Guild Wars 2

So you went F2P, cool, but in order for me to pay the equivalent of a monthly sub or more, you need to be able to provide me with a incentive to do so. You have to create a engaging game that keeps me interested in playing, you have to offer me things to buy from you that have some kind of value to me, and at a price that’s legitimate.

So first off you did create a game a engaging game. something I could casually play, and enjoy, where I could just simply explore and “play”. Then you started tweaking. You made dungeons which the first month might not of been the most engaging of designs, but were still fun to casually spend time, and made them tedious. You have yet to properly balance them, some dungeons basically come down to wipe a dozen times in order to complete, just for the sake of dying a dozen times.

Second, in your overdone attempt at creating and controlling a market, you created a financial grind, that either left me running your tedious dungeons ad nasuem, or farming events not for the sake of completing a event, but just to spam kill mobs in hopes of descent drops to convert to gold, to buy what I really wanted to get in the first place. I will applaud you on some of the changes to Cursed Shore, tho I think they need a few tweaks, but now that the events have chests at the end of them, I don’t feel obligated to throw on my MF gear just to farm the mobs of the events as much, but its still there. The proof of that would of been last night, when one of your events bugged, and just spawned endless waves of mobs. People found it more rewarding to stop running the other events, and instead everyone just thru on thier MF sets and farmed the bugged event.

Thirdly, since you have such a poorly but controlled with a iron fist economy, I find the grindwork I have to put into farming gold in order to get my gears not very pleasant. Matter of fact I am now sitting on 4 lvl 80 characters, because I found it more fun just to roll a alt and spend the money I made leveling him on my main, then working on my main instead.

This all leads full circle to the F2P model. You deliberately created a way in your game to buy gems with real cash, and convert those gems into gold. Now, seeing as you don’t have a way to gather gems ingame, I can only assume your telling me hey if you want to support us and get the gear without the tedious grind, buy your gold from us directly via the gems to gold exchange. The problem is I cant really justify your prices, using any other games market for currency, you are the most expensive model, especially when the real market setters, the gold sellers, have you beat by 6 to 1!

And just like buying gold from your cash shop, there is nothing else you offer on it that gives me any sense of worth or value. Spending over a gold per key to open the 100+ black lion chests I got sitting around? Buying 7 random dyes for 200 gems when they sell on the marketplace for 6s each?

So here I sit, in a game thats becoming stale to me because all I seem to do in it is farm, and I cant bring myself because of your borked up economy to give you my money, because I don’t feel I get any value from it, nor do I feel so strongly positive about your game to buy gems just to show my appreciation for the game you created.

So heres my suggestion. I see 2 ways you are going to get money from me to keep you guys afloat, and who knows I bet if you fix 1, you will fix the other, and get double my monies!

Stop worrying about gear grind. Who cares if everyone 3 months into the game is running around in full exotics, your only concern should be are we having fun! If you dont want to fix the grindy feeling of your game, then at the very least change your marketing of gems/gold to make them more buyer friendly. Give me a good bargain, and I will reward you with money, or fix the grindy aspect of your game, and I will reward you with money by buying your marketplace trinkets. If im not concerned with getting my gear, I will gladly pay for your skins and stuff.

If I find the game fun to play, just for the sake of playing it, you could do something like oh I dunno, come out with some kind of neat new expansions a couple times a year for say 20 bucks a pop, and you know what, I will gladly buy them!

+1

This is what they said they would do. Make games fun to keep people playing. I would assume they also had cash shop figures from GW1. So they had to have known that people enjoying themselves will spend money. And to your point about gear grind. GW1 had max stat gear. If you did grind, it was only for the better looking stuff with same stats. Until the 11/15 patch, they had the similar approach.

So now, I still would like someone to provide me with proof that people who prefer gear stat progression spend more money in cash shops than people who like horizontal progression and playing just for the fun of it.

dalendria.3762:

+1

This is what they said they would do. Make games fun to keep people playing. I would assume they also had cash shop figures from GW1. So they had to have known that people enjoying themselves will spend money. And to your point about gear grind. GW1 had max stat gear. If you did grind, it was only for the better looking stuff with same stats. Until the 11/15 patch, they had the similar approach.

So now, I still would like someone to provide me with proof that people who prefer gear stat progression spend more money in cash shops than people who like horizontal progression and playing just for the fun of it.

People pay for WoW, don’t they?

Just sayin’. :P

Though I agree I’d rather not see them go down THAT particular model. XD

critickitten.1498:

dalendria.3762:

+1

This is what they said they would do. Make games fun to keep people playing. I would assume they also had cash shop figures from GW1. So they had to have known that people enjoying themselves will spend money. And to your point about gear grind. GW1 had max stat gear. If you did grind, it was only for the better looking stuff with same stats. Until the 11/15 patch, they had the similar approach.

