Guild Wars 2

“Yay expansion!” Or depending on where you are on the roller coaster of ANETs info dump, “Meh, expansion.”

One rebuttal some players have leveraged at players dissatisfied with ANETs marketing campaign is that they should quit complaining about money because GW2 famously has no subscription fee. But because people are still yo-yoing their enthusiasm for HoT because of pricing dissatisfaction, I thought I’d break that discussion out into a new thread so the community can discuss what a subscription (perhaps an OPTIONAL subscription) would mean for the game and could mean for the expansion.

The “no subscription” line is a shield thrown up over ANET and aimed at price dissatisfied (price sensitive) players. But it’s worth pointing out that not having a subscription is not ANET doing you a favor; it’s a business decision.

In fact, were it not for the fact that many of you would be less likely to play GW2 if it had a subscription, I bet many of you would actually prefer to be given that option. Yea, a subscription could meet your needs very nicely and appeal to you as a customer, even though you have an aversion to them and prefer not to pay them. (People are fickle.)

And when they step into expanding their game it would be a little remiss of ANET to not at least consider an optional subscription…not to mention smart given a lot of people HATE the price of HoT.

Consider this, at the cheapest gem store price a transfiguration charge costs $.30. So a monthly $15 would in theory get you 50/month. If—by handing over the subscription—ONE of the benefits was unlimited transfigures, does that appeal to you? How would your relationship to the game change if you could dress yourself each day to your heart’s desire?

Changing your hairstyle is going to cost you what in real $$$? How many more would be converted by endless make over kits thrown on?

Recovering your runes and sigils?

A black lion key (cheapest) is $1.05? If a $15 subscription got you one/day along with your other login rewards, you’d save a ton even if that was the only benefit of subscribing.

Each person might not be swayed to part with their money by any individual subscriber benefit, but would enjoy that benefit none the less as part of a persuasive package they were swayed by.

What’s more, because ANET probably doesn’t sell very many people 50 transfiguration charges a month, nor 30 markover kits, nor 30 black lion keys (every month) the large discount of the subscription would flatten out their revenue (good) without cannibalizing very many gem store purchases. What % of the play base consume gems that heavily?

And an EXPANSION is a great opportunity to add more creative benefits of subscribing, maybe some the community has been asking for for a while, like more kitten bank space!

I bet many of you would prefer that! We should be less quick to say “but there’s no subscription” when others say the price of HoT is too kitten high, because all we’re saying is “ANET has withheld an option for enjoying this game from us and given us fewer choices so they can sell overpriced gems.”

And it’s an option ANET should consider in this and future expansions, because what is the next expansion price plans going to be? Vets pay $60 for the expansion while newbies get vanilla AND HoT thrown in free at the same price? That’s not going to go over any better!

I cannot understand your logic. You are saying that 60$ is too much so your solution is monthly subscription of 15$, what is the connection between the two?

I don’t get it.

If one were to subscribe and get unlimited transmutes, hairstyles, and bank space, I would mostly be concerned with how the bank space would be handled if someone stopped their subscription. Also how often d’you think people change their hair and armor? Transmutation charges aren’t too difficult to come by, it’s possible to save up and get unlimited haircuts right now, and you can also save up and get bank space.

And you said it too: “ANET probably doesn’t sell very many people 50 transfiguration charges a month, nor 30 markover kits, nor 30 black lion keys” because people don’t necessarily want that. I don’t see the point to a subscription in a game where you can support the company through the gem store…or you don’t. It’s much more freeing than a sub, and a lot less exclusive.

I just…I don’t see a point to adding a sub. Maybe I didn’t understand your point entirely. But as GW1 was successful with no sub, so too is GW2 currently extremely successful with no sub.

