Guild Wars 2

Galen Grey.4709:

phys.7689:

amassing currency by repetitive simple behaviors at a very low rate, is not considered to be enjoyable for most people. Or else people would be signing up to work in sweat shops.

Even if you dont get lucky for anything to drop you can probably buy most of the things in just 2 weeks. How is that a very low rate?

By grinding gold. How fun.. And then for the next item and the next and the next and…. And the time obviously depends on the price.

Galen Grey.4709:

I also heard mentioning people selling tot bags (Which I don’t do) earn like 7g per hour, thats very much above the game average per hour has that very low?

People who are grinding gold in the labyrinth you mean.

Galen Grey.4709:

And then you have the drops themselves. while earning the currency to buy stuff you want you may get it for free as well.

Maybe but it’s more likely you earn the gold before that because thats the most viable way for about everything.. grinding gold. You are more likely to get an item you do not like and then sell it for gold. Besides most items drop from the bags so to get it to drop you need to open them. Thats why people are paying money from them (they grindind) in hopes of getting the drop. And other people are selling the bags in a way to grind gold to buy the items.

phys.7689:

the other, well you can watch netflix while pressing buttons repeatedly i suppose, and hope one day your pressing of 1 wins you the day.

What is exactly how many people play GW2. Even WoodenPatatoes (I guess you could say he is a fan) has talked multiple times how he grinded while watching a movie.

I am very sorry but if people play your game like this then there is something very wrong with your game. It will then be a matter of time before people will think “What the heck am I doing?” and leave.

lordkrall.7241:

phys.7689:

amassing currency by repetitive simple behaviors at a very low rate, is not considered to be enjoyable for most people. Or else people would be signing up to work in sweat shops.

Which people quite clearly do

Yeah indeed. Exactly as they are also grinding gold in this game.

Because they feel they need to. To earn the money.

Not because it’s fun. And whats the idea of a game? To work in it or to have fun in it? You see the difference.

Galen Grey.4709:

Devata.6589:

Galen Grey.4709:

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Nice story and all but back on subject. If your nifty cat of darkness costs 12 candy corn cobs its because Anet in their wisdom decided they want people to take 4 days of gameplay give or take to earn the little rascal. (4 days because from I experiance you can earn about 3 of the sugary things every day on average) If instead of selling the little fluffy furball they decided to have it drop from say the mad king’s clock tower they’d have to introduce rng and set odds such that on average one would have the little ball of darkness drop after 4 days. Why would that be bad?

1. Some people don’t like jumping puzzles so you’re forcing them to grind content they hate.

2. some have a hard time finishing it while other still can do it each and every time. People who have a had time will never be able to earn one because naturally to keep with the 4 day or so time line they need to balance the drop rate with the people who rarely fail. If you can say do 10 runs an hour, people play an average of 4 hrs per day, 4 days worth of clock tower would be 160 runs. You wouldn’t go with the 160 obviously but even a 1% chance drop rate to have the thing drop every 100 run or so would be unreachable for most of the player base

3. Some people might enjoy other parts of the halloween event other then clock tower yet since they just cant live out without their their personal milk annihilator they;re going to loose the content they enjoy as they’re force to play what they actually dislike.

Currency solves all of these issues. Play the content you feel like playing and you’re getting close and closer to the cute little ball of darkness.

Like I said taking shortcuts is a personal choice. I wanted one the lovable little halloween horrors for myself as well. I didnt have to do anything, could have bought one outright from TP. Or better yet sell all the ToT bags and buy it after the first two days. Yet I personally believe whats important most is having fun playing the game so thats what I did and the RNG gods actually smiled on me this last saturday and now the scary named bag of love has been following me everywhere and Its been an awesome experience every second of it. Had it not dropped by the last day I would have surely outright bought it off TP dont get me wrong but by then it wouldnt have mattered anyway because I’d still had my fun enjoying the content hoping for Zuzu to drop.

