Double Wrong. If the old GW2 is worthless then Anet should just give it away for free to everyone. No charge.
The point is new players get both HOT and the old GW2 Including 4 character slots.
Looks like Anet cares more for the new blood than the people that got them where they are. The proof is in the outrage in this forum and no replay by Anet.
They’re not going to give away free versions of the base game because it will be abused by gold farmers and people who want to farm login/daily rewards- it’s also pretty much worthless as an expansion to your existing account unless you really like being poor, underleveled, and having literally none of the QoL stuff that accrues as you play the game. In order to prevent a massive amount of disposable new accounts, they have gated them behind purchases of HoT and removed all non-HoT accounts from the equation.
This whole situation has become like the video game version of the Friend Zone. So many people angry that a company that created a product that they love has the audacity to want to expand its consumer base in order to, you know, cover their expenses and continue turning out the product that they love. But unless the players get exactly what they want, based on what they perceive others to be getting, the product that they claim to love becomes utterly disposable.
Your point about consoles bundled with free games is moot because you can trade those free games back to the store for cash or store credit, our “free version of the game” gets blasted into oblivion, we get no serial code, no nothing, we just get HoT so we effectively pay $10 more than new players.
Except there are people who buy the console without any free games, and air cannot be taken back for store credit. Like, all of my points stand. Companies do this sort of thing all the time, for a number of reasons, and it is absolutely not discriminatory, nor are early adopters owed anything.
I literally get less for my money as an existing player than a new player would get for the same money. how is that not discriminating?
if I could get both, then it wouldn’t be. but I don’t. I only get the Expansion, while a new player gets both.
It’s because you already have the game and the version of the game you have is now obsolete. You have played it and enjoyed it (probably) for months if not years. Do you freak out about consignment stores? Consoles bundled with free games? Paperbacks? Movie series that are packaged together for less than it would cost to buy each one separately? If you bought the game at launch, you were an early adopter and early adopters almost always pay more for the privilege of having the thing first (“early adopter tax”).
Seriously- I totally get not wanting to pre-purchase until Anet gives us more information, and the lack of character slot is shady, but I’m starting to wonder if there’s a huge population of people who have never participated in capitalism before. Stuff like this is literally an every day occurrence.
why can’t those of use who have the game get another copy, to share, or use as an alt?
Because the idea is to eliminate the base game altogether- if you took the base game component and kept he HoT upgrade, then your friend with the base game would be locked out of the HoT stuff until they bought HoT, which includes another copy of the base game… Other games make new players buy the base game + the expansion. Anet isn’t.
And it’s not discrimination against anyone, not anymore than any product eventually going on sale or a deep discount. Which, again, not at all.
HoT Price Feedback + Base game included [merged]
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Batelle.1680
Veteran players have gotten almost three years of game time and free updates that new players will never have/experience (unless they pay for the Living Story stuff). If you think all that is worthless, then I’m not sure why you care about HoT in the first place.
HoT Price Feedback + Base game included [merged]
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Batelle.1680
I never said they should go over the limit. What i am asking is the content they advertised worth the pricetag of the original content-filled game or not. Am still waiting for someone to make the list i asked for to clear things up for me.
Which is, again, not something you can do when it comes to an MMO. You’re being willfully ignorant of the fact that the original game was an investment, one that required seriously undervaluing the work they had done in the hopes that enough people would buy in and continue to support it through incidental purchases.
The fact that they’re not undervaluing HoT the way the undervalued the base games means that no comparison can be made between price and content. Instead, you have to look at what you have been given before versus what you paid, and wait until you have been given enough information to judge HoT’s content on its own merits, divorced from expectations raised by an undervalued base game, and decide for yourself whether HoT is worth $50.
(and, don’t get me wrong, it’s fair to not pre-purchase the game right now because they haven’t listed all of the features…I’m just more concerned with the idea that we are expecting Anet to basically give their work away for free)
HoT Price Feedback + Base game included [merged]
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Batelle.1680
Anyone who is holding this up against the game’s original content is being patently unfair. Games have a price point- you can’t charge $300 for a video game even if it would take a player hundreds of hours to explore everywhere and do everything. This is why there are limitations to the size of single player games, even if they are open world (or “open world”). The dev understands the price point of their game, and develops a content budget from there.
