Passion has gone my friends [Merged]

[soulknight.9620]

On 3/3/2024 at 1:03 AM, Lord Trejgon.2809 said:

All gems you obtain through this way have been paid by someone else with irl money. Just FYI.

Should it bother me in some weird way? A simple common sense check: can you purchase gems with ingame currency? yes! Can you buy lw episodes with it? yes! So thats basically what i said. And just for you to think about it a bit: gems do not hold any value to the extent that they are "printed" by anet in quantities that they see fit. There is no physical limitation on the supply of gems. The price of them varies on sell/buy coefficient sure, but they are not limited by the amount other players have bought. 

On 3/3/2024 at 1:03 AM, Lord Trejgon.2809 said:

Right now, if you wanted to get access to POF, LWS4 and IBS on fresh account you'd need to pay (or have someone pay for you) much more than 40 euros.

POF+HOT is 29.99, so that basically POF for 15 euros. LWS4 and IBS can be unlocked via ingame currency. LWS4 is 960 gems, thats equal to 12 euros roughly. IBS is 960 gems too, so add another 12 euros. Thats 15+12+12= 39 euros in total. And another thing - steam lets you buy the whole dragon saga (thats HOT, POF, EOD, all of the LW 2-4 and IBS) for 99 euros. So you can get it even cheeper (cause HOT POF EOD cost 60 euros on gw2 official shop). So as i was saying - get your math right before throwing arguments. 

On 3/3/2024 at 1:03 AM, Lord Trejgon.2809 said:

And you trying to dismiss time is just you trying, because time was and is very important part of the packaging.

Time is not relevant because you cannot measure its value. It is highly subjective. 

On 3/3/2024 at 1:03 AM, Lord Trejgon.2809 said:

And the point you keep missing or purposefully ignoring, is that you are not comparing two content packs, but series of separatelly priced content packs against a smaller series of permabundled content packs. Glad that you managed to get it at promotional value of free, but that does not change that the comparision you are trying to draw is flawed, for the purpose of making look one of these much worse than it is.

No, its not flawed. The way anet ships their content (in smaller bundles or larger expacs) doesnt change the value of the content pack. You get what you get, period. There is no additional value of content being sliced up and fed to you in small portions and vice versa. 

On 3/3/2024 at 1:03 AM, Lord Trejgon.2809 said:

The only "problem" with the fact of having to log in during the period, is that it makes the "free" deal a promotion, and not "standard" pricing.

I didnt pay for it. My wife didnt pay for it. My friends didnt pay for it. Most of my guildies didnt pay for it. So what "standard" are you talking about. And you know what? You can still not pay for lw2-4+IBS with real money and basically get it for free via gem/gold conversion. If it was just a "promotion" then anet would lock it up just as they locked expac purchases behind real money payments. The way that you can simply get content (lw) with ingame currency is not different to any other content you get with ingame currency like a skyscale/griffon/collections/skins etc. You get things by playing the game. You wouldnt say that skyscale and/or griffon is locked behing a paywall wouldnt you?

On 3/3/2024 at 1:03 AM, Lord Trejgon.2809 said:

You take the "promise" of AN to be delivering more and better quality content at a yearly pricetag, but then get angry because you keep insisting on dismissing the time factor... Again going, by timescale even going in a way still favouring LWS4, the difference between LWS4 and SotO content quantity is much lesser than you keep pushing. Sure when you go by flat numbers of things like exact amount of new maps or fractals, SotO is still falling behind LWS4 even on exact fair timescale, but it is not falling behind as much as you are claiming.

In terms of quality, That is arguable. LWS4 varied wildly in quality of it's releases, with some episodes being indeed superior to even best pieces of SotO content, but in other episodes the quality was much much lower. Averaging out, I'd say in my opinion they get comparable, with LWS4 having higher peaks, and lower dips, and SotO being more consistent.

Yes, it took that promise and i did get dissapointed that it wasnt delivered on. Was it my fault to trust anet? Sure. But that doesnt change the simple fact that content quality is subpar compared to lw. And again. As a paying customer i do not have to take into consideration how much effort and time it takes anet to get content out. Its their bussiness and their internal processes are not of my concern. I pay for product and thats it. If i buy a cake i want it to be tasty and fresh. And i dont want to hear from the baker that "something went wrong in our bakery and i didnt have time to bake the cake in proper way". 

