Guild Wars 2

Not too long ago, Colin Johanson made a statement about creating a living world being the holy grail of MMO development. Maybe he just read out some PR script aloud, nevertheless, he said it. It is safe to assume that for as long as there is no financial pressure, ArenaNet will keep chasing that holy grail at the expense of pretty much everything else.

Looking at the NCSOFT quarterly reports, the day when financial pressure will be applied on ArenaNet is not likely to happen within the next 12 months.

Sure, some us do not share Colin Johanson’s opinion. There is a fair share of gamers out there for whom the holy grail of any game is gameplay; nothing else. There is a fair share of people out there who look at the aspirations of a living world and the underlying code structure of scripted events which always happen in the same way and wonder how they were ever supposed to go together.

Sometimes “new story content” with the same old class is just more of the same. That is when playing “old content” with another class comes into play as being more entertaining. Not one of GW2’s strengths, though.

What we currently see, is ArenaNet aggressively pushing the strengths they perceive to have. Push short production cycles, push the story, push daily pressuring mechanics, push achievement bars.

Let’s hope ArenaNet is using the time to work on the weaknesses of GW2 as well. Because if they are ever fixed, it won’t be a free update. There is nothing wrong with that. I certainly do not mind paying money for the good stuff, the large permanent map upgrade, the new classes, weapons, traits, etc. In short, all the stuff missing from the living story.

Okay, here’s the problem I have with Living World vs Expansions:

Living World takes one of the crappiest parts of Real Life — the fact that we often miss out on fun things due to other commitments — and puts it front and center as though it was a cool new feature.

Remember that time you and your friends were going to go on Spring Break together, but you came down with the flu all week and had to stay home and miss the fun? Or that time everyone was going out to that awesome new nightclub, but you had to work so you missed out? Or you couldn’t be there for a friend’s birthday party because you had other commitments? Living World is like someone thought of all those crappy moments and said, “Hey, let’s put that in our game! What fun! It’ll be great!”

You know what else would be like real life? How about if our characters get sick from time to time, and their stats drop and they can only walk instead of run? How about if our characters all had to pay rent or property taxes? Or had to eat food daily or die? All these things would make the world seem more “real”, but who would want them?

Living World has completely driven me away from GW2. Expansions present content you can do at your own pace and complete whenever you like. Living World, on the other hand, is a constant reminder that although we all paid our money, only some of us get to be lucky enough to experience certain limited-time content. That’s not fair. And one can justifiably counter by saying that Life isn’t fair, either, and I will agree.

But why on Earth would you want your game to reflect that?

minbariguy.7504:

Living World takes one of the crappiest parts of Real Life — the fact that we often miss out on fun things due to other commitments — and puts it front and center as though it was a cool new feature.

The worst part of this with the living story is the rewards and achievements. Not only are players that are taking a break or are unable to play at the time missing out on story content, they are missing out on rewards and achievement points they will never be able to get. Looking back at GW1, the main thing you could ever permanently miss out on was a festival/event hat, and even those became attainable a bit before GW2’s release. Every special event would come back the next year, typically with some new content(and a new hat), but also restoring the old content. The only other items I recall being exclusive to a single event were Wintergreen Weapons, which like the hats, where later made attainable once again during the 2012 Wintersday event(and presumably all future years).

GW2’s list of now unattainable items is already longer than GW1’s. Molten weapon tickets, multiple food items, jetpacks, a mini, a tonic, and event a gear stat combo from just the F&F event alone. Tomorrow, two sets of dragon wings, Jade weapon tickets, another mini, more food, and a cooking recipe will be gone.

It’s true that many of these items are simply cosmetic and don’t have any impact on gameplay experience, aside from wanting something you know you will never be able to get. There are a few exceptions like the recipe, food, and stat combo, but the rest is just fun/cosmetic/fluff items. What does leave a lasting impact on gameplay is the lost achievement points. Starting this week, achievement points will be used to unlock rewards. Anyone not playing during a given living story step will permanently lose out an any associated achievement points. They are already falling behind the curve every day with daily achievements, so why push that even farther with temporary living story achievements? Are new players not already far enough behind with no chance at ever catching up to the veteran players?

New achievements can be a good addition to the game, but not when you only have weeks to get them before they are gone forever. It rushes existing players into doing everything right now, and away/future players from ever experiencing that achievement hunt.

Galen Grey.4709:

Devata.6589:

..snip

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Just look at this threat for proof, the main argument against the living story is people are afraid its not going to keep them interested in the game because they’re afraid there will not be any longer term engaging content like an expansion would have. I assume all those people who’ve been asking for an expansion do so because they want one and they’ll all happily buy one if its ever released. Yet their fear is the current release strategy will make them wanna stop playing in the long run. Making an expansion would be nearly sure money (obviously it still would need to be good enough) where as if they stick with the living story they need to have releases that are so good that they’d convince the skeptics that there is long term value in the game even without expansions.

Bottom line while they’ll obviously do what they can to insentivize people to buy stuff from the gem shop they also need to ensure people are happy playing the game and to do that they still have to make quality content even more so then an expansion most likely.

“Think about it, if you come back after say 5 months of not playing the game cause you were bored, would you spend any money on skins when you’re not sure if you’re going to be enjoying the game enough that you’ll keep playing in the longer term?” If they focus on expansions but the game gets boring fast they might still sell good for the first expansion but not anymore on the 2th. So also for expansion it is necessary to keep people happy if they want to keep on selling expansions.

And they indeed now try to keep people playing with the living story because else they do not buy stuff but I already see the problems with the gem-store focus. Gold-driven system and all the temporary stuff is not fun and bad for the game while the reason for it seems to be the gem-store focus so yeah they need to try and keep people busy but they also need to try to get those people to buy gems and you can already see the negative side of that.

My bottom line is. In both case they need to have people playing but with the expansion way they need to do that purely by having a good game while for the gem-store they also need to make people to really buy the gems and while doing that they might make the game worse in the progress (also resulting in not having people playing).

Btw it’s not totally the truth that they just need to have people playing. For the expansion part they just need to have people playing, for the gem-store focus they just need to have gem-buyers playing.

mrstealth.6701:

minbariguy.7504:

Living World takes one of the crappiest parts of Real Life — the fact that we often miss out on fun things due to other commitments — and puts it front and center as though it was a cool new feature.

The worst part of this with the living story is the rewards and achievements. Not only are players that are taking a break or are unable to play at the time missing out on story content, they are missing out on rewards and achievement points they will never be able to get. Looking back at GW1, the main thing you could ever permanently miss out on was a festival/event hat, and even those became attainable a bit before GW2’s release. Every special event would come back the next year, typically with some new content(and a new hat), but also restoring the old content. The only other items I recall being exclusive to a single event were Wintergreen Weapons, which like the hats, where later made attainable once again during the 2012 Wintersday event(and presumably all future years).

GW2’s list of now unattainable items is already longer than GW1’s. Molten weapon tickets, multiple food items, jetpacks, a mini, a tonic, and event a gear stat combo from just the F&F event alone. Tomorrow, two sets of dragon wings, Jade weapon tickets, another mini, more food, and a cooking recipe will be gone.

It’s true that many of these items are simply cosmetic and don’t have any impact on gameplay experience, aside from wanting something you know you will never be able to get. There are a few exceptions like the recipe, food, and stat combo, but the rest is just fun/cosmetic/fluff items. What does leave a lasting impact on gameplay is the lost achievement points. Starting this week, achievement points will be used to unlock rewards. Anyone not playing during a given living story step will permanently lose out an any associated achievement points. They are already falling behind the curve every day with daily achievements, so why push that even farther with temporary living story achievements? Are new players not already far enough behind with no chance at ever catching up to the veteran players?

New achievements can be a good addition to the game, but not when you only have weeks to get them before they are gone forever. It rushes existing players into doing everything right now, and away/future players from ever experiencing that achievement hunt.