Sorry OP. But you are making zero sense here. I’ll pay the £35 for HoT over paying £10 a month. Its simple. Paying monthly will not speed anything up. People who seem to think that a sub would fix everything are just wrong. If GW2 was a sub game it would make no difference to how fast content came out, as the bottom line would be we have x number of staff and we are brining in x amount of profit. They would.not just hire more people if they had more.money coming in. The only time you hire more people in a business is when you are expanding. Or you have gained more work than you can handle. Just because you are making money and could hire more staff has never indicated you should.

The only point is to be a savvier consumer of MMOs. When we spend money, we rationalize the expense a number of ways and some of those rationalizations suck. “It’s on sale now, so I’d actually lose money if I don’t buy it and want it later,” is a famously bad rationalization for buying something. But people really do behave this way all the time. When purchasing an expansion, the fact that their is so subscription fee for GW2 is an equally bad rationalization that I see people using a lot.

A sub won’t speed it up
A sub won’t make for better content
A sub won’t make for more content
A sub won’t make for free expansions
A sub won’t even make for cheaper expansions
A sub wouldn’t give you any of those gem store items, it would just be $15 a month on top of everything else

It’s a profit model, not a charity. And while you can say well we have X million users so its an automatic X million times $15 a month how much awesome could they do with that?
But that doesn’t account for how many people would walk away
Or that much of that would end up in the pockets of investors/stakeholders, not the dev cycle.

That said I agree that “there’s no sub” is not a valid argument against someone’s opinion that HoT is priced too high. It’s a matter of value for dollar, and that’s highly subjective.

lukejoe.1592:

Consider this, at the cheapest gem store price a transfiguration charge costs $.30. So a monthly $15 would in theory get you 50/month. If—by handing over the subscription—ONE of the benefits was unlimited transfigures, does that appeal to you? How would your relationship to the game change if you could dress yourself each day to your heart’s desire?

My relationship to the game would change drastically. If I had the option of saving $15 a month by foregoing unlimited transfigures and any other cosmetic change for that matter, I would pick that option. Every. Single. Time.

No subscription IS a favour.

So, are you saying the expansion would be free with a subscription model? That it would be better to pay $180/year rather than $50 (if expansions came once per year)?
Or $360 rather than $50 (if expansions came once per 2 years)?

Is $180 or $360 worth some Transmutation Charges or Total Make-over Kits? I’m not sure it would be, for me.

I have to laugh. The OP assumes that if we had a subscription fee, the things in the gemstore wouldn’t be in the gemstore.

Sorry, but that’s not how companies work. Going you’re route, OP, we’d end up with more of a WoW model. Subscription fee, additional purchase costs for expansions, and a cash shop.

No thanks.

All I know is that if there was a subscription I wouldn’t be able to afford to play. I’m a poor college student.

This sounds a lot like the system Elder Scrolls Online has now they’ve switched from sub-based to buy-to-play. There’s an optional subscription which gives you $15 worth of cash-shop currency per month and free access to all DLC (which is all the new content).

I don’t subscribe in that game either, and I can’t see that changing once they start releasing DLC.

I can’t see how a subscription could possibly “meet my needs very nicely and appeal to me as a customer” when my needs are to be able to spend what I want, when (and if) I want to spend it, not a fixed amount every month on what the developers choose to give me.

Your example rewards are a perfect illustration of why. I’ve been playing since the 1st day of headstart and I’ve never bought a transmutation charge, black lion key or total makeover kit and I probably never will. I don’t even use all the transmutations I get free and I had a total makeover kit in my bank for months before I finally used it to make a few changes so tiny most my friends couldn’t even tell I’d made them.

The things I do buy (mainly toys and minis) would probably just irritate other people if they kept getting stuck with them as a ‘reward’ for subscribing.

The obvious solution is to just give gems. But then we’re back in the same situation I’m in with ESO – if I subscribed I’d likely get far, far more gems than I currently buy, and therefore more than I would use. Why would I want to pay for something I’m not using?

I am sure that I am probably in the minority, but it is not the raw cost of a subscription that bothers me. I am not terribly price sensitive. The reason that I do not favor subscription is that you are simply paying a monthly fee for the privilege of accessing the game. If you pay your subscription and end up taking some time off…say a week or two…it seems like throwing money down a toilet.

