In GW2, Trading Post plays you!
Paying for past content?
If someone buys the game after the end of living story 2, they’d have to pay to unlock living story 2.
If I buy lets say Lord of the Rings Online today, I have to pay to unlock a kitten-ton of expansions. How is this different?
Are you kidding?
Because for someone who logged in during that 2 week span…they got it for free! Have fun being a new player and having to buy:
- base game
- S1
- S2
- S#
Each season is ~$60…
And this is different than say… a person picking up WoW now?
Vanilla
BC
WotLC
Cata
MoP
WoD
Each one of those is $40 – $60 each…..
“But those are full blown expansions!”
And you know what LS2 entails precisely? Care to share?
Don’t look at me like that. Whatever you’ve heard, it’s probably not true.
Are you kidding?
Because for someone who logged in during that 2 week span…they got it for free! Have fun being a new player and having to buy:
- base game
- S1
- S2
- S#
Each season is ~$60…
And when I bought the game I had to pay about 50% more than someone needs to pay to access the game now.
You have no idea if we have to pay for S1.
You have no idea how much each season will cost.
You are basing your whole argument on speculations rather than facts.
Krall Bloodsword – Mesmer
Krall Peterson – Warrior
Piken Square
Krall Peterson – Warrior
Piken Square
If someone buys the game after the end of living story 2, they’d have to pay to unlock living story 2.
If I buy lets say Lord of the Rings Online today, I have to pay to unlock a kitten-ton of expansions. How is this different?
Are you kidding?
Because for someone who logged in during that 2 week span…they got it for free! Have fun being a new player and having to buy:
- base game
- S1
- S2
- S#
Each season is ~$60…
Well this is you speculating and making assumptions that arent proven legitimate. You dont know if old seasons will cost the same as new ones. Most likely older seasons will, as older expansions, sell for a lower price. Maybe even the customers buying Gw2 during S3 will get their box package with the free S2, just as you today can buy alot of box package mmos complete with older expansions.
Again this is me speculating and none of what i have stated above is proven true.
If someone buys the game after the end of living story 2, they’d have to pay to unlock living story 2.
If I buy lets say Lord of the Rings Online today, I have to pay to unlock a kitten-ton of expansions. How is this different?
Are you kidding?
Because for someone who logged in during that 2 week span…they got it for free! Have fun being a new player and having to buy:
- base game
- S1
- S2
- S#
Each season is ~$60…
That’s only if you want to play those particular episodes! You don’t need S1, S2, …, S267… The world can still grow and you have access to the whole world.. they’re not even selling areas here, they’re selling what could potentially be personal story steps… This is WAY better than any other model.. for the other models, you get the base game.. you get the base areas. Here, you get the game, you get all the areas, you just don’t get the previous stories unless you buy them.. come on here, this is such a good thing I don’t understand how anyone could say otherwise and be serious.
I’m not saying that they’ll never someday sell an expansion with new areas and then you’ll have to buy them.. but so far we know that all we’re having to pay for here are the episodes and that in LS2 there will be new areas so we’re getting new areas for free.
Slow down and smell the pixels.
Looking over the LS season 2 blurb I spotted this “Past episodes will be available for purchase for 200 gems”
Does this mean if we want to reply any LS content we need to pay for it in gems? Is it an unlock a chapter forever fee for every account or is it character bound? If we pay for a chapter can we team with people who haven’t?
Personally, not sure how I feel about this move. To me it seems to step over the ‘morality line’ and move GW2 to a payment model I don’t really like..
Hmm
If you log in during the release window of an episode (e.g. two weeks) you unlock the episode for your account. You can replay it as many times as you want for free. If you miss the release window and you want to play an episode that you didn’t unlock, you can purchase it.
It’s a lot like watching television in that you can watch (and record) an episode for free when it airs. If you miss it, you can buy the episode off iTunes later. Does that make sense?
Absolutely it does. I think it’s an excellent and fair idea, especially when all that’s being asked of players is to simply log on. That’s less effort than setting up my VCR to record programs back in the day, and 200 gems is more than reasonable.
If I just started today, I’m not planning on paying for S1 (pretending it’s available). There’s plenty of content in the existing game.
If a friend of my decides to start playing in 2015, they aren’t going to pay for S2. They can play the “regular” game and get Season 3 for free.
The only time anyone even has to consider spending gems is if they want to play LS content from the previous year. That seems like a really good compromise.
For those worried about open world components of the LS: we already have a split now. Season 1 included both instanced story and open world elements. e.g. retaking LA was open world/cooperative; confronting Scarlet during the counter-offensive was instanced.
What’s being offered for LS2 is the ability to keep track of the LS instanced storyline as if it’s a continuation of the PS — and I think that’s great. We get an evolving, epic story and it will be replayable. Plus, we get any of the temporary open-world content if we’re around at the right time.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
This is basically a new option we have. I dont see how an option can ever be a bad thing. If they didnt do any of this S2 would come it would play out and it would be gone. For people would would miss a few episodes because of RL commitements they’d loose them and would only be able to catch up by reading what happened.
If someone buys the game when S3 hits, same thing. They’d loose what happened in S2 and can only read about what happened if they wish to catch up.
Now they got an option, they can still behave entirely the same had this 200 gem option never be made available if they choose too. skip everything they missed or just read about it or if they want to spend $2.5 / 20g per episode and enjoy what they lost.
