Did Anet foresee HoT price pandemic?
Perhaps Anet should have priced the expansion at $30 with no character slot for upgrades and $50 for new players.
Most vets are going to need a character slot so that’s effectively $40 for them, but the $30 is low enough that outrage is unlikely.
Of course, that doesn’t address the bait-and-switch which is a completely different problem altogether.
Perhaps Anet should have priced the expansion at $30 with no character slot for upgrades and $50 for new players.
Most vets are going to need a character slot so that’s effectively $40 for them, but the $30 is low enough that outrage is unlikely.
Of course, that doesn’t address the bait-and-switch which is a completely different problem altogether.
if they had a lower price for the expansion, they would not have had a bait and switch issue.
that issue was created by making hot into the new core game.
the most people could have complained about was missing the best sale price.
Besides we do know living story team was 20 people which leaves a lot of employees unaccounted for, they had to be working on something. There is no way the feature patch teams and pvp teams made up for the other 330 employees right?
LOL.
People are still saying that. Amazing.
Before the Living Story began, we were not getting as many updates as we did it with (which is basically to say that we got barely any update at all). Ergo, if the more complex Living Story required a team of 20 people, what came before it would require even less.
So… What do you think these other “310” people have been working since release? Are you going to say they have been working in the expansion for 3 years now? Wow, if in 3 years all they managed to make was 3 maps, they surely have some content problems.
Nope. The truth is, ArenaNet is poorly organized, so they have a lot of people yet produce very little. See the Glassdoor reviews – almost all of them mention management issues, how teams working in one thing are suddenly expected to make a 180° turn and throw away everything they had been working in.
HoT has been under production for a bit more than one year now. It probably was under production since less than one year from when it was announced. That and ArenaNet’s slow speed explain why it has so little content after all.
-sigh- the management probably looks at their own staff like statistics too :/
-big hug and a thank you to artists and developers for enduring that-
for all we know the artists and developers know us better than management and management doesn’t listen. so many variables..
IBM PC XT 4.77mhz w/turbo oc@ 8mhz 640kb windows 3.1 hayes 56k seagate 20 meg HD mda@720x350 pixels
(edited by Ricky.4706)
Besides we do know living story team was 20 people which leaves a lot of employees unaccounted for, they had to be working on something. There is no way the feature patch teams and pvp teams made up for the other 330 employees right?
LOL.
People are still saying that. Amazing.
Before the Living Story began, we were not getting as many updates as we did it with (which is basically to say that we got barely any update at all). Ergo, if the more complex Living Story required a team of 20 people, what came before it would require even less.
So… What do you think these other “310” people have been working since release? Are you going to say they have been working in the expansion for 3 years now? Wow, if in 3 years all they managed to make was 3 maps, they surely have some content problems.
Nope. The truth is, ArenaNet is poorly organized, so they have a lot of people yet produce very little. See the Glassdoor reviews – almost all of them mention management issues, how teams working in one thing are suddenly expected to make a 180° turn and throw away everything they had been working in.
HoT has been under production for a bit more than one year now. It probably was under production since less than one year from when it was announced. That and ArenaNet’s slow speed explain why it has so little content after all.
actually the truth is they took the large projects people were working for off the LS plan, and moved them to the expansion.
Much of this expansion content is very obviously not designed to work within an expansion frame work, and based on things they were already working on.
Precursors: now HoT, in development since 2 years ago
New progression system AKA masteries according to their talk, came about due to exploring precursor progression, aka was in development as something that was once supposed to be living world
The Story line: is essentially part of LS2 usually an expansion story explores a totally different storyline, because it is an expansion
the zones, usually an expansion visits new zones, these ones are part of the maguma region, which is part of LS2
The progression, new weapons have been in the consiousness of the devs since beta 1.
Essentially what the expansion did is took all these background projects that were already in development, increased their scope, and grouped them together as an expansion.
which is also why this expansion doesnt work that well as expansion, alot of its functionality needs to be incorporated into the base game.
masteries, HoT only, but they will effect fractal progression/power as well the core world
guild halls, dont really work unless you let core people join guilds, this is a core system.
WvW map change has to be core
specializations, can work sort of separtely, but it required a complete revamp to the whole trait system, if used without the revamp, it would have had to be core.
This is part of why they dont want to sell a core game at all, they will have enough problems already trying to deal with HoTs core systems.
Problem is they kind of took it for granted that existing customers would drop 50 dollars no matter what. The content in this expansion is fairly light, and appears on many fronts to be partially finished.
specializations: only one for now, but we ll add more!
guild halls: only 2 for now, but we ll add more
new legendaries: wont have every weapon for now, but we ll add more!
story: we plan to continue the living story for HoT users! (aka dont expect an extremely large story block on release)
If they had a large block of content linked to the expansion ready for release 50 wouldnt be so bad.
I don’t think Arenanet saw it coming. They just have an habit of doing missteps with their PR when they have something big to announce.
Thinking of the game’s history since launch, they had a lot of PR disasters:
- The wave of frivolous permabans only a few days after the launch.
- The whole ascended tier fiasco 2 months after launch.
- The complete failure that was Scarlet’s introduction in LW season 1.
- The NPE fiasco.
- The trait hunt fiasco.
I think the expansion’s pricing or packaging is just another item to add to that list.
i dont think they made a good move on this..
no matter who setup this pricing at the first place.
Firstly HOT had given enough information about How the expansion worth $50.
base on what we know, most players finding this not worth it
Secondly Announce price now will make players on leave or break NO RETURN.
Third WRONG target audience. they too focus on new players.
