Story chapters still behind a pay wall? seriously?

[SaskiaElite.8132]

Why can't they make at least old ones free to play? As a former veteran player who purchased this like in year one, I still did not understand why Anet is so strict about their story chapters and it keep sending me spam GUI pop up everytime I login into the game. Those "stories" are without actual voice acting and cutscenes, so they arent cost them million of dollars or anything like that.

It is time to making them free to play for everyone. GW2 had a rough time last year same as wow and swtor, it is time to embrace your playerbase, not your publisher's orders. Just give us something new to play, other than broken matchmaking for dungeons and toxic fractals. Half of the playerbase don't even know how to play tier 2 fractals nor have the proper gear, it is time to level down things for easy understanding. In game economy is also broken since years.

Make the story chapters free to play please. Thank you

[Liewec.2896]

i'd especially like it if the new ones weren't behind a paywall, atleast until after they get em finished with voice acting,because i wanna wait until they're finished to play them,and it'll suck if i need to choose between paying to play the finished versions or playing an unfinished version and getting spoilers.

[AgentMoore.9453]

If you consider the chapters to be DLC, it begins to make a lot more sense.

You have the base game (Core Tyria) which you can play for free all the way from level one to 80. Then there are big chunka DLCs (The expansions) and smaller content (Living Story chapters) you can add to your game for a fee. Then, if you choose to purchase the game, you get one of the expansions rolled directly into it and even this gets put on sale from time to time.

Expecting to have everything unlocked because you paid the base fee for an 8-year-old game doesn't seem reasonable to me, especially if logging in a single time at chapter release would have negated the cost completely. I'm pampered to have gotten as much free content as I have (the quality of that content has been well-debated in a multitude of other threads), so I guess my question for you is this:

If ArenaNet decided, today, right now, to release all living world for free, what should they monetize to make up for the loss of revenue?

[Randulf.7614]

There’s no sub so paying for dlc content is the alternative.

Not that I’m not in partial agreement - the paywalls stop me recommending the game, but I’m not sure the best way for them to change it and not to lose money

[RaidsAreEasyAF.8652]

@Liewec.2896 said:i'd especially like it if the new ones weren't behind a paywall, atleast until after they get em finished with voice acting,because i wanna wait until they're finished to play them,and it'll suck if i need to choose between paying to play the finished versions or playing an unfinished version and getting spoilers.

But... But you unlock it by just logging in until the new story is released. You don't have to pay anything because you can unlock it right now for free and still wait until they add voice acting.

[maddoctor.2738]

@AgentMoore.9453 said:If you consider the chapters to be DLC, it begins to make a lot more sense.

@"Randulf.7614" said:There’s no sub so paying for dlc content is the alternative.

What's weird is that they made Heart of Thorns free with purchase of Path of Fire, which was a very good revenue stream, but they refuse to make the story free as well. So they took a massive hit to their revenue by making an expansion free but they still treat their story as "DLC"? I'm not buying it, they could've done the opposite, make all Living World free and keep the expansion cost, I'm sure they'd have a much smaller impact.

[Danikat.8537]

@Liewec.2896 said:i'd especially like it if the new ones weren't behind a paywall, atleast until after they get em finished with voice acting,because i wanna wait until they're finished to play them,and it'll suck if i need to choose between paying to play the finished versions or playing an unfinished version and getting spoilers.

New episodes are already given out free. If you log in during the release period (the time until the next episode is released) you get the episode unlocked permanently on your account. That's open to everyone - even free accounts can unlock new episodes when they're released. They won't be able to play them until they own PoF and have a level 80 character, but they won't have to buy the episode again.

You don't have to play it, or even start it. Literally as soon as you log into a character during the release period you've got the episode unlocked and waiting for you whenever you do want to play it.

[firedragon.8953]

I also bought the core game some 7 years ago. I just came back a few months ago. I paid for the expansions and then bought gems to unlock all the Living World episodes. Considering I maybe paid $60 for everything in the end, it seems like a good deal considering the hundreds of hours of content. Plus, they are already free if you keep the game installed and log in once and a while as a type of "loyalty bonus".

I don't quite understand. Why should it be free?

Personally, I only think it should be marketed better. The purchase page for buying the expansions is a bit unclear about whether or not you get all the Living World episodes with the purchase.

[yoni.7015]

You get the episodes for free if you log in while they are live. And to be honest they are not expensive to buy.

[Luthan.5236]

I can understand that they want to make money. And personally for me they were pretty cheap - since I bought them on sale. I even got HoT+PoF on a sale. Though it might have made more sense to offer them at a price for current players. They might be more willing to pay ... for the latest (and new) content. A new player catching up still will have lots of stuff to do.

(Then again: The ones that played always the latest stuff since release bought HoT and PoF separately and at a full price. While now for other players it is cheaper. But they have to buy the episodes.)

I would have preferred better "packaging". Instead of bundling HoT with PoF they should have bundled season 2 with HoT and season 3 with PoF (so you would not have a gap in between where you'd need to buy episodes as well). Cause a lot of new players are confused by that. They buy HoT and want to play it in order to notice that they miss something in between (which they can skip but story purists - lore and store is a major thing in GW2 while for other MMORPG the gameplay might be more important - it might be important to have them).

[Blocki.4931]

They cost.. what, not even 50g to unlock? You will ALWAYS own the most recent one and they are an incentive to at least log in once in 60 to 90 days.As far as I am concerned these are pretty good terms.