Its a new option, I think its fantastic for people who go on holidays and miss a couple of episodes. as for people who join later well $60 is the price of an expansion they can see it as such. Maybe Arenanet will feel generous and put a bundle for an entire season of living story missions too you never know.
But even if they dont and the new player thinks $60 is too much then s/he can just skip it and start with S3 or whatever Its no different then a new player joining today would do about S1.
I really dont think there is any downside to this and it gives people what they’ve been asking for all through out season 2 and option to play whatever episodes they miss.
If someone buys the game after the end of living story 2, they’d have to pay to unlock living story 2.
If I buy lets say Lord of the Rings Online today, I have to pay to unlock a kitten-ton of expansions. How is this different?
Are you kidding?
Because for someone who logged in during that 2 week span…they got it for free! Have fun being a new player and having to buy:
- base game
- S1
- S2
- S#
Each season is ~$60…
And how is this different to WoW/LotR/GW1 exactly? If I joined GW1 after EotN hits, I gotta buy Nightfall, Factions, and EotN to experience everything the game has to offer.
I’m not saying I like it, but it’s basically the same as any other game, and I don’t see what you want to happen. Do you want them to charge everyone for it do it’s fair on new players?
From f2p, to p2w, now p2w and p2p.
Sad.
Given how much everyone complained about the temporary nature of the Living Story, I’m surprised this additional option is garnering so much rage. If you don’t want to buy it, then don’t? I agree with Galen; I don’t see how another option is such a terrible thing.
Blude: The game isn’t p2w OR p2p, and it’s not f2p either. It’s buy to play.
“Be angry about legendary weapons, sure, but what about the recent drought of content?”
-Mike O’Brien
Because we can’t be angry about both?
-Mike O’Brien
Because we can’t be angry about both?
From f2p, to p2w, now p2w and p2p.
Sad.
And we’re back to “everything should be free all the time”
It doesn’t matter that so long as you log in it is free….
Don’t look at me like that. Whatever you’ve heard, it’s probably not true.
People need to look at the business side of implementing this:
Most importantly, it is a behavior conditioning mechanic to maintain scheduled logins or reinforce the habit of playing which will help maintain the player base going forward. It serves the same purpose as ‘dailies and monthlies’ in this game. Let’s be honest here: the story to date would fit on a kittentail napkin and the majority of it was just a way to reskin the same mass farming/zerg events over and over (a necessity to maintain the pace of releases and keep production costs under control).
To those angered by Anet selling story events: do you really feel that the prior story is NEEDED to enjoy future releases, or has your OCD kicked in and you just want the complete story for the sake of completeness itself?
If someone buys the game after the end of living story 2, they’d have to pay to unlock living story 2.
If I buy lets say Lord of the Rings Online today, I have to pay to unlock a kitten-ton of expansions. How is this different?
Are you kidding?
Because for someone who logged in during that 2 week span…they got it for free! Have fun being a new player and having to buy:
- base game
- S1
- S2
- S#
Each season is ~$60…
And how is this different to WoW/LotR/GW1 exactly? If I joined GW1 after EotN hits, I gotta buy Nightfall, Factions, and EotN to experience everything the game has to offer.
I’m not saying I like it, but it’s basically the same as any other game, and I don’t see what you want to happen. Do you want them to charge everyone for it do it’s fair on new players?
I think they expected the game to be 100% free when you buy the base game, including all future content. The thing is Anet never said all future content would be free. It’s actually very generous that they give it for free to active players.
Each season is ~$60…
Each season is free. If you miss previous seasons, and wish to access it, it doesn’t cost money. Just exchange Gold for Gems, and you get it for zero (0) dollars.
You’re welcome.
Free? hardly.
How does a new player get $60 worth of gold? That’s what I thought. Don’t be facetious.
If someone buys the game after the end of living story 2, they’d have to pay to unlock living story 2.
If I buy lets say Lord of the Rings Online today, I have to pay to unlock a kitten-ton of expansions. How is this different?
Are you kidding?
Because for someone who logged in during that 2 week span…they got it for free! Have fun being a new player and having to buy:
- base game
- S1
- S2
- S#
Each season is ~$60…
And how is this different to WoW/LotR/GW1 exactly? If I joined GW1 after EotN hits, I gotta buy Nightfall, Factions, and EotN to experience everything the game has to offer.
I’m not saying I like it, but it’s basically the same as any other game, and I don’t see what you want to happen. Do you want them to charge everyone for it do it’s fair on new players?
I just answered how it’s different. It’s not hard to understand.
It’s similar to this: if WoW allowed current active players to get expansions for free, but if you were a new player/in-active player then you had to purchase the expansion.
I’d much rather have paid expansions than this half-hearted bullkitten of semi-free DLC.
How does a new player get $60 worth of gold? That’s what I thought. Don’t be facetious.
Where do you even get the numbers from?
You are assuming that:
1: People would buy every single episode.
2: People would buy every single episode on their own.
3: ArenaNet won’t release a package at the end of a season at a reduced price.
Krall Bloodsword – Mesmer
Krall Peterson – Warrior
Piken Square
Krall Peterson – Warrior
Piken Square
From f2p, to p2w, now p2w and p2p.
Sad.
When was it ever p2w?
Unless by “p2w” you mean Pay To Warrior Quaggan Backpack Set.