So now, I still would like someone to provide me with proof that people who prefer gear stat progression spend more money in cash shops than people who like horizontal progression and playing just for the fun of it.

People pay for WoW, don’t they?

Just sayin’. :P

Though I agree I’d rather not see them go down THAT particular model. XD

Incorrect comparison. All WoW players pay the same amount for the same vertical progression system. Dalendria asked for proof that shows a player would pay MORE for vertical progression rather than horizontal.

Ya know to me its like they got their priories/business model all jumbled up.

F2P games are all for the most part casual games. They aren’t games designed like monthly MMO’s, where people tend to spend a exorbitant amount of time daily/weekly/monthly playing them, where they are basically a full time hobby.

Traditional MMO’s rely and size scale and depth to keep the person playing constantly, and thus paying the company monthly. They tend to have a longer leveling time, and they rely on progression to keep the person subbed.

Those games rely on keeping keeping people logged in, as much as possible, as long as possible, to maximize the financial rewards.

F2P models should solely be based around fun factor. They shouldn’t be bothering trying to trend my playtime, whats going to be most important for Anet and GW2’s survival is when I am playing, am I spending money, and when they release paid content, am I buying it?

As things sit with this game, I feel like to keep up with the joneses, I have to play it like a traditional MMO, but this one lacks the depth of those other games, and gives me no reason at all to support them financially, and because of that, it would be highly unlikely I would be rushing out when new paid content becomes available.

I just don’t see how this is a win/win relationship between the consumer and the company. My guess is, and this is only a guess, but I am betting 3 months into the game 90%+ of us are what would be regarded in the F2P realm as “leechers”, and the only thing that would make Anet financially successful right now was the fact that we paid a initial investment of 60+ bucks, where as most F2P games either have a low($20.00 or less) initial investment, or no initial financial investment at all.

At this point Anet, I would not pay you a monthly sub for this game, because it lacks the finesse of other AAA MMO’s, and your too grindy, too expensive, and dont offer either enough stuff or useable stuff in your cash shop to support via the traditional F2P system. And I am willing to bet I am in the Majority by a vast amount when it comes to this.

So I would suggest you pick which model you are, and soon.

critickitten.1498:

dalendria.3762:

+1

This is what they said they would do. Make games fun to keep people playing. I would assume they also had cash shop figures from GW1. So they had to have known that people enjoying themselves will spend money. And to your point about gear grind. GW1 had max stat gear. If you did grind, it was only for the better looking stuff with same stats. Until the 11/15 patch, they had the similar approach.

So now, I still would like someone to provide me with proof that people who prefer gear stat progression spend more money in cash shops than people who like horizontal progression and playing just for the fun of it.

People pay for WoW, don’t they?

Just sayin’. :P

Though I agree I’d rather not see them go down THAT particular model. XD

Anet competing with wow by trying to adopt wow’s mechanics is by far the worst thing Anet could do financially. WoW is a Juggernaut of a game that requires significant framework, design and support to keep it afloat and viable.

I am not by any means a wow fanboi, but this game can not stand up on its own and compare itself to what WoW is, and nor should it even try.

Just one thing, may seem nitpicky, but IMHO it’s important – GW2 is not F2P, it’s B2P (buy to play). While I see what your point is, I do think that the difference is relevant, as I tend to see people on the forums justifying potential company’s bad moves or negligence with “it’s F2P, what else do you want” argument and I think it would be bad if this thought pattern stuck.

Doolio thats because most people automatically F2P=“bad game” in this business, because most people only have experience with the model because they bought a AAA MMO, it turned out to be bad, and because it was a poor title, it went F2P to stay alive, and by alive, I mean on life support. Very few titles go from AAA, to F2P, and see a resounding financial success based off their initial goals.

Remember every title that has gone from AAA to F2P has survived because they have cut everything down to skeleton crew as far design, support, and infrastructure.

GW2 is really unique in this market. A game that boasted AAA game quality, but run on a F2P platform, so if this game was to sink, where would they cut the fat from? From the looks of things, they are already running on a skeleton crew model, and skeleton crew is not meant as a negative here, it just means they dont have have to spend a ton of money of CS salaries, and the infrastructure to support that employee base. While the devs may have titles stating they are a lead of this or that, its highly unlikely they have a real large “team” of underlings, that answer directly and work directly and solely under them.

Yah Anet made a lot of money with its initial launch of GW2, but without people continuing to support the game financially, that becomes a static #, and since most companies don’t withhold large chunks their “profits” to keep the project afloat beyond a fiscal year, Where is GW2’s profit going to come from next year if we aren’t spending money in the cash shop and buying expansions??