MMOs are different because they have to front load their content without scaring off potential customers/subscribers with a massive price tag for the main game. So they sell the game for the same price as a single player game and count on subscriptions or cash shops to eventually cover the costs of development and to make their initial investment of content profitable. Basically everyone who bought GW2 got one hell of a deal on the original game considering the amount of content it has and the lack of subscription fee.
As for the cost of the HoT- even if it took less time to develop the content for it and even though it won’t have as much content as the base game, it should not be devalued by that metric alone. The base game was a gamble for Anet and I’m guessing that they want HoT to pay for itself (as a unit of content they feel is comparable to an average video game) so that they can continue doing free content updates and being supported by the gem store.
Finally- I would ask a dev about beta character slots before I assume that there’s not going to be a slot added with the basic HoT purchase. I have a beta slot added already (in addition to the slot I purchased)- if they plan on letting us keep that character once the game goes live, then all the rending of garments and assertions of being slapped in the face on that front are a mite melodramatic.
(edited by Batelle.1680)
HoT Price Feedback + Base game included [merged]
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Batelle.1680
Core game is a free bonus to a set Heart of Thorns price to incentivize new players to get the game and not have them pay double.
Your post is pointless.
Nobody misses you. Go away.
…while ignoring existing players…..
Ain’t you an Entitled Ethan?
how hard is it to make another purchase option of “xpac only edition” at slightly lower price?
Very hard, because they are valuing HoT at $50.
Anet posted on reddit that they will offer a HoT upgrade for players who just bought the base game. I don’t know what the parameters on those orders are, but it’s something they are doing.
HoT Price Feedback + Base game included [merged]
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Batelle.1680
Or, it could be that the expansion itself is $50, but in an attempt to attract new players the core game comes ‘free’ to them if they bought the expansion at the same price as the rest of us.
It’s a common marketing and economic tactic that works wonders, not a single quality MMO hasn’t done something like this before.
Do you believe the expansion is worth $50 though? Not to dismiss the work ANet put into it, but from everything we’ve seen it’s a mini expansion, it doesn’t offer nearly as much that every other quality MMO’s expansion does at this price point. The only thing that could justify this price is if the core game was bundled in with it at a 50%~75% discount or if ANet has been really coy and is actually including an entire continent in HoT to surprise us with.
I hope it’s the latter, because if it’s the former I have to really wonder if we’re going to be saddled with an extra account every time an expansion comes out.
We don’t know what the long term plans are for the Heart of Thorns- will there be content added after the initial release (the way its been added to the base game)? I mean, even if it is a “mini” expansion, there’s still been a lot of new stuff created for the game (a new pvp map, new wvw maps, guild halls, a new 3-in-1 zone, new mode of travel, a new class, a new trait system, and new specializations for all existing classes). It might not be the same size as another MMO expansion pack, but Anet has also expected us to pay a lot less for the amount of content they’ve give us, and plan to keep giving us. If this was SWTOR, I would never pay $50 for an EP because I’ve already thrown hundreds of dollars at them in subscriptions (never mind the base game cost). With GW2 it’s different, simply because the return of my initial investment has been so high that I don’t think that them asking $50 for a substantial amount of new content (that might beget more “free” content) is that out of line.
The EP is $50, and people who pre-purchase it get the base game for free. It’s a marketing ploy to attract new players and it’s only a rip-off if you consider the three years of game time, temporary story and event content, and free living story content to be < the price you paid for the game originally.
Sounds immersion breaking. Monsters loosing health while no player in sight?
Oh my god, really? You can just pretend they ate something that disagreed with them, or are getting beat up by a ghost. Also, it’s not like this is a setting in which characters go invisible at will…oh wait, it super is.
Yeah, I just had a pug vs pug match that was 2 rangers, a thief, an elementalist, and a guardian versus three thieves and two guardians. The guardians both quit pretty about 45 seconds in and some of my team basically camped their respawn to more efficiently kill the remaining thieves.
