They never said that non-upgraded accounts would get previous expansions for free.
HoT released as $50. If you buy PoV with HoT it too will be $50. So for the same price as the first expansion you can get the both. Also if you already have HoT it’s cheaper. Everyone wins.
I’m pretty sure that you can’t buy the expansion with gems, but you can upgrade from the standard PoF to deluxe for 2400 gems ($30 vs $25 if you straight up buy deluxe). This was the same with HoT when it was shipped.
So this new expansion is about new maps, mounts and elite specialization.
What about:
Dungeons
WvW
Fractal
PvP
These things are not important Arena? I’ m sorry but after the HOT expansion, you continue going down to the hill.
Dungeons are dead since before HoT.
WvW, PvP are separate releases from LS and expansions according to AMA from last episode.
Actually around $214 for Bifrost. $400 of gems can be exchanged for nearly 6000 gold. If anything, the exchange rate rises faster than the cost of legendary and precursor weapons so they actually cost less in real dollars today than pre HoT or even LWS1 times.
I wish they made old Legendary Weapons account bound, if you want one, you do the work to craft it yourself. Precursors are a different story since in the beginning it was entirely by luck which one you got, or variable cost but steerable using the MF as a gear sink. So trade was necessary for them.
But the devs what players to earn rewards that they get through participation in the event that grants those rewards. Buying them for just gold defeats that.
First generation legendary weapons should have been account bound from the start, but considering they pull it a price of $300US or so for someone to just use their credit card was far too appealing to the money counters. I believe making them capable of being traded pretty much destroyed any prestige they could have had.
There are a number of things in game that are needlessly account bound however. Elder Spirit Residue, Mithrillium, Charged quarts crystals, etc.
There is no reason to lock them down because most of them are simply one step away from being traded. Elder Spirit Residue can be crafted in to Spiritwood items that can then be traded. Ascended gear wasn’t out for more than a couple days before someone had crafted their own after purchasing the required Spiritwood and Deldrimor off the Trading Post, completely circumventing the time gating.
There are dozens of items that are either account bound or soul bound that do not need to be restricted that way.
I don’t believe ANet’s decision to not make the original legendary account bound was to encourage gem sales but to encourage dedicated crafters to make them for gold.
Charged quartz was account bound and time gated to prevent gold wealthy players from crafting celestial gear immediately when it was first introduced. Again it was part of the “map participation is required to obtain” philosophy. First in the Labyrinthine Cliffs and later Dry Top.
As for legendary gear, ANet learned a bit from celestial gear and allowed the “basic” T7 mats (bolts, ingots, squares) to be tradeable but the mats used in their creation to be time gated and untradeable. This gave dedicated crafters something to earn income on. This meant the “participation” factor came from obtaining the mats required to craft vision crystals.
Then they should propagate what ever “fix” the create to the other pass zones. I would love to “pop over” to the Royal Terrace and “pop back” to were I was playing.
I wish they made old Legendary Weapons account bound, if you want one, you do the work to craft it yourself. Precursors are a different story since in the beginning it was entirely by luck which one you got, or variable cost but steerable using the MF as a gear sink. So trade was necessary for them.
But the devs what players to earn rewards that they get through participation in the event that grants those rewards. Buying them for just gold defeats that.
I would not be surprised that this “new” method of activating waypoints will be a thing for the future expansion and LW stories since the Asura have no presence there. Rata Novus was a key location in the Heart of Maguuma area, Draconis Mons, with other locals just off the main maps so it makes world building sense that the Asurians set up WPs everywhere.
This part of the world is likely “new” with nobody ever venturing there in the last couple hundred of years from our part of the world. So I imagine a new means of fast travel needs to be introduced.
“Buying” just seems like it only adds and promotes to more cash grabbing. I’d have to say no to ‘buying’ sorry.
Come off it, it’s simply something else to spend map currency on. And you can’t buy map currency, you can only earn it yourself so how can it be a “cash grab”?
