Guild Wars 2

which is $45 in today’s dollar value, not that far off from HoT’s $50

I’ve said in my other post that I’ve never agreed with the economical arguments that “you could have done something better, so you lost ‘x’ amount”. That sort of envious deficit thinking leads to jealousy (and jealous whining), in my opinion. So I don’t care that new players get a $10+ value in the base game free. I’ve gotten free hats, boosts, living story updates that can’t even be played anymore (yet) just for playing the game since launch that they will never have. And for playing the game and getting achievement points, a few of the rewards included gems, essentially paying me back for playing. My account is worth more and worth far more to me than what I’ve paid money into it. I’m sorry you don’t feel the same way about your account.

I believed them when they said “buy the game and that’s it”, too. That’s what my last sentence in the initial post was about, but unlike you, I don’t blame them for changing their minds. Circumstances change and nothing lasts forever. I also said in my other post that I’m guessing that it will be added to the gem store (just like the deluxe edition of the base game), which may mean it can be earned through trading gold for gems and keep their original statement true.

Not all “whole new game”s have as many ways to play as GW2. It’s like calculating the area of a circle then seeing how much more radius you get if you apply the same area to the outside of the circumference. Even though you’ve doubled the area (same amount of work to make), you aren’t getting getting double the radius (progress in one direction). So even if they took as much time to make this expansion as it took to make the base game (excluding developing the UI and engine), there still would be this perception of “it’s not enough for the price”.

I disagree when some of the arguments, both here and on reddit, have been about what you get for $50 of game. My point is that $50 now is not worth the same as $50 then. It seems that people were looking for a $30-$40 expansion price, which is not consistent with GW1 pricing.

Is the expansion a good value?

Given that they’re making content across such a disparate player base, trying to keep explorers, crafters, pvp-ers, story experiencers, etc. happy, I think it will be. I think as much as players tout the game’s versatility to others as a selling point, they’ve forgotten (or don’t care) how much development resources it takes to go in any one direction, let alone all the directions.

Will there be lots of new content? Probably. Will there a whole lot of content for how I play? Probably not. Is it easy to try a different branch of content? Yes.

The only other way I can think of how they could have done this is by making a pvp specific expansion or an exploration specific expansion or a living story based expansion, etc. which would displease the players who enjoy the different modes of play by ‘favoring’ one playstyle over the other. Or, if the other playstyles got updates while the expansion halted progress for a major update for a specific playstyle, there would be more grief about having to pay for it while the others get theirs free.

I will say that I think the game needed an expansion if for no other reason than to drum up excitement and press under a unified title. Living story updates were not doing that. Large balance updates were not doing that. There’s a small corner of my brain that protests that all the stuff in the expansion was probably going to be in the game without paying for an expansion, but if this helps keep the game population healthy and not stale, then the price is comparatively small.

I think a lot of the arguments about the pricing are forgetting to take inflation into account. Spending the same amount of money, even 5-10 years ago is not the value it would have today. Based on the numbers I’ve seen others throw around, for 2006 (nightfall and factions) $50 is 2015’s $58.68 () – full game, full game price. For 2007 (Eye of the north) $40 is 2015’s $45.64 – not that far off from Heart of Thorn’s price.

I’m also guessing that the expansion might end up like the first deluxe upgrade and also be put directly into the gem store for an equivalent amount of gems so you can “purchase” the base expansion by trading gold for gems rather than giving Anet money directly. If this is the case, it would be the boon to vets that many feel is missing and likely why the base expansion won’t come with an extra character slot; it may not be announced yet to keep the gem market from going haywire as players scramble to farm and horde in preparation.

I’ve never agreed with the economical arguments that “you could have done something better, so you lost ‘x’ amount”. That sort of envious deficit thinking leads to jealousy (and jealous whining), in my opinion. New players are getting the game and everything that comes with it. I don’t think people who paid for the game with one of the sales weeks ago have been ripped off by this announcement – they have been playing the game for a while now.

Cosmetic digital stuff with preorder/prepurchase is nothing new. It’s a shame they’re cutting corners by not having a box set with physical goodies, but it also focuses sales directly to them which means a greater share of profit – I’ve always read that box sales generate only a sliver of revenue to the developer.

Will I get it? Likely not as a prepurchase as I don’t particularly care about a title and beta access, but I will probably get it closer to launch, when I know I will need to if I want access to the new areas.

It’d be interesting if, like the Silverwastes, it was able to be overrun due to guild inactivity thus forcing the guild to reclaim it.