The final score was 500 to 36. Horrible matchmaking caused people to quit the match, which lead to a pretty bad display of sportsmanship, and a blow-out. If I was on that team, and I was new to PvP, I would probably never come back.
I can understand full team going unraked being a problem, and not even then. New team, new players in the same guild, new classes.. every of these is a good enough reason to go unraked as a team. Just as trying out pvp is best done in hotjoin where, for the most part, it shouldn’t matter who wins.
Also, 5 man team, 2 of them working toward common goals. That makes your 5 man team still thinking it’s just everyone for him/herself?! It’s team play. It’s less the duo’s “fault” for smacking your behinds as it’s your own team’s fault for headless chicken’ing there or everywhere.Admitedly, toys are a poor choice for this type of pvp (there’s plenty pve content in WvW). But other than that, I actually don’t see a problem. There are teams that are good yes, and they have very little reason for going unraked, unless they met some much better teams in ranked and want to blow off some steam – making the unraked match incredibly difficult. But these are actually rare ocassions and I’d call them opportunities to improve one’s play-style, to get closer to how ranked it.
Remove the hammer, trebs and guild lords from the maps. Done. Rest relies on personal skill and ability to play as a team member, not a yolo artist.
Except teams will always have an advantage, especially if they’ve worked together before and go into the map with a game plan, one that has been honed over countless matches. This weekend I was up against the same pre-made several times and I about lost it when two of the players were both touting dragon finishers. One of them had more PvP experience than my collective pug- even efforts to coordinate failed in the face of a group that familiar with the map and each other, one that could anticipate most moves and cut us off. If they couldn’t cut us off, they were able to coordinate on the fly much more effectively.
Either Anet should separate solo queue from team queue, or they should stop pretending that it’s “an even playing field for everyone!” because it’s absolutely not.
2 people at the skyhammer canon? Ignore them, win the 5v3?
It’s not 5v3, though. It’s 5v3.75 + the Skyhammer (which is a pretty huge advantage, not only for the ability to make decapping incredibly difficult, but also because you can see almost everything going on below, and can thus prioritize targets for your team on the ground).
How would this even work? Would it be majority rule? If so, I could see it getting abused by pre-mades using it to get the map they want.
I mean, I hate Spirit Watch and Foefire as much as a lot of people hate Skyhammer and Courtyard, but I’m not a child and I can suck it up and do my best even if it’s more of a chore, it’s still just five minutes (~10, with queue time). If that ceases to be the case, I would rather save my time by walking away from PvP altogether rather than support a feature that could very well deny those who do enjoy more unpopular maps from ever getting to play on them.
I really like the Silverwastes, and the meta events work perfectly for my play style (I love doing pre-events for world bosses, simply because it feels more organic than “show up and press 1 for three minutes until loot falls out”. The fights themselves are kind of repetitive, but I think the area itself is gorgeous. Dry Top is, too, and I enjoy the music in both places. I just wish Dry Top was a skosh easier to navigate.
For base game zones, it’s hard to choose one. Plains of Ashford, Diessa Plateau, and Blazeridge Steppes all have their charm. I kind of love how they handle the transitions between the different micro-environments (like normal and haunted, or normal and branded).
Now you’re just making me want to check it out.
It’s kind of creepy- just a bunch of people in their underwear flailing around an island covered with crows, rats, and dying quaggan.
Premade is an organized group?
When you join Unranked there are no premade groups right?
Or is it?
No, there are pre-mades in unranked, too. It’s not always a five person group, some “pre-made” teams are 2, 3, or 4 people grouped plus solo pugs to fill out their number.
OK.. didnt know that, but issnt premade for ranked?
Then whats the difference between unranked(solo arena.. but can be a team also..) and ranked (team)?
No- you can solo q in ranked or unranked. If I understand it correctly, unranked earns you rewards and levels your PvP rank while ranked also counts towards your standing amongst all players who participate in ranked PvP (the leaderboard). So if you were a ranked player and wanted to try out a new build or group with some guildies who had never played PvP before, you could q unranked and not have to worry about impacting your overall rank.
Premade is an organized group?
When you join Unranked there are no premade groups right?
Or is it?