First, TP prices are subject to the same supply and demand laws as anything else on the TP. That is less popular skins or skins in high supply will have a lower price. Also supply for these skins are also based on how long they have been available for purchase, if they still are available in the Vault, if they had returned recently to the Vault, if they are part of the BLC rare and ultra-rare pool, etc.
For instance Aetherized Weapon Skins are one the oldest BLT skins in the game, introduced during LWS1 in 2013. They range in sell price on the TP from 139 to 18 gold depending on the skin. However before HoT the prices were considerably higher simply because nobody was offering to sell any that they had coupled with not being able to buy them anymore, until new Lion’s Arch opened with the Vaults.
And yes, players selling them will initially take into account the ticket cost when pricing them. But BL Weapon Skins were always a suckers game IF you had to buy your keys. It’s always been roughly 25 keys per “ticket” and 2100 gems for a 25 keys can be exchanged for, at the time of writing this, around 418 gold. That’s for one ticket. So a two ticket skin for under 200 gold is a flippin steal.
It boils down to you wouldn’t be able to sell that 2nd backpack/glider skin for big bucks. At no time did they bake in a “reroll for another of same rarity but decreased pool size”. Otherwise I wouldn’t have a stack Queen Jennas.
@Illconceived ….. Please don’t cherry pick what the thread is about. If you will read the entirety of the Op’s 1st post he is complaining about the 2 ticket price being a cash grab. My posts addresses this portion of the ops complaint.
I love how the phrase “cash grab” gets tossed around frequently for a game that is buy once and play until the servers are unplugged. Other than the original game (which is now free) and the expansion, the majority of income over the life of the game is generated by the cash shop. A cash shop that revolves around convenience and cosmetics rather than power and pay walls.
You can’t “cash grab” something that’s entirely optional. Now if the cash shop isn’t bringing in enough income, then what’s your solution?
I can understand that doubling the initial ticket price is extreme but that’s the problem when you start at 1. Doesn’t give a lot of room for fine tuning.
The only effective way to protest price markups is to not buy from the company.
That tactic doesn’t work against a monopoly. Even refusing to buy keys and only buy the skin off the TP, someone had to buy keys to get tickets to buy the skins in the first place. ANet still gets paid.
Same with the gem exchange, someone first laid down cold hard cash for those gems you bought with gold. ANet still gets gets paid.
That leaves buying or not buying the expansion. However a portion of that decision is based on your friends in game. Are you willing to leave them as they move onto the expansion and next LW story content or not?
But ANet does monitor closely what is bought with tickets and if this set simply doesn’t sell as well in the first month or two when compared to other sets, that could dissuade them from making 2 tickets the new starting cost.
I would have been happy if Laz escape so the chase continues. I can of hate it when writers dispose of an excellent villain rather than letting them scurry away so they can be a thorn in the hero’s side at some later date.
I think the bigger question raised will be the World Gift used in crafting them. Currently Gen 1 uses Gift of Exploration to produce Gift of Mastery. Gen 2 weapons currently use Gift of Maguuma Mastery, which requires all the Masteries unlocked for Heart of Thorns. Its very obvious this was the initial design intent to have it tied to the Expansions…. But if the next Expansion comes out, will the remaining legendary weapons from Gen 2 use Gift of Maguuma Mastery, or Gift of (Dessert?) Mastery from the new expansion?
Imagine you’re a new player joining in during this current expansion, do all its content without going through HOT first (because Elona is where all the fun is at the moment), see the new Legendary weapons in LS4, start work on one…. and then realize you completely mastering everything in PoF has zero contribution to the new Legendaries, because it requires Gift of Maguuma mastery.
This presents a very real problem moving forward, if the Legendary weapon generations aren’t directly coinciding with the expansions, but the gifts in their creation are. I also can’t see them using clone recipes to allow any Expansion mastery gift to qualify for any weapon, as that trivializes the process for existing players moving forward. They do need more incentive for players to get the expansion;, and Legendary weapon sets were a small, but significant part of that.