How does a new player get $60 worth of gold? That’s what I thought. Don’t be facetious.
Where do you even get the numbers from?
You are assuming that:
1: People would buy every single episode.
2: People would buy every single episode on their own.
3: ArenaNet won’t release a package at the end of a season at a reduced price.
Not to mention, they do sales and such on their items rather frequently in the gemstore.
How does a new player get $60 worth of gold? That’s what I thought. Don’t be facetious.
Where do you even get the numbers from?
You are assuming that:
1: People would buy every single episode.
2: People would buy every single episode on their own.
3: ArenaNet won’t release a package at the end of a season at a reduced price.
The numbers are freely available(calculate them based upon S1 # of chapters and 200 gem cost per chapter).
If you’re a new player, then yes, you’re going to purchase the full season. The only people purchasing individual episodes will be people who missed a couple or people who want the reward from them. ANet will likely release a packaged season, but don’t expect it to be much cheaper(see: their “sales” on gem store items).
How does a new player get $60 worth of gold? That’s what I thought. Don’t be facetious.
Where do you even get the numbers from?
You are assuming that:
1: People would buy every single episode.
2: People would buy every single episode on their own.
3: ArenaNet won’t release a package at the end of a season at a reduced price.The numbers are freely available(calculate them based upon S1 # of chapters and 200 gem cost per chapter).
If you’re a new player, then yes, you’re going to purchase the full season. The only people purchasing individual episodes will be people who missed a couple or people who want the reward from them. ANet will likely release a packaged season, but don’t expect it to be much cheaper(see: their “sales” on gem store items).
So as a new player you’ll have a full expansion pack you could buy just starting the game, or you could play the original game first and use the gold saved to get it free. Either way, there will be an entire season of content available to you at a price.
Also this content will likely be tailored to you or a small group experience. Who pays for that? Who pays for the devs that sit down and rescale all this content so it works for you? Paying for it is perfectly acceptable and cold hard cash is only one of 3 options here.
I think this is a great idea, if they make the content of high quality, I am game, things are moving in the right direction, keep up the great work. For a game that is free to play, this is one of the smartest decisions they can make, I really hope this helps them get in the direction they want to be, I know I’d be more than willing to buy the content i’ve missed up to this point. And honestly, what is $2.50 to play through some content you will enjoy?
(edited by Silent The Gray.3091)
Overall I’m pretty stoked about the changes, but having to pay to unlock makes me raise my eyebrow. I don’t feel overwhelmingly negative about it, but I guess I just don’t really get why having the chance to just log in once during the window, even if you don’t play any of it, means you’ve ‘earned’ the story for free, while if you miss that window due to work or family or holidays or your PC blew up or whatever else, suddenly it will cost you money. It feels like a really . . . artificial way of applying a price tag to things.
But, the changes on the whole, I’m really happy about. I just hope this doesn’t inconvenience too many people. Yes, being able to buy old content is better than not being able to experience it at all, but I don’t accept that making it purchase-after-the-fact was an inevitability.
Usually I can at least log in once every 2 weeks so I guess it won’t impact me that much, but ehhh. Weird one.
How does a new player get $60 worth of gold? That’s what I thought. Don’t be facetious.
Where do you even get the numbers from?
You are assuming that:
1: People would buy every single episode.
2: People would buy every single episode on their own.
3: ArenaNet won’t release a package at the end of a season at a reduced price.The numbers are freely available(calculate them based upon S1 # of chapters and 200 gem cost per chapter).
If you’re a new player, then yes, you’re going to purchase the full season. The only people purchasing individual episodes will be people who missed a couple or people who want the reward from them. ANet will likely release a packaged season, but don’t expect it to be much cheaper(see: their “sales” on gem store items).
So as a new player you’ll have a full expansion pack you could buy just starting the game, or you could play the original game first and use the gold saved to get it free. Either way, there will be an entire season of content available to you at a price.
Also this content will likely be tailored to you or a small group experience. Who pays for that? Who pays for the devs that sit down and rescale all this content so it works for you? Paying for it is perfectly acceptable and cold hard cash is only one of 3 options here.
People that play actively don’t “pay” for it, so I don’t see what you’re getting at. The only people losing here are new players and people who don’t log in every 2 weeks.
shrug
ANet needs money, this is a fact the business needs money to continue to operate. But honestly they could do a lot worse than this system. They could charge everyone for new content, they could gate off parts of the world for premium customers. For the most part this is a system that won’t impact any of the regular players. Of course the argument that ANet could do worse isn’t going to win anyone over.
Each season is ~$60…
Each season is free. If you miss previous seasons, and wish to access it, it doesn’t cost money. Just exchange Gold for Gems, and you get it for zero (0) dollars.
You’re welcome.
Free? hardly.
How does a new player get $60 worth of gold? That’s what I thought. Don’t be facetious.
The new player can play the game, earn Gold normally, and go back and enjoy content they missed. Again, it costs zero (0) dollars.
I’m glad I’m able to help you understand this concept.
In GW2, Trading Post plays you!
Interesting news. There is an extra positive slant to this;
1) Supports an era of more permanent additions to the open world – this wouldn’t work otherwise
2) The quality should in theory improve massively over S1. No one is going to pay for content if word of mouth is overwhelmingly negative towards the content.
More and more intrigued by S2 week on week.