The way that I use the gem store, I get things that have lasting value to me…perpetual gathering tools, extra bank or bag slots, etc. Once I have purchased them, I have them indefinitely into the future. In a subscription system, once the month is over, there is no residual value. If I want to keep playing, I have to keep paying. Even paying for the base game or the expansion…I have that access into the future without further payments.

For me, that means that I feel no particular pressure to log in. If I want to play, I log in and do what I want and, when done, I log off. When I played a subscription game (and I played one for eight years), there was always a nagging pressure to log in and do whatever grind they had set up for me. I doubt seriously that I am spending any less money now…but I do pay for things I want and can use rather than just paying for the right to access the basic game.

lukejoe.1592:

The only point is to be a savvier consumer of MMOs. When we spend money, we rationalize the expense a number of ways and some of those rationalizations suck. “It’s on sale now, so I’d actually lose money if I don’t buy it and want it later,” is a famously bad rationalization for buying something. But people really do behave this way all the time. When purchasing an expansion, the fact that their is so subscription fee for GW2 is an equally bad rationalization that I see people using a lot.

How many people are purchasing the expansion because there is no subscription fee as opposed to purchasing the expansion because it expands the game they enjoy paying ?

The reality is, in a sub fee vs non sub fee comparison, that games with sub fees have cash shops too. Its not an either/or situation. It is a matter of do you want a sub fee plus cash shop or just cash shop?

Not a whole lot of people seem to agree with you, OP.

I’ve played sub games and no sub games. Sub games want to keep you subbing, so they throw things in to keep you playing, because they want that extra money. It changes the way that those games operate. To me, that’s more annoying than being here and having to find stuff to do to keep busy until the next content comes out…and that this point that’s what many of us do.

I’m having more fun here without a sub, than I’ve ever had playing a sub game.

I greatly prefer subscription fees. In GW2 I don’t feel like I’m ever earning skins etc through a meaningful or interesting way. Everything seems to revolve around gold, which puts me in a spot where I have to grind or pay real money.

In WoW you get 50 character slots, free face/hair/color change as much as you want, there has never been a weapon skin released in the cash shop. 99.8% of the minis and mounts are released in game. The list of pros just greatly outweighs the negatives for me.

All in all I just prefer to pay a few bucks a month and never have to worry about the constant reminder of buying from the cash shop. Even spending $13 a month in GW2 would never give me enough convenience to compare to some sub games. i mean, just buying character slots in GW2 to match those in WoW would pay for nearly 3 years in subscription fees.

I definitely see the F2P/b2p appeal for the people that can’t afford or don’t want to pay a monthly sub though. I don’t even think GW2 would be doing half as well as it is now if they had a sub because of how many people are opposed to it. If anything I think an optional sub that gives all conveniences/skins etc would be pretty awesome.

^ what he said.

Both the cash shop and HoT bundling with base game makes me think their policy is “wheather rain or snow, you pay us twice!”

If this game changes to a monthly subscription, I will quit and uninstall the game. I like to have the choice when and if I spend my money. They have to earn it, not make me pay it just to play. I have easily spent more money on this game than I would have if it had a sub, but it was my choice to do so and that makes all the difference to me.

A sub fee is the dinosaur of gaming. There is nothing to be gained from adding $15 a month except a smaller gaming population.

DresdenAllblack.1249:

A sub fee is the dinosaur of gaming. There is nothing to be gained from adding $15 a month except a smaller gaming population.

Not saying this game should get a subscription, but the reason its a dinosaur is because the current models gets them more money for less effort.

Depending on bow you play, that model may be to your advantage, but it isnt automatically a better service.

Think about it this way.
Unlimited talk and text is a subscription
Pay per minute/base minutes is gem shop

Who is the better depends on your own usage style.

phys.7689:

DresdenAllblack.1249:

A sub fee is the dinosaur of gaming. There is nothing to be gained from adding $15 a month except a smaller gaming population.