I believe MO stated you won’t need the new expansion for the rest of the 2nd set of weapons.
On one hand you need the HoT mastery to craft the new legendary weapons. Because of that (and I think it was clarified on Reddit during the Ep 5 AMA) that you WON’T need the new expansion when they finish trotting out the rest of the “new” legendary weapons.
On the other they never said the “new” legendary weapons would be out in a timely manor. Just that they would start releasing them post HoT.
Our plan is to keep releasing legendary weapons alongside episodes, with the weapons not requiring the new expansion.
Mo
I see no reason to believe they won’t continue their current pace. I’m looking forward to the new longbow and dagger.
Neither do I, just that they never said they would all be out by X months after the HoT expansion. So I don’t see the issue some are upset over, other than the weapon type they want hasn’t been released yet and they are afraid they aren’t coming.
I wouldn’t. Emphasis mine from the article you linked.
Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns heralds the beginning of the first new set of legendary weapons to be added to the game since its original set of twenty included in the launch of Guild Wars 2.
On one hand you need the HoT mastery to craft the new legendary weapons. Because of that (and I think it was clarified on Reddit during the Ep 5 AMA) that you WON’T need the new expansion when they finish trotting out the rest of the “new” legendary weapons.
On the other they never said the “new” legendary weapons would be out in a timely manor. Just that they would start releasing them post HoT.
Maybe there’s a glut of tickets? Scraps drop more frequently since the chest revamp.
If there was a “glut” of tickets (there’s not), the supply on the TP would be high enough that the prices would be marginally higher than the skins which cost 1 ticket. As it stands the prices are running 2x normal, reflecting the normal average ticket value.
If there is some sort of problem with too many tickets, they can further nerf key farming. There are a lot of people who still do that once a week and a number of them on multiple accounts.
Anet simply cannot leave the Black Lion Tickets alone. It seems like every half year or so they have to try some new gimmick which has the same general result of making the players mad.
First it was locking the Immortal skin set in with outfit bundles (which they have apparently forgotten. At the rate the skins are accessible via gem store purchase it will be years before anyone could complete the skin set).
Then they thought it would be “cool” to make Privateer weapon set Account bound, thus forcing players to, one way or another, buy black lion keys.
Now they are breaking from the 5 year old standard and doubling the initial ticket cost.
The results are the same. People upset about it. The whales just buy what they want, because dropping $500 on gems to gamble with black lion keys is nothing to them. Many casuals just ignore it, while a few spend gold on the TP to buy the skin they want, and the collectors are forced to decide just how important it is to complete a set (side note: due to the Privateer skin set, which is locked behind RNG, and the sovereign set, which requires tokens that are no longer available, it is potentially impossible to complete the goal of having all skins of a specific weapon type.)
Having tickets doesn’t mean you use your tickets. I have 7 or 8 and if there isn’t anything in a new 1 ticket set I’m interested in, I’m certainly not going to wait for their price to go up and spend them at 3. So if ANet sees a lot of tickets sitting on player accounts unspent, just maybe they may decide if they think a new set would generate a lot of interest, start it at 2 tickets, drive those key sales (besides the new glider, backpiece and pet). And squid “hair” weapon set is a set that would be popular?
It’s useful when you are leveling up. My first character, a Norn, use her wurm often as a bit more firepower (she was a mesmer, they need it). Can’t say I’ve used them on my human and sylvari characters.
Because ANet didn’t want an open world faction based MMO. That’s one of the reasons for the Elder Dragons being the unifying enemy all the races can get behind.
While an Elder Dragon truely rising and laying waste to large areas of existing Tyria sounds cool, it would be quite annoying in game. Remember how ticked players were with the lack of repeatability of Episode 1 or asking for the original Lion’s Arch back (besides personal story instances)?
So that leads to the “defeat before the truly wake up” but that becomes a trope. New expansion, next elder dragon to defeat. Wheeee!
And many felt since LS1 that defeating the dragons outright was the wrong tact. So now we’re shifting to the other powerful beings we are aware of, the Human Gods.