I agree 100% Stop with temporary stuff, being it items, or achievements.

(btw I do except that the dragon-bash stuff will come back next year.)

And part of the reason for this tactic is imho the gem-store focus.. This is the part where I was talking about when I said that focus will imo make the game worse. Fact is that except for the achievement that seems to be to keep people playing, most of the items can easily be obtained with gold or gems and you can buy gold with gems.. yeah you can also buy gems with gold but without really farming for it not ad a high enough pace to obtain all those items.. Might be the reason they are now speeding it even more up.

So stop with the temporary stuff and stop with the gem-store focus but have a expansion focus. It would make me already very happy.

Sure there are many other thinks I would like to see differed like no instance based maps, traditional quest, in-game player housing, persistent WvW (franctions?), mounds, not a redefined list of mini’s, pets, mounts and a few more.. But at this moment

I think the temporary stuff is really damaging the game in an irreversible way by scaring people away that might never come back while the other thinks I dislike could be implemented in the future. Like with an expansion for example.

How are they defining an “expansion”?

I don’t want new classes. New classes are just the op mixing pool versions of classes already in game with a different core mechanic. You can keep the classes at 8 and work on expanding on new weapons, utilities, elites, traits, runes, sigils etc. Although, there used to be 12 classes considered, but only 2-3 named. The marksman and warden became the ranger. The Juggernaut may have been a class considered to fill the role of a non magical knight after moving the guardian to a magical knight or may have been renamed to the guardian. http://tap-repeatedly.com/2011/06/exclusive-interview-arenanets-jon-peters-and-jonathan-sharp/ Adding a new class while in the process of expanding on what you got is the best way imo to unbalance the game further and prevent build variety on existing classes. Years from now on a fully expanded trait and weapon system is the time to introduce the unknown(s) if at all.

New maps, I want new maps and why not for free? The game has so much to expand on and rushed to reserve a marketing deadline now needing to grow into itself. Installments, not expansions, could mean a team is working on the Crystal Desert and Elona that would be as big as Tyria was at launch. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s being worked on to be released slowly over time either to ease into while they find ways not to stretch out the populations.

The temp stuff is not good standalone, but “with” the expanded on permanent stuff could be amazing. I really think there needs to be an upgraded lfg tool. Sure I could use a third party site that is better, but not everyone uses them. Gw2 shouldn’t be reliant on that. When dealing with dead zones just metamorphosis guesting and overflows into cross servers with more freedom to direct traffic making populations more regulated amongst all the zones.

Devata.6589:

..snip

My bottom line is. In both case they need to have people playing but with the expansion way they need to do that purely by having a good game while for the gem-store they also need to make people to really buy the gems and while doing that they might make the game worse in the progress (also resulting in not having people playing).

Btw it’s not totally the truth that they just need to have people playing. For the expansion part they just need to have people playing, for the gem-store focus they just need to have gem-buyers playing.

Sure but who are gem buyers? arent they just a subset of players? and what do they enjoy out of the game? For your statement to be true what they’d need to enjoy is buying stuff off the gem store without any particular love for the game itself. Do you really see that? What I am trying to say is buy putting stuff for sale and neglect the actual game play they’re not going to retain gem-buys any more then they’re not going to retain players who will never spent a single cent on gems. Which brings us back to square one. The first important thing they need to focus on for this to work is to have people playing the game regularly and thats not going to happen without making sure the game is fun for as many people as possible.

translation = “we are making plenty of profit from the piecemeal selling of shinies to whales that we don’t actually need to produce new content”. Congrats, guys, for making this plan work for them.

Thing is what they’re saying they plan to do is just shift the release model. Its not that they dont want to release the stuff that one usually finds in an expansion, its just that instead of bundling everything together and release it all at once its being released gradually. Of course some stuff takes a lot of time to develop and so they do need a bit of “fillers” and thats what we’ve been getting in the living story so far mixed in with the good stuff.

Think of it this way… imagine we’re at release and there is a planned expansion which will feature the crystal desert and the fight with Kralkatorrik. In addition it has some extra features which are, Guild missions, 5 new sPvP maps, new dailies, new progression based mini Dungeons (FotM), a raid like system with content for 5+ players, a new professions (Dervish).

So all of this content has a varing degree of effort required. Lets say in total it would take 1.5 years to complete. Now instead of having 1.5 years with nothing but some holiday event every few months they’re gradually releasing the stuff from the expansion together with a few themed stories. 1 Month we got FotM another we got Guild missions in another we got a PvP map etc… In some months they just dont have anything substantial completed so we got small updates, I have no doubt the first flame and frost living story release was such a month, instead of releasing nothing they just gave us a little something to do. They keep releasing one thing at a time until they finish the bulk the of the work which would be the Kralkatorrik storyline. When they’re done they start 1 month with a living story event designed to stir the narrative towards that direction. Some Elonian dervish warriors show up to warn us of an escalation by Kralkatorrik minions and soon after the dragon minions invade. The Dervish is made as a playable class, the next month 3 zones open up as we start to invade Kralkatorrik domain. The month after that another 3 zones followed by another update where the faceoff with the dragon is unleashed.

I dont understand why people dont think this is an awesome idea provided they make it work. I can understand people are skeptic and think that Anet might not manage to deliver but if thats the case why would an expansion change things in anyway? It all boils down if Anet can create the content or not. Whether its packaged in an expansion or released gradually doesnt change anything really. If they were developing an expansion they’d still finish some content before other. an sPvP map requires much less effort then creating a zone and populating it with tons of events. Instead of sitting on it for 12-15 months until everything else is completed they’re opting to release it when its done. Thats great imho cause we keep getting new stuff to enjoy month after month.

Galen Grey.4709:

I dont understand why people dont think this is an awesome idea provided they make it work.

Honestly, it’s because some of us don’t think they are making it work. When an expansion is released for any other MMO, they don’t remove content and achievements after a certain number of weeks and then say, “Oops, sorry, you’re too late; we took it out of the game.”

I actually do like the general idea of adding story content every 2 to 4 weeks that builds a continuing story. A Living World storyline that you can play through on your own schedule without it being pulled out from underneath you would be fantastic. But that isn’t what they’re doing. They are intentionally creating content on a timer so that we have to play on their schedule or miss out. That’s a total deal-breaker for me.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Just to clarify a bit, as Mike said there are numerous teams beyond our Living World teams, and some of them are working on much longer term projects which we’ll go into details on much further down the road.

It’s entirely possible some of the types of content which you might traditionally find in expansions would be released through an expansion in the future for Gw2, and it’s possible we’d try something different when it comes to integrating those type of releases.

We have no final plans one way or another about expansions at this time, and certainly haven’t ruled them out, it’s something we’ll discuss more in the future.

Edited to add: Our primary focus right now is on making the core Gw2 experience as strong and compelling as possible, we’ll release a blog post later this month detailing more specifically our plans for Gw2 in the second half of 2013.

I am very worried that Gw2 will lose too much fan base with the foretold release of Elder Scrolls online this year.

I hope Anet has a large body of their final plan’s, for an expansion, drawn out soon preferably before Elder Scrolls Online is released.

Anet just may be competing for player base. While the past expansions have been incredibly fun (special mention to SAB), the “type” of content and the combined size is not equivalent to what a full scale expansion offers.

You have since release introduced one new explorable zone. One permanent dungeon that ( I believe ) you yourselves admitted was poorly implemented. Yes Fractal, an incredibly fun dungeon but not in terms of the grind necessary to earn ascended gear and other limitations (level limited per character).

These seemingly random story-lines do not give us players any context of how far away or if at all we are approaching the goal of fighting the 5 reaming elder dragons.

If you leave players feeling high and dry too long player base will drop. It’s great you want to implement these monthly events, but that is all they amount to “monthly content”, not the content that draws new player base in.

