Guild Wars 2

Hi guys i want to discuss about something that concerns me and that is living story episodes and new players
There are 3 seasons in which 2 of them are playable , but for those who dont know how it works ill explain briefly
Every living story episode that is being released will have a certain time that you need to log in into the game in order to obtain it if you missed this opportunity than youll have to buy the episode

So why does it concern me about the future of this content?
Since we have so many episodes a new player will buy the game will have to obtain these episodes by purchsing them for a big chunk of gems , i know some would say “well he dosnt have to” in my opinion it is a content that you will have to have since it has so many great rewards such as ascended gear , mastaries , story and maps.

(A slight remark to consider another expansion is in the works)

So what do you guys think
Is it a big issue?
Will it hurt the game?
Will there be a solution such as packaged living story bundles for half the price?
Please share your opinions on the topic

That really depends if zone access is locked by the living story. I personally don’t think it should be.

It already is locked by ls access. A guildmate of mine logged in for the ember bay patch but not the bloodstone fen one and could not access bloodstone fen, he tagged along with someone in the bloodstone fen story of someone else and immediately was kicked the second they hit bloodstone fen so yeah.

I find that to be a problem. The story, sure, but charging gem access for an entire zone I think will cause more problems.

Why should you access any place that is part of the LS without having that part unlocked? You should not be able to access the events to go with the LS part that you don’t have.

anet has the metrics on whether or not new people buy the LS episodes and I expect they will adjust the prices as needed if the numbers are to low.

I don’t see the problem with making people pay for it. It’s additional separately developed content.

creating a package deal for all of them once they’re all released sounds like a good move, though

what’s the problem, actually? new players can just manually get LS2 and LS3, and play.
If you come in later to the game you should be expected to not be the first to do something, that’s like common sense. I mean, if I go boot up WoW now, I shouldn’t be expecting many people, if any at all, for the earlier raids. It would be my own incurrection if I did, not the gamemakers

PyrateSilly.4710:

Why should you access any place that is part of the LS without having that part unlocked? You should not be able to access the events to go with the LS part that you don’t have.

Because up to now, not unlocking the LS just means you don’t get to play the story. Now it would be a double whammy with the zone and the story. It would be like not letting people into Silverwastes if they didn’t have LS2.

I think it’d be helpful to maintain accessibility so that these new zones aren’t going to be empty once the bulk of people are done farming stuff and achievements.

And besides, people that don’t unlock it can already use a teleport to friend anyways to reach the zone…

It’s no different to any other game that’s been going for a while. Even single player games have expansions, DLC and other addons that are sold separately. The only difference between GW2 and most other games is that normally we’d all be paying for the Living Story as well. The nearest I know of other developers coming to giving away all their new releases is including them as part of a subscription package.

I think the important question, with any game, is whether it’s worth the money. When DLC was being promoted as the next big thing in gaming I was extremely skeptical. My concern was that it’d turn full priced games into a ‘starter pack’ and then you’d have to keep paying out to buy all the other bits to make up a full game.

That’s definitely the case with some games, but I don’t think it’s a problem with Guild Wars 2. When you buy the base game you do get a full game’s worth of content (even more so these days when you get HoT as well). And then, once you’ve played through that if you decide you want more you have the option to buy the Living Story. Each episode only costs 200 gems, which is about £2.15 or $2.50 and it’s less if you buy the bundle. (Or you can buy it with gold, or a mix of gold and real money.)

I admit I haven’t had to buy any of them but I’d be happy to pay it for the amount of content you get in an episode.

Having said all that I do think it could be worthwhile for them to release a bundle with the base game, HoT and LS 2 and 3 all together. Although that would make the absence of season 1 even more glaring. (And of course some existing players would kick up a fuss demanding compensation from Anet for giving new players discounted access to content we got for free.)

MrPinks.2015:

So why does it concern me about the future of this content?
Since we have so many episodes a new player will buy the game will have to obtain these episodes by purchsing them for a big chunk of gems […]

So what? Makes up for the fact that they, unlike us, didn’t have to pay for each expansion separately but got all of them for approximately 23 bucks.