Why’s wrong the core game already on the market for 3 years. basically if someone interested to the game will bought already. and "example is 3 years ago i am not interested Diablo 3, event an expansion release after to me just an expansion. i still wont change my mind. "
so if they want to take the risk by sacrifice part of veteran to new players. good on them.
only one thing to explain this . its they need money to survive. but is it a good move? you may cover the cost ATM. what about your future planning?
-cut scene to super hero gw team smashing through wall and saving a bad deal-
can’t have the most amazing solution ever without a mess to clean first! ^.^
Armageddon to a noob pr guy, free marketing to a pro!
now about that in game bmw sports coupe…….
IBM PC XT 4.77mhz w/turbo oc@ 8mhz 640kb windows 3.1 hayes 56k seagate 20 meg HD mda@720x350 pixels
They should have realized that some people didn’t want all the extra fluff and gems they just wanted the expansion and the character slot for the new class. I understand what they were trying to do in promoting the upper packages with gem sales and the character slot, at the end of the day they’re a business and they have to try and make extra sales out of the expansion. They must have figured most players would take the $75 package to get the extra slot without complaint.
Ok, ok, ok, how about this as a compromise. you don’t like the $50 package they are offering, and you don’t need the fluff in the $75 package. What if they offered a $60 package that includes the $50 package PLUS a free character slot? Would that work for you?
Personally, i won’t give them 50$ for just 1 reason: in 2-3 years I will have core game + HoT for free, plus the next expack.
Oh wait. That means, in 10ish years I’ll have core game +3 expacks for the same 50$.
Oh wait!!! That means before they’ll release GW3, I can have the core game and ALL THE EXPACKS for just 50$.
OH WAIT!!!!! That means Anet will never ever see my money anymore!
And we won’t have the risk of bumping into you in the game, so win-win!
Perhaps Anet should have priced the expansion at $30 with no character slot for upgrades and $50 for new players.
No, the price is $50, that’s the floor that they determined for the project. At $30 they would not get the returns they budgeted for.
Of course, that doesn’t address the bait-and-switch which is a completely different problem altogether.
Yes, because it’s mythical.
“If you spent as much time working on [some task] as
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
" What if they offered a $60 package that includes the $50 package PLUS a free character slot?"
I’d feel insulted, and convinced they want a moron audience with money to burn so they can start a cult of people that worship aliens. #epsilon
IBM PC XT 4.77mhz w/turbo oc@ 8mhz 640kb windows 3.1 hayes 56k seagate 20 meg HD mda@720x350 pixels
(edited by Ricky.4706)
I’m pretty sure they knew exactly what they were doing but saw gamers for exactly what they are, a bunch of hot air supported by a jelly spine. There is only a small percentage of gamers out there who say “I won’t buy this at this price” and actually stick to it. They know this and are taking advantage.
I’m pretty sure they knew exactly what they were doing but saw gamers for exactly what they are, a bunch of hot air supported by a jelly spine. There is only a small percentage of gamers out there who say “I won’t buy this at this price” and actually stick to it. They know this and are taking advantage.
Well, those gamers are buying virtual rocks for $10 a piece. Can you really blame Anet for trying?
Be careful what you wish for, Anet might just give it to you “HoT”
“…let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die;.”
“…let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die;.”
" What if they offered a $60 package that includes the $50 package PLUS a free character slot?"
I’d feel insulted, and convinced they want a moron audience with money to burn so they can start a cult of people that worship aliens. #epsilon
Well, some people are never pleased. #omega
“If you spent as much time working on [some task] as
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
Hard to say, on one hand it is pretty hard to believe a multi million dollar company didn’t have the fore site to make the appropriate announcements to prevent this. That leads me to believe they had an idea, maybe they under estimated how much of an pandemic.
On the other hand, it is entirely possible that they really were that negligent, if this is the case we have taught them a valuable lesson for future expansions.
And on the third hand (if they had one) NCsoft pushed them into this position, though it is hard to believe Anet had zero say in the matter.
I’m pretty sure they knew exactly what they were doing but saw gamers for exactly what they are, a bunch of hot air supported by a jelly spine. There is only a small percentage of gamers out there who say “I won’t buy this at this price” and actually stick to it. They know this and are taking advantage.
Well, those gamers are buying virtual rocks for $10 a piece. Can you really blame Anet for trying?
I was hoping they were more fan friendly than most gaming companies, but it looks like they are just like everyone else nowadays. I don’t have a problem with companies making money, that is what they are supposed to do, but show those who have done more to support your company than others, that you get it and appreciate it.
Oh please, of course they knew.
Or at least those in touch with the community knew. It’s just that those who made the decisions don’t give a cluck and those who knew what was going to ensue are left cleaning up the mess and soaking up the hatred.
Joy to the world, ignorance is bliss
It is possible that they did, in fact it is possible that they are using the rage storm as free advertising. Only to swoop in fix the issue in a better than expected way now all those who raged out to all their gamer friends, will then have to position Anet in a positive light and maybe all the non players you raged to will consider joining. Not likely but kinda like one of those mastermind schemes that might be though unlikely….muwhahahaha!!!
“In the end, we are all just killers and we couldn’t be bothered to care.”
" What if they offered a $60 package that includes the $50 package PLUS a free character slot?"
I’d feel insulted, and convinced they want a moron audience with money to burn so they can start a cult of people that worship aliens. #epsilon
Well, some people are never pleased. #omega
Helps when someone tries to please. Your list of responses on the other hand seem to just be looking for someone to argue with. Anyone who agrees with you agrees with you. Anyone who doesn’t is ticked.