Now if only I could get gyjwnmteujei8 or whatever he’s called

Nice story however I talked about working towards the items in the game. Not trading it for another item (what you hole story is about). I kill a boss and he drops the reward I want in stead of I zerg mobs, earn money by selling all drops I do not want and then buy the item I want from another guy ho got that item he did not wanted. And then again for the next item.

Grinding gold (or another currency) is boring and it also devalues the item from a game-play perspective. A person could have earned it with brainless grinding or also with buying gems nothing special really. While with the other way even if gold is a secondary possibility (if an item is not accounted bound) it would be extremely hard and more likely he earned it by killing that boss that drops it. If it’s RNG then every time you kill that boss there is the rush of ‘will it drop’ vs now seeing some number slowly going up until you can find it (no rush, but boring).

So why do I dislike the currency approach? Because it’s boring.

About your points. Your force them to do something they do not like? I don’t like to brainlessly grind gold and thats the best option for getting most things now so thats invalid. (oow and I do like the clockwork tower from a content perspective, would still not like grinding it for gold. But even if I would like to do that it’s not a viable option compared to the labyrinth.) Besides you would be able to put the same reward in lets say 2 different things. While more likely you put another items behind other content. Yes do they want that item then they need to do the clocktower, and do they want something else they need to do some other content. That way there is always something you like locked behind content you like and something behind content you do not like so much. Of course if it’s not account-bound the currency way is still an option, it’s just not the most reliable. Every item have it’s own best way of getting it in stead of all having the same best way of getting it (like now). So if you don’t like that, well then you are out of luck.

So what you name the perfect solution me (and many others) consider boring. And it’s very much link with all the brainless grinding and zerging in this game even more people complain about.

Iason Evan.3806:

Devata.6589:

Iason Evan.3806:

I have mixed feelings about it. I bought the 2 handed chainsaw and the one handed a long time ago. I paid 175g for the 2 hander and it was a good chunk of change for me at the time so that my character could have one. I like the lottery for these skins because it doesnt hurt the value of the skins on the market but it also puts some more of them in circulation for people that weren’t playing when they came out. As with anything in this game if you want an item, the best course of action is to earn the money and buy what you want.

I just wish ArenaNet would put as much time and effort into a non-RNG solution for precursors as they do with the gem shop. I am one of those people that likes to give money to games because they seem to care more about quality and player enjoyment over cash grabs and lock boxes. That is why I said I have mixed feelings about this in my first sentence. ArenaNet has slowly gone from being the company that cared about making an awesome game that was for players with the belief that if you make it awesome people will want to support your game to, just going with the lowest common denominator cash shop tactics found in any two-bit f2p game on the market. Might as well just start selling Lock boxes with a chance at a precursor in them on the gem shop.

They didn’t mind hurting the value of last years skins.

True, but you can see how much work went into the design of quite a few of the first year skins. Both the chain swords have unique sound effects. The quality of weapon design in how intricate it is has gone down considerably. The second year ones pale in comparison in terms of design quality. I won’t argue which set is better because that comes down to personal taste, but you can see how more work went into the first year designs.

I’d personally like to see more skins of that quality for players to be able to earn in game. The lottery is cool and all(at least they weren’t outright for sale for 5-7 tickets)but a cash shop skin doesn’t have the same value to me as say, a Fractal skin(Hint: the Fractal skin holds more value to me).

Sorry but I have to disagree with that. The longbow is similar to the short-bow so looks just as ‘special’. The great-sword from last year has the bat special effect.

I was did not get any skins of the first year mainly because I figured I would be able to get them the year after, else I would have put more effort in it. I did get the two skins I wanted last year. (including all the other stuff like the mini’s).

Now I still not have a viable go at first years stuff but the last years stuff I have all got devaluated. You see how that makes people feel cheated twice? So yeah I think there would be nothing wrong with giving us now also another fear go at the first years Halloween and this lottery is not that. It’s not fun and it’s not a really viable option. It really looks like a way to get people to spend a lot of money on tickets.

