the writer's guild.

Finally (and selfishly 😉) bring back Guardian Staff to how it used to be back in the day, change Guardian Scepter so it doesn't suck and doesn't make that awful noise (I think everybody agrees, it is bloody awful) and make core classes good again. I know... if you make core classes too dope then why would people buy expansions, right? Well, I want to play core classes and I've bought every expansion since. Also, hammer improvements for Guardian ;0 (I know, I can be selfish).

This is really a major problem I have with the direction of SotO, at least what information they have revealed.

It's not that I particularly care if they make skyscales, legendary armor, or rune bonuses more accessible to newer players.

It's that these features were either sustaining a lot of continued player populations on old maps (leggy armor mats in HoT maps, leggy armor collections in raids Skyscale collections in PoF/S4 maps, runes for dungeons), or otherwise were capstones of a natural power progression for horizontal expansion that will now heavily disincentivize players to even play expacs at all (leyline gliding and mounts, generally).

And that *could* be okay in a broader context of replacing all of that obviated incentive with new incentive systems. But so far we have received virtually nothing to indicate the devs are mindfully replacing these achievements with *new* reasons to populate player maps. Mayyybe the Zaishen Quests, but I think that itself is going to be a poor, comparatively soulless incentive system.

A huge portion of GW2 or any game's old content is only as relevant and fun as the game can continue funneling players toward it. ANet has yet to indicate they will adequately address this. Personally I love a lot of older metas and the general ability to assemble players for old content, and if that becomes more difficult as a consequence of this soft reboot (and replaced by EoD style metas), a huge chunk of my motivation to play is gone.

[jokke.6239]

53 minutes ago, Holgarf.6581 said:

Except it wasn't generous free content. 

Why? If you logged in, you got it for free

And was a response to those kind of comments, yes you must have seen the context in my message

[Holgarf.6581]

1 hour ago, jokke.6239 said:

Why? If you logged in, you got it for free

And was a response to those kind of comments, yes you must have seen the context in my message

Really if folks are paying for expansions, those should be free anyway, not dependant on being logged in at the appropriate time. Seeing as you could unlock them for free if you were on at the right time, to access them you'd need the expansion anyway, in which case being on the game during the correct time to receive it for free shouldn't need be relevant because as I said, it should be free if you paid for an expansion anyway. Money's gotta money.

Edited July 24, 2023 by Holgarf.6581
Extra, extra clarity, for those who need it.

[Gibson.4036]

2 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

It's not even that. It's much simpler. If two people were to make a product of the same quality, but one of them worked twice as hard as the other to get the same result, which of them two would you value more?

Kinda hypothetical in a world where production has had every possible bit of inefficiency optimized out of it. It's not like most of us are buying crafted items from tradespeople with varying skill levels, able to produce different amounts of stuff in the same time.

Edited July 24, 2023 by Gibson.4036

[Batalix.2873]

53 minutes ago, Gibson.4036 said:

Kinda hypothetical in a world where production has had every possible bit of inefficiency optimized out of it. It's not like most of us are buying crafted items from tradespeople with varying skill levels, able to produce different amounts of stuff in the same time.

Eh that's a sweeping overgeneralization. Just because entrepreneurs are constantly trying to optimize production/profit doesn't mean they all have the same opportunities/resources or are using them well. In fact a large part of "success" can just involve managing to convince people to buy a near-identical product for an inflated cost due to branding or outright misinformation.

2 hours ago, jokke.6239 said:

Why? If you logged in, you got it for free

And was a response to those kind of comments, yes you must have seen the context in my message

I think the implication was that the "free content" came at the cost of huge technical debt and neglect. Yes we got LW for free, but all the resources put into it were diverted away from more robust additions/fixes to the game.

Edited July 24, 2023 by Batalix.2873

[jokke.6239]

8 hours ago, Batalix.2873 said:

Eh that's a sweeping overgeneralization. Just because entrepreneurs are constantly trying to optimize production/profit doesn't mean they all have the same opportunities/resources or are using them well. In fact a large part of "success" can just involve managing to convince people to buy a near-identical product for an inflated cost due to branding or outright misinformation.

I think the implication was that the "free content" came at the cost of huge technical debt and neglect. Yes we got LW for free, but all the resources put into it were diverted away from more robust additions/fixes to the game.