Not saying this game should get a subscription, but the reason its a dinosaur is because the current models gets them more money for less effort.

Depending on bow you play, that model may be to your advantage, but it isnt automatically a better service.

Think about it this way.
Unlimited talk and text is a subscription
Pay per minute/base minutes is gem shop

Who is the better depends on your own usage style.

Not the best comparison, since pay-per-minute plans also have limited time, so you still have a subscription.

No, subscriptions are a dinosaur because the microtransaction (and no sub) route works out much more in the players’ favor. To get the player’s money, they need to make something that the players feel is worth their money. Employees and bills have to be paid, regardless of the release of content, so microtransactions force the company to keep trying to make things the players think are worth buying.

Subscriptions, on the other hand? They only have to make it good enough that people don’t cancel their subscriptions. And to be honest? That’s a pretty low bar. Requires work, still, but you can get away with a lot more lousy stuff that way.

lukejoe.1592:

In fact, were it not for the fact that many of you would be less likely to play GW2 if it had a subscription, I bet many of you would actually prefer to be given that option.

This right here distills the illogic into one sentence. “If you guys didn’t prefer not to play the game with a sub, I bet you’d prefer a sub.”

We do prefer it without a sub. That invalidates the rest of the post.

(“We” meaning the people targeted by that line, not every player. Obviously some people have it in their heads that a sub would somehow magically make the game perfect).

Yeah, I’ve been playing since launch (which, oddly enough, is around the same amount of time I played WoW (from WotLK to shortly after Cataclysm), and I have spent soooo much less money on GW2. I even buy things from the cash shop periodically (because I like supporting a company that gives me something I like), and therefore have shiny new skins and status items that I never had in WoW.

Also, not having to pay a sub makes it so the game doesn’t punish me for taking a break…

So yeah, OP, if you want to kill GW2, add a subscription.

MattyP.6954:

Yeah, I’ve been playing since launch (which, oddly enough, is around the same amount of time I played WoW (from WotLK to shortly after Cataclysm), and I have spent soooo much less money on GW2. I even buy things from the cash shop periodically (because I like supporting a company that gives me something I like), and therefore have shiny new skins and status items that I never had in WoW.

Also, not having to pay a sub makes it so the game doesn’t punish me for taking a break…

So yeah, OP, if you want to kill GW2, add a subscription.

Yeah that’s how I feel. I too played wow for about as long as you did. And after leaving, I’ve never looked back. For me the sub made me play even when I didn’t want to, as if I didn’t play I felt like I was throwing money out the window. Now with the way GW2 works. Yes the first 2 years I spent more that I would have on gems, than I would have on a sub, but that was my choice. So far this year I’ve spent about £30 on gems. A lot less than I had been, but them my personal circumstances have changed.

Rin.1046:

I like to have the choice when and if I spend my money. They have to earn it, not make me pay it just to play. I have easily spent more money on this game than I would have if it had a sub, but it was my choice to do so and that makes all the difference to me.

THIS. I came here from WoW because I disagree with having a sub fee, a cash shop, plus xpac fees. Money money money, and even if no new content comes out for MONTHS…you still have to pay to play.

With GW2 you pay for the game and xpacs, for the privilege to play…after that they earn the money. If you like new perk content in the cash shop, then yay, but you’re not forced into paying for it.

GW2…don’t listen to trollers. You’re doing it right already.

What’s also funny is that you can buy gems with gold in this game. I do it all the time.
The only thing I bought with money are character expansion slots, but subscription games usually make you pay them extra money monthly.
However you can also buy those with gold.
And you can also get gems in game from achievements.

“No Subscription Fee” is not a favor. You’re correct. It is not. “Buy to Play” is a business model. It’s a business model that has worked very well for Anet since GW1.