Im not here to compare one feature of the content pack to another. I am saying that as a content pack SOTO is lacking compared to LW. Ive said it multiple times. I dont know why you keep trying to argue with arguments that i didnt make at all. 

On 3/3/2024 at 1:03 AM, Lord Trejgon.2809 said:

Yes, under release of EoD, and with new model. And how the cash shop sales were holding up with no expacs, you could see during IBS, where in the mid-season they had to drop half the plans they had, get everyone to work on expac instead, and in the middle of that they were also hit with layoffs. I was calling LWS system of releases unsustainable, not what they are doing right now.

Have you seen their financial documents to call it unsustainable? I sure didnt. From public financial reports gw2 was doing just fine. And there may be a simpler explanation for the "plan change" and "layoffs". NCsoft wanted more money. And when a parent company wants more money - you cut costs (fire people, cancel unannounced projects, change monetisation model). And from what i see in SOTO they cut costs a lot. Loads of reused models, textures etc. Have you seen the "new" models of "demons" in latest patch? The ones that look the same as quaggans, move like quaggans and fight like quaggans, but with a diffrerent skin texture? And thats just one example. But the worst part for me personally is the lack of creativity from anet. Did you find the latest mastery good? Oh look you can craft an armor now. Not that we already had an option to craft lege armor and weapons. So what was the point of that mastery aside from anet marketing "NEW MASTERY TO UNLOCK". If that doesnt scream "cut costs" then i dont know what is. 

On 3/3/2024 at 1:03 AM, Lord Trejgon.2809 said:

Other games and developpers are irrelevant to the value you get from GW2 purchases if servers were to shut down. Way to miss the point and try to deflect with irrelevant statements, in the same post that kept trying to dismiss other things as irrelevant. Nicely played.

As a matter of fact they are relevant. If anet would be a monopoly and the only way i could play mmos was gw2 then sure i would be worried about their fate a lot more. But there are other games that can provide similar experience and fill my need for mmos. The point you were trying to make is a trap that i didnt want to set my foot in. As simple as that. The argument of "but what would you have if anet go bankrupt, you would loose all of your purchases and time put into gw2" is a manipulative way to inflate the value of anet and gw2 and try to make me fear loosing access to gw2. I do not value games the same way as you do. I buy a game, have fun, get all the content i want done and if the game has nothing more to offer me i move on. I have no need to tie gw2 to my self identity or my life as a whole. And atm seeing how gw2 is starting to put less effort for higher price im thinking that its time to move on. Thats the point i made. 

The only reason im here on the forums is to try and do my best to give feedback to anet and hope that they would actually change something about the future of gw2. 

[Trejgon.9367]

40 minutes ago, soulknight.9620 said:

As a matter of fact they are relevant. If anet would be a monopoly and the only way i could play mmos was gw2 then sure i would be worried about their fate a lot more.

Ok, I was already getting a feel of it becoming pointless echo chamber with most of yoru post, but this has proven to me that you are clearly not even engaging with the points I am making.

So here is this one:

What kind of content are you getting in let's randomly say, dunno, ESO, for the money you have spent buying POF? That was my point. Not that you would not be able to spend rest of your money somewhere else. The moment GW2 servers go down (or any MMO while at it) you loose access to ALL the content you paid for to THAT particular studio.

You have a point on the math of PoF+LWS4 combined pricing, I forgot that bundles are a thing, and was going on in my head with the oldie 200 gems per episode (and launch price of PoF, because I forgot that bundle happened too)

Anyway, have a nice day, because there is no way we can have a good faith discussion, when you keep insisting that time doesn't matter, and that sensible take of AN announcement of how they are going to be delivering content from SotO onwards, was to expect them to somehow now magically being able to do 1.5 years of content released over 0.75 years, while being fully aware that they did not in fact double in size to be able to pull that off.

[Holmindeboks.3490]

On 3/2/2024 at 9:36 AM, soulknight.9620 said:

And whose problem is that? anets or mine as a paying customer? Let me get this straight - I dont care what it takes them to develop the product, I dont care how much time they spend on it, I dont care of any difficulties they experience, I dont care how much people or resources they spend on it. As a paying customer the only thing i care is to buy a product and get good quality product in return, i dont need to make excuses for anet for the lack of quality. 