Then content can never be "free"

Cuz they could always do something else instead

[Batalix.2873]

2 minutes ago, jokke.6239 said:

Then content can never be "free"

Cuz they could always do something else instead

Yeah I'm neither here nor there on that particular argument, just clarifying. It is free, but it also nothing is free and everything has hidden costs.

[Ashen.2907]

9 hours ago, Batalix.2873 said:

Yes we got LW for free,

If getting something for "free" involves having to give the company money first it isnt free. LW was included in the price of an expansion. The EoD strike missioms werent free because we didnt have to pay for them separately.

[jokke.6239]

7 minutes ago, Ashen.2907 said:

If getting something for "free" involves having to give the company money first it isnt free. LW was included in the price of an expansion. The EoD strike missioms werent free because we didnt have to pay for them separately.

Then why did I have to pay for so many episodes individually? 

Living World is sold seperatly from expansions.

Getting them for free was just a bonus to active players

 

What makes you say it was included in the price of the expansions?

Edited July 25, 2023 by jokke.6239

[Ashen.2907]

4 minutes ago, jokke.6239 said:

What makes you say it was included in the price of the expansions?

Because if you dont buy the expansion you cannot have the LW episodes. If there is a monetary expenditure prerequisite for having something then it isnt free.

[jokke.6239]

Just now, Ashen.2907 said:

Because if you dont buy the expansion you cannot have the LW episodes. If there is a monetary expenditure prerequisite for having something then it isnt free.

That's not what you said though

You said it was included in the price of the expansion

I also payed for the base game before I bought HoT, but I didn't expect to get HoT for free

[Gibson.4036]

17 hours ago, Batalix.2873 said:

Eh that's a sweeping overgeneralization. Just because entrepreneurs are constantly trying to optimize production/profit doesn't mean they all have the same opportunities/resources or are using them well. In fact a large part of "success" can just involve managing to convince people to buy a near-identical product for an inflated cost due to branding or outright misinformation.

Yeah, I am talking in generalizations, because it's necessary in this format. There are, of course, niche markets where people still pay more money because things are hand-crafted, and therefore take a lot longer to make. This, due to a perception of increased quality, whether real or illusory. But overall, we're not really paying because someone can make something faster. We pay for all kinds of other reasons, including the branding you mention. Sometimes for the same exact product, produced in the same exact factory, placed in different packaging.

But my comment came out of the fact that industrialization made a huge percentage of workers interchangeable and production very similar across entire industries. A work-hour became disconnected from skill because you can remove the need for skill in the mass-production process. There's going to be a pretty small difference person to person doing a simple, repetitive task as a tiny part of the production of a product. Which is why production can be moved wherever people are desperate enough to minimize the cost of said labor.

[Ashen.2907]

9 hours ago, jokke.6239 said:

That's not what you said though

You said it was included in the price of the expansion

I also payed for the base game before I bought HoT, but I didn't expect to get HoT for free

Ok then, there are two prerequisites. One must pay real money and one must log in within a specified window of time.

Paying for the base game was not a prerequisite for HoT as the base game was free by the time of HoT's release.

Edited July 25, 2023 by Ashen.2907

[Jianyu.7065]

Complaints like this will never end and the best answer will always be - nobody is forcing anything on you. 

The fact is, many players have already purchased and many players will purchase the new content in the future. Period. From ANets perspective, what exactly have they done wrong? From a long term players perspective, what exactly is wrong with buying it?

[WeightTrainer.3219]

On 6/27/2023 at 4:38 PM, ReaverKane.7598 said:

All skyscale, and Runes discussion aside, which, let me tell you holy moly.

But asking us to pay for Living World, and calling it an "expansion"... Now that's a bold marketing strategy.
If not, let us review your release plans:
We get 2 maps and one story episode at release, with more stuff on future episodes. That's a living world season plan.

We get no elite specs. Oh sure you're allowing more weapon flexibility and that's fine, but that in no way replaces new elite specs. No new features, nothing that would be what hallmarks expansions so far.

And you ask pretty much the same price as previous expansions for what's basically a single living world episode worth of content, and a IOU for more stuff?

Hilarious. Good luck with that strategy.

I am really looking forward to all the World vs. World content coming with the expansion.