You’ll break ANet’s legs seriously… this is part of how they make some profit. It should be expected that people will buy these episodes so their revenues will increase, and it’s fair tbh. They even make bundled discounts from time to time. The game is wonderful, and I have absolutely no problem with this model.

I don’t understand this “Every living story episode that is being released will have a certain time that you need to log in into the game in order to obtain it if you missed this opportunity than youll have to buy the episode”.

Does someone mind explaining? So does this apply for, let’s say, someone who has HoT and has logged in before episode 4 came out but won’t log on for a few days after its release?

Pyaari.8217:

I don’t understand this “Every living story episode that is being released will have a certain time that you need to log in into the game in order to obtain it if you missed this opportunity than youll have to buy the episode”.

Does someone mind explaining? So does this apply for, let’s say, someone who has HoT and has logged in before episode 4 came out but won’t log on for a few days after its release?

You have 2months+ to unlock current episode. Just log in. No further action needed. They sell to increase revenue, it’s part of their model so they don’t have to explain why. I’d love an explanation about how this could be something bad, though.

You can call it what you will, but living story now is DLC and you really can’t argue with that if you look at it. I have friends who I wanted to play, but they where put off by the whole thing.

Myself? I purchased season 2 which I missed and really don’t have a problem with it, even being locked out of areas. In almost any other game, if you don’t purchase the DLC you can’t access that content. Maybe what they really need to do is call it DLC so new players who are used to that term are not put off?

Pyaari.8217:

I don’t understand this “Every living story episode that is being released will have a certain time that you need to log in into the game in order to obtain it if you missed this opportunity than youll have to buy the episode”.

Does someone mind explaining? So does this apply for, let’s say, someone who has HoT and has logged in before episode 4 came out but won’t log on for a few days after its release?

You have a lot more than a few days. Just before Head of the Snake was released Gaile gave the heads up for anyone who hadn’t logged in to o so and bank episode 3 so one episode can be banked any time between it’s release and the next one being released.

Might be a good time to remind you that if you didn’t “bank” Episode 3, do so now, before Episode 4 launches.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Episode-4-release-time/first
I on’t think you even need to own HoT to bank. Say if you are core or F2P for years, playing regularly, logging in during the times, you could have all 4 episodes banked by now but would need to buy HoT to unlock them.

Valento.9852:

Pyaari.8217:

I don’t understand this “Every living story episode that is being released will have a certain time that you need to log in into the game in order to obtain it if you missed this opportunity than youll have to buy the episode”.

Does someone mind explaining? So does this apply for, let’s say, someone who has HoT and has logged in before episode 4 came out but won’t log on for a few days after its release?

Ah, it is 2 months now. Was already wondering as I know people who did not log in during all episodes but who do have all episodes unlocked.

Back when they first announced this approach with LS2 I advised against it. The problem is that it’s not an expansion and so many people are less willing to spend money on it.

However at the same time they feel they are missing part of the game if they don’t have it.

So they have to buy it while they do not want to, or they have to grind for it (as if the game has not enough grind yet) or they feel they are missing essential parts of the game they are playing.

If it’s a real expansion I feel people are more willing to spend money on it. So these patches in-between should be paid for with the last expansion imho. But that only works if you earn your money with those expansions, not if you depend a lot of in game sales.

Also the only people who get this problem are new or returning players. Maybe the idea once was that people would log in to get them for free and so did stay active. But the reality is that people might also not log in and once they missed a few episodes you create another reason for them to not come back or have something they dislike when they are back.

I have been complaining about them being story locked (and behind a fight yet) for awhile now. At least it is no longer like the first 2 episodes, where there was no portal to get to the new zone so they felt extremely disconnected.

PyrateSilly.4710:

Why should you access any place that is part of the LS without having that part unlocked? You should not be able to access the events to go with the LS part that you don’t have.