Guild Wars 2 should be focused on large scale expansions to keep drawing in new players and delighting old. You are currently falling flat, trying to please old, backwards way of thinking MMO’ers who like to grind for max gear. And in doing so will lose the true player base you should be trying to please.

GvG, Guild Halls, New Professions, New Playable Races.
New Achievements such to the scale as the current world completion that will draw players into
New areas:

• Cantha
• Elona
• Crystal Desert
• Maguuma wastes
• Far Shiverpeaks
• Ring of Fire Island

P.S. I am very sorely disappointed that achievement points are so frivolously earned through daily and monthlies… It is nearly the equivalent of giving titles away towards GWAMM for completing dailies in Gw1.

Fey Zeal.7032:

TESO won’t be coming out until 2nd quarter 2014 unfortunately. Anet must thank the mmo gods every day for the window they’ve been given.

Galen Grey.4709:

Devata.6589:

..snip

My bottom line is. In both case they need to have people playing but with the expansion way they need to do that purely by having a good game while for the gem-store they also need to make people to really buy the gems and while doing that they might make the game worse in the progress (also resulting in not having people playing).

Btw it’s not totally the truth that they just need to have people playing. For the expansion part they just need to have people playing, for the gem-store focus they just need to have gem-buyers playing.

Sure but who are gem buyers? arent they just a subset of players? and what do they enjoy out of the game? For your statement to be true what they’d need to enjoy is buying stuff off the gem store without any particular love for the game itself. Do you really see that? What I am trying to say is buy putting stuff for sale and neglect the actual game play they’re not going to retain gem-buys any more then they’re not going to retain players who will never spent a single cent on gems. Which brings us back to square one. The first important thing they need to focus on for this to work is to have people playing the game regularly and thats not going to happen without making sure the game is fun for as many people as possible.

In a perfect word it would be true that they keep people happy and so those people are in the game and buy gems. But in this word there focus on the gem-store might backfire and if you look at the many complains this is not a theoretical chance but is it already happening. Many complains are about the gold-grind and the temporary content / items while both imho are a direct result of the gem-store focus. The gold-driven system makes it more rewarding to buy gems to transfer to gold and the temporary content is there to create a sense of urgency to get people to buy the temporary items involved with it and at the same time do the achievements.

An example of this you could have seen with many MMO’s in the past years, all run by people who believed to be very smart. They all went subscription-based and you could say the same about that system as you now say about a gem-store focus.. They need to keep people happy to have them stay.. But the reality is that they all failed as subscription based games (I can not name one subscription-based MMO in the last 6 years that is still subscription-based) and with that failing usually a big part of the support-team left and basically the whole game failed. While if they would have gone for a B2P game they might have been a huge (financial) success. But the focus on the money destroyed the game making the people behind it probably end up with less money they if they would have goon for another system.

(I was also active in the beta (and forums) of Rift saying they should not go for subscription-based and got the same sort of reactions as now get from you.. well guess what, it failed ans subscription-based and is now F2P of course the questions is, how many people will now still go play the game and how many would have still be playing if it was B2P? Sure they did make some nice money of it but it’s short-run money, the money for the long run they probably miss out on)

“they’d need to enjoy is buying stuff off the gem store without any particular love for the game itself.” but what if the stuff they buy will be the stuff you need to enjoy the game?

You see the many complains about the temporary items and the gold-driven system that I just talked about. So people don’t like that but gem-buyers don’t have that problem. They just buy gems and buy the items and other stuff they need. So it’s not true that you will be making both groups happy. (This is basically how F2P games work.. for 99% of those games it is.. if you are willing to buy items it’s fun to play else don’t bother with them)

And let me be clear.. The reason that I am here is pure selfish. I put a lot of work in creating a guild and also like to have a game that last multiple years (I am not one of those MMO hoppers) but the way they are now going seems to me to be the wrong way ending up in a boring or even failing game.

Mercurio.4970:

translation = “we are making plenty of profit from the piecemeal selling of shinies to whales that we don’t actually need to produce new content”. Congrats, guys, for making this plan work for them.

So basically you are saying.. buying many gems is bad for the game?

Well then I must agree on this kryptonite effect.

Galen Grey.4709:

Thing is what they’re saying they plan to do is just shift the release model. Its not that they dont want to release the stuff that one usually finds in an expansion, its just that instead of bundling everything together and release it all at once its being released gradually.

And so change there income / payment model, and so change / ‘improve the game-mechanics to fit this model’ and so might ending up making a game that is not as good as they would have had if they made money with the expansions.

What people like me here are talking about is that the way they release content is more then just the way they release content. And one may might be better for the game itself then the other.

morrolan.9608:

Fey Zeal.7032:

TESO won’t be coming out until 2nd quarter 2014 unfortunately. Anet must thank the mmo gods every day for the window they’ve been given.

Yeah they have been very lucky about that indeed. Maybe a little bid to lucky as this may result in the idea that they do not need an expansion. Ever since release they only had to deal with to other big releases and that was Mist of Pandaria and The secret world. Last one failed and the first one did draw some people back away from GW2 but it was never there main target group anyway.

However we have now WildStar, TESO and ArcheAge upcoming and if GW2 has not everything sorted out at preferably a expansion ready before those releases they will lose a big player-base to them. If GW2 has not everything sorted out and one of those games would be released B2P (so aiming for the same player-base) it might even be the end for GW2 as big MMO. So lets hope they have stuff sorted out before then. If I however have to believe the article I think they are moving further away from having stuff sorted out.

Some people need to redefine what they think a expansion is. I consider anything permanent in the living story a expanion. Even if it’s a JP or mini game.

Major expansion will still happen. They may just be broken down into 1-3 living story arcs.

ArcheAge was boom and bust in Korea, I expect the same in the west.

TESO. The way people are talking about I’m betting they are once again setting themselves up to be disappointed by the actual implementation. Just as GW1 fans are loudly disappointed by GW2. Plus it’s going into the already crowded “swords and sorcery” genre.

Wildstar. It looks to blend the art style of WoW with a modern dynamic combat system plus going into the fairly sparse SciFi MMO genre, it looks to have promise.

minbariguy.7504:

Okay, here’s the problem I have with Living World vs Expansions:

Living World takes one of the crappiest parts of Real Life — the fact that we often miss out on fun things due to other commitments — and puts it front and center as though it was a cool new feature.

Remember that time you and your friends were going to go on Spring Break together, but you came down with the flu all week and had to stay home and miss the fun? Or that time everyone was going out to that awesome new nightclub, but you had to work so you missed out? Or you couldn’t be there for a friend’s birthday party because you had other commitments? Living World is like someone thought of all those crappy moments and said, “Hey, let’s put that in our game! What fun! It’ll be great!”

You know what else would be like real life? How about if our characters get sick from time to time, and their stats drop and they can only walk instead of run? How about if our characters all had to pay rent or property taxes? Or had to eat food daily or die? All these things would make the world seem more “real”, but who would want them?

Living World has completely driven me away from GW2. Expansions present content you can do at your own pace and complete whenever you like. Living World, on the other hand, is a constant reminder that although we all paid our money, only some of us get to be lucky enough to experience certain limited-time content. That’s not fair. And one can justifiably counter by saying that Life isn’t fair, either, and I will agree.

But why on Earth would you want your game to reflect that?

If I missed out on one trip but there was a trip every two weeks? I’d live with it.

You’re comparing a once in a lifetime spring break to chapters in a story that are coming fast and furious. I can even see people taking a break and intentionally skipping some of the story, just because they’re inundated.

It only means when you come back from whatever break you’ve taken, there’ll always been something new to do, not that you have to do ALL of it.

Maybe you miss X piece of armor or Y weapon skin…but there’s another one around the corner. And everyone will have different stuff, so we all won’t look exactly the same.

Not a bad thing in my book.

Behellagh.1468:

ArcheAge was boom and bust in Korea, I expect the same in the west.

