Free LS vs heart of thorns
Well, personally, I like expansions, so it isn’t really a big deal to me. But it doesn’t seem like it would be too much trouble for them to bring back things like SAB and WvW Seasons to help fill in the gap.
What? Just… what? How in the world is WORKING on an expansion “resting on their laurels” or “taking a paid vacation”? Content requires work to produce. I guarantee you no one at ANet is twiddling their thumbs and laughing at all the nothing they have to do.
Could the timing have been better? Yeah, but that’s what you get moving from one schedule to another. If you didn’t want to wait and pay for larger chunks of content (which many, many people requested), then you should have paid for more gem store items. ANet needs to make a profit to actually keep the game running.
well i spend an average of £20-£30 a month witch i think is more than enough of my money for gem store items only now i gotta pay for the content as well witch i think is just gonna be same quality as LS 2
so just what am i getting for my gem purchases atm Heart of thorns ? but wait i have to pay for it after they make it
and yes i do realize they are not siting doing nothing yes they are working on heart of thorns and neglecting current content in the mean time as you said all this could have been better timed they should have made plans to entertain us while we wait
i mean they are not short of options they have SAB they have pavilion they could be doing a proper features patch or even focus on a fractals patch and finally raise that lvl cap that they promised us
instead we got these patches consisting of balance/bug fixes (witch we see on allmost every patch) and the odd nice thing thrown in there like this recent camera change witch i personally feel would have been better suited to a proper features patch.
why couldent they have aranged this stuff better and gave us something to do while we wait
well i spend an average of £20-£30 a month
The thing is spending any number of money on gems does not entitle you to anything except whatever it is that you bought the gems for or choose to use them for at later date. No-one forces you to spend any money on GW2 after the initial box price (which is about the equivalent of a subway sandwich now, at least during recent deep discounts). What money you do spend is entirely based on your judgement and whether they deserve said money or not in your opinion.
You are not giving ArenaNet money as compensation for their regular free updates, because a player that makes gem purchases gets the same free updates as the people that don’t do.
Also HoT content is by its very nature more costly than LS, because while they brought in the biconics for living story both for logistics and cost effectiveness but now they have good portion of the voice cast from the base game back and their new secondary cast as well which means that for instance just doing the voice work for HoT will cost magnitudes more than LS voice overs do (the player character is also talking that is each PC line times 10 for each race and sex).
There is a glass ceiling on live development both in terms of type of content, changes and the resources that can be used to develop said content whether in terms of cost, time or logistics.
HoT is way more than just story and undetermined number of PvE zones related to said story, but since we are talking story in addition to extra VO and longer development time overall the story will also feature real player choice again with different paths through story mission (tuned with the new story delivery system in mind vs old personal story). So saying that it will be same quality as LS is not a fair comparison at all.
Also, you do get free goodies even without paying for HoT, including the new borderlands and the new Stronghold gametype.
Expansions > LS jank for me. Don’t get me wrong, LS was cool, GJ Anet staff, but it wasn’t anything near expansion material. I’d muuuuch rather have expansions yearly, and pay for them happily, than to continue down the LS path. That is, in the case of the expansion actually being expansive. I’m hoping HoT has a huge content boost, the initial statements just have me worried that it’s rather small.
to OP: exactly my thoughts.
I don’t understand only one thing at all – why to create so beatiful living RP world, why they invested money to make the level 1-15 zones so good, if they didn’t want to make the whole game RP? Players who don’t like RP will just run through and RP players, who love them, will be frustrated later only.
If HoT wont end up as LS3 + feature pack boxed behind paywall I’m all for expansions.
LS2 is not worth a single penny and LS1 doesnt exist so we cant count it as content.
I’m bringing this topic up coz lately i have been bored as hell with the patches and the fact that there has been no real content, sorry but reusing an old mini game and sticking decorations up in divinity’s reach dose not pass for content to me
We have had similar downtimes even with the Living World releases, like the large gap between Season 1 and Season 2 or the break half way through Season 2. So this is exactly something new just because of the expansion pack.
I suspect we’ll have a Spring WvWvW tournament like we did last year, possibly they’ll announce it this week and do it next week or it’ll be the start of April but I would imagine it is coming. (But I should stress I am just speculating here).
but at this time I’m feeling like a regular and free installment of living story was better what do you guys think ?
I think a hybrid model would be the coolest way for them to go about it. Paid expansion packs with free Living World seasons in between to help fill the time & build the story towards the next expansion pack.
But ultimately, if there’s a few months where you’re bored of GW2 then just play something else for those few months and come back when something is happening that you’ll enjoy? There’s no obligation to play GW2 all the time, especially if you’re getting bored during the downtime (which as I established at the start, exists no matter what model they go with).
What ArenaNet is doing is experimental. They probably don’t even know what they’ll end up with. The way season 1 worked was the closest to their vision of a living world, but like the real world, if you miss it, you miss it.
The problem is, the living story doesn’t sell itself and to a lot of people, free content automatically means it’s mediocre. People outside of the game don’t care that some game is getting a patch. Did you hear anything about WoW’s last major patch? How about its expansion? Expansions generate far more interest as they’re treated like a new game.
Moving forward, I suspect that they’ll continue with the expansion model and use the living story as a beginning and an end. I wouldn’t be surprised if they stopped selling the episodes and included them with the expansion, unless they end up selling it for 24.99-34.99 to compensate. The tricky part about the price however is people will judge it, 49.99 being the expected price of a full expansion.
I still think the same… main story will be covered by personal story (or call it however you want) just like in the main game, but without all the choices and will be locked to HOT owners… and then after the HOT story they will begin the new story somewhere else for everyone without any HOT relation as a prelude for next expansion story, just like with the first and second living story seasons… my opinion…
EDIT: only question is if the HOT story will be released at once as in the main game or it will be covered by more parts added one by one by updates (acting as a LS3)
(edited by MaXi.3642)