5% is 300 gold, not 600. But their will be 600 gold deducted from the 6000 for “sales tax” so the seller’s net would be 5100 gold (300 posting fee, 600 tax).
And as others said, it’s priced so high because of the fixed number left. There was an uproar from those holding on to them when the MF spat out a few a while back.
So the dragons are kinda like bees and sharks? ppl don’t like them but we need them to keep life as we know it and stop killing them out of fear.
I’m just glad that we get to expand on Orr – because it felt so unfinished for so long- hopefully this will help.
No just the Elder Dragons, they are magic control rods for the Tyria magic reactor. “Pull” to many and run away reaction. BOOM!!
They should have made a node for every single item offered on the BL board and put them in the gem shop for 400 gems each. That way they would have sold way more, visitors can harvest them too and everyone would be happy, atleast I would. I collect everything for home instance but I wish I could get a refund for the hunters board, its less than underwhelming.
They would then need to find spots for every node then in every home instance map. It’ll be like walking around a store full of mid aisle displays.
I can sort of understand why since it’s delivering fine mats Vs basic. And the one node/ multiple types makes since because otherwise it overflows the home instance with pens of animals to bash for claws and teeth.
The “kinds” of materials delivered is random. Also a t5 – t6 mat is random and it is just 1.
What I mean is primarily what we find in the fine section of the material storage section. Sure the T6 version is rare but the majority of other nodes we have in our home instance deliver only basic grade mats.
The first time I used it i got 1 t6 mat and 2 t2 mats…. the second one i got was 1 t5 mat and 2 t2 mats…
I do not expect to “get rich” off of this gem store item but 1. I would like to be able to share it. 2. I would like for it to be a bit more satisfying.
Right now I would really like my 1200 gems back this purchase was not worth my gems.
And it’s not about a quick rich scheme, quite the contrary, by limiting it to the player owner, it controls the flow into the TP. Last thing they need is a flood that could lower prices on the TP and if the flow is too high, collapsing the price to vendor level.
I can sort of understand why since it’s delivering fine mats Vs basic. And the one node/ multiple types makes sense because otherwise it overflows the home instance with pens of animals to bash for claws and teeth.
Actually, he was in said trailer. But everything else you said is accurate. I, too, wonder about our merry band of companions. Interesting, though, to see a wraith and a ghost in the trailer. Also, Anise will be back.
Forgot he was in the recap portion but nothing new.
Check out the Player Helping Player forum and the game’s wiki.
The game will automatically down level you in lower level areas so everywhere can still be dangerous. You will still get random drops and XP of your true level so if you want you could level to the max in a starter zone.
Also remember that in the PvE areas, players shouldn’t fear other players as everyone who participated enough gets the same loot drop chances and full XP.
With all the jump cuts I was thinking you got Zach Snyder to edit it.
Yes it tells us NOTHING other than it looks like we’re some place new in Orr. Are those NPCs or player stand ins? Where is anyone else from Dragon’s Watch? Not even an image of Balthazar. Don’t know. That would be telling.
The game is very self directed than leading you around from quest giver to quest giver to next map. If exploration isn’t your thing or setting your own goals to achieve, I can understand your impression.
My concern isn’t the 12K at 2.72s, it’s the over 30K units dropped onto the market overnight in the US (11pm to 4am). Not just the T4 cloth but T4 leather also got a surge of items placed for sale on the order of 25K.
Yes, this is a self interest post as I placed a couple 100 at the low price a 1/2 an hour before the first 5K dump. Being under sold is a fact of life on the TP but I’ve rarely seen so much placed for sale in such a short period of time.
Last 24 hours a metric butt ton of linen got dumped onto the TP. Over twice as much as usual. Is there a new source of linen? Returning players dumping inventory? What?
But everything else you said is accurate. I, too, wonder about our merry band of companions. Interesting, though, to see a wraith and a ghost in the trailer. Also, Anise will be back.