Being heavily against the cash-shop focus that this game has and how it effects this game I am not that heavily against the idea of unlocking the previous episodes for gems. Thats also not very strange as I am in favor of moving to expansion sales to earn the money and strip the cash-shop down (putting all those things in the game) and you can see some similarities between unlocking previous episodes and selling expansions. It’s still far from the same but has more similarities that how the cash-shop worked so far.
However I do think the way it’s done is still not good. Use 200 gems to unlock a previous episode? How about use 200 gems to unlock the previous episodes (and the upcoming 5*). And yes then still 200, not suddenly going up in the price.
The thing is that it would likely not even mean much lose in gem-sales. If somebody has been gone for a while, lets say half a year then he is not very likely to go and unlock every episode for 200 gems paying 2400 gems. Not only that, you will get a huge load of negative feedback over smaller episodes because people did pay money for it. No, at best (not counting exceptions) they unlock two or three episodes that many people still repeatedly do. However a big group will not unlock everything and might in fact not come back to the game for that reason. What they see is a huge pay-wall and not for expansion-like content (because if you guys are going to put that in the game it will be already available for them) but for a huge list of episodes including there events and rewards. So asking money for every single episode makes no sense.
Letting people unlock all previous episodes for 200 gems will be something people will do and are also more likely to do again when having missed a few while if it’s pay per episode they might simply not buy them. *Before I also said that when unlocking all previous episodes they should also unlock the upcoming 5 (or 4 or 6 something like that). Obviously I don’t mean they should be able to play upcoming episodes but I mean that whenever they become available they will be unlocked for them also if they do not log in. This prevents people from waiting with unlocking the previous. Someone might come back from a vacation and have missed 2 episodes but the upcoming 2 months he might also have less time to be online, so just to make sure he does not now spend 200 gems and then misses another episode 3 weeks from now he decides to wait 3 weeks and 3 weeks become 6 weeks eventually not bothering with it at all anymore. This is easily prevented by also unlocking the upcoming x episodes.
Doing it like I say here will mean more people being willing to return or jump into the game at a later time (those that now might stay away) and will likely not drops the total number of sales you will get for unlocking episodes. And because you would have more people playing the overall income might even increase.
I hope you ArenaNet learned something now seeing how what many people did say already a year ago that content should not be temporary. You come to the conclusion the community where right so also take this advice into consideration and don’t wait another half year to conclude that the episode selling did not worked out as you hoped it would.
BTW, I’m still in favor of an expansion-based model because the changes do not remove most of the cash-shop focus related problem. Just to be clear.
(edited by Devata.6589)
How does a new player get $60 worth of gold? That’s what I thought. Don’t be facetious.
Where do you even get the numbers from?
You are assuming that:
1: People would buy every single episode.
2: People would buy every single episode on their own.
3: ArenaNet won’t release a package at the end of a season at a reduced price.The numbers are freely available(calculate them based upon S1 # of chapters and 200 gem cost per chapter).
If you’re a new player, then yes, you’re going to purchase the full season. The only people purchasing individual episodes will be people who missed a couple or people who want the reward from them. ANet will likely release a packaged season, but don’t expect it to be much cheaper(see: their “sales” on gem store items).
From my count, I can only see 18 episodes in season 1 that relate to the Living Story. Festivals don’t count, as they didn’t add to the Main story line, but were along side the main story line. That still only equals $45 USD (18*2.5). One can reasonably assume that Season 2 will be similar in the number of episodes. Do even those that miss all of season 2 will be paying $45 if they wanted to get all of them at once. ($62.5 USD if they wanted EVERYTHING from season 2, assuming the festivals will have to be paid for.) Thats a MAX of $62 USD for a full years worth of story and content. Thats not considering bundled Seasons, Sales, Etc. Again none of this is REQUIRED! It is and will continue to be 100% optional.
More then likely people might pay for a couple of episodes of the ones that sound interesting and had good feed back. But they can certainly split it out over time, and defray much of the cost by converting gold gained from each episode. If you buy one, play it all they way through, taking your time, you can easily have enough gold to buy the next and so on. People keep forgetting that you are still getting loot and money from those events. And don’t need to fork over a chunk of change from the get go.
“You know what the chain of command is?
It’s the chain I beat you with until you
recognize my command!”
It’s the chain I beat you with until you
recognize my command!”
Each season is ~$60…
Each season is free. If you miss previous seasons, and wish to access it, it doesn’t cost money. Just exchange Gold for Gems, and you get it for zero (0) dollars.
You’re welcome.
Free? hardly.
How does a new player get $60 worth of gold? That’s what I thought. Don’t be facetious.
The new player can play the game, earn Gold normally, and go back and enjoy content they missed. Again, it costs zero (0) dollars.
I’m glad I’m able to help you understand this concept.
Go look up the conversion costs of gold to gems. Yea, a new player can EASILY get 400g to get ONE season…lol. Keep on trolling bro.
Each season is ~$60…
Each season is free. If you miss previous seasons, and wish to access it, it doesn’t cost money. Just exchange Gold for Gems, and you get it for zero (0) dollars.
You’re welcome.
Free? hardly.
How does a new player get $60 worth of gold? That’s what I thought. Don’t be facetious.
The new player can play the game, earn Gold normally, and go back and enjoy content they missed. Again, it costs zero (0) dollars.