Ah, my bad, i missunderstood there. 

(Example) If they work 4 years for an expansion without releasing something fresh/new then ppl get bored. Who wants to play a game for 4 years by doing the same over and over again? 
maybe old players who like atari and tetris. 
You say you want good content but i think you dont want to wait 4 years for that. And the dev team has to get money those 4 years. So they spread up the team, 80 % for gemstore items because thats the money they need to survive that 4 years of working. And 20% are working on the expansion. 
 

they have you to stay within the game to earn money. If you know that they need 4 years for an expansion you just take a break for those 4 years and come back when it gets released. But if many ppl like this then they have no income for those years. 
 

thats why they can better make skins for gemstore because its a fashion game as players say. 
 

 

[IAmNotMatthew.1058]

18 hours ago, Wolfofdivinity.6251 said:

Your right matey. However can you honestly say this one isn't a severe drop off? PoF and HoT were fine. EoD was a large decline....but this....hahahaha pay now content later. Time has passed I don't hear too many people speaking fondly regarding EoD. Hell I'm probably one of the few that liked PoF. HoT is the only one I hear people still enjoy...and really it's largely because the metas are still fun and populated.

Severe drop off compared to what? Anet starting LWS3 with a small kitten map that you could run around and finish everything tied to it in a week or two and nothing for like 3 months and then repeating it again in LWS3? Becase the same kitten has been happening for years. 

Get rid of those rose tinted glasses and remember how the game was back then. It was sure as kitten fun farming Branded meteors and repeating the same 2 metas for 4 months at the start of LWS4, the 3 month wait for Kourna only to ""enjoy"" that map for another 3 months, but hey, it had a mount, so all is good, right? Did I mention that 4 LWS4 maps were essentially recycled from Nightfall and 3 LWS3 maps are from Prophecies? Recycled content is a big complaining point about Soto, but seems to be ignored with everything else.

You look back at previous expansion - costing 50€, if not more for all the releases - as good, because over the span of like 3 years a lot of kitten was released for them and then you complain that a yearly release - 25€ - has less content.  

[Astralporing.1957]

9 minutes ago, IAmNotMatthew.1058 said:

Severe drop off compared to what? Anet starting LWS3 with a small kitten map that you could run around and finish everything tied to it in a week or two and nothing for like 3 months and then repeating it again in LWS3? Becase the same kitten has been happening for years.

Maybe. The difference is that we've had expansions in between those. This time however we don't because that filler LS content is what Anet calls expansions now. Basically, you are comparing the low points of previous release system to high points of now. And those low points of old come off as at least comparable to the best of what we can count on today.

[Cuks.8241]

35 minutes ago, IAmNotMatthew.1058 said:

Severe drop off compared to what? Anet starting LWS3 with a small kitten map that you could run around and finish everything tied to it in a week or two and nothing for like 3 months and then repeating it again in LWS3? Becase the same kitten has been happening for years. 

Get rid of those rose tinted glasses and remember how the game was back then. It was sure as kitten fun farming Branded meteors and repeating the same 2 metas for 4 months at the start of LWS4, the 3 month wait for Kourna only to ""enjoy"" that map for another 3 months, but hey, it had a mount, so all is good, right? Did I mention that 4 LWS4 maps were essentially recycled from Nightfall and 3 LWS3 maps are from Prophecies? Recycled content is a big complaining point about Soto, but seems to be ignored with everything else.

You look back at previous expansion - costing 50€, if not more for all the releases - as good, because over the span of like 3 years a lot of kitten was released for them and then you complain that a yearly release - 25€ - has less content.  

Funnily both Bloodstone Fen and Istan are one of my favourite LS maps (I don't mind if LS maps are a bit smaller and with less secrets compared to full expansion maps). Bloodstone was gliding playground and masteries were fun and I like Istan metas a lot. I'm sure I'll play them more in the future while I don't really have much interest in Soto content already now. And no, I haven't played much Soto at all,  explored the place, maybe did metas 2 or 3 times, 3 convergences and I'm not even interested in checking new bosses. I probably did Hablion more times than Soto metas meanwhile just because I like to fool around Bloodstone Fen while waiting for pvp queue. Hey maybe even Istan metas just because I like to do LS4 dailies and metas for volatile magic if I'm bored with other content.