Ofc if you’re just looking for a debate, not bad. Nothing wrong with a good Internet brawl. (No sarcasm. Quality entertainment.)
Agreed, but come on. It’s not like 2-3 people are complaining. It’s quite a few actually and the wave has become at least so big that most mainstream gaming media are reporting it.
You can’t tell me no one at arenanet(or NCSoft, whoever is responsible for the pricing implementation) at any point didn’t go:“Are we maybe taking this to far? Players are stupid, but there is a limit of shady business stuff we can pull off without it collapsing on us.”
In case this did not come up, get rid of the marketing team and replace them because they sure as * are completely out of touch with their gamer base.
Now yes naturally but like I explained in a different post: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Did-Anet-foresee-HoT-price-pandemic/5183541
it will take sometime before they can come up with anything. Its only been 2 business days. Even if they take the easy way out and simply give a character slot to everyone which hopefully would be enough to diffuse this situation, it will take sometime to get that approved by all stake holders. I dont think its something that can be decided and told to the community in as little as 2 days.
Most stakeholders don’t even know what a character slot is so I don’t think that if this would be the only thing they wanted to do it would have been decided on that high level, while the question, what they will do likely must.
Giving a char slot would help a little but is likely not what would really satisfy most people as the people complaining about the $50,- where expecting a char slot even with a $35,- version.
Maybe Anet simply changed direction with their business model (focusing more on expansion instead of micro-transactions) and then all they have to do is explain that. There might then be people who don’t believe Anet will also indeed do that, but overall it would solve the $50,- issue for the biggest part.
Then there is of course the problem with the GW2 being given away for free while for the last 6 months GW2 has been promoted a lot while the faq stated it was for free. This is a way harder problem to fix, the honest thing to do is allow people to buy HoT and reduce the price by the amount they spend on GW2, and that would then be the case for everybody who did buy GW2 since they announced HoT. That would be the most fair way, however it would likely reduce much of the income for the previous quarter so not really an option form a business viewpoint. So I think that is something they can’t really fix.
If they expected it, half of their office would be filled with rows and rows of fire extinguishers;)
There’s no way they saw this coming. They couldn’t have derailed the hype train for HoT harder if they’d tried, and literally in the middle of trying to promote it!
It doesn’t help that from the little information we’ve got, HoT feels like a living story season welded to a feature pack and sold at a huge markup.
I doubt they saw people getting upset about a bundle comming. They probably saw it as a good move. Of course people who already had the game are getting a worst deal than new players, so they should’ve seen it comming.
Price? 50$ is a bit pricey for an expansion, and to play the new profession a lot of people will also have to purchase a character slot. So for a lot of players thats 60$, more than the base game likely cost them.
And honestly they haven’t revealed a great deal, either because they are being to secretive or they simply don’t have that much to show.
So a lot of people are scratching their head and wondering if it’s all really worth it. I’m one of them. Considering my preferences the only thing that HoT really adds for me, that i care about, is another profession. That’s not much for 60$. I suspect a lot of players are not universal players that dip into everything, but pick their gamemode and stick to it.
Honestly i don’t get the impression that they really read things very well. They thought the first Trait overhaul was a great idea, and now they are overhauling it again because it really wasnt. To name just one example…
And yet…the Witcher guys are pretty agile.
I still think it’s possible.
They’re pretty agile how? what exactly did CD Projekt Red do on the scale of changing the price of an item after it went for pre-order?
It took them 2 weeks to clarify they’re actually working on Cyberpunk 2077 after stating it was Witcher 3 until at least 2017 and thats only about issuing a statement no need to change anything or effect anyone! But maybe I missed something they did, can you share examples of what decisions they took within a couple of days that had implications to multiple departments?
Sorry, I don’t buy this. Not with the megathreads of feedback that have popped up for various issues.
I assume you’re referring to mega threads you’re refering to past issues not this expansion fallout right? because obviously the expansion fallout has no bearing on weather arenanet did their homework before deciding stuff about the expansion. But thats perplexing because how exactly do you expect arenanet to know people would go ballistic over giving the core game away for free based on say the ascended armor reaction, or the NPE, or the trait changes? They’re completely unrelated! Of course one could argue they should have none people would rage because they kind rage for everything and sadly you’d even have a point but how does that help you decide anything?
Well, two things there.
1) WoW also included a free level 90 character with even the standard editions.
2) This expansion is looking to go down as one of their worst.
1. they had to. Pandaria did really badly and considering in WoW every expansion depends on the previous if people didnt feel compelled to go through pandaria when it launched extremely good chances are they will not feel compelled to go through it when war lords launched. With instant level 90 they solve that problem. My personal theory of course but why else offer an instant level 90? its not like warlords released a new race / class that people might want to play directly in warlords. I may be totally wrong but from where I stand it seems they gave that more for themselves then a gift for their players.
2. that may be so but this too they couldnt have known before they launched it so even if this expansion doesnt do well it doesnt mean blizzard didnt take its decision based on the premise this would be the most successful expansion ever.
Anet failed on the first point and I think we can all agree that ANet doesn’t want to emulate the second. And, well, just because WoW does it, and even can get away with it, doesn’t mean that it’ll work for ANet.
not necessarily if my paranoid theory is correct Anet actually did the same thing Blizzard did by giving away the core game for free. Its a present to players thats more of a present to themselves in actuality.