I’m glad I’m able to help you understand this concept.
Go look up the conversion costs of gold to gems. Yea, a new player can EASILY get 400g to get ONE season…lol. Keep on trolling bro.
Please show me where Anet has a policy that a new player needs to farm and collect enough Gold in a single day. If a player does the normal available content, they can collect enough Gold to exchange for Gems. Remember, this is a convenience to them, because they joined the game late. New content is being developed each month.
If the new player is a Casual, the current LS content and open world content will be more than enough for them. If they want to access past events, that option is available if they choose to get it.
If the new player is more Hardcore, they’ll be able to eat up the current LS content, all the open world content, and have more than enough Gold to get past content. 400 Gold isn’t hard to get when a player plays a lot.
PS – I’ve played the Gem Exchange market, so I know exactly how it works, and how much it costs both ways: Gems -> Gold and Gold -> Gems.
In GW2, Trading Post plays you!
Each season is ~$60…
Each season is free. If you miss previous seasons, and wish to access it, it doesn’t cost money. Just exchange Gold for Gems, and you get it for zero (0) dollars.
You’re welcome.
Free? hardly.
How does a new player get $60 worth of gold? That’s what I thought. Don’t be facetious.
The new player can play the game, earn Gold normally, and go back and enjoy content they missed. Again, it costs zero (0) dollars.
I’m glad I’m able to help you understand this concept.
Go look up the conversion costs of gold to gems. Yea, a new player can EASILY get 400g to get ONE season…lol. Keep on trolling bro.
Just looked up the numbers on GW2spidy.
Currently the exchange rate is:
•100 gems costs 11 g 50 s to buy.
Thats a total of 23g for 200 gems. That is a reasonable number for a new player to achieve. They can by it PER ESPISODE fairly easily. they don’t NEED to buy it in one go! If they want to pay the cash, great! And don’t forget that a new player CANNOT even access ANY of the previous content until they reach Level 80.
“You know what the chain of command is?
It’s the chain I beat you with until you
recognize my command!”
It’s the chain I beat you with until you
recognize my command!”
Each season is ~$60…
Each season is free. If you miss previous seasons, and wish to access it, it doesn’t cost money. Just exchange Gold for Gems, and you get it for zero (0) dollars.
You’re welcome.
Free? hardly.
How does a new player get $60 worth of gold? That’s what I thought. Don’t be facetious.
The new player can play the game, earn Gold normally, and go back and enjoy content they missed. Again, it costs zero (0) dollars.
I’m glad I’m able to help you understand this concept.
Go look up the conversion costs of gold to gems. Yea, a new player can EASILY get 400g to get ONE season…lol. Keep on trolling bro.
A. A new player has plenty of other things to do before having to “worry” about buying old season content.
B. You have no way of knowing how they will handle this at the end of a season. A “season pass” or bundle packages are very likely.
C. Even without bundling, they dont have to buy all steps at the same time. They can unlock them one at a time as they get the gems (using either gold, real money or a combination of the two).
This is a very positive thing – and of course people new to the game should have to pay for content above and beyond what was included when the game launched. Almost every game out there does this in the form of expansions or DLC packs (I think GW2’s way is much better than either of those as it offers the content “for free” to dedicated players).
I keep seeing people saying it’s a ‘stupid move’, ‘bad idea’, ‘will push new players away’, etc.
I have to ask all of you this question: How is it any different than telling them, they missed out on old content, and can NEVER do it, even if they want a specific reward only attainable via that content, just because they didn’t even know about the game at the time? This gives them the ability to play that ‘chapter’ if you will, for a nominal fee, instead of being completely screwed. And this doesn’t change anything for those that log in to do it. The stupid move would be if you had to pay just to play it at all. It’s a smart move from a business standpoint, and does NOT negatively affect us, the players, unless you wanted to keep a specific reward to yourself, so you can rub it in the face of new players, and go “Haha, see what you can’t get”
Give it a rest and give actual feedback worth a dime.
This new direction is brilliant. It creates permanent content. It allows for new players to experienced previous missed content. And (business wise) provides a new potential revenue stream. I’ve spend hundreds of dollars on Gems, and will keep doing so for years to come.
In GW2, Trading Post plays you!
I think it’s rather reasonable, considering the pricing of the other stuff you can see in the game.
Countless gems spent in keys or endless story key farming for a few BL weapons without an alternate method like 200-300 per skin or a 1600-2400 gem full set?
That’s bad.
500 gems for just a mere headgear that you can’t wear anytime because there’s no “outfit” head slot to mix and match head and body like with GW1’s costumes, so you have to continuously spend charges to just change your hat, or keep several transmuted headgear pieces in the inventory?
That’s bad.
800 gems for an armor skin set you can’t unlock permanently by, for example, paying 5 charge per skin instead one, so they become free to apply like AP and HM skins? That’s bad.
But 200 gems for unlocking something you missed? That’s actually cheap. That’s less than what cost getting an account upgrade or the Bonus Mission Pack in GW1, and you only have to pay if you could not login anytime within the entire duration of the story.
What’s more important is that you now will be able to get a friend to join the game, and they will be able to replay that content with you.
It’ll be even less of a problem if players could join as long as the ‘instance owner’ has the content, like with Magicka campaigns. I don’t know if every player will need to unlock it to enter, or if it’s there only to start.