The amount of content is irrelevant if it's not interesting enough to play it more than once.

[Mistwraithe.3106]

On 3/3/2024 at 4:54 AM, soulknight.9620 said:

It doesnt matter in this debate. The question is not how much content anet can dish out per minute. The question is that we have a paid package of content (SOTO). And we had a free package of content (lw4). And lw4 provides more content and better quality of said content. 

I will not be accountable for anets decision to switch their bussiness model from "buy an expansion for 40-50 euros and get a whole lot of content day one and 1-2 living world seasons as a bonus" to "get a paid expac for 25 euros thats basically provides less content than said living world season".

Without getting into all the other arguments in this thread (many of which I find twisted) it's obvious that making LW content free to active players at the time of release was economically dumb.

It's a fact that an income oriented business wants to charge their most enthusiastic customers more and then discount to make further marginal sales to the less keen customers.

The LW model gave the expansions, the fruits of Anet's work, to the current players, which included all of the keenest players, for free. Then Anet charged money (gems, it's irrelevant that you can buy them for gold, someone paid real money for them originally and hence they represent money from Anet's point of view, the more demand there is for gems the more Anet make) to sell LW to less active and new players.

This is the complete opposite of how it should work. Look at any other gaming software company, they release expansion packs at full price initially, then eventually the price drops so less keen and new players can pick it up cheaper. That is the correct economic model as it maximises income. Anet's original LW model was economically doomed to fail.

The current Anet mini expansion model seems economically sound. They get regular income, they can plan for the future and their customers get regular content.

You might not like the content that Anet are producing, but don't try saying that the LW financial model was better because it was disastrous for anyone who wants GW2 to have longevity. It's likely what got us into the IBS mess in the first place.

Edited March 4 by Mistwraithe.3106

[Astralporing.1957]

1 hour ago, Mistwraithe.3106 said:

You might not like the content that Anet are producing, but don't try saying that the LW model was better because it was disastrous for anyone who wants GW2 to have longevity. It's likely what got us into the IBS mess in the first place.

And yet that's exactly what we've got now - IBS expansionless approach to content delivery, except painted over a little and called (but only called) an expansion. SotO being called an expansion does not make it an expansion any more than IBS being called a Saga made it less of a Living Story Season 5.

[Mistwraithe.3106]

1 hour ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

And yet that's exactly what we've got now - IBS expansionless approach to content delivery, except painted over a little and called (but only called) an expansion. SotO being called an expansion does not make it an expansion any more than IBS being called a Saga made it less of a Living Story Season 5.

My post was quoting soulknight and was entirely on why it needs to cost money for the mini-expansions because the free LW model was unsustainable and a mistake.

Whether you want to say the mini-expansions are more like living world content or the old big expansions is a different matter. It's also not necessarily that relevant given plenty of people are saying in this thread they really liked LWS3 and LWS4. So the underlying point of your post is probably more whether you like the content. Again tho, not what my post was about which was purely the economics of the models.

[Astralporing.1957]

1 hour ago, Mistwraithe.3106 said:

It's also not necessarily that relevant given plenty of people are saying in this thread they really liked LWS3 and LWS4.

Sure they did. Notice though that IBS up to Drizzlewood was not far from overall LS3/LS4 quality. When people talk about LS3/LS4, they silently consider it as a part of a package with their preceding expansion (even if they do not necessarily notice it themselves).  And the reason why people look at IBS as if it was much worse (when it really wasn't - not until Champions anyway)  is exactly because it wasn't attached to an expansion but tried to replace it. Besides, honestly, IBS up until Champions probably was still better than SotO.

And your economic comparison is highly flawed because you do exclude expansions from it.

Edited March 5 by Astralporing.1957

[Obtena.7952]

On 3/1/2024 at 4:46 AM, csuvix.9284 said:

What is this strategy that I buy something and then I have to wait almost a year for a full content?

So you wonder why Anet throttles the content for you ... then literally you say this. 

