Guild Wars 2

I would the help of the community to brainstorm ways to help convert more Free to Play players into Buy to Play players. Keep your suggestions realistic and on topic, and please keep things civil!

Go!

How about a trial of the HoT and the new maps? Sort of like when we had the beta of the HoT, “mirror accounts” were made where we got to play on the new maps but no progress/gold/mats were kept. Let them get a 1 day taste of what the new maps are and give them a level 80 with soldiers gear to use.

Hmm…that might chase some away trying out the core HoT maps. It can be challenging for those not used to it. Maybe one, or more, of the Season 3 maps, but not those requiring Gliding.

Maybe, a free day/week/24 hours of in-game time of Gliding and/or Auto-autoloot. Or open Elites for the trial.

What’s your suggestion, OP?

Just a flesh wound.3589:

How about a trial of the HoT and the new maps? Sort of like when we had the beta of the HoT, “mirror accounts” were made where we got to play on the new maps but no progress/gold/mats were kept. Let them get a 1 day taste of what the new maps are and give them a level 80 with soldiers gear to use.

I think a HoT trial would be pretty awesome!

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Hmm…that might chase some away trying out the core HoT maps. It can be challenging for those not used to it. Maybe one, or more, of the Season 3 maps, but not those requiring Gliding.

Maybe, a free day/week/24 hours of in-game time of Gliding and/or Auto-autoloot. Or open Elites for the trial.

What’s your suggestion, OP?

I don’t have any ideas to contribute yet, but I will think about it for sure!

Illconceived Was Na suggested that I should think of ways to convert f2p players into b2p players in a different thread, so I thought it was a great idea and decided to start this thread to get the ball rolling!

Honestly the current F2P system would work for me.

If you’re not sure you’ll like the game you can play through the story and the open-world and everything exactly like you can on a paid account so you can see what you’re getting for your money and make an informed decision. But there’s lots of restrictions, which drive me mad when I’m playing my free account and would make me want to pay to get rid of them. The ones which bother me most are the inability to talk in map chat, buy or sell most things on the TP and the restriction on visiting certain maps until you’re the right level. Eventually I’d also want access to the HoT maps and story and the Living Story stuff. Oh and more character slots.

I feel like a bit of a hypocrite saying that because I hate “free” to play games which then push you to pay for them to actually enjoy the game. But I feel like it’s different with GW2 because it’s just one single payment to lift all the restrictions: you can see exactly what you’re expected to pay to get a full version, instead of constantly paying out “just a little bit”, “less than a cup of (massively over-priced) coffee” for one little extra thing, oh and another one, and another one until you find you’ve spent far more than you would on a normal game.

Those HoT maps aren’t gonna get people to spend money. Instead, give them a week of gliding and auto-loot, as someone already suggested.

I say free gliding and auto-loot for trial.
Exposing potential customers to them land pirhanas, steamroller champs and packs of Poison Ivy’s offsprings; not a good idea.

But then, i bought HoT for the glider, i stayed for that epic Meta in Dragon Stand.

Advertise LWS2 more, so more players are aware that it exists. Currently AFAIK the only way to know its there for purchase is to look it up yourself, have someone tell you, or just be browsing the gem store randomly.

Have a $10-15 option to buy the base game. It would just remove all F2P restrictions on your account, as well as knock that much money off of the purchase of HoT if and when you decide you want it. This might not seem like much, but GW2 caters to casual gamers, and a casual gamer is much more likely to drop $10-15 on a game than $50. Giving them a chance to play GW2 without the F2P restrictions not only gives them a chance to fully experience the game, it also makes it more likely that they will buy HoT since it will have a smaller price tag.

There’s really no need for free players to buy the game. The gem store was always more profitable than box sales and free players can’t buy gems with gold. They’d likely be better off continuing in a F2P direction, where expansion #1 goes F2P with expansion #2. They could additionally break it up, selling optional features on the gem store, such as the elite specs or story, or a bundle containing it all with a permanent 25% mastery XP boost.

The living world should probably also change, where buying the expansion acts as a season pass, nulling the requirement to login. To incentivize buying the expansion early on, only the episodes from that point would be unlocked for free, though maybe buying direct should simply include them since ArenaNet has a higher price. If they want to continue being generous, episodes could still be unlocked for free by logging in, but only for paid accounts.

The issue with a HoT trial would be toggling off HoT progress toward masteries, specializations, etc. when the trial is over.

kurfu.5623:

Those HoT maps aren’t gonna get people to spend money. Instead, give them a week of gliding and auto-loot, as someone already suggested.

I agree with this

HoT zones can actually be pretty frustrating when you dont have Masteries/proper Gear/enough experience yet so they would maybe even encourage F2P players NOT to buy HoT!

Instead give them a limited time access to the truly awesome features of HoT:
Infinite Gliding and Autoloot like mentioned
If easily possible without leading to problems with the Achievements connected to it they could also get accesss to Elite Specialisations for that limited time i guess since that is a big part of the Expansion