If the expansion cost (which is competitive with other subscription based MMOs) is too much for you, or you feel it is too much for what you would be getting, then don’t buy it. It’s really as simple as that

If the cost turns out to be prohibitive, and they don’t make enough sales, they will lower the price, eventually. All you have to do is wait.

Games cost time, talent, sweat, and $$MONEY$$ to create.
Are you saying that the people who create these games don’t deserve to be paid for their work, or that they should be paid less, yet still give you more?

Bottom line: Buy it or don’t, but for the love of Tyria, PLEASE; quit yer kitten. these forums are turning into a really depressing place, when so much whining overwhelms actual discussion.

A non-optional subscription is very much a rental fee. Don’t pay, don’t play. The most commonly expressed reason for a sub fee is so the developer will add content that is otherwise free. This has not been my experience with sub games. The sub games I’ve played that remained sub games offered minimal to no content updates between XPacs, which they also charged for. So, I’m not a fan of that model and not a fan of renting long-term games. It just does not make sense for my wallet.

An optional subscription is a package deal. Pay a lump sum, and get W, X, Y and Z, whose cost (usually) if bought individually is more than the lump sum. I’d have no issue with package deals in MMO’s, as long as they only contained purely optional items. Since I consider anything in the gem store to be optional, I’d be fine if a GW2 package deal offered gem store items.

That’s not the way optional subs work in this industry, though. The company wants you to keep paying that monthly fee. Let’s say that the OP’s 50 Transmutation Charges was a benefit. So, I pay for 6 months, and find I have surplus charges I have no need for, as well as surplus on the rest of the stuff offered. I’d stop paying for a while. So, companies that use this model tie things to the sub that you cannot do without and still maintain the same quality of play time. This would include something like “GW2 Gold Membership provides you with 4 extra bank tabs and 2 extra bag slots per character for as long as you maintain that membership.” Stop paying, lose access. I think that kind of model, which is in common use in Freemium MMO’s, is not my preferred model.

I understand the reluctance to buy HoT at the current price. However, I have to say it would be better for me to overpay by anywhere from $15 to $30 (assuming one thinks HoT is priced too high) once every 1, 2 or 3 years than to pay $15 a month for 12, 24 or 36 months. That’s just me, though.

If the intent is to have other people pay that $15/month instead of dropping their money into gems when they want to, I question whether we’d be better off. If the package deal contains stuff they’d otherwise buy, then they’d buy less gems. The deal would have to attract a lot of players who are not otherwise inclined to drop at least that much into gems per month on average. I have a hard time thinking the deal would be attractive enough to do that unless it contained stuff people think they cannot do without.

When I have excess money I DO buy 30 Black Lion Keys a month (well, 25) and I’d never want to pay a sub fee. There’s no real benefit to it, even if it were an optional perk I wouldn’t do it since I’d be able to buy my gem store items regardless.

As others have said, all a sub fee would do is lead to less people playing, and the system ending up like the train wreck that’s wow, paying a sub, a cash shop, and paying for expansions.

Not to mention that sub fees are going the way of the Dodo, there’s a reason every sub fee game lately has been dying off.

Fernling.1729:

I greatly prefer subscription fees. In GW2 I don’t feel like I’m ever earning skins etc through a meaningful or interesting way. Everything seems to revolve around gold, which puts me in a spot where I have to grind or pay real money.

There is no correlation between subs and how you earn rewards though … Do you believe if GW2 was sub based, we would have a different approach to earning rewards like skins? If so, why do you think that?

I think it’s the opposite. You would pay your sub, then you would still have gemstore, etc… Why wouldn’t Anet want to appeal to people’s willingness to pay for extra goodies? It would be stupid for them not too …

Obtena.7952:

Fernling.1729:

I greatly prefer subscription fees. In GW2 I don’t feel like I’m ever earning skins etc through a meaningful or interesting way. Everything seems to revolve around gold, which puts me in a spot where I have to grind or pay real money.