On 3/1/2024 at 4:46 AM, csuvix.9284 said:

So I rushed trough story again (which is 1 hour max) and the rest is same as with EOD. I'm not a big achivement hunter so I don't find it interesting to do.

Yeah ... it's such a mystery why Anet is trickling out content to people, especially when people complain they rushed through the content and got nothing left to do ... and of course people like that will say it's a GAME problem, not a "I rushed content" problem. I guess we will never figure that one out. 🤔

Edited March 5 by Obtena.7952

[Sugar Min.5834]

In summary..

GW2 (core)   ★★★★★
HoT                ★★★★☆
PoF                 ★★★★★
EoD                ★★★★☆
SotO              ★☆☆☆☆

Edited March 5 by Sugar Min.5834

[Holmindeboks.3490]

6 hours ago, Sugar Min.5834 said:

In summary..

GW2 (core)   ★★★★★
HoT                ★★★★☆
PoF                 ★★★★★
EoD                ★★★★☆
SotO              ★☆☆☆☆

Pof was only good because it brought mounts to the game. Thats a huge positive feature. But further the maps were boring. (Except the living world seasons) story was way too long. I paid 2 guildy’s 20 gold each to carry me through the story because i hate (guildwars 2 story’s) before i said i hate story’s. But assassins creed origins and diablo 4 story’s are amazing. 
i remember a quest for suns refuge or whats the cave called. It took me 45 minutes solo to complete. Ridiculous long. And within mind that if you disconnect you have to do all over again. This is far from relaxing. I always wanted to rush guildwars 2 story’s to claim the end reward because of chance for disconnects. 
 

 

Edited March 5 by Holmindeboks.3490

[Vayne.8563]

6 hours ago, Sugar Min.5834 said:

In summary..

GW2 (core)   ★★★★★
HoT                ★★★★☆
PoF                 ★★★★★
EoD                ★★★★☆
SotO              ★☆☆☆☆

No bias detected here.  You must have paid a lot for those rose colored glasses. At any rate, I like Soto more than I liked EoD, and it it weren't for mounts, probably more than I liked PoF. HoT was by far my favorite expansion though.

[CorneredLamp.7809]

On 3/1/2024 at 6:37 PM, Royal Grand Majesty.9852 said:

On the contrary, WoW [Retail] released content and new features consistently as OP wishes GW2 to, how-ever watch any WoW [Retail] content creator today or go read the WoW reddit or forums and be witness to the complaints made by the masses on how WoW has become too complicated and cluttered with all of its overlapping systems.

Do you really want a new mount every expansion? Do you really want another method of traversing the Maps such as Gliders and Jade Bot Protocols?

There comes a point where less is better. WoW [Retail] for example has long past this point many expansions ago.

What overlapping systems? The recent iteration of WoW gutted the traditional expansion talent tree that you had to do upkeep on? The content and reward system is also extremely simple and streamlined compared to GW2: all you have to do is the listed number of mythic+ dungeons, raid bosses, and pvp a certain amount - that's it.

The problem with retail wow is that there is basically nothing worthwhile to do except for the 8 highlighted dungeons, + the raid.  

[Holmindeboks.3490]

13 minutes ago, CorneredLamp.7809 said:

What overlapping systems? The recent iteration of WoW gutted the traditional expansion talent tree that you had to do upkeep on? The content and reward system is also extremely simple and streamlined compared to GW2: all you have to do is the listed number of mythic+ dungeons, raid bosses, and pvp a certain amount - that's it.

The problem with retail wow is that there is basically nothing worthwhile to do except for the 8 highlighted dungeons, + the raid.  

Nothing to do? You can farm raids and dungeons solo for mounts and skins. This things have to be bought in guildwars 2 because they dont drop. So guildwars 2 is f2p but a farming simulator compared to wow. In the end its the same. Pay… in wow you pay to get access. In guildwars 2 you probably pay for gems because you dont want to grind a meta for months and wasting your life for 2 gold after a bossfight for/meta for an hour, and get bored. I often read, you have to work x hours for the money and spend it on gems. This is not the way for a f2p game while you also have to buy the expensions. But they know ppl choose the easy way (wallet) instead of grind for months. Buy 1 skin and gold gone. Except if you craft a legendary from the gold. Then you get more gold. So instead of 1 skin you get 2 or 3. If you use the gold for another legendary then its a new grind but with some starting budget. 
 