[ProfileName.9281]

ITT:

>This game is fun but I hate my parents

$25 for a season of living world sounds like a good deal to me. If your worried it will be a bit kitten, wait for a sale. Which it will go on sale eventually, probably in a couple years.

[Holgarf.6581]

14 hours ago, ProfileName.9281 said:

ITT:

>This game is fun but I hate my parents

$25 for a season of living world sounds like a good deal to me. If your worried it will be a bit kitten, wait for a sale. Which it will go on sale eventually, probably in a couple years.

I'm glad it sounds that way to you. Most of us however aren't so easily mislead. Less content, less quality, actually more expensive for the user and Anet's diverted resources to other projects, doesn't really scream confidence to the future of the franchise.

Edit: forgot to mention Living World used to be free and post EoD LW expansions lacked severely... so again you're going to be paying for stuff that would otherwise have been free. "...sounds like a good deal to me".

Edited July 26, 2023 by Holgarf.6581
If Anet were a medical team, they'd pull the power to your life support machine to save 0.20c

[Panda.1967]

As a replacement for living world, this is a good move… its approximately the same amount of content as a full living world release, but at almost half the cost. No, living world is NOT free. Living world has a price tag of $50-80 depending on the season. The “Free living world seasons” are strictly a bonus for active players at the time of episode releases and during the occasional living world returns event. Living world as a whole was only ever free during season 1. Ever since season 2 it has had a solid price tag.

However, as stated earlier, this is a terrible move as a replacement for expansions. This is a small fraction of a full expansions content, none of the main selling points of an expansion, and all for a measly $5 discount off the normal expansion cost.

Edited August 4, 2023 by Panda.1967

[idpersona.3810]

13 minutes ago, Panda.1967 said:

As a replacement for living world, this is a good move… its approximately the same amount of content as a full living world release, but at almost half the cost. No, living world is NOT free. Living world has a price tag of $50-80 depending on the season. The “Free living world seasons” are strictly a bonus for active players at the time of episode releases and during the occasional living world returns event. Living world as a whole was only ever free during season 1. Ever since season 2 it has had a solid price tag.

However, as stated earlier, this is a terrible move as a replacement for expansions. This is a small fraction of a full expansions content, none of the main selling points of an expansion, and all for a measly $5 discount off the normal expansion cost.

Your numbers confuse me. Season 2 is 1280 gems (or $16). Seasons 3 and 4 are 960 gems (or $12) [all current prices]. So I'm genuinely curious how you came up with $50-80.

I agree though that this format isn't a great replacement compared to previous expansions. We will have to wait and see whether or not this truly mitigates the content drought feel we've gotten over the years. Only time will tell.

Edited August 3, 2023 by idpersona.3810

[IAmNotMatthew.1058]

On 7/26/2023 at 9:31 AM, ProfileName.9281 said:

$25 for a season of living world sounds like a good deal to me. If your worried it will be a bit kitten, wait for a sale. Which it will go on sale eventually, probably in a couple years.

Every prior LW - with the exception of LWS2 - was ~15$ of Gems if you bought gems specifically for LW with each release, if you buy the complete pack it's even less.

25$ is closer to a proper expansion than to Living World.

 

[Panda.1967]

1 hour ago, idpersona.3810 said:

Your numbers confuse me. Season 2 is 1280 gems (or $16). Seasons 3 and 4 are 960 gems (or $12) [all current prices]. So I'm genuinely curious how you came up with $50-80.

I agree though that this format isn't a great replacement compared to previous expansions. We will have to wait and see whether or not this truly mitigates the content drought feel we've gotten over the years. Only time will tell.

Its been several years since I’ve seen the gem costs of LW episodes since I own all of them… I was working off memory.

[Kozumi.5816]

On 7/24/2023 at 4:06 PM, Batalix.2873 said:

Yes we got LW for free

I would rather pay for good content instead of getting Kourna.

[HeliosMagi.9867]

19 minutes ago, Kozumi.5816 said:

I would rather pay for good content instead of getting Kourna.

How is Kourna bad? it gave us more Joko and the Roller Beetle.

[idpersona.3810]

2 hours ago, Panda.1967 said:

Its been several years since I’ve seen the gem costs of LW episodes since I own all of them… I was working off memory.

No worries. Like I said, I was just confused by the numbers. I do agree in general. I also have all of them and so I don't know if those prices are on sale or not.