There is no correlation between subs and how you earn rewards though … Do you believe if GW2 was sub based, we would have a different approach to earning rewards like skins? If so, why do you think that?

I think it’s the opposite. You would pay your sub, then you would still have gemstore, etc… Why wouldn’t Anet want to appeal to people’s willingness to pay for extra goodies? It would be stupid for them not too …

Exactly.

At this point in the MMO genre, for the most part, its not sub vs cash shop. Its sub plus cash shop vs cash shop.

I have to laugh at the OP here for a moment. His post actually points out more flaws of the subscription system than anything. Not to mention, most (if not all) sub based games will still charge you between $40-$60 for their expansions on top of the $15/mo.

As for those saying they prefer a sub based system…well, if they have $15/mo to shell out from their pockets (or their parents’ pockets) all the power to them.

Fernling.1729:

I greatly prefer subscription fees. In GW2 I don’t feel like I’m ever earning skins etc through a meaningful or interesting way. Everything seems to revolve around gold, which puts me in a spot where I have to grind or pay real money.

If I understand this quote…

Guild Wars 2 with no subscription = offers choice to pay real money to avoid ‘grind’
Guild Wars 2 with subscription = offers no choice to pay real money to avoid ‘grind’

I’m not seeing the advantage. =/

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Fernling.1729:

I greatly prefer subscription fees. In GW2 I don’t feel like I’m ever earning skins etc through a meaningful or interesting way. Everything seems to revolve around gold, which puts me in a spot where I have to grind or pay real money.

If I understand this quote…

Guild Wars 2 with no subscription = offers choice to pay real money to avoid ‘grind’
Guild Wars 2 with subscription = offers no choice to pay real money to avoid ‘grind’

I’m not seeing the advantage. =/

Good point … I think the ‘advantage’ is that some players feel left out because they are RL cheap or poor and can’t ‘compete’ with people that buy their way into loot with RL money.

Bottomline: Subs make things ‘equal’ in some people’s eyes. Only time can equate to loot.

Having a sub fee is no guarantee all gemstore services will become free.
Just look at wow. You pay for the base game, the expansion AND a sub fee.

And you still have to pay real cash for certain services and cosmetics in their battle.net shop.

Pets – 10$
mounts – 20-25$
Helmets – 12$
lvl 90 boost – 50$
faction change – 25$
Appearance change – 15$
character transfer – 20$
race change – 20$
name change – 8$

Those prices are absolutely absurd considering how much money it costs just to be able play the game at all. I’d rather have the Guild Wars 2 model. Paying for some extra services but no sub fee.

so the op is crying about item you can get FREE, if you just make/save the gold? lol this is… sad… please op if you dont wanna get HoT, stop making post about how cool will be a suscription fee… couse reasons….

ScribeTheMad.7614:

A sub won’t speed it up
A sub won’t make for better content
A sub won’t make for more content
A sub won’t make for free expansions
A sub won’t even make for cheaper expansions
A sub wouldn’t give you any of those gem store items, it would just be $15 a month on top of everything else

It’s a profit model, not a charity. And while you can say well we have X million users so its an automatic X million times $15 a month how much awesome could they do with that?
But that doesn’t account for how many people would walk away
Or that much of that would end up in the pockets of investors/stakeholders, not the dev cycle.

That said I agree that “there’s no sub” is not a valid argument against someone’s opinion that HoT is priced too high. It’s a matter of value for dollar, and that’s highly subjective.

exactly this, if you wanna pay a sub buy $15 of gems every month.

This game has more content and more active content getting added to it then any sub game out there. plus sub’s always add a cashshop anyways now adays and ussually becomes p2w

Obtena.7952:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Fernling.1729:

I greatly prefer subscription fees. In GW2 I don’t feel like I’m ever earning skins etc through a meaningful or interesting way. Everything seems to revolve around gold, which puts me in a spot where I have to grind or pay real money.

