Guild Wars 2

Dear ArenaNet,

I love this game and I want to see it grow! There is a thread about more PvP modes and I’m very excited, so here are some suggestions:

*If people want more from this game at a quicker pace, and I’m one of those people, then we must acknowledge that this is a business. The primary purpose of business is profit. Period. Hence, there should be a subscription payment model similar to SWTOR. If you want quality, then you need to pay for it. Subscription + Gem Store + Expansion Packs = More content with a higher level of quality, which in turn leads to game longevity. Most people will embrace this concept if presented correctly.

*Anet, if you bring in more money, then you can develop more content quicker. It is a cycle. More content means more players and subscribers.

*Subscription should be for the hardcore players, so make it worth their money. B2P with no subscription should be geared for the casual players. Nothing should change in the game as it is for casual players. Instead, the subscription should add aspects to the game not intended for casuals. This would differ greatly and be much more appealing than what SWTOR did.

*If a subscription or paid membership is added, then so should be newer parts of the game. Don’t dissect the game giving what used to be B2P only available with subscription.

*A boxed expansion, or DLC would bring in immediate large sums of cash. Your box sales of GW2 were off the charts, what do you think a boxed expansion would bring? This would also help justify the subscription/membership.

*The living story changes are great and are very similar to a post I made long ago about Orr. The current state of Orr should be instanced and accessible from the living story / personal story menu as a flashback. This would keep the personal story, allow for friends to join and help others leveling and allow for the living world to expand and feel coherent.

*Changing the landscape of Orr to reflect the ending of the personal story, which would provide essentially 3 new zones of content could be either a DLC or boxed expansion. Now, really do something awesome here ….like what blizzard did with Cataclysm or Burning Crusade. Make Orr look very unique with lots of fun mechanics.

*All the vistas, POIs, and hearts should stay where they are, but the heart missions should change to reflect the ongoing dynamics of Orr.

Well I can agree with most of your post, but there’s no reason to have a subscription in this game. The game was sold on a promise of no subscription.

Subscriptions will not happen. Anet’s been pretty definitive about that NOT being a consideration in their economic model. If you and other convert players are so intent on being shackled to a monthly fee, there are a variety of options available to you (I will not go into the details as you likely already know them).

To be clear, Anet would be betraying their core player base if they put a “premium” subscription in place (I would be one of those that felt betrayed). Believe it or not, there is very large segment of gamer that feel VERY strongly about NEVER playing a monthly fee for a game (I’m one of them). This is a HUGE reason I (and others) played Guild Wars and now play Guild Wars 2.

If you feel you need to pay a sub for this game set a side $15 a month and buy gems, problem solved.

That would be a definite no from me personally. Having a monthly subscription forces a player to feel inclined to play the game simply because you’re paying for it and it introduces a new barrier for returning players. As an example, I dropped the game for over half a year and I had no barriers of coming back to it and starting to enjoy it again. Yet if it would be subscription based, I wouldn’t have even thought of coming back due to an additional barrier being provided. I’m against any sort of subscription based games due to the issues explained above.

In terms of GW2 going sub based, they would most certainly lose a rather large chunk of their player base due to as mentioned before, people feeling betrayed. I for one would not bother paying monthly subscriptions. Other great free or B2P games out there. In addition, monthly subs does not equal better and faster content. I believe that Anet isn’t scarce on resources or staff and as far as I’ve experienced, they’re doing a far better job than Blizzard in terms of listening to the community and implementing new content even though it may feel lack luster at times. The only issue I have with the Living Story content (if that’s what you’re refering to since that’s Anets bread and butter lately) is that it comes out too fast and feels that it could be much better with more time put into it.

It’s fascinationg how many people are almost begging for more options to give Arenanet money. Why aren’t they just buying more gems?

“If you want quality, then you need to pay for it.”

While there are elements of truth to this statement, it is not the way consumers should be thinking about game development. Games are entertainment. There’s tons of things to do for entertainment. The market is saturated.

It should be, “If the game lacks quality, then consumers should encourage quality by NOT paying.” not, “If the game lacks quality, consumers should offer to pay more to induce the developer to provide quality.” The former attitude encourages the developer to provide quality — sink or swim. The latter encourages the developer to provide crap and then charge extra to provide slightly better crap.

Zephyron.7081:

*If people want more from this game at a quicker pace, and I’m one of those people, then we must acknowledge that this is a business. The primary purpose of business is profit. Period. Hence, there should be a subscription payment model similar to SWTOR. If you want quality, then you need to pay for it. Subscription + Gem Store + Expansion Packs = More content with a higher level of quality, which in turn leads to game longevity. Most people will embrace this concept if presented correctly.

Holy flipping cake mix!

So you want to go straight from B2P to P2P and expansion packs and Gem Store? GET ALL OF THEIR MONEY! ALL OF IT! LEAVE NO PENNIES BEHIND!

*Anet, if you bring in more money, then you can develop more content quicker. It is a cycle. More content means more players and subscribers.

While throwing money at everyone does get you more slaves, that doesn’t magically mean everything will be better. While you can turn it into content by hiring new artists and designers and whatnot, you’ll also end up with a clusterkitten of bugs, which you cannot fix by throwing the sweet dollahs at it, yo!