Or if there was some special consumabe used as a token to unlock chapters, so you can gift it if your friend won’t pay.
In any case, they can always sell the entire campaign (a bundle of all chapters) like an expansion. Expansion and DLCs get sold all the time and people has gotten quite used to it. And it’ll be just for story and story rewards, shared maps would still be free, so they won’t be limiting people as much as with GW1’s campaigns.
Had to log in and comment because some of you are acting like spoiled lil brats. The game is FREE, you paid $60 for it, or less if you got it on sale, the devs give us new content and rewards every 2 weeks, new sets of achievements, bosses, what not. Then of course people find something to QQ about “plz anet less zerg mechanics, plz anet more organized content” so we get new Teq, 3 wurms in Bloodtide, we get updated world bosses, and you people cry “anet y u do dis, too hard to kill” For anti zerg mechanic we get a pavillion and you complain how its impossible, rewards aren’t good, bla bla. Then you want the Queensdale train to be removed, it gets removed, you cry about it.
Last year everyone complained how Liadri was extra difficult because of the dome, this year they listen to you people and remove the dome, are you happy? No!
‘anet y u do dis again, now these new people have it easy". And of course, the most recent one, we finally got rewards from past events, which personally made me really happy because I missed out on Gasmask skin and the Baloon, but for some reason, a lot of you want to be ’special snowflakes’ and think you deserve those rewards more than new players.
And now, to finally get to my point, players kept asking for living story to be replayable precisely for these reasons, because they missed out or they wanted to introduce their friends to it. And when we finally get the option to do so, you complain because you would “have to” pay for it. This doesn’t mean that you have to whip out your credit cards, if you already can’t take 5 sec of your day within 2 WEEK PERIOD to log in, just use those 20 gold that you can get in 2 days of dungeoning and buy it for yourself or your friend if you really care about it that much.
IMO, its an amazing change and I’m very excited about it. Plus to all the people who are complaining that they now cant invite their friends to play the game because they will either have to read walls of wiki, or use real money-you are so full of kitten. If this living story update never happened, how would your friends play then? You wouldn’t introduce them to the game because they missed out on LS so they might as well never play it? Please. It’s sickening how you ask for all these changes, and when they finally happen, you find ways to complain about it. If you don’t like it, don’t buy the super expensive im about to be bankrupt item for 200 gems and keep buying outfits for 800 gems like you always do. I agree when people say that Guild Wars 2 community is way better and helpful than other MMO’s, but some people are just so volatile and condescending that they ruin experiences for everyone, even themselves.
TL:RD If you hate all these FREE changes to one of the best MMO’s out there, go and play Wow, you can have your precious makeovers for only $25, new content every year or 2 for $60, subscription fees for $15 a month, and of course, so much replayable stories (aka quests that you anyways never read). Sorry for the long post and rage, but I’m sick of people crying about kitten just for the sake of crying about it. Good day.
You’re not a real dragon. You just look like one around the eyes.
#SkrittBackpacks
#SkrittBackpacks
I keep seeing people saying it’s a ‘stupid move’, ‘bad idea’, ‘will push new players away’, etc.
I have to ask all of you this question: How is it any different than telling them, they missed out on old content, and can NEVER do it, even if they want a specific reward only attainable via that content, just because they didn’t even know about the game at the time? This gives them the ability to play that ‘chapter’ if you will, for a nominal fee, instead of being completely screwed. And this doesn’t change anything for those that log in to do it. The stupid move would be if you had to pay just to play it at all. It’s a smart move from a business standpoint, and does NOT negatively affect us, the players, unless you wanted to keep a specific reward to yourself, so you can rub it in the face of new players, and go “Haha, see what you can’t get”
Give it a rest and give actual feedback worth a dime.
How about ‘Of course they can do it, just by clicking on something, no cost involved’?
My Life in Tyria: http://lankygw2blog.blogspot.com/
Updated every Monday
Updated every Monday
I keep seeing people saying it’s a ‘stupid move’, ‘bad idea’, ‘will push new players away’, etc.
I have to ask all of you this question: How is it any different than telling them, they missed out on old content, and can NEVER do it, even if they want a specific reward only attainable via that content, just because they didn’t even know about the game at the time? This gives them the ability to play that ‘chapter’ if you will, for a nominal fee, instead of being completely screwed. And this doesn’t change anything for those that log in to do it. The stupid move would be if you had to pay just to play it at all. It’s a smart move from a business standpoint, and does NOT negatively affect us, the players, unless you wanted to keep a specific reward to yourself, so you can rub it in the face of new players, and go “Haha, see what you can’t get”
Give it a rest and give actual feedback worth a dime.
How about ‘Of course they can do it, just by clicking on something, no cost involved’?
So…clicking the log in button during the story with no cost involved?
How does a new player get $60 worth of gold? That’s what I thought. Don’t be facetious.
Where do you even get the numbers from?
You are assuming that:
1: People would buy every single episode.
2: People would buy every single episode on their own.
3: ArenaNet won’t release a package at the end of a season at a reduced price.The numbers are freely available(calculate them based upon S1 # of chapters and 200 gem cost per chapter).
If you’re a new player, then yes, you’re going to purchase the full season. The only people purchasing individual episodes will be people who missed a couple or people who want the reward from them. ANet will likely release a packaged season, but don’t expect it to be much cheaper(see: their “sales” on gem store items).