If I understand this quote…

Guild Wars 2 with no subscription = offers choice to pay real money to avoid ‘grind’
Guild Wars 2 with subscription = offers no choice to pay real money to avoid ‘grind’

I’m not seeing the advantage. =/

Good point … I think the ‘advantage’ is that some players feel left out because they are RL cheap or poor and can’t ‘compete’ with people that buy their way into loot with RL money.

Bottomline: Subs make things ‘equal’ in some people’s eyes. Only time can equate to loot.

It works both ways. Some people barely have any time to play but they have lots of money from working. So they can’t compete without the ability to spend that money to keep up.

Time is money for a lot of people.

And if GW2 had subscription fees, one day it’d have free to play on it, but wouldn’t have the number of players it does now.

If GW2 suddenly changed to subscription fees, they’d loose all those who play it because of “no subs fees”, being left only with those who want to play it regardless of it.
Since GW2 is advertised as “No Subscription fees” game…

ScribeTheMad.7614:

A sub won’t speed it up
A sub won’t make for better content
A sub won’t make for more content
A sub won’t make for free expansions
A sub won’t even make for cheaper expansions
A sub wouldn’t give you any of those gem store items, it would just be $15 a month on top of everything else

It’s a profit model, not a charity. And while you can say well we have X million users so its an automatic X million times $15 a month how much awesome could they do with that?
But that doesn’t account for how many people would walk away
Or that much of that would end up in the pockets of investors/stakeholders, not the dev cycle.

That said I agree that “there’s no sub” is not a valid argument against someone’s opinion that HoT is priced too high. It’s a matter of value for dollar, and that’s highly subjective.

Precisely this. And if you want proof, you can look at pretty much any other sub fee game on the market.
Sub fees aren’t magic, having one doesn’t poof quality content into the game.
I played WoW for several years, I’ve been playing FF14 for the past 2 or 3 months, and I’ve dabbled in Tera, Rift, Wildstar, etc over the years.
Nothing about a sub fee makes the game superior, it’s just a different form of revenue intake for the company, and a different payment plan for the player.

I know a number of players who would probably drop GW2 like a molten-hot-lead-brick if a sub was introduced… I would wager it would kill GW2.

Yes – No subs is not a favour it is a business decision but subs do not necessarily increase income for a product and more money does not necessarily equate to a faster delivered or better product.

IMO The only sub that might be a good idea for GW2 would be one that equates to a monthly income of Gems at a discounted rate (say 10% more gems for the sub versus one off Gems purchase).

I believe n0-Subs is mixed. I mean at one point it’s a choice of the company. But they could as well have introduced a Subscription, and I am pretty sure they would tons more that way. (I think WoW makes tons of profit and I don’t believe everything is invested back in the game) So to some extend it is a Favour because they chose to do it like this, because more people can play this way. (Also the poor students), even though they of course still need to earn money from expansions / gems to be able to survive.

I dont know why but people feel like a subscription based model is all good no evil. Truth is every model has its pros and cons. Sure with a sub model they can probably put all the skins in the game but they’d need to change things so that people are discouraged from taking breaks. In traditional MMOs thats achieved through gear threadmills and making sure that people fall behind if they stop to effectively discourage stopping. Further more it would add substantially to the game’s cost which for some would be a problem.

What OP say is true, no sub is not being done as a favor but it surely is more favorable to a sub in my opinion. The reason for that is actually mentioned by OP himself.
“ONE of the benefits was unlimited transfigures, does that appeal to you?”, “How many more would be converted by endless make over kits thrown on?”, “Recovering your runes and sigils?”