*Subscription should be for the hardcore players, so make it worth their money. B2P with no subscription should be geared for the casual players. Nothing should change in the game as it is for casual players. Instead, the subscription should add aspects to the game not intended for casuals. This would differ greatly and be much more appealing than what SWTOR did.

This sounds an awful lot like paying a subscription for better drop rates. Which, you know, is pay-to-win. And that’s definitely not a way to go.

*A boxed expansion, or DLC would bring in immediate large sums of cash. Your box sales of GW2 were off the charts, what do you think a boxed expansion would bring? This would also help justify the subscription/membership.

The box sales were off the charts because of hype for a new game in a series.

*The living story changes are great and are very similar to a post I made long ago about Orr. The current state of Orr should be instanced and accessible from the living story / personal story menu as a flashback. This would keep the personal story, allow for friends to join and help others leveling and allow for the living world to expand and feel coherent.

*Changing the landscape of Orr to reflect the ending of the personal story, which would provide essentially 3 new zones of content could be either a DLC or boxed expansion. Now, really do something awesome here ….like what blizzard did with Cataclysm or Burning Crusade. Make Orr look very unique with lots of fun mechanics.

*All the vistas, POIs, and hearts should stay where they are, but the heart missions should change to reflect the ongoing dynamics of Orr.

Colin mentioned in an interview that they do not want to do that, exactly because it messes with the way the Personal Story integrates to the current world. The Personal Story is about current events, not the past.

Heck, what if I have not completed the Personal Story? How the heck am I supposed to accept that Orr is a flowery paradise while I’m being told by Saladbolg that I need to defeat Zhaitan? Is my character schizophrenic or something? Is he just dreaming? Is he actually a butterfly?

“Heck, what if I have not completed the Personal Story? How the heck am I supposed to accept that Orr is a flowery paradise while I’m being told by Saladbolg that I need to defeat Zhaitan? Is my character schizophrenic or something? Is he just dreaming? Is he actually a butterfly?”

RESPONSE: The personal story could be viewed as your character’s history…the back story. The living story has now become the current story and Orr should reflect that. If one wants to know the events leading up to the current living story, then they can live their own personal flashback. A level 20 is bolstered to 80 for living story material, so this would work. I’m just saying it would better create the illusion of a living world. By the way, I like the living story content, but is would like to see more PvP development.

“It should be, “If the game lacks quality, then consumers should encourage quality by NOT paying.” not, “If the game lacks quality, consumers should offer to pay more to induce the developer to provide quality.” The former attitude encourages the developer to provide quality — sink or swim. The latter encourages the developer to provide crap and then charge extra to provide slightly better crap.”

RESPONSE: I gotta say you have a point. My intention is to encourage ideas that would help sustain a healthy population and to keep the quality content flowing. Subscription worked well for WoW and the hybrid model that SWTOR uses seems to be successful. I guess Anet just needs to keep putting out cooler stuff in the gem store. More skins and finishers?

Your flaw is the fact that you are COMPARING a subscription MMO with a P2P MMO (and even one that started out subscription, failed and changed to a tiered subscription F2P model) and expecting something similar from all of them. It’s just not a logical expectation to make. You wouldn’t go to a Steak House and complain that they don’t server your favorite….egg rolls (especially if you know for a fact a Chinese place is right down the street).

You keep mentioning quality content and SWTOR… One of those words doesn’t mean what you think it means…

Anet so lucky to have all these players telling them how to make more money.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

You keep mentioning quality content and SWTOR… One of those words doesn’t mean what you think it means…

“and”….I bet it’s the “and”….amiright?

Zephyron.7081:

RESPONSE: I gotta say you have a point. My intention is to encourage ideas that would help sustain a healthy population and to keep the quality content flowing. Subscription worked well for WoW and the hybrid model that SWTOR uses seems to be successful. I guess Anet just needs to keep putting out cooler stuff in the gem store. More skins and finishers?

GW2 averaged over $8.25M per month in sales for Q1, 2014. This is the quarter that the doomsayers point to in order to “prove” that GW2 is, well, doomed. GW2 just added the China market. They make plenty of money.

Going to a sub or freemium model in the West would be risky. Many people bought the game because it was B2P. How many of these would leave if a sub were now required, or if some things were locked behind a premium member pay wall? Would a sub mean no more store? Some say yes, and tout this as the main reason to have a sub. I say that companies don’t throw out revenue-producing systems that generate large returns — which means we’d have both sub and store.

You seem concerned about quantity of new content. ANet was providing LS chapters at the rate of 1/2 weeks last season. I don’t know what the rate for LSS2 will be. Assuming it’s 1/month, that still puts GW2 up with the best of the sub games for delivering regular updates. There’s no guarantee that changing payment models would guarantee faster content production.

There’s also no guarantee that changing payment models would improve quality. Under the current model, quality content likely means more players playing, and some of them will buy gems as long as ANet produces stuff they want. ANet already has plenty of motivation to produce quality, even leaving aside professional pride.