i always liked fishing in wow. Sure its rng but not useless. There you can fish up mounts and pets. In guildwars 2 its just junk loot but with a fish icon. Sure you can defend this but i am sure you wish guildwars 2 fishing also dropped mounts or minis. 
 

in wow you dont have to do current content. If you have current expansion greeny’s you can solo nearly everything. Except last/previous expansion raids

Edited March 5 by Holmindeboks.3490

[soulknight.9620]

23 hours ago, Lord Trejgon.2809 said:

What kind of content are you getting in let's randomly say, dunno, ESO, for the money you have spent buying POF?

23 hours ago, Lord Trejgon.2809 said:

Anyway, have a nice day, because there is no way we can have a good faith discussion, when you keep insisting that time doesn't matter, and that sensible take of AN announcement of how they are going to be delivering content from SotO onwards, was to expect them to somehow now magically being able to do 1.5 years of content released over 0.75 years, while being fully aware that they did not in fact double in size to be able to pull that off.

So you basically asked me a question and a few paragraphs down you say you dont want to engage in a discussion with me because you dissagree with one of my arguments. Yeah... So why should i bother to answer the question then? 

But i will add a thing to close things up a bit. Time it takes for anet to pump up content can be shortened/altered by: 1) hiring more people and increasing their production capacity since by your own saying they received more financing with the new model, 2) reforming their production process and contract more outsourced staff/companies (which is a common practice in game development industry). 3) getting more development "lines" setup so that more content packs/releases are developed at a single time (they actually did have this back in the living world days). Thats just a few examples. 

23 hours ago, Holmindeboks.3490 said:

(Example) If they work 4 years for an expansion without releasing something fresh/new then ppl get bored. Who wants to play a game for 4 years by doing the same over and over again? 
maybe old players who like atari and tetris. 
You say you want good content but i think you dont want to wait 4 years for that. And the dev team has to get money those 4 years. So they spread up the team, 80 % for gemstore items because thats the money they need to survive that 4 years of working. And 20% are working on the expansion. 
 

they have you to stay within the game to earn money. If you know that they need 4 years for an expansion you just take a break for those 4 years and come back when it gets released. But if many ppl like this then they have no income for those years. 
 

thats why they can better make skins for gemstore because its a fashion game as players say. 

If they take 4 years to develop and expac and while developing it they wont pump up content for a mmo project then they SHOULD just close the project and call it a day because they wouldnt understand the concept of an mmorpg. And this "example" is out of context since this never happened with gw2, the longest content drought we had was 6-9 months in HOT era i believe (but i could be wrong a bit). For past 5 years they released content on regular schedule so i dont see the problem here. Where i do see problem is that they changed their model to yearly PAID content packs that provide LESS content with LESS quality than FREE living world seasons. 

If they want to earn money - thats fair. But they have to EARN it. 

13 hours ago, Mistwraithe.3106 said:

Without getting into all the other arguments in this thread (many of which I find twisted) it's obvious that making LW content free to active players at the time of release was economically dumb.

It's a fact that an income oriented business wants to charge their most enthusiastic customers more and then discount to make further marginal sales to the less keen customers.

The LW model gave the expansions, the fruits of Anet's work, to the current players, which included all of the keenest players, for free. Then Anet charged money (gems, it's irrelevant that you can buy them for gold, someone paid real money for them originally and hence they represent money from Anet's point of view, the more demand there is for gems the more Anet make) to sell LW to less active and new players.

This is the complete opposite of how it should work. Look at any other gaming software company, they release expansion packs at full price initially, then eventually the price drops so less keen and new players can pick it up cheaper. That is the correct economic model as it maximises income. Anet's original LW model was economically doomed to fail.

The current Anet mini expansion model seems economically sound. They get regular income, they can plan for the future and their customers get regular content.

You might not like the content that Anet are producing, but don't try saying that the LW financial model was better because it was disastrous for anyone who wants GW2 to have longevity. It's likely what got us into the IBS mess in the first place.

I believe you are argueing with the wrong person. If anet wants to make paid content - im fine with it (which i said multiple times), the problem here is that there is a decrease in quality and quantity of said content compared to previous living world releases that were free for the majority of active playing people. 