All these suggestions have on thing in common and that thing is also a major issue with the subscription model, they all make you pay for things you will not fully use. sure for some people unlimited transmutations / makeovers etc would be something they could use but I have no doubt for the majority of people a couple of makeovers a year if even is more then enough. Even less with transmutations some will never need to buy one because what they earn by playing the game more then makes up for the usage. Even if you go above I bet for the majority of people buying the transmutations / make over kits they need would be far cheaper then a sub. So paying a sub would essentially mean overpaying for stuff that people will not ultimately use. (I got unlimited transmutations but only needed 2 ex)

The same thing is ultimately true with Subs. Subs make sense when you’ve got tons of time on your hands. If I pay a sub and get to play 8hrs a day thats a great fair deal. When I was younger I ever ran 3 subs at the same time during summer holidays a few times but I could get my value out of what I was playing. Now that I am older free time isnt easy to come by. There are weeks I barely manage to spend 8hrs playing for the whole week never mind every single day. Thats when sub models start to seem problematic. I still pay $15 a month but I am essentially playing a lot less. Its a lot harder to justify $15 a month when you’re just playing 2 hours here, 1 hour there and a few days when you dont even login at all simply because its starts to feel you’re paying for stuff you’re not using and even though $15 a month isnt a fortune when there are other more necessary expenses, like say upgrading your kids room, you postpone to the subsequent year because you don’t want to stress your finances you have to question if “wasting” money on things you’re mostly not using (8hrs a week vs 60+hrs a week surely feels that way) is the right way to go. Whats even worst though is if you decide to stop you’re essentially throwing away all the money you have ever spend. Like the longest game I subbed to was EvE online, I think I spend close to $1200 on that game yet today I cant enjoy a single cent of that $1200 I spend unless I fork out another $15 and then another $15.

A good cash shop model like that employed on Gw2 is a different story though. It allows me to control my spending without loosing all value of what I have already purchased. I only have to pay for what I am going to use. I am not going to buy 1000 transmutation stones and by the time Gw2 closes down I would have 950 of them left for sure, I can simply buy what I need, when I need and that makes a whole lot of difference.

Galen Grey.4709:

…snip…

Very well said, I agree completely. Also, regarding the paying for things you don’t need, with a sub model you are essentially paying for skins and other cosmetics that you may not like. At least with Anet’s gemstore model you can pick and choose what skins you want to pay for. A far superior and fairer models for the players IMO.

Subbed games still have account services and even cash shop so TC is well….

A sub game generally doesn’t have to deal with what we’re currently seeing in the way of WvW golem exploits right now though there always on top of stability and glitches. Also Sub games tend to have the cash to do proper phasing of zones, more money for a better script(Sylvari must always be the Bond villain is extremely dull), and permenant content not this temporary deal we had the entire season 1. Maps for SaB, Lab Cliffs, Toxic Tower, and so forth all exist there just not in the game. Also sub games are faster in terms of content as GW2 is now going on three years and we still don’t have a release date for an expac. So many beta’s too while other have one big beta we’ve had Beta weekends all summer and those who farmed those portals earlier in the year are out of luck as beta is tied to pre-order sales now.

… did you just say a sub game fixes bugs, exploits, and glitches right away? And has more frequent content releases?

/steps out of the way of the stampede of refuters.

P2P MMOs are a bad thing in general IMO – I will NEVER support any kind of P2P gaming regardless of how much I may enjoy the game in question.

Lack of subs does not cover the root cause of the majority of the complaints about GW2 changes since release IMO. The root causes are more to do with notionally controversial decisions and the lack of even the most simple of measures to mitigate them adequately. Not doing such things has very little (if anything at all) to do with not having the money IMO but probably more to do with a lack of willingness to admit when errors in judgement have been made.

While many of us may agree that there are issues with the current state of GW2 I strongly doubt we will all agree on what the solution should be. GW2 is not the only game that has fallen victim to issues with disconnect between customer/player views of what needs to be done and what the developer/publisher believes what needs to be done.

Something doesn’t have to be done as a favor in order to be beneficial and to encourage return business. If I buy something from a merchant and determine that, for me, it is a great value, it doesnt matter that they didnt sell it to me as a favor, I will be more likely to be willing to buy their products going forward.

Of course that can lead to mistakes. I prepurchased GW2 without hesitation because of the great value I received from GW1. Now I will wait until after release to decide whether or not HoT is worth my money.