[Vrath.1754]

There is no sub fee, you only have to purchase PoF to get HoT for free. Its incredibly cheap for the amount of content compared to other AAA MMOs. Having to either login during the LW episode to get it for free or pay a bit for them is nothing asking very little. In addition you can also convert gold to gems to buy the LW episodes.

Overall I disagree for the cost to play GW2 and compared to other games it's a fine the way it is.

[Bursting.1976]

You can grind gold and convert it into gems to buy living world episodes or complete packages. Yeah this is boring but you can eventually get them all for free.

[Donutdude.9582]

So, instead of continuing to support the developer by remaining an active player, you want older content that you missed free of charge for a buy-to-play business model?

No. You cannot have it for free. Either:

• Pay up and remain active.
• Stop complaining.

[Jilora.9524]

Just log in once a day for 2 second even if you quit or play another game that way you get daily log in rewards and unlock every episode. If you can't do that and come back I mean it's a pay wall you can bypass by playing and converting gold to gems so I think the system is fair and no change needed.

[coso.9173]

Even when I stopped playing for months, I always remembered to log in whenever a new episode would be released, it takes literally 1 min every 3 or 4 months.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

What GUI spam? I get one notice that I've unlocked the newest Episode. Whether I can play it on one account, or can't play it on another.

[Liewec.2896]

@RaidsAreEasyAF.8652 said:

But... But you unlock it by just logging in until the new story is released. You don't have to pay anything because you can unlock it right now for free and still wait until they add voice acting.

ah thats cool, i did log in for the last one, and i'll log in for the next :)

[Eloc Freidon.5692]

People excusing Anet for a terrible business model that only escalates the entry price of the game the older it gets is really sad.

[AgentMoore.9453]

@Eloc Freidon.5692 said:People excusing Anet for a terrible business model that only escalates the entry price of the game the older it gets is really sad.

What superior business model are you offering? Genuine curiosity here, since I'm surprised LS chapters are free at any point and was expecting to have to pay for them as other games have had me do over the years in the form of DLC. The entry price of the game is free, let's not forget, no matter how much living world gets added.

If there's a better way to do things that doesn't deplete the paychecks of the people who make this game, I don't think anyone's opposed to that - we'd just like to see it.

[maddoctor.2738]

@"AgentMoore.9453" said:If there's a better way to do things that doesn't deplete the paychecks of the people who make this game, I don't think anyone's opposed to that - we'd just like to see it.

Are you saying that Heart of Thorns revenue was less than the money they get from Living World episode sales? Because they already made the expansion completely free, drastically reducing the paychecks of the people who make this game. A tiny dent to it by comparison (is the Living World even "selling" well?) wouldn't hurt the company's revenue.

[Randulf.7614]

My assumption is that making the expansions free is a biggher statement to incoming players. A new player looking for an MMO sees that one purchase get core + 2 expansions is not only a simpler message, but tends to be a stronger one given what player expectations of what expansions are.

I do agree that making LS free instead of expansions is better, but I can see why they did it the other from a marketing view. I guess the gold - gems is also a factor. I'm not expacs are buyable the same way?

I also concede they have access to financial data to make the decision they feel is best.

[AgentMoore.9453]

@"maddoctor.2738" said:Are you saying that Heart of Thorns revenue was less than the money they get from Living World episode sales? Because they already made the expansion completely free, drastically reducing the paychecks of the people who make this game. A tiny dent to it by comparison (is the Living World even "selling" well?) wouldn't hurt the company's revenue.

I can't really answer that except to say 'maybe?' As people are so fond of saying, we don't have access to the company's numbers, so unfortunately we just have to flail the logic stick at things like this. Maybe LS does sell better than HoT; it'd certainly explain the decision.

But even if LS doesn't sell better than HoT, someone at ArenaNet had the bright idea to try a model where the oldest expansion gets rolled into the base game upon purchase. Something in their research told them this was a good idea, so they either made up the money somewhere else (Monetized loadouts?) or thought they'd turn a profit by offering an expansion as an incentive to get more people to buy GuildWars2 or upgrade their alternate free accounts to paid ones.

Either way, removing one revenue stream necessitates that a new one opens somewhere else, either directly (by monetizing something else) or indirectly (making part of your product free so more people will buy it). So regardless of why LS costs money, to make a change to the system we have to figure out what system would work better in its place.

[Kylden Ar.3724]

What paywall?

Log in while chapter is "Live" and it's unlocked, own the xpac or no. Buy the expac, can now play.

Missed it live and own xpac? Gold to gems is cheap for the chapters.

And even then, the LS is such small parts compared to the real XPacs you would not be missing much if you skipped them and played Xpacs only. The only LS really worth unlocking for if you missed it is LS3, because those maps give so many good Ascended Trinkets it's not funny.

[Vayne.8563]

@"Eloc Freidon.5692" said:People excusing Anet for a terrible business model that only escalates the entry price of the game the older it gets is really sad.

I've played a LOT of MMOs. None of them hav had a better business model than this one. Not one. And by a lot I mean most of them.

I'm not sure what's worse. Free to play pay to win MMOs or MMOs that offer "optional" subs that you need to pretty much play the game, or MMOs that charge $15 a month just for the privileged of playing the game AND sell you expansions and usually have a cash shop. Charging for content isn't a terrible business model, and giving it away free to loyal players is pretty damned generous. So is allowing you to buy it with in game gold.

The only thing I don't agree with is the lack of packages to buy it up front, when you first purchase the game.