As for the "gems" question. Do you have a proof that gems that are sold ingame are the same gems that other people paid for? I dont. Can we run out of said gems to purhcase with gold? I dont think so. It is a virtual currency that anet controls and can "print" in any quantity they want (just as gold). The sole fact that the exchange rate is affected by the amount of bought/sold gems doesnt suddenly make gems be "paid by other people". 

As for anets bussiness models. Are you sure you are argueing to the right person? I didnt say once that anets bussiness model was great back in the days. I did however say they made a lot of money with cash shop alone when there were no paid expansions. That can be easily doublechecked by publicly availible NCsoft financial reports. And again like i said before im not here to provide analitics for anets current/former bussiness model. Thats their problem. My current problem is that as a customer im forced to pay more for less content of a lesser quality than before. 

Please dont shift the blame of anets bussiness model on to their customers. It was anets decision to advertise as an mmo that plays by different rules than the rest of the market. Which includes: horizontal progression, free living world updates, no subscription, a solid buy-to-play model, casual friendly game. The majority of gw2 success was dictated by this qualities. When i personally bought this game back in 2014 the major selling points were exactly the ones i listed above. If they want to change their model - sure why not, its their choice, but at least make it better for customers (for ex. more content and/or better quality content) and not just anets financial reports.

P.s. a sidenote, if you gonna reply to someone please read the arguments first. Because from your post it feels like you "dissagree" with arguments that i didnt make. 

Edited March 5 by soulknight.9620

[Holmindeboks.3490]

6 minutes ago, soulknight.9620 said:

If they take 4 years to develop and expac and while developing it they wont pump up content for a mmo project then they SHOULD just close the project and call it a day because they wouldnt understand the concept of an mmorpg. And this "example" is out of context since this never happened with gw2, the longest content drought we had was 6-9 months in HOT era i believe (but i could be wrong a bit). For past 5 years they released content on regular schedule so i dont see the problem here. Where i do see problem is that they changed their model to yearly PAID content packs that provide LESS content with LESS quality than FREE living world seasons. 

so 6 or 9 months for less content, that means that they are rushing to fullfil the wishes of the players with new content instead of taking the time for better content.
they also dont understand the part of mmo(rpg) because rpg means loot, but in gw2 there drop no loot, the mobs drop junk and the loot is mostly behind a paywall (or even worse, behind rng... black lion chests)

i just bought my weekly seitung chest and again i got a middlefinger. i wont play the game again until i loot that 6k + worth item. i am done with wasting my time on a junk farm simulator.

[kharmin.7683]

3 hours ago, Holmindeboks.3490 said:

Pof was only good because it brought mounts to the game. Thats a huge positive feature. But further the maps were boring.

 

This is a highly subjective statement.  I found PoF to be a great change from HoT as if the devs listened to much of the players' opinions of the latter.  If not for the ridiculously large aggro radius of most mobs, I'd probably spend the bulk of my time in these zones.

And, yes, this is my opinion.

[Zok.4956]

18 hours ago, Mistwraithe.3106 said:

Without getting into all the other arguments in this thread (many of which I find twisted) it's obvious that making LW content free to active players at the time of release was economically dumb.

I don't think it was economically stupid. At the time of launch, LW was free. It was funded from initial game sales and later, like a F2P game, by Gemstore sales. 

The fact that LW content remains free for active players, and only future players have to pay something for it, was a smart move in order not to antagonize the players who were active at the time when this change was introduced.

And this allowed Anet to do the "return to" events before EoD, where you could unlock episodes for free and which attracted many new and returning players. That was also a smart move.

What Anet should have done later (at the latest with the Steam release) was that HoT+S3 and PoF+S4 should each have been offered only together as significantly cheaper bundles. 

So that would basically have been similar to what is happening now with SotO. Except that SotO is now also an EA (early access) model where the official release date is only the start of the EA phase and the real release (when the expansion is fully released) is a year later. And this means that Anet receives the revenue from the expansion sales one year before this mini-expansion is completed. Not surprisingly, Anet now prefers this model and hopes it works.

Nevertheless: My criticism (if I criticize something) relates more to: quality, quantity and creativity of the "expansion" (as far as we know it now) and the small mini-story bits.