(snipped for brevity, my apologies)
It’s how they went about it, if you ask me. (I.E. the FAQ change and general lack of info or release date) Also, Blizz isn’t a company that ANet should be looking at for emulation so far as I’m concerned. I also get the feeling that what people envisioned when it came to an expansion was more along of the lines of GW1 and their prices. Or so I assume. There’s also the general consensus that what we’re looking at is an expansion that’s really just a living story segment and some features being packed together.
But cant business change their mind ever? and doesnt offering everyone a refund more then makes up for the FAQ issue? as for people were expecting prices more in line with Gw1, doubt it considering that unless I am mistake the 2 campaigns sold for $50 while EOTN sold for $40
If it would have fooled you as well, then you haven’t been paying attention to various threads.
I already explained how knowing people raged with NPE changes doesnt tell you people will rage if you charge $50 instead of $40 especially when there was no rage when you sold two campaigns for that price years before when strictly speaking $50 was more money.
As a final thought, I get the feeling that on a very basic level, ANet is just, well, really bad at marketing and PR. Like, really, really bad. One might say horrible, even.
Perhaps, but the community does seem to be more sensitive then average too.
well yeah, i’d imagine a gaming community would be more sensitive, now had it been accounting software the reaction would be different…maybe ? somehow I don’t think an accountant would be amused by getting an achievement title of “math genius” as part of a peachtree accounting software option. peachtree pencil and eraser skins probably wouldn’t fly either.
IBM PC XT 4.77mhz w/turbo oc@ 8mhz 640kb windows 3.1 hayes 56k seagate 20 meg HD mda@720x350 pixels
(edited by Ricky.4706)
LOL.
People are still saying that. Amazing.
Before the Living Story began, we were not getting as many updates as we did it with (which is basically to say that we got barely any update at all). Ergo, if the more complex Living Story required a team of 20 people, what came before it would require even less.
Are we talking about the same game? cause before living story we got:
- shadow of the mad king
Which had 2 minigames, a dungeon, costume brawl, 5 jumping puzzles, 2 mini dungeons, 2 world events
- Lost shores
1 new map, 9 fractals, ascended gear, 1 pvp map, 2 new jumping puzzles, a bunch of new events
- Wintersday
2 mini games, a dungeon, a jumping puzzle, changes to WvW
Sure they were monthly updates not every 2 weeks but they were quite big, bigger then 2 living story season 1 events combined. Besides no one said before the living story everyone was working on the updates. Like I said its entirely possible they were split into a live team and a team working on the expansion. If anything I’d say more people were working on updates before living story was a thing, certainly not less.
So… What do you think these other “310” people have been working since release? Are you going to say they have been working in the expansion for 3 years now? Wow, if in 3 years all they managed to make was 3 maps, they surely have some content problems.
The problem is your assumption that its just 3 maps, as its been pointed out numours times now Anet havent revealed how many maps there are. All they said is there are 3 biomes and personally I cannot understand how people expect a single map per biome when the core game has 5 maps per biome not counting the cities.
Nope. The truth is, ArenaNet is poorly organized, so they have a lot of people yet produce very little. See the Glassdoor reviews – almost all of them mention management issues, how teams working in one thing are suddenly expected to make a 180° turn and throw away everything they had been working in.
and yet a smaller subset of that team (Anet were 270 at launch, they’re 350 now) created all the content that was there at launch. did launch somehow make people less efficient and the new resources slowed down everything?
HoT has been under production for a bit more than one year now. It probably was under production since less than one year from when it was announced. That and ArenaNet’s slow speed explain why it has so little content after all.
based on what? the 20 people on the living world team isnt an assumption, its fact stated by Anet themselves, which begs the question what where the other 330 people working on between 2012-2014 if as you say the only started less then a year ago?
The problem is your assumption that its just 3 maps, as its been pointed out numours times now Anet havent revealed how many maps there are. All they said is there are 3 biomes and personally I cannot understand how people expect a single map per biome when the core game has 5 maps per biome not counting the cities.
That’s true but you have to admit that Anet’s silence on this is pretty deafening.
I’ve only once seen an MMO company be so quiet and vague about the content of their upcoming expansion. Mythic with DAoC’s Trials of Atlantis expansion. Which was an utter disaster.
So why not put us out of our misery and give us some details, eh, Anet?
They’re pretty agile how? what exactly did CD Projekt Red do on the scale of changing the price of an item after it went for pre-order?
I’m referring to their ability to quickly handle gamebreaking patches for one. They put out like 3 patches in the first week when hair physics were breaking everything. There’s also the free copies of Witcher and Witcher 2 they offered to Korean customers due to some problems that cropped up. I’d have to find that article again for the specifics on what the issue was.
I assume you’re referring to mega threads you’re refering to past issues not this expansion fallout right?
I’m referring to even this expansion fallout. The thread was linked earlier in this thread I believe. It’s a thread talking about including character slots with a purchase of the expansion.
But yes, also past issues.
There’s also the threads that popped up in regards to the heroic edition changes. So, um, yeah. There is some precedent for figuring out if vets might get salty over something like the core game bundle.
1. they had to.
No, they didn’t. They could have sold Draenor easily off of the marketing and hype alone between the perception of returning to the “Outlands” and things like a taxi in Times Square with a gigantic Gorehowl embedded in it.
But it really doesn’t matter if they had to or not. The fact is, they did, and they factored that into the pricing, that’s why it cost the extra $10.
I may be totally wrong but from where I stand it seems they gave that more for themselves then a gift for their players.
There is no such thing as a “gift” for the players in anything a company does. It’s all an attempt at making sales, so whatever argument you’re shooting for here is rather irrelevant.
Blizzard still did not have to do it. Hype alone would have shot Warlords into the starry night as a raging success rocket.