TESO. The way people are talking about I’m betting they are once again setting themselves up to be disappointed by the actual implementation. Just as GW1 fans are loudly disappointed by GW2. Plus it’s going into the already crowded “swords and sorcery” genre.

Wildstar. It looks to blend the art style of WoW with a modern dynamic combat system plus going into the fairly sparse SciFi MMO genre, it looks to have promise.

Onshidesigns.1069:

Some people need to redefine what they think a expansion is. I consider anything permanent in the living story a expanion. Even if it’s a JP or mini game.

Major expansion will still happen. They may just be broken down into 1-3 living story arcs.

No, it’s not about the content it’s about the way they make the money that has influence on the game. And that might be positive or negative influence. Many of the people who want an expansion think that way of incomes results in a good game while generating money with the gem-store results in a bad game.

Behellagh.1468:

ArcheAge was boom and bust in Korea, I expect the same in the west.

TESO. The way people are talking about I’m betting they are once again setting themselves up to be disappointed by the actual implementation. Just as GW1 fans are loudly disappointed by GW2. Plus it’s going into the already crowded “swords and sorcery” genre.

Wildstar. It looks to blend the art style of WoW with a modern dynamic combat system plus going into the fairly sparse SciFi MMO genre, it looks to have promise.

If you go back 4 comments of me you see me saying how I do not believe in subscription based games and how they all fail. ArcheAge was released as subscription based game and indeed failed as subscription based. They now converted to a F2P game (also a system I do not believe in that much but still better as subscription based / P2P) I may assume they will not make the same mistake here and release it immediately as an F2P or even better a B2P game. And so the failure in Korea does not yet mean a failure here.

About TESO I agree with you. I think it will not be a huge success. It’s a GW2 clone so most of it has already been done and many of the signle-player fans will be getting something totally different as what they hope for.

I also have my reservations about Wildstar. I do like the humor in there video’s but I don’t think that will really work out in the game itself and it’s WoW with aliens.. Not really a good combination if you ask me. It’s a big hype but I don’t expect much of it.

Of those games I see the most potential in ArcheAge (but even that can fail if they do not make the correct change for the western marked, do not create a little hype and have a bad payment model).

However that all would not matter. Even if they would all fail they are still able to take away a lot of the GW2’s player-base and might even be the end for GW2 as big MMO. For that they do not need to be a big ongoing success.

But once “stolen” players reject these new games, as you seem to suggest will happen, they can always return here as if nothing happened.

WoW and EVE are both subscription games. A number of former subscription only games that have gone F2P still have a “premium” subscription tier. Pure F2P games like the ones from Nexon are designed to have enough inconveniences that the cash shop is only optional for masochistic players with patience of Job. Or some Chinese F2P games that are in reality P2W.

minbariguy.7504:

Galen Grey.4709:

I dont understand why people dont think this is an awesome idea provided they make it work.

Honestly, it’s because some of us don’t think they are making it work. When an expansion is released for any other MMO, they don’t remove content and achievements after a certain number of weeks and then say, “Oops, sorry, you’re too late; we took it out of the game.”

I actually do like the general idea of adding story content every 2 to 4 weeks that builds a continuing story. A Living World storyline that you can play through on your own schedule without it being pulled out from underneath you would be fantastic. But that isn’t what they’re doing. They are intentionally creating content on a timer so that we have to play on their schedule or miss out. That’s a total deal-breaker for me.

They already said they’re going to change that going forward. Funny thing is this all came about due to player request those same players that now are hating it.

In a game like an MMO change is a tricky thing. You can either have contextual change or temporal change. Most MMOs go with contextual change IE you’re given a quest to say save a village, you kill a few of the whatevers that are threatening that village but nothing really changes except you’re told you saved the village by the same npc that ask you to save the village. GW2 went with temporal change, you actually save the village and things actually save but only temporary. In a few minutes things are going to repeat. A lot of player rejected that change, they called it gimmicky, they called it fake some even called it nonexistant because of that repetition.

So Anet improved on that by making the content itself temporary. Change such as we managed to beat the molten alliance became factual the moment all the events / dungeon were removed from the game. No one can call that change a gimmick, fake or nonexistant because the events happened and left their mark on the world (refugees, the changes to southsun etc…) but at the same time the molten alliance no longer attacks every 30 minutes even though we’ve beaten them.

Anet only gave us what we wanted. Meaningful persistent change. However like the saying goes, be careful what you wish for. Those same players who complained about changes happening on a schedule realized they wanted that change to happened on a schedule after all so now Arenanet are going to move towards there again.

This was all an evolutionary process. Remember the first time we got one such update, the november release, lost shores the situation was a lot worst. Events happened only once and never repeated. Again people didnt like that so Anet changed it to a repeating month long event. People still dont like it so Anet promised more persistent content going forward.

I think getting use to the living story content requires a change of perspective from the more traditional mmo mindset of grind it now, grind it fast, be the first to finish.

If you look at it from the perspective that every time you log in, that there is something new you can do for a few hours or in addition to your normal WvW, PvE groups, or TPvP it’s really nice.

You can take a break for a week or two and come back to something new, and for a long time player you can have neat items and skins for xxx event that others who weren’t in the game at the time don’t have.

You might be a bit miffed that you missed that content, but there is more coming.

I kind of look at the living story now as a daily newspaper or a T.V. show, something new each week that I can sink a few hours into on top of my usual stuff.

Rather than from my old mindset of “I’ve got 3 weeks off lets grind this out, and watch all of xxx T.V. show in one sitting”

Karast.1927:

I think getting use to the living story content requires a change of perspective from the more traditional mmo mindset of grind it now, grind it fast, be the first to finish.

If you look at it from the perspective that every time you log in, that there is something new you can do for a few hours or in addition to your normal WvW, PvE groups, or TPvP it’s really nice.

You can take a break for a week or two and come back to something new, and for a long time player you can have neat items and skins for xxx event that others who weren’t in the game at the time don’t have.

You might be a bit miffed that you missed that content, but there is more coming.

I kind of look at the living story now as a daily newspaper or a T.V. show, something new each week that I can sink a few hours into on top of my usual stuff.

Rather than from my old mindset of “I’ve got 3 weeks off lets grind this out, and watch all of xxx T.V. show in one sitting”

If I had to play like that, it would kill me. You could play relatively casually and still get enough effigies to burn doing them every time you went near one on a map, if you play normally.

You can do the same with pinatas. Every time you go to Lion’s Arch, or any city, or any time you pass one, just bakitten. If I had to sit there in LA and bash every pinata on the same day, I’d think it was a huge grind.

I think this new content is more grindy for a casual player who has less time, and not nearly as grindy for me.

I’m not even trying to grind this stuff and I’m done with a week left till the next update. Of course, I could have gone through those achievements in record time.

One thing I try never to do for this sort of content is consult the Wiki or Dulfy.

Galen Grey.4709:

So Anet improved on that by making the content itself temporary. Change such as we managed to beat the molten alliance became factual the moment all the events / dungeon were removed from the game. No one can call that change a gimmick, fake or nonexistant because the events happened and left their mark on the world (refugees, the changes to southsun etc…) but at the same time the molten alliance no longer attacks every 30 minutes even though we’ve beaten them.

Anet only gave us what we wanted. Meaningful persistent change.

But its not meaningful. In the world of the game I inhabit it is in fact completely meaningless and out of sight given that SS is deserted again because they didn’t meaningfully change the zone enough to keep people going there in sufficient numbers.

Galen Grey.4709:

This was all an evolutionary process. Remember the first time we got one such update, the november release, lost shores the situation was a lot worst. Events happened only once and never repeated. Again people didnt like that so Anet changed it to a repeating month long event. People still dont like it so Anet promised more persistent content going forward.

See this is a misreading of the situation, people don’t want the events to be purely once off so now they aren’t which is great they don’t necessarily want those events to be permanent. What people want to be permanent are things like the dungeons or as I said above permanent events in zones like Southsun. Its not like being able to run other dungeons over and over again affects immersion.