No, there are pre-mades in unranked, too. It’s not always a five person group, some “pre-made” teams are 2, 3, or 4 people grouped plus solo pugs to fill out their number.
There should be a heart event in every starter area that requires familiarizing oneself with combos. The issue is that not every profession has equal access to elemental fields and/or finishers, and what is available is dependent on weapon sets and/or skill slots, so it would have to either be one of those “pick up this standardized weapons and do the thing” or it would become hopelessly complex. But it should definitely exist in some form beyond an easily ignored pop-up.
I think it’s because people are bored, and frustrated, so they act more frustrated. It’ll change when the expansion hits.
It’s exactly this.
I speak for myself when I say that the reason behind my negativity is the “communication” policy. I wouldn’t care so much about lack of content if the devs actually spoke to us about minor topics/updates/what’s being worked on and such.
I’ve seen more open communication policies bite developers in the kitten , though, and be just as harmful to the community. Players tend to latch onto even the smallest morsels and build them up, even without context and with caveats from the devs saying “this is a work in progress, all things are subject to change”. Then, when content does come out that doesn’t match the sky-high expectations players have built up from their endless speculation, they attack the devs for all sorts of things (from being lazy to lying). It’s frustrating not knowing what’s happening behind the curtain, so to speak, but I can’t blame the devs for not wanting to share anything until it’s as close to final as it can possibly be.
I was pretty ambivalent about the pre-made issue, mainly because I have benefited a great deal from being the novice spare on a pre-made team of players much, much better than myself. I’ve learned a lot from those experiences, which is valuable in its way.
But kitten if it’s mostly profoundly unfun to be up against those squads, especially on maps that benefit a lot from communication and familiarity with each other (and, given the limited number of maps, more than likely well-established strategies coming into the fight). The rewards aren’t awesome enough that I’ll PvP just to be offed over and over again by a coordinated zerg of players with matching guild tags (and finishers well above my rank), and anyone who reads the team chat for the ragtag-misfits teams on the receiving end of such lopsided beatings can see that a lot of solo players feel the same way.
This is an excellent idea, and I have no idea why there would be an issue with it from a gameplay standpoint. It would also alleviate some of the common complaints people have about gear variety for certain armor tiers.
I’m Terrible At Video Games, and especially bad at jumping puzzles. So my favorite moment in GW2 was the first time I finished the Mad King’s Clock Tower. Even if I had never beat it, I really enjoyed the tens of hours I spent trying, so it would still be a standout memory.
Plus it takes a slot away from another non-fractal daily task for players who don’t do fractals, PvP or WvW. Unless I decide to jump into fractals today (unlikely), I won’t be completing my dailies.
Language barriers are a way of life, though. We don’t have an official world language, as much as English speakers seem to think otherwise, and it’s really assholish to expect other people to speak your language for your own comfort.
And I don’t even know why this would be an issue? If servers are being merged, then there’s going to be more people around from everywhere. Right now, people are not able to group or do certain events because of a lack of players. If you refuse server merging on the grounds that there will be too many people you don’t understand, you’re also throwing out all the extra players who do speak your language, and that could, you know, group with you and help do events.
I find it quite disheartening that we’ve not heard anything yet, one way or another. I’m hoping it’s Thanksgiving that’s causing the delay, and that it’s not just them hoping we forget. I was starting to feel a little disillusioned about the game when the event started, and I think that this has completely tanked my love for it.
1. Couldn’t finish due to server lag and disconnects.
2. Couldn’t finish due to server crash.
3. Couldn’t finish due to new build.
On the plus side, I did the DE there at the camp next to the main event in order to free up the waypoint, so at least I got some (worthless) XP, karma and a shiny silver to keep me warm at night.
Just got stomped out again by a new build. Anyone still in?
Game crashed. I would appreciate an invite- and I swear I’ll drop!
to many people lieing around dead making stupid Karka Jokes instead of releasing, especialy when at one point the waypoint was just across the bridge. Nah they just lied dead.
They were lying there dead because using the waypoint was a surefire way to get booted from the server for good and risk losing out on everything.
After a disappointing weekend of laggy, bugged events, this final one was the polar opposite: ran smoothly, very little lag (not enough to be a problem at all) and a nice, smooth chain of events that culminated in a great reward. Nicely done!