Edit: Ah I see they did also put mad memories in so you can now also get that skin in a viable option. Guess what I got that one the first year, so make that cheated 3 times.

now don’t get me wrong. I don’t really mind that all those things do become available in a viable way again. But then they should also have done that with the weapon skins.

Iason Evan.3806:

I have mixed feelings about it. I bought the 2 handed chainsaw and the one handed a long time ago. I paid 175g for the 2 hander and it was a good chunk of change for me at the time so that my character could have one. I like the lottery for these skins because it doesnt hurt the value of the skins on the market but it also puts some more of them in circulation for people that weren’t playing when they came out. As with anything in this game if you want an item, the best course of action is to earn the money and buy what you want.

I just wish ArenaNet would put as much time and effort into a non-RNG solution for precursors as they do with the gem shop. I am one of those people that likes to give money to games because they seem to care more about quality and player enjoyment over cash grabs and lock boxes. That is why I said I have mixed feelings about this in my first sentence. ArenaNet has slowly gone from being the company that cared about making an awesome game that was for players with the belief that if you make it awesome people will want to support your game to, just going with the lowest common denominator cash shop tactics found in any two-bit f2p game on the market. Might as well just start selling Lock boxes with a chance at a precursor in them on the gem shop.

They didn’t mind hurting the value of last years skins.

Fernling.1729:

caveman.5840:

depends how big the expansion would be to price
idk about 60$ it would need to be a insane expansion … new game

An “insane” expansion is typically what you would see. I would gladly pay(wouldn’t expect anything different either) $60 for an expansion the size of Factions, nightfall or any of the WoW expansions.
I would also be okay with paying $10-$20 every 4-6 months for a DLC type expansion.

What I would think is best is that you have an expansion once a year. Then one smaller one (and so also a little cheaper) and the next year a bigger one (what cost more) and so on, lets say 40 / 60 and that pretty much no cash-shop in the game (while the expansions may optional also being sold in the cash-shop). But still both true expansions. DLC tends to disappoint and under-deliver content-wise in most games.

In addition real expansions give you the opportunity for CE edition what I think can also be good for a game. Not only from a income perspective but it adds something to the game also opening the way for more merchandise.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

The only ‘people’ who said to wait were the players themselves. ArenaNet has never given a timeline for when an ‘expansion’ would arrive. I fail to see where this “didn’t meet the expected timeline” comes from other than the people posting on the forums…especially the OP.

If there is evidence of ArenaNet stating there would be an ‘expansion’ within a certain time period (such as 2 years 25 days x amount of hours, or whatever), please do provide the link.

No Anet never give a time-line thats also why I started by saying this was even more towards those people then to Anet.

However what Anet did do was saying “they would put in the content we would normally see in an expansion” whether is was with an expansion or with the living story. And what most people expect is x amount of content in y amount of time. That time-line is basically provided by what the market does and is then also who those other people basically where referring to.

And that y time-line (provided by the marked) has been passed while the content is smaller then x. So in that way we did not get the content we would normally see in an expansion because then we would have seen more content by now.

Aeolus.3615:

Devata.6589:

Aeolus.3615:

Game do not need an expansion IMO, what they need is to tune LS to bring the same as expansions over time, some TP souvenirs would cover the price.

Well I think they should simply because the LS approach means they need to focus on the cash-shop what is not good for the game. However that was not the point of this thread.

The point was that they did have had the time to do exactly what you say and that time it now over. By now we should then have had that content. The excuse you give here is what we get from people for over 1,5 year now. And usually that did come with the notion that other games also did take about 2 years to release the expansions.

Anet did got the time to do this and that time is over now. We should have gotten that content by now. In an expansion (as I prefer) or in the LS. The time to tune has long passed.