Drytop and Silverwastes to the forums please.

Not only do you have to OWN the episodes but you need to have played at least the first instance.

IMHO it must stay as it is.

Main content – anything significant playable is still available to everyone (free players as well!). Namely fractals, PvP, WvW, huge lot of explorable areas with little lore gems, map metas and farm trains – all the stuff that you usually spend your GW2 time.

LW is mostly story content and really one time experience – not your usual gameplay. Our epic lore we together eagerly wait for. Good stories have huge build up time (bad example – game of thrones). So it is important for those who wait for it to get it for free (hence log in and cash in). Otherwise it would go against “pay once” model heavily + we get rewarded for being loyal players. As soon as we get an update, were done with it just as fast (Unless expansion. I liked that HoT had longer story to chew).

For someone who is new – they are already showered with new stuff. LW is like a huge DLC to the game – humongous story content to go through. I will dare to say – equivalent of an AAA game. (Heck, I enjoyed this more than most of RPG AAAs out there.) New player gets a choice – does he/she wants to buy additional game to play through or skip it (spoilers are all over the place really….) and jump right into hype train waiting for new episodes. Some cool features and maps locked behind stories, yes. But unnecessary so far. LW functions awesomely well as DLC so far.

Consider the magnificent lore as your loyal player reward. New players will be rewarded differently – as new expansion releases they will get HoT free along with it. They already have the easy way in.

Edit: Two months ago I was that new player.

The problem ofc being that many stat combination trinkets are very easily accessible via LWS3 maps and that otherwise you are looking at farming the same HoT map over and over for a chance at getting a recipe that allows you to craft an exotic version of such trinket, or going into raiding to obtain these trinkets, the problem being that you need these trinkets to start raiding.

They could bundle in S2 with a new purchase of expansion nr 2. But the logical way (from a player perspective anyway) would be to bundle S2 with HoT and S3 with expac 2. I guess they will stick to their current format though.

On one hand I’m concerned with the fact that the access to certain maps will be gem-only for those who weren’t in the game during the time of LS, but on the other side… The story is available only to those with HoT because we actually paid for that content. It just seems fair that people who arrive later are required to pay for the very same content – just in a bit different way.

In that case the LS3 may be treated as a reward for both buying HoT and playing at the time of LS3’s release. Also, you have to note that each episode is a stand-alone story and there was lot of effort put into that, as well as in creating new areas. ArenaNet certainly deserves some cash for doing things like that.

Reiiya.2491:

IMHO it must stay as it is.

Main content – anything significant playable is still available to everyone (free players as well!). Namely fractals, PvP, WvW, huge lot of explorable areas with little lore gems, map metas and farm trains – all the stuff that you usually spend your GW2 time.

LW is mostly story content and really one time experience – not your usual gameplay. Our epic lore we together eagerly wait for. Good stories have huge build up time (bad example – game of thrones). So it is important for those who wait for it to get it for free (hence log in and cash in). Otherwise it would go against “pay once” model heavily + we get rewarded for being loyal players. As soon as we get an update, were done with it just as fast (Unless expansion. I liked that HoT had longer story to chew).

For someone who is new – they are already showered with new stuff. LW is like a huge DLC to the game – humongous story content to go through. I will dare to say – equivalent of an AAA game. (Heck, I enjoyed this more than most of RPG AAAs out there.) New player gets a choice – does he/she wants to buy additional game to play through or skip it (spoilers are all over the place really….) and jump right into hype train waiting for new episodes. Some cool features and maps locked behind stories, yes. But unnecessary so far. LW functions awesomely well as DLC so far.

Consider the magnificent lore as your loyal player reward. New players will be rewarded differently – as new expansion releases they will get HoT free along with it. They already have the easy way in.

Edit: Two months ago I was that new player.

i love your passion indeed .

I don’t see any issue with it since it can also be bought with gold.

On the other hand when the next expansion comes out it will get a little weird if they don’t include the LS stuff.