. Its a present to players thats more of a present to themselves in actuality.
It’s a business move, nothing more. ANet heavily miscalculated, though, which isn’t surprising. They have a track record with that at this point.
But cant business change their mind ever?
Sure, as long as they keep their customers properly informed in a timely manner. And failing that, so long as they find a way to maintain consumer trust.
These two things both happen to also be things that ANet is not very good at.
and doesnt offering everyone a refund more then makes up for the FAQ issue?
From what I’m hearing, not everyone is being offered a refund. Only those about a month out are being offered the refund.
And honestly, in my opinion? No, it doesn’t make up for the FAQ issue. ANet continues to have these horrible communication issues with its playerbase/customers, even after promising to step up their game when it comes to communication. There are severe internal issues that they need to work out and fast.
as for people were expecting prices more in line with Gw1, doubt it considering that unless I am mistake the 2 campaigns sold for $50 while EOTN sold for $40
Don’t know, merely an assumption on my part. But it seems clear quite a few people were not expecting $50. That much is certain.
Perhaps, but the community does seem to be more sensitive then average too.
This community is no more sensitive than any other mmo community. It’s no more or less toxic than any other community, either, excepting maybe WoW or PvP games.
ANet’s finger is so far from the pulse of the community they may as well be holding their finger to a femur.
Just bought the ‘ultimate edition’ of another game. It was on sale, at a price lower than the lowest pre-order price of HoT. It included all the content released since launch, some beginner weapons, some boosts, an outfit, and a code for the base game. What’s that? A code for the base game? But what if you already have the base game? Well, you can use it for an alt account, or (drum roll) give it to a friend. Hmm.
The table is a fable.
That’s true but you have to admit that Anet’s silence on this is pretty deafening.
I’ve only once seen an MMO company be so quiet and vague about the content of their upcoming expansion. Mythic with DAoC’s Trials of Atlantis expansion. Which was an utter disaster.
It’s only been a weekend. This isn’t something where they can have random devs shooting at the hip, they need an official response. Most of the more vocal devs are purely game makers, they have absolutely no role in the marketing/sales aspect, so they can provide no useful information. I’m sure that those who do know what’s going on are putting together an appropriate response, but I’m in no way shocked or concerned that they haven’t said much yet.
“If you spent as much time working on [some task] as
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
actually the truth is they took the large projects and moved them to the expansion.
We dont know for sure but I’d say this is part true. By their own admission they werent sure big updates (which they promised from day 1) would be rolled out as part of the living story or as part of an expansion so most likely big projects were developed in parallel with the living story that could either plug into it or bundled in an expansion.
Story line: is essentially part of LS2 usually an expansion story explores a totally different storyline, because it is an expansion
The story continue after LS2, just like Gw2 continues after the events of EOTN. there is no rule that says they have to be unrelated!
the zones, usually an expansion visits new zones, these ones are part of the maguma region, which is part of LS2
Again EOTN.
Essentially what the expansion did is took all these background projects that were already in development, increased their scope, and grouped them together as an expansion. which is also why this expansion doesnt work that well as expansion, alot of its functionality needs to be incorporated into the base game.
The stuff incorporated into the core game is changes to the core mechanics. stuff like changes to traits, skills etc.. naturally if you ever make changes to such a system they have to be incorporated accross core game / expansions. You cannot have people who dont own expansion have 1 set of stats while those who do have another. That has nothing to do with the other features in the expansion much less how they fit together.
masteries, HoT only, but they will effect fractal progression/power as well the core world
Its horizontal progression, you dont get it you have less options but that doesnt mean you will not be able to compete.
guild halls, dont really work unless you let core people join guilds, this is a core system.
why? if you dont buy HoT you cant access your hall, why is that a problem? nothing the hall provides is mandatory!
specializations, can work sort of separtely, but it required a complete revamp to the whole trait system,
why? lets assume they didnt intend to revamp the trait system, what was there to stop them from simply releasing a set of traits for the specialization that you simply would not have listed unless you have HoT?
This is part of why they dont want to sell a core game at all, they will have enough problems already trying to deal with HoTs core systems.
no one can have HoT without having the core game. Giving away the game for free or not doesnt make any difference here.
specializations: only one for now, but we ll add more!
guild halls: only 2 for now, but we ll add more
new legendaries: wont have every weapon for now, but we ll add more!
story: we plan to continue the living story for HoT users! (aka dont expect an extremely large story block on release)
there isnt one specialization there are 9. Each specialization is like a mini profession with 1 new weapon and 1 new heal, 4 new utilities and 1 new elite + 11 new traits. so its like 4 specializations are like one of the old professions. Which essentially means this expansion has the equivalent of 3 new professions. Thats pretty good for an expansion.
Guild halls there are only two huge zones, provide a variety of game play mechanics that we dont even fully know yet (they havent said anything about new guild missions, or challenging group content for the guild for example) but what we do know needed 8 full blog posts to explain. Hardly something one would call underwhelming.
New Legendary weapons, unless I missed something all they said was an I quote “For now, I’ll say that we’ve been working kitten new legendary weapons, the first handful of which will be introduced in Heart of Thorns, with more to come in subsequent updates.” that doesnt in anyway imply there will not be 1 legendary weapon for every weapon type. If they flat out said that please link the source.
As for the story all they said is the events in HoT take part right after the events of LS 2. I am not sure how in your mind that translates to “dont expect an extremely large story block on release” but we’ll see since they havent said a single thing about that yet.