We (the complainers) can not be accuses anymore of not waiting long enough and Anet can not be excused anymore for needing more time to release or tune. Waiting is over. ‘We’ did what we have been asked (waiting) it’s Anet who failed to deliver. And ‘we’ did warn for that early enough.

Players need to wai,t see if Anet has learned what went wrong(blob disaster effect >:] ) in LS1, and that only time will tell over the LS2 season.

Anet said multiple times they where improving it and people where told to wait all the time. moral of the thread is that the waiting time is over.

echo.2053:

Devata.6589:

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That’s the whole point, because other games have released expansions in x time your now frustrated and running around stomping your feet because there hasn’t been an expansion for this game, like a kid who was told no. Once they convince you to buy and play the game they don’t have to do anything further.

An expansion isn’t a fix all solution as you guys seem to think. A new expansion would keep you busy for a few months at best then the current underlying problems leading you back to wanting new content. Loot being one of them. Yes you don’t need to have the most rare items, but 95% of the items in game are 6g or less, not even remotely a struggle to get. Once you do get these cheaper items then what do you do? Do a dungeon that doesn’t have unique reward or endlessly farm for gold for no reason since you already have the item you like best.

you act like there’s something wrong with them wanting to have a cash shop on the side. Have you seen the amount of outside sites that sell game items and currency for real money. If you were the developer youd be crazy not to go in cash shop when those sites are selling your items for $$$. Micro transactions are the future

Lastly I don’t just accept the way things are if i don’t enjoy them. Action speaks louder than words – I haven’t logged in since the week prior to last tourny, and even up to that point it was maybe 1-2 times every 2-3 weeks at best. This isn’t going to be the last mmo ever…..

Thats one way to put it. Another way is that ‘We’ have been asked to give Anet this time and ‘we’ did.

Also another way of putting it is that Anet is underperforming to what the market does while they said they could do this using the LS. So I then now conclude they can’t.

But if I am to listen to you I (and all those people asking us) should not use other games as reference. What is very convenient now Anet has undelivered if we where to do that. They do not have to do anything thats true, if they want to destroy there own game they may also very well do that. Still I may say something about it.

If I would purely look at it from a cash-crap way in there perspective I would agree with you. It;s a nice cash-crap at least for the shorter term and NCsoft simply moves on to the next game after that. But I am looking it from both perspectives, not only from the cash-gapping perspective.

Well my action where speaking up here and not buying any gems while spending addition money on the game itself buying a CE. So yeah I did all I could from an ‘action’ perspective.

Galen Grey.4709:

Devata.6589:

Flitzie.6082:

Another day another expansion thread.
At some point I feel I should voice my own opinion on this.
(Note: I have not played GW1 for reasons I still dont understand, I kind of never had it on my radar. I have no experience with the Expansions of GW1 and what they did to the game)

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Games dying out is not because of expansions.

it is not that simple. Consider Gw2 at launch how many people cried out for vertical progression so much so Anet gave them ascended armor and Fractals. Now Imagine they were going with an expansion model and imagine each expansion takes 1.5 years to develop (1/2 way between our two timelines) Anet hears the need for vertical progression and decides their idea of ditching vertical progression wasnt healty and focus most of the expansion on adding some vertical progression only to have a bigger out cry when the expansion releases. Now its 1.5 more years before they can “fix” it or convince people that well it was just a one off there would not be a new tier with every expansion etc..

you’re essentially both right an expansion doesnt kill an MMO but a miss step in an expansion very well can.

I did not see anybody ask for that. But then again I did not become really active here until about 6 months after release when I did see the game starting (or planning) to go in the wrong direction.

Sure missteps can end bad for a game but thats not different from the way they do it now. How long did it take them to take out scarlet because many people disliked it? And after the complains about the ascended tier they did keep adding more. Likely because that was already worked on, so the LS does not also mean they can simply turn back on a bed decision. If you make a bad decision in one expansion you fix it in the next one. There is a higher risk with the expansion model I do agree with that. Not as much higher as you seem to think because we did see it happen with the LS as well without it being taken out within a small amount of time but yeah expansions have a higher risk. With GW1 however Anet did show they could provide what people wanted.