Unless your experience was, you know, the opposite of that.
We had lag galore, invisible monsters wiping out the entire map in about two seconds, more lag….more lag…people complaining because those of us being kittenon by the server were “just standing around” and then a bunch of people were booted and shut out of receiving anything for their time and effort.
Pretty sweet, indeed.
During the second reinforcements, I was lagged out of contributing (although I could still get coated in karka babbies with no problem). Then I started teleporting? Then I was completely stuck for a few minutes. Near the end of that portion of the event, I tried to travel the nearest WP in the hopes that it would help with the lag/stuckedness. After ~minute of no response, I suddenly had the transition screen and…that’s it. I ended up logging out and trying to get back in, only to end up in an overflow where the event was already finished.
I received XP/Karma/Silver for the escort portion of the quest, but literally nothing for the part involving the Ancient Karka.
You mean there were actual good rewards for this? kittenck. Man, I’m normally not someone who complains about these sorts of things, but how patently unfair to those of us who were booted from our servers and couldn’t finish.
Missing out is better than doing the entire grindy event and getting kittened over near the end by lag, then disconnection, thus getting absolutely nothing but a net loss of silver for repairs.
I’m not to thrilled at the moment.
I am also going to throw my voice behind this. I had to give up on Staits of Devastation and Frostgorge Sound today because there was nobody around to do DEs with, and my 74 warrior can hold her own, but it’s either spectacularly unfun (SoD) or a waste of time (Champions, large groups with multiple veterans). I couldn’t even continue with level-appropriate Renown Hearts in FS because there were multiple DEs happening around the area and they were just not worth the hassle of soloing.
This was after slogging through Sparkfly Fen and soloing about 90% of those DEs. It was manageable, but not a whole lot of fun.
I would like to see something done to help increase populations in the non-starter/non-endgame areas. If there could be a way to merge servers in some areas when they drop below a certain population, that would be awesome. I hate running around an empty zone, especially when I have to pass DEs in progress because it’s a Champion fight or they’re already overrun with mobs and I’d die within a few minutes if I tried to solo them.
I had a ton of fun with Reaper’s Rumble, which is definitely enough. I would love more games like this in the future, as I’m not great at straight up combat but I do like tactical fun stuff.
And I agree that fluffy prizes should be handed out. I love the idea of new town clothes, or themed gift bags. Fun, unique stuff for fun little games sounds about perfect for me.
Anyone who has seen me flailing around to get to a Vista that’s even slightly above waist high knows that a hard kitten timed jumping puzzle was probably the last thing I should have attempted.
But I did. Over and over and over and over and over again. I spent hours, an embarrassing number of them, and I crashed more times than I could possibly count. It was hard, unfair, impossible, infuriating, and addictive. I made so little progress for so long that I was starting to question my mental health.
Then I realized how much fun I was having. Yeah, the puzzle was hard, but I loved being in the lobby and anticipating what I could do the next time, could I get a good start off the pause? Would I make it over the cog this time, and maybe to the little block before it’s covered? And when I wasn’t anticipating, I was looking at the other players in the room, checking out their character designs and armor, chatting with them sometimes or sometimes just silently sympathizing with their expressed pain and frustration.
And it was awesome. Aside from a few tiffs, and some rampant Norn racism, everyone was so supportive. We cheered for people when the timer ran close, we cheered for people who were cheering for themselves. We were genuinely happy for those who made it, and when I finally made it, the people in the lobby were happy for me.
I was, to be honest, ecstatic. I am horrible at these things, but I wanted to beat this one puzzle. Not only did I achieve that, admittedly sadistic, goal, but I did it with all of my characters and then came back for more. My bank now has a neat row of Mad King Slippers and I am weirdly proud of my little collection. I don’t really go out of my way to challenge myself in these games, and I am an MMO hermit most of the time, but the Mad King’s Clocktower pushed me out of my comfort zone and kitten it, every stupid hour and faceplant was worth it. So…thanks, Josh.
I got caught there trying to help someone who was caught there, who said that they got caught there trying to res someone else.
It’s kind of a cluster, to be honest.