If they had a large block of content linked to the expansion ready for release 50 wouldnt be so bad.
we cant tell if thats the case until we know all that is included in HoT. So far what they have revealed taken on its own merit has been pretty sizeable so I have faith
The problem is your assumption that its just 3 maps, as its been pointed out numours times now Anet havent revealed how many maps there are. All they said is there are 3 biomes and personally I cannot understand how people expect a single map per biome when the core game has 5 maps per biome not counting the cities.
That’s true but you have to admit that Anet’s silence on this is pretty deafening.
I’ve only once seen an MMO company be so quiet and vague about the content of their upcoming expansion. Mythic with DAoC’s Trials of Atlantis expansion. Which was an utter disaster.
So why not put us out of our misery and give us some details, eh, Anet?
I am not saying i agree with how Anet are handling this. I said it before and I will say it again, I think they should have told us exactly what was included (not including spoiler of course) before opening pre-purchase. people need to know what they’re buying.
All I am saying is lets not create conjectures out of the silence and state them as fact multiple times.
Most stakeholders don’t even know what a character slot is so I don’t think that if this would be the only thing they wanted to do it would have been decided on that high level, while the question, what they will do likely must.
I think you’re mixing stakeholders with shareholders. Pretty sure every stakeholder knows what a character slot is. Stakeholders would be teams that are related to an item. In this case including a character slot for free. Owner of that would probably be sales. Stakeholders would include finance who have to base their forcasts on what sales do. (including character slot for free means less revenue, while not including it generates revenue stream for those people who lack a free character slot) another stakeholder will be development itself since based on the forcasts by finance can plan how many resources they’ll have for development content in the future etc…
Giving a char slot would help a little but is likely not what would really satisfy most people as the people complaining about the $50,- where expecting a char slot even with a $35,- version.
well there is nothing anyone can do for those people really.
Maybe Anet simply changed direction with their business model (focusing more on expansion instead of micro-transactions) and then all they have to do is explain that. There might then be people who don’t believe Anet will also indeed do that, but overall it would solve the $50,- issue for the biggest part.
somehow I think the bulk of those who are unhappy would not believe them anyway. Besides I doubt the pricing is based on the business model, it probably is more related to the amount of work it took to develop the expansion but since we dont yet know the full extent of the expansion its too early to judge this.
Then there is of course the problem with the GW2 being given away for free while for the last 6 months GW2 has been promoted a lot while the faq stated it was for free. This is a way harder problem to fix, the honest thing to do is allow people to buy HoT and reduce the price by the amount they spend on GW2, and that would then be the case for everybody who did buy GW2 since they announced HoT. That would be the most fair way, however it would likely reduce much of the income for the previous quarter so not really an option form a business viewpoint. So I think that is something they can’t really fix.
How would that be the honest thing to do ? give hot for free to all those 3.5 million people who bought the game at launch? that would be crazy. The honest thing to do is exactly what they’re doing. Refund what you paid, give you back your account as soon as you buy HoT.
We dont know for sure but I’d say this is part true. By their own admission they werent sure big updates (which they promised from day 1) would be rolled out as part of the living story or as part of an expansion so most likely big projects were developed in parallel with the living story that could either plug into it or bundled in an expansion.
I have no data on this one way or the other, but my personal suspicion is that both Drytop and Silverwastes were originally developed as part of the same project as HoT, and it was only because players were underwhelmed with elements of LW s1 that they decided to refocus them as free updates to the game and shifted them out of the bundle with the other stuff. My guess is that if they had run with their original plan, they would have had a s2 story completely unrelated to what we got, just kittening around in the existing maps, maybe some of them overhauled, and then the Mordremoth stuff would all have launched as a single package when HoT was ready to launch. Could be wrong on that though, and I think the way they ended up doing it was better.
“If you spent as much time working on [some task] as
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
I’m referring to their ability to quickly handle gamebreaking patches for one. There’s also the free copies of Witcher and Witcher 2 they offered to Korean customers due to some problems that cropped up. I’d have to find that article again for the specifics on what the issue was.
Fixing bugs doesnt even involve upper management at least no more then keeping them in the loop. Anet do that too. they fix a lot of stuff the days following each release.
Offering free copies would be a good example, I’d be interested in seeing that article if you find it.
I’m referring to even this expansion fallout.
But yes, also past issues.
Then I think you misunderstood what we were saying. We were talking about Arenanet anticipating the backlash before they announced the pre-purchase. IE when they were discussing what to include in the package months before the announcement did they realize what they did decided would make fans angry? That is naturally something that current threads couldnt have helped them forsee, at least not without a time machine.
There’s also the threads that popped up in regards to the heroic edition changes. So, um, yeah. There is some precedent for figuring out if vets might get salty over something like the core game bundle.
Those were very minor so much so I dont even recall what the issue was!
No, they didn’t. They could have sold Draenor easily off of the marketing and hype alone
You think so? so you’re a player who thought Pandaria sounds bad and decided not to buy it at all. Draenor launches but if you’ve even been playing you’re still level 85 because well you dont own pandaria so now suddenly you’re okey with play though pandaria in order to get to level 90 so you can start draenor ? (not sure if there is another way to get to 90 without playing through pandaria (not a wow player) if thats there is an equally or faster way to get to 90 my argument is likely invalid.
The fact is, they did, and they factored that into the pricing, that’s why it cost the extra $10.
of course it matters. if giving away something for free increases your market size by 3 million people you’d be crazy to charge $10 for it. (again provided there was no alternative)
There is no such thing as a “gift” for the players in anything a company does. It’s all an attempt at making sales
I didnt say its not an attempt to make a sale Anet arent giving away the core simply to be nice, they’re doing it to sell more HoT and to increase future Gem sales. But againt its a bad idea to charge again for it now.