I am not so sure. I can see someone like me whos all for the story to buy them sure and do so happily btw! but for the majority of the people who just want content to play and dont care much about the story it will likely not be as much an issue as you imagine.
Think about it. Lets assume you buy Gw2 on day one of S3. You need to get to 80 and thats gonna take you a month. That means you’re already at Episode 5 of S3 by the time you need to worry about the living story and have 4 free episodes to experience. (this is assuming you do nothing else like engage in PvP or WvW or do JPs or start another Alt etc…) Its going to take you another couple of weeks to enjoy the first 4 episodes you have stashed which means we’d already be at episode 6 by the time the new player catches up. Now if what they care mostly is to play content why would they need to buy S2? Not saying none of them will maybe S2 Episodes 10 had this nifty backpack that I really need to have for my character and I buy that one sure but do I really need all of it if story isnt my main thing ?
At the end of the day whats cool about this is none of these are necessary to progress and stuff. None of the story is kept secret so you cant know about it. IF they keep the same pattern of S1 most releases are connected at arms length and you’re able to enjoy them even if you didnt experience all the previous episodes in the same season.
You’re going to buy them if you want to buy them and if you want to buy them then naturally they’re worth the price. so again why should it be a problem?
I keep seeing people saying it’s a ‘stupid move’, ‘bad idea’, ‘will push new players away’, etc.
I have to ask all of you this question: How is it any different than telling them, they missed out on old content, and can NEVER do it, even if they want a specific reward only attainable via that content, just because they didn’t even know about the game at the time? This gives them the ability to play that ‘chapter’ if you will, for a nominal fee, instead of being completely screwed. And this doesn’t change anything for those that log in to do it. The stupid move would be if you had to pay just to play it at all. It’s a smart move from a business standpoint, and does NOT negatively affect us, the players, unless you wanted to keep a specific reward to yourself, so you can rub it in the face of new players, and go “Haha, see what you can’t get”
Give it a rest and give actual feedback worth a dime.
How about ‘Of course they can do it, just by clicking on something, no cost involved’?
So…clicking the log in button during the story with no cost involved?
Or, it still being clickable after it’s over for some who missed it.
My Life in Tyria: http://lankygw2blog.blogspot.com/
Updated every Monday
Updated every Monday
How does a new player get $60 worth of gold? That’s what I thought. Don’t be facetious.
Where do you even get the numbers from?
You are assuming that:
1: People would buy every single episode.
2: People would buy every single episode on their own.
3: ArenaNet won’t release a package at the end of a season at a reduced price.The numbers are freely available(calculate them based upon S1 # of chapters and 200 gem cost per chapter).
If you’re a new player, then yes, you’re going to purchase the full season. The only people purchasing individual episodes will be people who missed a couple or people who want the reward from them. ANet will likely release a packaged season, but don’t expect it to be much cheaper(see: their “sales” on gem store items).
So as a new player you’ll have a full expansion pack you could buy just starting the game, or you could play the original game first and use the gold saved to get it free. Either way, there will be an entire season of content available to you at a price.
Also this content will likely be tailored to you or a small group experience. Who pays for that? Who pays for the devs that sit down and rescale all this content so it works for you? Paying for it is perfectly acceptable and cold hard cash is only one of 3 options here.
People that play actively don’t “pay” for it, so I don’t see what you’re getting at. The only people losing here are new players and people who don’t log in every 2 weeks.
shrug
What are they loosing exactly? as is right now they’d simply loose the chance of experiancing the content and there would be nothing they can do about it.
With this they have an option to buy it at least.
They’re not really loosing, they’re actually gaining an option to do something about it!
I keep seeing people saying it’s a ‘stupid move’, ‘bad idea’, ‘will push new players away’, etc.
I have to ask all of you this question: How is it any different than telling them, they missed out on old content, and can NEVER do it, even if they want a specific reward only attainable via that content, just because they didn’t even know about the game at the time? This gives them the ability to play that ‘chapter’ if you will, for a nominal fee, instead of being completely screwed. And this doesn’t change anything for those that log in to do it. The stupid move would be if you had to pay just to play it at all. It’s a smart move from a business standpoint, and does NOT negatively affect us, the players, unless you wanted to keep a specific reward to yourself, so you can rub it in the face of new players, and go “Haha, see what you can’t get”
Give it a rest and give actual feedback worth a dime.
How about ‘Of course they can do it, just by clicking on something, no cost involved’?
So…clicking the log in button during the story with no cost involved?
Or, it still being clickable after it’s over for some who missed it.
You have to pay for past content you missed in every other pay model MMO released.
I’m sorry Anet, but I can’t afford your game anymore.
if you have the free time to make this post, you will very likely have the free time to unlock the living story episodes
Plenty of people are NEW to the game…do you expect them to shell out $100+ once S1 becomes available(and S2 as well depending on when they join in)?
Lets be clear: this isn’t an expansion. This is content that was temporary that is basically being made into DLC, albeit “hidden” DLC. When someone buys the game they won’t see any expansions listed, but upon logging in…they’ll find that they “need” to get S1 + S2 etc. to get caught up. ANet is already giving out the chapters if people log during the 2 week window: why not just do it outright and save the headache for new players?