Devata.6589:

Galen Grey.4709:

Thing is what they’re saying they plan to do is just shift the release model. Its not that they dont want to release the stuff that one usually finds in an expansion, its just that instead of bundling everything together and release it all at once its being released gradually.

And so change there income / payment model, and so change / ‘improve the game-mechanics to fit this model’ and so might ending up making a game that is not as good as they would have had if they made money with the expansions.

What people like me here are talking about is that the way they release content is more then just the way they release content. And one may might be better for the game itself then the other.

This is a reply to the previous post as well.

In my experience people like to pin everything they dont like on the payment model. Not just on this game but on all games regardless of payment model. I’ve seen things argued that games that have micro transactions like gw2 gives you limited storage space as to force you buy extra storage. yet nearly every p2p game I played from WoW to Aion to Rift to Tera (when they were still p2p) still had expandable storage which you had to spend a lot of play time to expand fully.

What I am trying to say is its easy to pin whatever you like on the gem shop so you have to be careful to ensure there really is a link.

For example you mentioned that you believe temporal content is a result of the gem store. What link do you see there exactly? how is the gem store benefiting from temporary content? In my opinion its actually hurt by it. If I wanted to design the game around the gem store I would do it quite differently. What I would do is create the same nifty weapon skins. Ensure that like it happened in flame and frost mobs would be carrying them so that players can see how great looking they are. Have two chests like we had in dragon bash, one that drops from the mob and one thats purchasable from the cash shop. Have the one that drops, drop only for as long as that living story is going on say 2 months. After it ends the content remains in the game, the chest doesnt drop anymore but can still be bought from the gem store. That way people can still play the events and see how great the weapon skins look which will make them want one and the gemstore would be their only option at least for a while (might do an event with the same weapon skins again in the future). Dont you think this will definitely generate more money then temporary content? because I think it would for multiple reasons.
1. New players that join the game later can still spend money on past weapon skins
2. Not all players will like all the skins. I might think Fused weapons are amazing but sclerite weapon skins just dont fit the look of my character so while I would buy chests that might drop fused weapons I will not buy ones that drop sclerite
3. I might take a break from the game join again in the future and really wanting a fused weapon skin thus if it was available for sale I would throw money at it.
4. people generally have a budget. I am sure some do. I might not be willing to spend more then say $20 in a month but that might not be enough to get all the weapon skins I want. If it remained in game in subsequent months I might be willing to spend more to get that skin I love.
5. Alts. Certain skins go well with certain professions. The sclerite weapon skins are great on a necro but dont see them fit a mesmer much. When the sclerite skins were available I might not have owned a necro character but now that I finished to level all my other character I decided to start one. If the skins were still available I might be willing to try to get one as it would fit my necro’s look perfectly.

As for your other point the gold driven system I will agree its not as clear cut as temporary content is. I personally think the main reason why gold is hard to come by is to control inflation which you have to admit this game does very VERY well. Its got one of the most stable economy systems I’ve seen in any game in terms of inflation. You can only do that if you limit how much money characters earn. Of course you’re also right in that a side effect of that is people are more willing to convert real money into gold. If thats the main purpose or if inflation control is the main purpose its hard to tell. Even if there was no RMT in game I would still hope they’d done things the way they are. Having good inflation control is not only good for alts but also new players that join the game.

morrolan.9608:

But its not meaningful. In the world of the game I inhabit it is in fact completely meaningless and out of sight given that SS is deserted again because they didn’t meaningfully change the zone enough to keep people going there in sufficient numbers.

See this is a misreading of the situation, people don’t want the events to be purely once off so now they aren’t which is great they don’t necessarily want those events to be permanent. What people want to be permanent are things like the dungeons or as I said above permanent events in zones like Southsun. Its not like being able to run other dungeons over and over again affects immersion.

Southsun is a good example. The same events that made it popular during the last living story based there are still in game. The crazed karka still attack, the karka queen still comes around wrecking havoc. The only thing thats missing now is the canach and null instances (not exactly a great loss lets be honest), the crab toss mini game (I enjoyed it to be honest but not many did) and a few story driven events. The meat and potatoes of that event are still playable today. Yet while going during the event was nearly always a guaranteed overflow now you dont see many players there. Is it because content was taken away? or is it because content was introduced else where?

I think its cause content was introduced else where and if thats the case its another reason why this release model is a great idea. At the end of the day if we got an expansion what would happen? lets assume the game started in cantha and the main game (IE Tyria) was an expansion, we’d have waiting a year – two years to get it and in 2 – 3 months people would have finished it all and fallen back to their usual pattern (Ie what they do now once they finish with the living story of the month) Then it would be another 1 – 2 year wait for the next expansion. Like this content is getting pacing too. Instead of having 3 months of stuff to do and then 9 months of trying to figure out what to do while waiting we get new stuff to keep us occupied a couple of weeks. Even if the content is not something one might enjoy it will likely occupy them for a couple of days just to try it or perhaps force themselves to grind their way to that release reward. After that they’d just need to endure a week and a half of wait until something else comes out rather then months.

I am sure a lot of people dont know what they want themselves so you can imagine how hard it is for a 3rd party to figure out what it is said people want. I mean lets focus on Dynamic Events again. People didnt specifically say what they expected only that dynamic events arent dynamic and that they dont change anything cause 5 – 30 mins they’ll repeat. If you were put in charge to fix that what would you do? cause they only thing I can think of is one time / temporary events.

Actually yes you do see people unhappy with some continuity issues, like if zaithan is dead why doesn’t Orr sink again or why the risen keep on regenerating or wasn’t the land cleansed etc…

Its not easy to find the perfect balance, the only thing you can do is experiment with different styles and see what players like best. Thats whats happening here. Going forward it seems to be a ratio of repeatable and temporary content like you suggest. We’ll see if that will make people happy.

morrolan.9608:

Fey Zeal.7032:

TESO won’t be coming out until 2nd quarter 2014 unfortunately. Anet must thank the mmo gods every day for the window they’ve been given.

Can’t say I give a kitten about TESO. Other Elder Scrolls fans I know also can’t be bothered about it. Nothing I’ve seen makes me want to care about the game, and it’s becoming hard for me to understand why people do. Also, from what I’ve heard, Cyrodiil will be a large focus of the game, which sounds like WvW 1.5 and since WvW didn’t catch me in this game, TESO just doesn’t seem to have a whole lot for me.

Wildstar on the other hand could potentially kill my GW2 interest. And after that I’m heading for WH40K Eternal Crusade. I must say, Behavior knows how to interact with their fan base, I always gave kudos to ANet, but man, Behavior is taking it to another level.

Behellagh.1468:

But once “stolen” players reject these new games, as you seem to suggest will happen, they can always return here as if nothing happened.

WoW and EVE are both subscription games. A number of former subscription only games that have gone F2P still have a “premium” subscription tier. Pure F2P games like the ones from Nexon are designed to have enough inconveniences that the cash shop is only optional for masochistic players with patience of Job. Or some Chinese F2P games that are in reality P2W.

WoW is from 2004 and Eve from 2003. I was talking about the last 6 years.

Can they come back.. yes, has nothing happened? No they missed out on a lot of content but the big questions is.. will they come back. Looking at other mmo’s it’s not very likely that they will come back. Once a game ‘failed’ it almost never makes a comeback.

BTW I do not suggest they will all fail, I just say that it would not really mather if they fail or not.

And yes some of the now F2P still have a “premium” subscription tier but they had to move to that system because the subscription system failed. Usually the “premium” subscription tier also does not really work as they put the most interesting stuff behind that premium tier however that does normally not really matter as most as those games are seen as a failure. Getting some money is then nice for the people behind it but they usually go on to the next project hoping that becomes an success. That also means that the game itself becomes of a lower quality. This might also be why you almost never see such a game making a comeback.

