recently i’ve tried to convince some people to check out gw2 and while they were surprised they could get the core game for free when purchasing the expansion (not f2p with the limitations) they were reluctant when i told them they had to buy the living world seasons seperately as they obviously weren’t around.
therefore i would suggest lowering the price of those with time. like any dlc from other games drops in price over time the older living story seasons should see a price drop. i thought about the whole thing and indeed those seasons might be a reason for somebody to not decide playing guild wars because of fractured content that has to be bought seperately. however, i do like the system very much as it is, it’s very generous anyway but i would like to see some more incentives for players to actually purchase them as new players when the seasons are already a bit … well .. seasoned
that could be something like a price drop of 20%-30% once a new season is released or finished (f.e. season 3 would make season 2 cheaper) until they at some point fade out into being very cheap in a distant future (f.e. 4 years from now season 2 would cost pennies). that thought came to me when i realized that over time as more seasons are released the price for the complete package goes up and up. perhaps in a few years (and i hope very much gw2 is still thriving in a few years) it might already cost quite a sum. this depends on how pricing is done with the new expansions but an example:
4 years from now, expansion every 2 years, expansions have to be bought and every expansion gives the core game for free (i don’t expect anet to make a previous expansion f2p once a new one is released), perhaps with a slight price drop on the previous expansion:
HoT, let’s say 25$
expansion 2, let’s say 35$
newest expansion 50$
season 2: 18$
season 3: 18$
season 4: 18$
season 5: 18$
that would accumulate to 164$ if would want the whole package at once.
i could see how that could discourage somebody from wanting to start the game late into it’s life cycle.
while a cumulative price drop on the seasons and bundle deals with the expansions (“buy the new expansion now and get the last season for free”) wouldn’t cut that much into what anet could earn from them (let’s be honest, most people playing get them for free and at least in my assumption the amount of veterans is far larger than that of new people) but portray a picture (i don’t wanna say give the illusion) of the game being slightly less heavy priced when we consider future releases.
f.e. with a price drop of 20% per new season when season 5 is released the prices would look like that:
season 4: 14.4$ (instead of 18)
season 3: 11.5$
season 2: 9.2$
with 30%:
season 4: 12.6$
season 3: 8.8$
season 2: 6.1$
while this would still accumulate to 145$ (or 138$ @ 30%) and the overall price drop for the whole package would be around 10-15% the individual price of the seasons in the gemstore would be much more inviting to purchase them and may convince new players to actually go for older seasons which might not be as relevant any more.
it’s just an idea i had, what do you think of it? pls discuss.