Blizzard still did not have to do it. Hype alone would have shot Warlords into the starry night as a raging success rocket.
didnt do that with pandaria!
It’s a business move, nothing more. ANet heavily miscalculated, though
Again there are business moves and there are business moves.
Lets take WoW as an example. If I buy WoW today, it will cost me 7.5 euro
That includes the core game and 4 expansions. Now they state the base game includes the expansions up until draenor for free. Now you could argue there is a hidden charge with every expansion included, they’re not really giving it for free but why wouldnt they? If they get me to buy its not just those 7.5 they’ll get but also the sub and future expansion sales if i stick with the game.
Same here there is no need for Anet to secretly charge for the core game because the business motive for doing that isnt to get some money off the sale of the core game, its to get money for the expansion sale and future gem sales. So yeah the target is always to make more money but its not necessary to cheat to reach that target.
From what I’m hearing, not everyone is being offered a refund. Only those about a month out are being offered the refund.
Did you actually hear about people being refused a refund or is it just that the stories you hear of people who have successfully refunded had bought the game less then a month ago?
And honestly, in my opinion? No, it doesn’t make up for the FAQ issue. ANet continues to have these horrible communication issues with its playerbase/customers, even after promising to step up their game when it comes to communication. There are severe internal issues that they need to work out and fast.
How could they handle the FAQ issue any differently if they did indeed change their minds after the published the FAQ?
We dont know for sure but I’d say this is part true. By their own admission they werent sure big updates (which they promised from day 1) would be rolled out as part of the living story or as part of an expansion so most likely big projects were developed in parallel with the living story that could either plug into it or bundled in an expansion.
cut for size
- 1, eotn had a completely new plotline, that introduced a totally new and different conflict, the one of an elder dragon. Each campaign had a seperate storyline, not a continuation of the previous.
prophecies was about exodus of ascalonians and the rise of a lich lord
factions was about the vengeance and madness of shiro
nightfall was about the hidden god and his plan for world domination
eotn was about the awakening of the dragons and the beginning of a new era.
by continuation, i dont mean events that happened after previous events, i mean the overall plotline and story is resolved.
This plotline is directly the continuation of season 2, nothing was resolved in season 2, this is part of the storyline about the rise of mordremoth and the hidden origin of the sylvari. - The zones of EOTN were fairly different than zones you had access to before. you had total new architecture and style with asura, with norn, dwarf and a more fleshed out char culture( which up to that point was basically just fires and bones)
- based on what is currently available in fractals/and the mastery name reveals, i highly doubt it will be the type of horizontal thing you are speaking of, but im just making educated guess here.
- guild halls/systems needs to be a system that any person can take part in, otherwise it would split guilds between people with HoT and people without HoT. This is not a good system to be expansion based, because guilds already exist and have connection that this may sever.
- if they didnt revamp the system, the skills/traits/weapons would be in too many different builds, and increase the options too greatly.
- giving the game away as one package makes a huge difference, it means that the core game is a dying breed. If they sell the old core separtely there will undoubtedly be a growing amount of people who just have the core. What they do by basically remaking the core is they insure that core users is something which can only decrease with time. Lets say core costs 20 bucks, many people will say hmm, 20 bucks is the right price, but 50 bucks is too much. So people would continue to buy core without considering hot, especially since core is more expansive and has everything you need. In the long run, this means they can consider core only players less in their calculations.
basically the reality is that HoT is mostly a version update in its implementation. Its not, overall designed with an idea of having a separate experience for people to buy into. Many of the changes it aims to make are core game design shifts.
take a look at gw1, its campaigns, and even the expansion were designed to be separate adventures in the universe of guild wars.
some parts of Hot are fairly self contained, others, not so much.
Most stakeholders don’t even know what a character slot is so I don’t think that if this would be the only thing they wanted to do it would have been decided on that high level, while the question, what they will do likely must.
I think you’re mixing stakeholders with shareholders. Pretty sure every stakeholder knows what a character slot is. Stakeholders would be teams that are related to an item. In this case including a character slot for free. Owner of that would probably be sales. Stakeholders would include finance who have to base their forcasts on what sales do. (including character slot for free means less revenue, while not including it generates revenue stream for those people who lack a free character slot) another stakeholder will be development itself since based on the forcasts by finance can plan how many resources they’ll have for development content in the future etc…
Giving a char slot would help a little but is likely not what would really satisfy most people as the people complaining about the $50,- where expecting a char slot even with a $35,- version.
well there is nothing anyone can do for those people really.
Maybe Anet simply changed direction with their business model (focusing more on expansion instead of micro-transactions) and then all they have to do is explain that. There might then be people who don’t believe Anet will also indeed do that, but overall it would solve the $50,- issue for the biggest part.
somehow I think the bulk of those who are unhappy would not believe them anyway. Besides I doubt the pricing is based on the business model, it probably is more related to the amount of work it took to develop the expansion but since we dont yet know the full extent of the expansion its too early to judge this.
Then there is of course the problem with the GW2 being given away for free while for the last 6 months GW2 has been promoted a lot while the faq stated it was for free. This is a way harder problem to fix, the honest thing to do is allow people to buy HoT and reduce the price by the amount they spend on GW2, and that would then be the case for everybody who did buy GW2 since they announced HoT. That would be the most fair way, however it would likely reduce much of the income for the previous quarter so not really an option form a business viewpoint. So I think that is something they can’t really fix.