People who just got bored with the game might come back with an expansion but once they moved on to the next MMO most of them will not come back anymore.

Azjenco.9425:

killcannon.2576:

Still waiting on the list of what has changed in this “Living World”.

A lot of stuff being added and then taken away again. Apparently that simulates the real world, things are there one day and then it’s missing a few days later.

It is actually a combination of both things there one week and then some stuff that is not taken away that gives a feeling a reality. In the past not much was left behind of any use . Now they are changing that and leaving useful things behind.
Not useful to me yet since I don’t like JP, WvW, or SPvP

Galen Grey.4709:

minbariguy.7504:

Galen Grey.4709:

I dont understand why people dont think this is an awesome idea provided they make it work.

Honestly, it’s because some of us don’t think they are making it work. When an expansion is released for any other MMO, they don’t remove content and achievements after a certain number of weeks and then say, “Oops, sorry, you’re too late; we took it out of the game.”

I actually do like the general idea of adding story content every 2 to 4 weeks that builds a continuing story. A Living World storyline that you can play through on your own schedule without it being pulled out from underneath you would be fantastic. But that isn’t what they’re doing. They are intentionally creating content on a timer so that we have to play on their schedule or miss out. That’s a total deal-breaker for me.

They already said they’re going to change that going forward. Funny thing is this all came about due to player request those same players that now are hating it.

In a game like an MMO change is a tricky thing. You can either have contextual change or temporal change. Most MMOs go with contextual change IE you’re given a quest to say save a village, you kill a few of the whatevers that are threatening that village but nothing really changes except you’re told you saved the village by the same npc that ask you to save the village. GW2 went with temporal change, you actually save the village and things actually save but only temporary. In a few minutes things are going to repeat. A lot of player rejected that change, they called it gimmicky, they called it fake some even called it nonexistant because of that repetition.

So Anet improved on that by making the content itself temporary. Change such as we managed to beat the molten alliance became factual the moment all the events / dungeon were removed from the game. No one can call that change a gimmick, fake or nonexistant because the events happened and left their mark on the world (refugees, the changes to southsun etc…) but at the same time the molten alliance no longer attacks every 30 minutes even though we’ve beaten them.

Anet only gave us what we wanted. Meaningful persistent change. However like the saying goes, be careful what you wish for. Those same players who complained about changes happening on a schedule realized they wanted that change to happened on a schedule after all so now Arenanet are going to move towards there again.

This was all an evolutionary process. Remember the first time we got one such update, the november release, lost shores the situation was a lot worst. Events happened only once and never repeated. Again people didnt like that so Anet changed it to a repeating month long event. People still dont like it so Anet promised more persistent content going forward.

First of all it is still ‘fake’.. The content is not based on what the players do. If it was then the influence from payers change the world. Like if they introduce an event and if players defeat the enemy then that area will forever become friendly territory else it will forever become hostile territory.

Anyway, You can still have persistent change without the temporary dungeons, achievements and items (and thats what people are complaining about). Remember the introduction of south sun cove? There we shaped the land by cutting down tree’s. These tree’s are still down. But there where no achievements or skins attached to that specific thing (cut down x trees).

With MF the story could be to defeat the new enemy and then keep them away.. keeping them away could then be done with the MF dungeon. Keeping the dungeon in forever (we need to keep them away forever), Make achievements for that dungeon (so they will also be available forever) and because the enemy is still there (not on or land) you can also keep the items in, they can then just drop from the dungeon and so on.

So it’s perfectly possible to have persistent change without the temporary skins, dungeons and achievements.

The reason they have it temporary is not because people asked for it but it is purely because they want people to buy stuff from the gem-store and to do that they try to give a idea of urgency. The oldest trick in the marketing book.. next to giving an idea of scarcity.

Devata.6589:

People who just got bored with the game might come back with an expansion but once they moved on to the next MMO most of them will not come back anymore.

Or they might come back for an update. An update and an expansion pack has the exact same allure of content, except that one is free and the other one you have to buy.

FourthVariety.5463:

Not too long ago, Colin Johanson made a statement about creating a living world being the holy grail of MMO development.

the statement was more inline with MMO developers are trying to find the “holy grail” which is the perfect mix for keeping the players coming to the game.
This perfect mix is how to add content in a timely manner so as to keep the income coming into the company.
They feel they are closer to this “holy grail” but they are not there yet nor do they even believe they are

Mirta.5029:

Devata.6589:

People who just got bored with the game might come back with an expansion but once they moved on to the next MMO most of them will not come back anymore.

Or they might come back for an update. An update and an expansion pack has the exact same allure of content, except that one is free and the other one you have to buy.

And lets deal in reality. I see several people post here they would pay for an expansion pack, but lets get real. If you can get the same thing for free over a period of time instead of getting hit with a a lot of bug filled in one shot that you dish out money for. I bet most would really not have to pay a dime.

Galen Grey.4709:

In my experience people like to pin everything they dont like on the payment model. Not just on this game but on all games regardless of payment model. I’ve seen things argued that games that have micro transactions like gw2 gives you limited storage space as to force you buy extra storage. yet nearly every p2p game I played from WoW to Aion to Rift to Tera (when they were still p2p) still had expandable storage which you had to spend a lot of play time to expand fully.

What I am trying to say is its easy to pin whatever you like on the gem shop so you have to be careful to ensure there really is a link.

Well I don’t. There is more stuff I do not like. I would prefer the world to be one big world not instances. I prefer mounts, I don’t like the lack of guild managing tools and I would prefer open world housing.

I don’t blame any of them on the payment model. Some things are, some things aren’t.

Galen Grey.4709:

For example you mentioned that you believe temporal content is a result of the gem store. What link do you see there exactly? how is the gem store benefiting from temporary content? In my opinion its actually hurt by it. If I wanted to design the game around the gem store I would do it quite differently. What I would do is create the same nifty weapon skins. Ensure that like it happened in flame and frost mobs would be carrying them so that players can see how great looking they are. Have two chests like we had in dragon bash, one that drops from the mob and one thats purchasable from the cash shop. Have the one that drops, drop only for as long as that living story is going on say 2 months. After it ends the content remains in the game, the chest doesnt drop anymore but can still be bought from the gem store. That way people can still play the events and see how great the weapon skins look which will make them want one and the gemstore would be their only option at least for a while (might do an event with the same weapon skins again in the future). Dont you think this will definitely generate more money then temporary content? because I think it would for multiple reasons.
1. New players that join the game later can still spend money on past weapon skins
2. Not all players will like all the skins. I might think Fused weapons are amazing but sclerite weapon skins just dont fit the look of my character so while I would buy chests that might drop fused weapons I will not buy ones that drop sclerite
3. …. (cut because of the body length)

It’s a very nice idea but thats not how the marketing people think. They basically say.. Create a feel of urgency and way more people buy. Without that urgency less people will buy it if if you keep it in for longer.

Have a read: http://www.drewsmarketingminute.com/2012/06/how-do-you-create-urgency.html

Galen Grey.4709:

As for your other point the gold driven system I will agree its not as clear cut as temporary content is. I personally think the main reason why gold is hard to come by is to control inflation which you have to admit this game does very VERY well. Its got one of the most stable economy systems I’ve seen in any game in terms of inflation. You can only do that if you limit how much money characters earn. Of course you’re also right in that a side effect of that is people are more willing to convert real money into gold. If thats the main purpose or if inflation control is the main purpose its hard to tell. Even if there was no RMT in game I would still hope they’d done things the way they are. Having good inflation control is not only good for alts but also new players that join the game.