And yet 500,000 or 1,000,000 or however many people it is just bought the game and didn’t feel the ‘need to get S1…’ to get caught up. Jus’ sayin’……..
People will complain about anything and everything these days…
I don’t necessarily mind paying for content as a general concept, but it does seem kind of weird that new players will be ‘punished’ more and more as time goes on relative to older ones. Surely they have something else in mind for dealing with that. It kinda seems like it would make more sense to just make some story content free for all players and some paid for all players.
Regardless, on the on whole this is a vast improvement over the current system and is almost exactly what I’ve suggested in the past, and I’m happy to provide Arenanet with more money if it turns around into more high quality content.
(edited by Einlanzer.1627)
How does a new player get $60 worth of gold? That’s what I thought. Don’t be facetious.
Where do you even get the numbers from?
You are assuming that:
1: People would buy every single episode.
2: People would buy every single episode on their own.
3: ArenaNet won’t release a package at the end of a season at a reduced price.The numbers are freely available(calculate them based upon S1 # of chapters and 200 gem cost per chapter).
If you’re a new player, then yes, you’re going to purchase the full season. The only people purchasing individual episodes will be people who missed a couple or people who want the reward from them. ANet will likely release a packaged season, but don’t expect it to be much cheaper(see: their “sales” on gem store items).
So as a new player you’ll have a full expansion pack you could buy just starting the game, or you could play the original game first and use the gold saved to get it free. Either way, there will be an entire season of content available to you at a price.
Also this content will likely be tailored to you or a small group experience. Who pays for that? Who pays for the devs that sit down and rescale all this content so it works for you? Paying for it is perfectly acceptable and cold hard cash is only one of 3 options here.
People that play actively don’t “pay” for it, so I don’t see what you’re getting at. The only people losing here are new players and people who don’t log in every 2 weeks.
shrug
What are they loosing exactly? as is right now they’d simply loose the chance of experiancing the content and there would be nothing they can do about it.
With this they have an option to buy it at least.
They’re not really loosing, they’re actually gaining an option to do something about it!
I hate to correct people’s spelling, but you’ve spelled “losing” wrong multiple times. It’s bothersome. lol.
It’s a lot like watching television in that you can watch (and record) an episode for free when it airs. If you miss it, you can buy the episode off iTunes later. Does that make sense?
I feel this is fine, and 200 gems is not a lot, it is an annoying amount in that you can’t actually buy 200 gems with real money directly, or as I recall any multiple of 200 below the 4000 gems pack. But with the currency conversion it shouldn’t be that big of a deal.
In general I think this is a very reasonable business model.
Edit: the only question I really have is whether there will be deals at later date, like say when season 3 is in full swing to buy the entirety of season 2 at a discounted price. Also what is the expected “retail” price for a past season? Mainly asking because if someday season 1 is added, does that mean I would have to buy that content or is it smart enough to know I was actually there.
And for me personally, the most important thing: where does SAB fall into this, is it a festival or living world or its own thing?
(edited by Crise.9401)
I still don’t get why a new player jumping in in the middle of season 2 is being punished. It much like the TV analogy given earlier. If you started watching, say Game of Thrones because it happened to be on when you were switching through channels, heard about it from friends, in the middle of say season 3. We’ll you’ve missed Seasons 1 & 2. You shouldn’t be given the boxed DVDs of past seasons for free, just because you didn’t watch them. No if you enjoyed the last half of season 3, you’d be inclined to spend the $75 for the DVDs of Season 1 and after watching that, buy the DVDS for season 2. But wait! While you were getting caught up on Seasons 1 and 2, assuming you didn’t marathon them, season 4 has started. But you didn’t get to see the first half of season 3. And it’s not available on DVD yet! OH NO! But wait!! You can buy each episode of season 3 for $2.50!? AND the episodes of season 4 for the same price!? Praise the six!!! I don’t need to drop a bunch of money at once to have access to EVERY EPISODE!!!. Whats that? I get a free DVD copy of the newest episodes for just turning on my TV!? GOLLY GEE!!! THAT SURE IS SWELL!!
New players coming in will have no idea of whats going on yes. BUT they are not obligated to to buy anything. If they jump in with the story, find they like it, they have the option of buying each episode for a small price, they can start with an episode or 2, and if they like it, they can buy more with RL cash money, or by converting gold. It won’t turn away new players. In fact if they are coming from other games with expansion models, its just the next logical step after buying the game initially. IT’s something they are already familiar with and half expect from the start.
“You know what the chain of command is?
It’s the chain I beat you with until you
recognize my command!”
It’s the chain I beat you with until you
recognize my command!”
It’s a lot like watching television in that you can watch (and record) an episode for free when it airs. If you miss it, you can buy the episode off iTunes later. Does that make sense?
I feel this is fine, and 200 gems is not a lot, it is an annoying amount in that you can’t actually buy 200 gems with real money directly, or as I recall any multiple of 200 below the 4000 gems pack. But with the currency conversion it shouldn’t be that big of a deal.
In general I think this is a very reasonable business model.
Pretty sure you can buy 800 for 10 dollars or euros. That would be a multiple of 200 (200 × 4 = 800).
Also, and not related to the quote above, it’s funny people are commenting on how new players or others would have to buy Season One if and when it became available, when there were sooo many comments on how worthless it was. Why would people ‘need’ or even want to buy something deemed so worthless? Just seems amusing to me.