how will monthly content updates work?
Monthly updates serve as the prime value proposition of this ‘free’ game. It’s primarily a marketing device to instill a sense of value for your original $60 and a competitive advantage over other companies with their various monetization models.
I think you can see clearly from the past months exactly how they have and will work. Because they must happen, they compete successfully for developer resources and are a primary obstacle in addressing core game and profession issues. They give us islands with nothing to do on them and roads to walk up and down. It would be far preferable to have a longer development cycle focused on the core game and interesting permanent content (which could be used to expand the story). At least that would be my preference.
i guess to each their own but imo id rather them release content that will be played on a daily basis, and for them to tell us we r going to get expansion worth of content ( not content u would see in a expansion) and then end up just giving up the living story isnt right. i understand there is still alot of work needed in the content we have atm but they can still atleast add a dungeon or another world event in each of these updates something that is rewarding/challenging. we need more instanced content also bc zerging is just ruining this game, if guild bounty’s were instanced it would of have been 10x better
The expansion’s worth of content was in terms of systems. There are big systems that they’ve been working in over the past two months.
1. The Living Story: From what they’ve said, this is going to be considerably bigger in March. They’ve been testing the system in small ways to make sure it’s working, as they figure it out. Unless they abandon it for some reason, this system is now in place and should let them add more content through it faster.
2. Updated dailies: Sure it might not affect your gameplay a ton, but it’s nicer and more interesting than the static ones that were there before. You can pick and choose from content.
3. WvW rewards/progression. Yes, we haven’t seen this system yet, so we don’t know how good it will be, but it’s a full system they have to integrate into the game. That takes time.
Whether we’ll see more systems integrated or more content in later months, we’ll have to see, but in terms of systems, they’ve been adding a ton. I realize players often underestimate how many manhours it takes to create a system versus add content to preexisting systems, but it really is quite a lot more and what they’ve done monthly is quite impressive.
Monthly updates serve as the prime value proposition of this ‘free’ game. It’s primarily a marketing device to instill a sense of value for your original $60 and a competitive advantage over other companies with their various monetization models.
I think you can see clearly from the past months exactly how they have and will work. Because they must happen, they compete successfully for developer resources and are a primary obstacle in addressing core game and profession issues. They give us islands with nothing to do on them and roads to walk up and down. It would be far preferable to have a longer development cycle focused on the core game and interesting permanent content (which could be used to expand the story). At least that would be my preference.
Well said Raine!
But on the other hand, don’t forget that we’ll get a new fluffy bunny backpack item each month :-/