It’s not just hard to get money.. it’s hard to get mats. But you can buy the mats with money. I first did wonder if the gold-driven system was basically simply a result of a failed attempt to have a game where you do not need to farm for items.. However it’s not like you don’t need to do it. You simply can’t really farm mats. Every time people find a way to farm mats a patch gets released reducing that. And that shows me that it has to do with the gem-store focus. Because you can still keep the gold limited and the economy stable with people having the ability to farm mats. (The mats would then just be less expensive, thats about it) But now if people want for example an legendary they will need money to buy the mats giving and they can get the money with gems. When people could get the mats easier it the need for money would be less. So it has not do to with the amount but with the need for it.

Krosslite.1950:

Mirta.5029:

Devata.6589:

People who just got bored with the game might come back with an expansion but once they moved on to the next MMO most of them will not come back anymore.

Or they might come back for an update. An update and an expansion pack has the exact same allure of content, except that one is free and the other one you have to buy.

And lets deal in reality. I see several people post here they would pay for an expansion pack, but lets get real. If you can get the same thing for free over a period of time instead of getting hit with a a lot of bug filled in one shot that you dish out money for. I bet most would really not have to pay a dime.

There is not such thing as free.

It needs to get payed one way or the other. Why do many people prefer the expansions?
Because they believe / know that if Anet does not get the money from expansions they need to get the money from the gem-store meaning they need to try to convince people to buy stuff from the gem-store and so make changes in the world that are not very good for the game. Like for example the temporary stuff we see not so many complains about.

It’s basically the same reason why many of those people will also not like to play F2P games and might have gone for a B2P game like GW2.

Devata.6589:

First of all it is still ‘fake’.. The content is not based on what the players do. If it was then the influence from payers change the world. Like if they introduce an event and if players defeat the enemy then that area will forever become friendly territory else it will forever become hostile territory.

Anyway, You can still have persistent change without the temporary dungeons, achievements and items (and thats what people are complaining about). Remember the introduction of south sun cove? There we shaped the land by cutting down tree’s. These tree’s are still down. But there where no achievements or skins attached to that specific thing (cut down x trees).

With MF the story could be to defeat the new enemy and then keep them away.. keeping them away could then be done with the MF dungeon. Keeping the dungeon in forever (we need to keep them away forever), Make achievements for that dungeon (so they will also be available forever) and because the enemy is still there (not on or land) you can also keep the items in, they can then just drop from the dungeon and so on.

So it’s perfectly possible to have persistent change without the temporary skins, dungeons and achievements.

The reason they have it temporary is not because people asked for it but it is purely because they want people to buy stuff from the gem-store and to do that they try to give a idea of urgency. The oldest trick in the marketing book.. next to giving an idea of scarcity.

Yes and no. Its a theme park so yeah there is an intended conclusion and its a game so its all fake of course. The intention is not to have real change, you’d need a sandbox for that but to have “believable” change. Going with your southsun cove example, that too had temporary event which made it more believable. If the karka kept invading lions arch every 15 minutes players beating the karka on southsun itself would have been a gimmick so to speak. Just like cutting down the trees resulted in persistent cut down trees so beating the karka resulted in no more karka invasion of lion’s arch and so did beating the molten alliance result in no molten alliance dungeon. That being said we dont really have to loose the dungeon forever. I agree with you that such a situation would be a pity. Luckly we have FotM, I am hoping that perhaps the friendly asura there will perfect his device where as it will not be just random fractals which you can do but perhaps even choose more recent event so we can get the dungeons in their entirety and not a fractalize version. That would be nifty and can still carry forward the story.

I think you’re misunderstanding the situation. Its not that anything in particular is required to have story or persistent change, its what makes sense in the specific context. For example if they were to create a dungeon which is say I dont know a section of the underworld that holds lots of treasure its okey to have that permanently. Sure it still has the issue of why do enemies keep regeneration but its just a question of make believe its not driving forward any story. Its kinda like why we get story mode dungeons and explorer mode dungeons. Story mode are meant to run once as they drive the story forward while explorer mode arent tied to the story thus its not as much a big deal that they’re repeatable. Thats also another option for other dungeons they could do a story mode / explorer mode too.

You might have a point with urgency but I am not entirely convinced. Urgency might give them a few extra sales sure but a longer period of sale will give them sales from new players, players with new alts, players who stick to a monthly budget etc…

Devata.6589:

There is not such thing as free.

.

Oh I know. I already established earlier in this thread that the cash shop is funding these updates

Galen Grey.4709:

Devata.6589:

First of all it is still ‘fake’.. The content is not based on what the players do. If it was then the influence from payers change the world. Like if they introduce an event and if players defeat the enemy then that area will forever become friendly territory else it will forever become hostile territory.

Anyway, You can still have persistent change without the temporary dungeons, achievements and items (and thats what people are complaining about). Remember the introduction of south sun cove? There we shaped the land by cutting down tree’s. These tree’s are still down. But there where no achievements or skins attached to that specific thing (cut down x trees).

With MF the story could be to defeat the new enemy and then keep them away.. keeping them away could then be done with the MF dungeon. Keeping the dungeon in forever (we need to keep them away forever), Make achievements for that dungeon (so they will also be available forever) and because the enemy is still there (not on or land) you can also keep the items in, they can then just drop from the dungeon and so on.

So it’s perfectly possible to have persistent change without the temporary skins, dungeons and achievements.

The reason they have it temporary is not because people asked for it but it is purely because they want people to buy stuff from the gem-store and to do that they try to give a idea of urgency. The oldest trick in the marketing book.. next to giving an idea of scarcity.

Yes and no. Its a theme park so yeah there is an intended conclusion and its a game so its all fake of course. The intention is not to have real change, you’d need a sandbox for that but to have “believable” change. Going with your southsun cove example, that too had temporary event which made it more believable. If the karka kept invading lions arch every 15 minutes players beating the karka on southsun itself would have been a gimmick so to speak. Just like cutting down the trees resulted in persistent cut down trees so beating the karka resulted in no more karka invasion of lion’s arch and so did beating the molten alliance result in no molten alliance dungeon. That being said we dont really have to loose the dungeon forever. I agree with you that such a situation would be a pity. Luckly we have FotM, I am hoping that perhaps the friendly asura there will perfect his device where as it will not be just random fractals which you can do but perhaps even choose more recent event so we can get the dungeons in their entirety and not a fractalize version. That would be nifty and can still carry forward the story.

I think you’re misunderstanding the situation. Its not that anything in particular is required to have story or persistent change, its what makes sense in the specific context. For example if they were to create a dungeon which is say I dont know a section of the underworld that holds lots of treasure its okey to have that permanently. Sure it still has the issue of why do enemies keep regeneration but its just a question of make believe its not driving forward any story. Its kinda like why we get story mode dungeons and explorer mode dungeons. Story mode are meant to run once as they drive the story forward while explorer mode arent tied to the story thus its not as much a big deal that they’re repeatable. Thats also another option for other dungeons they could do a story mode / explorer mode too.

You might have a point with urgency but I am not entirely convinced. Urgency might give them a few extra sales sure but a longer period of sale will give them sales from new players, players with new alts, players who stick to a monthly budget etc…

Well my point with the south sun cove example was that they can make a nice story that indeed has temporary events but they can keep dungeons, items and achievements available. I would prefer that and I think many people do.

This thread however is about not getting an expansion and why do I think they go for this option? To get people to buy gems. So if we got expansions there would be no need for that and they could still have temporary events but keep content like achievements, dungeons and items available forever.

However, even if they would change this, if they will generate income with gems and not with expansion I am afraid they will start doing yet something else to try to get people to buy gems that might be bad for the game.

With an expansion I have believe the decisions they will make are less likely to be bad for the game because there focus is.. make a good game, not get people to guy gems. Even if they may be connected.

If people are rushers, no matter how many large expansions they will add, the rushers will finish it in a few days and then cry there is no content. So giving this little contents every 2 weeks is better then a full expansion.

Devata.6589:

Well I don’t. There is more stuff I do not like….
I don’t blame any of them on the payment model. Some things are, some things aren’t.