With GW2 that seems to have been ore of a problem. There content seems more about selling gems and proving a point.. Lets destroy LA to show what we can do with the LS. Both do not really help the game imo.

Galen Grey.4709:

Devata.6589:

If they would go for the B2P approach it would be once a year. P2P games that do release an expansion once every 2 years also release stuff in-between and usually one bigger patch half-way. Furthermore while personal a good expansion can easily keep me busy for well over a year.

You whole premise hinges on an expansion every year and you think that somehow your choice of business model magically makes things go faster. No CEO goes “hey people, we’re going with the Pay to play model that means you only work 1/2 of the day and do whatever you feel like for the other half because unlike those poor B2P MMOs we dont need to release every 1 year thus we can afford to work 1/2 as much” They release every 2 years cause it takes to years to finish and release. For the milliont time. Living story team is 20 people. Anet has 350 employees. 6% of the work force works on Living story. 6% doesnt cause 1 year delays it causes 1 month delays.. they didnt release an expansion after 1 year 1 month even if they started in the 6th month of Gw2 release. So stop thinking if they drop the whole Living story entirely you’re going to get an expansion every year cause you’re not, modern MMOs just have too much art work to deliver in that time frame not to mention all the work that goes in Dynamic events. At best you can get 1/2 an expansion packaged as an expansion and paid for like a full expansion which would be worst for everyone!

Devata.6589:

For example, if mini’s where put in the game in stead of in the cash-shop it would likely have giving me things to do for easily over a year simply going after all of them. Now I don;t even bother because grinding gold or buying them with cash is not what I consider a fun way of playing a game.

And sadly that is how many of the GW2 ‘veterans’ spend much of there time in GW2. Even a person like Wooden Patatoes said many times he does grind a lot sometimes while watching a movie on a second screen. Sorry thats now what I consider engaging game-play.

Because grinding for the mini is so much more fun then “grinding” for gold. Grinding is grinding its not fun irrespective of what you do it for. I dont think running a dungeon to get a common mini will be any more fun then running a dungeon to earn 1g with which you buy the mini.

I dont think running a dungeon 25 times so that the rare mini drops is any more fun then running a dungeon 25 times to buy the super rare mini.

I dont think running a dungeon 100 times to get the super rare mini to drop is any more fun then running a dungeon 100 times to earn the gold for the super rare mini.

But you know whats fun? Today I dont feel like running dungeons I feel like doing a world bosses, Dynamic Events, Fractals, Jumping Puzzles, WvW, running around the world doing whatever I come across, etc.. instead and I can do that and still work towards my mini.

Gw2 is as grindy as much as you want it to be grindy.

No P2P and F2P models put also a lot more content out during those 2 years (thats something you seem to forget) and I would also not expect every year an expansion the size of the expansions you would see with the expansions released every two years. That are the big differences. I would expect less content in between and smaller expansions then the 2 years expansions. And that is why it can go faster (an expansion per year) when they focus on that.

An while for you that might not be more fun, for many including for me it is. Also is gives the item itself more value. Like I said before. I had fun doing the MA dungeon and farming for that dungeon. I don’t have fun grinding gold to buy items. While that might not be true for you it’s very true for me and many other people.

Every time that rush of will it drop or not.. Yes that makes doing the dungeon 25 times much more fun ten doing it 25 times seeing your gold slowly go up and it also makes the reward feel much more rewarding. (that is what I said about it giving more value to the item)

And you know whats fun? I would likely want more things then that one item. And some might be in dungeons other can be in world bosses, Dynamic Events, Fractals, Jumping Puzzles and so on. Making all that content more fun to do becuase of that rush.