I have a feeling that the only way they are going to break Ele builds’ favoring of Arcana is to make part of the 3 and 5 point traits in each element give attunement recharge reduction for that element and have the Arcana profession recharge rate reduction points still count for all the elements, but not as much reduction as putting that many points in an individual element. You would still be able to flip to non-specialized elements for their utility, but not as often as the ones you favor, and with the number of points that max level characters get it would be impossible to favor only one element.

Lingering Elements represents a blending of attunements and is correctly placed as an Arcana trait. However, Elemental Attunement and Evasive Arcana are so favored, I would recommend splitting them up as part of the 3 and 5 point trait respectfully for each element with the 3 point one giving the boon for that element to yourself only (in addition to the current trait) and the elemental dodge spell at 5 points substituting for the “do more damage when…” trait at that level eles now have. They can move Elemental Contingency down to master level and perhaps have the full Elemental Attunement trait as a grandmaster trait. That would leave them only one grandmaster trait to fill in Arcana, not a huge change. It would be interesting to see the “do more damage when…” traits get condensed to a single grandmaster trait of doing more damage for each condition on the target…

The problem is that doing both of these would complicate the simple one line minor traits that eles currently have. But, no one ever said elementalist isn’t a complicated profession.

I posted this problem on the bug forum because I noticed it as well on my staff ele. The post was summarily buried and ignored.

evilkittenofdoom.7983:

I am running the following, using a Staff. It’s a Healer/Support focused build, exceptionally good at removing Conditions and providing a steady stream of buffs and healing.

I use a build very similar to that post’s, but I double down on regen and glyphs.

0/20/0/30/20 (while gearing up, it was 20 in water, 30 in arcane for Evasive Arcana)
—Quick glyphs, Inscription, Soothing Wave (Arcane Abatement for jumping puzzles), Cleansing Wave, Cleansing Water, Blasting Staff, Elemental Attunement)
—Full Cleric gear, Sapphire jewels, Runes of Dwayna, Sigil of Renewal – some Magi gear would not go amiss either if you don’t want to over stack toughness
—I run all the glyphs, except Glyph of Renewal unless I’m soloing an event with a lot of downed npc’s – its casting time and bugginess discourages me from considering it any more than that situational.

This build hands out regen and condi removal like candy at halloween. Max’d healing power means that if they don’t burst you down – which cleric’s toughness helps with – then staff’s kiting, juggling, and healing abilities will let the regen get you back to full in no time. It’s also great for stacking boons in attunements other than water.

Glyph of Elemental Power’s stun break helps keep me on my feet and is basically an instant cast boon generator. Glyph of Storms I like using better than Fire 5 because I can use it while running, and the elementals are walking condi generators on autopilot.

I’ve soloed champions and several group events on this build, though it takes a while even with what power cleric’s gear has and the damage buff from Bountiful Power. I would love to have 10 more skill points to get Arcane 30 and Evasive Arcana back, but with all the condi’s flying around right now, I feel that Cleansing Water is more important – and I like the completeness of having as much healing power as I can stack.

I was thinking something similar. I know several friends that left the game and are hesitant to come back because they cannot experience the earlier chapters of the living story and don’t want to join the content midstream. What I think they should do is implement something like Norn spirit traveling to different parts of the past living story. They could even make it so that you could only access the parts that were available at this time in previous years, so that at minimum it would take a year to fully catch up – giving people time to experience the stuff currently out now as well as catch up. NPC allies are a good idea though, for the zerg content. I think people would still do that stuff, even if it didn’t garner any bonus chests or had fewer achievement points associated with it than doing it when it released.

The regeneration from the rune set works on heal skill cast, but it does not proc the condition remover Cleansing Water (Ele Water XI).

The only stance that works is water stance, which Inscription (Ele Air VIII) grants the regen. I also feel that the regen timers aren’t stacking properly, but I don’t know that for sure.

I think they should instance the previous living world stuff under something like Norn spirit quests; we’ve had lots of Asura stuff already. I know several people who are reluctant to pick up the game again because they can’t catch up with the living story – I would also enjoy ‘going back’ to get some of the stuff I couldn’t get during my intermittent play. They can just have it give the achievement and not any other bonus chests to make it fair to the people who did it at the time it came out.

Instancing it would take some time, so it would make sense that you couldn’t do the stuff that just got finished, so that would provide some incentive to do the stuff currently out while you’re catching up on the stuff you missed. Instancing the past events will also help deter people ‘living in the past’ and keep players mostly in the present zones. Some challenges will be also downscaling some of the group events to handle a single group of 5 instead of waiting for a zerg group (like the current marionette and worm events).