Edited March 5 by Zok.4956

[Sobx.1758]

6 hours ago, Holmindeboks.3490 said:

Nothing to do? You can farm raids and dungeons solo for mounts and skins. This things have to be bought in guildwars 2 because they dont drop. So guildwars 2 is f2p but a farming simulator compared to wow.

We've been through it, you keep bringing up those drops as something you want, but you said you've quit subscription mmo because you weren't getting drops for a long time. Now you're back to painting it as something you want again, what is this nonsense?
And, again, you can farm gold to get whatever you want from gemstore.

Edited March 5 by Sobx.1758

[Ashen.2907]

10 hours ago, Holmindeboks.3490 said:

(in WoW) You can farm raids and dungeons solo for mounts and skins. This things have to be bought in guildwars 2 because they dont drop. So guildwars 2 is f2p but a farming simulator

Interesting statement. You list farming as what there is to do in WoW while complaining that farming is what there is to do in GW2.

 

And, by the way, in response to another of your posts: RPG does NOT mean loot. It means Role Playing Game. A storytelling game in which you take on the role of one of the characters in the story.

[Holmindeboks.3490]

55 minutes ago, Ashen.2907 said:

Interesting statement. You list farming as what there is to do in WoW while complaining that farming is what there is to do in GW2.

 

And, by the way, in response to another of your posts: RPG does NOT mean loot. It means Role Playing Game. A storytelling game in which you take on the role of one of the characters in the story.

In wow you farm a few raids a day and some dungeons. The chance to get a skin is much higher then spend the same time on guildwars 2 meta’s for a bit gold and in the end buy one skin. 
 

but to be honest. My main game genre is not mmo. Its fps. But i went to mmo to do something else cus i had no more fun in fps. 
 

But now i dont play mmo anymore. The only thing i want is nice loot. 

the forum is too addicted and i cant leave it. Maybe i have to ask for a ban for a month. It will give me rest. I left twitter already. 
 

 

Edited March 5 by Holmindeboks.3490

[Bladestrom.6425]

13 minutes ago, Holmindeboks.3490 said:

In wow you farm a few raids a day and some dungeons. It chance to get a skin is much higher then spend the same tome on guildwars 2 meta’s for a bit gold and in the end buy one skin. 
 

but to be honest. My main game genre is not mmo. Its fps. But i went to mmo to do something else cus i had no more fun in fps. 
 

But now i dont play mmo anymore. The only thing i want is nice loot. 

WOW CORE  game play cycle is - farm loot with +1 , then farm +2, then farm +3 farm +4 ..farm +1 billion [RESET] farm+10 and so on for literally infinity because if you don't you cant be competitive.  In the mean time, no wvw, pvp is broken because someone with + x beats someone with +y, massive toxicity and elitism because player A has +x and player b has + Y

Guild Wars is and always will be about horizontal progress of PVP/PVE skills/skins / achieves and in particular collections.  

If you have played a game for 10+ years it can be perfectly natural to get bored of stuff, or lose 'passion' etc.  The beauty of GW2 is you can leave for years and come back and lose nothing and have all that new content from your absent time to play.  In WOW if you return in 2 years, you skip past that 2 years of content (?!) to the latest dungeons to get back on to that got-to-get + XXX gear asap.

 

Edited March 5 by Bladestrom.6425

[Sobx.1758]

15 minutes ago, Holmindeboks.3490 said:

In wow you farm a few raids a day and some dungeons. The chance to get a skin is much higher then spend the same time on guildwars 2 meta’s for a bit gold and in the end buy one skin. 

Yeah, "you only farm a few raids a day and some dungeons" and yet you still said you didn't get drops for a few months so you quit. From my understanding you keep going against your own words, am I missing something crucial here?

15 minutes ago, Holmindeboks.3490 said:

But now i dont play mmo anymore. The only thing i want is nice loot. 

You can't get loot if you don't play. Again, I don't understand how these 2 sentences work together. From my understanding it's constantly repeated equivalent of "I don't want to do, but I want to have" along with the "make these drops rare for others, but easy to get for me" (also based on another thread we talked about this exact same thing). In that case, your expectations are unrealistic.

Edited March 5 by Sobx.1758