You might not but I have personally seen people say the game has a lack of mounts so that people use teleporting which costs money and forces you to buy gems for example.

but staying on you personally its like I told you in the last post. you mentioned difficulty to make gold and temporary content. Dont get me wrong, its possible that you’re right and their intention is to drive gem sales but like I explained there are also legitimate reasons why things are the way they are.

Devata.6589:

It’s a very nice idea but thats not how the marketing people think. They basically say.. Create a feel of urgency and way more people buy. Without that urgency less people will buy it if if you keep it in for longer.

I know about the concept and important of creating urgency to drive sales but its not a silver bullet to be used everywhere. Creating urgency makes sense when you want to ensure a client doesnt think too long about the purchase as to avoid the risk they end up buying a competing product. It also only makes sense when whatever you’re selling is something that is bought once or only a few times. If you go try buy a car you’ll get sales persons telling you to hurry cause they have other clients interested in it etc.. etc.. and that makes sense. You’re not going to go to say a super market, or a green grocer and get the urgency sales pitch because it will be counter productive. If your green grocer tells you to be quick about buying those apples because they’re about to become scarce and they dont know when they will be able to get more apples to sell all they will really end up with is one next customer when they come next time and see an abundance of apples and feel cheated. Same here, I dont think urgency will help in the grand scheme of things. I mean lets think about it. Lets go with fused weapons cause they’re nifty. If you want to get say a set of 3 fused weapons urgency or not you’ll buy chests until you get those 3 fused weapons. All Arenanet can gain with the urgency tactic is they get 50 sales this month (assuming 50 chests lead to 3 tickets) as opposed to 20 sales this month, 20 sales next month and 10 sales the month after if they remained on the market. IF you want them, you want them it doesnt matter if they’re available for 1 month or forever yo’re not going to buy more then 50 chests if thats what it takes to get the tickets you want. Further more this is offset by a number of drawbacks. One being what we called the greengrocer factor. because people think they’re being manipulated some refuse to spend any money at all. Further more people on a budget will not spend more then their budget urgency or not If I only have $10 to spend this month thats all they can get. I could spend another $10 next month but alas there are no more fused weapons and the new set of skins doesnt match the look I am going for so no money for anet.

Bottom line urgency makes sense when you either want to beat your competitors by making sure potential customers dont get enough time to shop around. It also only makes sense when its an object that is only going to be bought once. In this case none of those criteria apply imho.

Devata.6589:

It’s not just hard to get money.. it’s hard to get mats. … But now if people want for example an legendary they will need money to buy the mats giving and they can get the money with gems. When people could get the mats easier it the need for money would be less. So it has not do to with the amount but with the need for it.

I dont think thats really it. The problems experienced in an economy isnt just inflation, there is also deflation. Gw2 suffers a bit here cause most things are completely worthless. If mats were easy to come by they’d be sold for nothing and your economy will suffer cause nothing in your game will be worth selling at all. Its a balance. On one hand you need to make sure that gold is limited so that people will not be able to drive price up and up but on the other hand you need to make sure that stuff is valuable enough that people will not give it away for free (like they do with any gear sub rare tier)

The thing with legendaries is they’re meant to be long term goals. Its by design that it should take a players months of game time before they can afford it. The problem with people converting real money into gems is to get around that intended barrier.
Honestly the problem there is people are able to do it rather then its required.

Devata.6589:

Well my point with the south sun cove example was that they can make a nice story that indeed has temporary events but they can keep dungeons, items and achievements available. I would prefer that and I think many people do.

This thread however is about not getting an expansion and why do I think they go for this option? To get people to buy gems. So if we got expansions there would be no need for that and they could still have temporary events but keep content like achievements, dungeons and items available forever.

However, even if they would change this, if they will generate income with gems and not with expansion I am afraid they will start doing yet something else to try to get people to buy gems that might be bad for the game.

With an expansion I have believe the decisions they will make are less likely to be bad for the game because there focus is.. make a good game, not get people to guy gems. Even if they may be connected.

At the end of the day it all boils down to trust. If they wanted to focus just on money why not have it both ways? Do the expansion, sell it but still have the weapon skin of the month and sell that from the cash shop?

If they were really all about the money first and foremost, why make chests loot-able in game and not have them just in the cash shop exclusively like we had during halloween? We could take it even further why allow ingame money to be traded for gems?

Of course Arenanet is a business and as any business it definitely wants to make money but I just dont see them focusing only on the money. For starters I am pretty sure a lot of people never buy a single gem using real money those will still get a ton of content for free where as if they had an expansion they would be forced to pay for it (and nothing is precluding them for keeping the same cash shop strategy with an expansion)

Honestly I dont see the greed you seem to be seeing. The content they’re releasing for free every two weeks just keeps getting better and better. Tomorrow we’re going to get one jam packed patch with lots of nifty and free stuff. Not just that but once again they listened to people’s feedback and the rng boxes include tokens that once you earn enough off you can exchange for the real deal if it doesnt drop for you. We’ll see if they keep this up but I honestly feel that they definitely earned the benefit of the doubt at least!

After watching the recent interview and several posts from Colin, this seems a big led down.

Living story approach is pretty cool but for the hundredth time, it is like giving a pacifier to a child who really just wants a new toy.
We want permanent content that opens up new areas, new farming spots, adds more rich end game.

Your main objective behind living story has been to make it seem that the world is changing. Now doing this with a 2 week temporary content does not make me feel this.

Instead, imagine the addition of Cantha, allow us to play 2 new races The Tengu and perhaps another…New cities, areas, build on the previous lore.
New places, dungeons, Elite Areas.
The game is lacking End game – Providing Elite areas such as Underworld, Fizzure of Woe.

More effort provides better rewards, meaning harder content will give guaranteed better rewards.
These are the changes that the game needs today.

I will gladly pay a full price of a new game for an expansion, instead the game is being run by selling minipets and costumes which cant be used in combat….

We need endgame.

Gw2 and ANET will fail if dont give us endgame.

Tiger.7506:

We need endgame.

Gw2 and ANET will fail if dont give us endgame.

End-game =
1) Living Stories
2) Down Scaling of your level to allow access to all zone to do Dynamic Events
3) Dungeons with multiple routes of exploration
4) sPvP
5) WvWvW

plus your post is totally off topic for this thread

Krosslite.1950:

Tiger.7506:

We need endgame.

Gw2 and ANET will fail if dont give us endgame.

End-game =
1) Living Stories
2) Down Scaling of your level to allow access to all zone to do Dynamic Events
3) Dungeons with multiple routes of exploration
4) sPvP
5) WvWvW

plus your post is totally off topic for this thread

No endgame.
Endgame = reward

Tiger.7506:

No endgame.
Endgame = reward

endgame /= reward.
Endgame is something you do at the end of the game. Some people decide that endgame starts at level 80, others that it’s what happens when you get full world completion, third party will think that it’s what you do when you do everything in the game, other people claim that it’s what happens when you complete your personal story. But no, the endgame does not have to be rewarding to be called end game.

Tiger.7506:

Krosslite.1950:

Tiger.7506:

We need endgame.

Gw2 and ANET will fail if dont give us endgame.

End-game =
1) Living Stories
2) Down Scaling of your level to allow access to all zone to do Dynamic Events
3) Dungeons with multiple routes of exploration
4) sPvP
5) WvWvW

plus your post is totally off topic for this thread

No endgame.
Endgame = reward

Endgame rewards:
The Bifrost Staff
The Dreamer Shortbow
Frenzy Harpoon gun
Incinerator Dagger
Kudzu Longbow
Kamohoali’i Kotaki Spear
The Minstrel Focus
The Moot Mace
The Predator Rifle
Rodgort.png Rodgort Torch
Twilight Greatsword
Eternity Greatsword

Also anything bought with Karma is a reward since Karma is only given as a reward

Also rewards for dungeon tokens is end-game reward

this game could have 10kk players!

Game has sold over 3 million copies