How would that be the honest thing to do ? give hot for free to all those 3.5 million people who bought the game at launch? that would be crazy. The honest thing to do is exactly what they’re doing. Refund what you paid, give you back your account as soon as you buy HoT.
“I think you’re mixing stakeholders with shareholders.” I indeed was, I even types stakeholders while thinking shareholders. btw, don’t be surprised if there are multiple stakeholder who also don’t know including the financial people you talk about.
“well there is nothing anyone can do for those people really.” They might be fine with it if they know Anet indeed makes that change and so they are paying $50,- basically for another product, having much of those items they would usually have to buy additionally, in-game.
“somehow I think the bulk of those who are unhappy would not believe them anyway. Besides I doubt the pricing is based on the business model”
It’s very possible some don’t believe it, however it makes a lot of sense that it is based on the business model, in fact I am pretty sure it is, the question for me only is.. do they price it higher because they believe they are already using some special model (every commercial they also point out GW2 does not have a subscription, as if it something special no other game has) and so think the $50,- is reasonable with the current approach (what is untrue and the many negative reactions seems to proof that), or do they indeed know it would not have been reasonable but they indeed do plan to move back more to the B2P model what makes this a reasonable price. Only that part of the communication is than lacking behind.
“give hot for free to all those 3.5 million people who bought the game at launch?” That is not what I said, anyway it doesn’t really matter because as I also said, this is something they can’t really fix imho.
it’s easy to fix …seriously….call it an upgrade …and this is normal procedure. an old version gets upgraded with a new version, old and new users have whole versions of the new version, Not an additional copy of an old version.
The problem is an expansion is a 2nd product.
had this been Guildwars 2.1 then the arguing would be silly and it would still be a bargain for a new player.
IBM PC XT 4.77mhz w/turbo oc@ 8mhz 640kb windows 3.1 hayes 56k seagate 20 meg HD mda@720x350 pixels
(edited by Ricky.4706)
Offering free copies would be a good example, I’d be interested in seeing that article if you find it.
I’ll see if I can dig it up.
Then I think you misunderstood what we were saying. We were talking about Arenanet anticipating the backlash before they announced the pre-purchase. IE when they were discussing what to include in the package months before the announcement did they realize what they did decided would make fans angry? That is naturally something that current threads couldnt have helped them forsee, at least not without a time machine.
And I pointed out the thread that specifically mentions adding a character slot for users who buy HoT. I’m trying to remember the title. Something along the lines of “HoT and character slots” or something.
Basically, people were giving feedback about HoT and Character Slots before the prepurchase was even a thing.
You think so? so you’re a player who thought Pandaria sounds bad and decided not to buy it at all. Draenor launches but if you’ve even been playing you’re still level 85 because well you dont own pandaria so now suddenly you’re okey with play though pandaria in order to get to level 90 so you can start draenor ?
Yes, because that is exactly what I did. I took my 85 into pandaria, quested through about three zones before hitting 90 to prep that character for Draenor, and then took that free 90 boost and made an all new character with it.
(not sure if there is another way to get to 90 without playing through pandaria (not a wow player) if thats there is an equally or faster way to get to 90 my argument is likely invalid.
Heirlooms, which give more exp in everything you do while wearing them.
of course it matters. if giving away something for free increases your market size by 3 million people you’d be crazy to charge $10 for it. (again provided there was no alternative)
WoW chargers $60 for just a char boost. They definitely factored the lvl 90 boost in the price of the expansion.
didnt do that with pandaria!
Pandaria also wasn’t based off one of their most successful expansions. It also wasn’t hyped as well, and the community wasn’t looking forward to it as much. Draenor was their “return to form”, so it excited a -ton- of people, because of how horrible Pandaria was perceived.
Did you actually hear about people being refused a refund or is it just that the stories you hear of people who have successfully refunded had bought the game less then a month ago?
Specifically heard some stories about people being more than a month back being out of luck.
The recommendation given to them was to try and “press the issue”
How could they handle the FAQ issue any differently if they did indeed change their minds after the published the FAQ?
By making an announcement and letting everyone know? By communicating rather than just changing the FAQ?
They had this change prepared for E3, that means they had to have been considering it at least a few days before hand at the minimum. Tell us THEN. And then, also tell us specifically how we can go about getting refunds or whatever if need be.
Generally? And I don’t know how else to express this without caps, so I apologize in advance: STOP BEING SO SECRETIVE
Active dialogue is the key to success. Blizz had to learn that the hard way very recently with how they handled an in game issue.
How would that be the honest thing to do ? give hot for free to all those 3.5 million people who bought the game at launch? that would be crazy. The honest thing to do is exactly what they’re doing. Refund what you paid, give you back your account as soon as you buy HoT.
Anet statement “For all players who purchased the Guild Wars 2 core game from our website and registered it between January 23, 2015 and June 16, 2015 in anticipation of Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns, we will automatically refund what you paid for the core game should you decide to per-purchase Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns from our website or in-game store any time through July 31, 2015.”
This is exactly what I was trying to say, this is the most honest thing to do, but I did not think they would be able to do it as it could possible really mess up the sales numbers for Q1 (when they did sell many of those copy’s).
Huge thumbs up here for Anet here!
Also announcing now how they will handle this in the future is really good.
Giving the character slot is also very good and will be a little extra for those who do find the $50,-
The only issue left imho is indeed those people who simply do find $50,- to expensive, they must be shown that for some reason a GW2 expansion is justifiably more expensive than that of other MMO’s and the only reason I could see for that is them being a true B2P game with more focus on expansions but less on the cash-shop. That is the only part that is missing imho. But other then that again, huge thumbs up for Anet!