Galen Grey.4709:

Devata.6589:

Galen Grey.4709:

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having an mmo essentially means " pay the game with the cash-shop " you can count mmos without a cash shop on one hand regardless if they’re b2p, f2p or p2p

20 people out of 350 = 6%
so if I had to choose between waiting 2 years with barely anything to play but having an expansion 6% before or waiting 6% extra but having something new to play nearly every 2 weeks. is it really a choice?

because an expansion like the main game would have none of these? “But do you like to go into the world to have fun collecting items, working towards goals and rewards and so on then this is not good” ?

Cause I dont know, legendary weapons, named exotics, dungeon skins, Karma skins, heart vendor skins, world bosses skins, crafting recipes, titles, a single piece of town cloths, probably more stuff I forgot were all there with the main game for you to go out and have fun collecting why would it be any different with an expansion just cause there is the living story too?

Well we have had this discussion many times and you know what you are doing wrong here I told you that so many times that rather you do it on purpose or you are fooling yourself?

But here is it again. There is a difference between having a cash-shop and focusing on it to generate your income.

WoW has a cash-shop but it does not focus on it to generate it’s income that results in something like 10 mini’s, 5 mounts, 3 skins and the option to change your name. That is about it. (those number are +- didn’t feel like looking it up).
That is a huge difference to a game that focuses on it like GW2 that has much more in the cash-shop and also designs the game to be based on a currency what you can then buy with cash. And that very much effects the game in a negative way. While I agree WoW should not sell mini’s, mounts and skins however at least until now it does not effect the game experience itself. So there is a huge huge difference. But heey, I explained that many times to you already.

Same that you keep talking about the 2 years while you know I talk about 1 year because you are comparing it to P2P and F2P games while I talk about B2P games (like GW1 who released an expansion once every 6 months). And yes I much rather would like to wait a year for good new content if that means I would have a game not influenced in a negative way by the cash-shop focus as that is happening now. And personally I have had more joy playing during the breaks then I had during the LS patches because they did feel to much as a task you had to complete. That did become better with the first half of second season of course (that I still have to complete).

All the stuff you name are usually very rare world drops or at least harder to get then the currency to buy them. If I would want lets say a skin dropped by Teq (while that are the better ways to reward for sure!) I would likely end up earning the gold to buy it before it would drop (reason is because world bosses are one of the things used in this game to grind gold). And if thats the case there is something wrong. Not to mention that overall the better looking stuff does not drop from these things (the Teq mini being the only exception I can come up with). Also a legendary is mainly grinding gold to buy half of what you need. There are a few examples I GW that are implemented correctly but you try to put in more then there really are. Also when 90% is a grind the 10% that is implemented correctly is sadly also not interesting anymore. If I would want to collect mini’s I need to grind gold for over 90% of all mini’s and then can work directly towards another 10% while I would likely earn the money to buy them sooner.

Last time I remember working directly for an item in GW2 directly because it was an item you could really only get that way (gold was possible but even harder because of the price) and where very nice drops where the molten mini and molten backpack. Of course that was back when everything was temporary so that got pulled out and when it was put back in as fractal (what is less fun because if I want to do that dungeon I do want to also do other ones) those rewards where taken out. however that where the type of things I enjoyed doing much more.. or better said, I enjoyed doing that and I do not enjoy grinding gold.

Galen Grey.4709:

Devata.6589:

Galen Grey.4709:

wasted.6817:

I see this “2 weeks after rushing through content, back to complaining on forums” myth is still popular and goes around. How do people even come up with that kind of crap.

2 weeks is perhaps a little exaggerated although true for some hardcore players. For most people a couple of months is more likely.

there is a website that can help shed some light on this. it allows people to post their average play time:
http://www.howlongtobeat.com/

going for a certain very popular mmo if we take how long people took to finish the main content on average and the fastest times we get:

Expansion 1: 50hrs, 50hrs
Expansion 2: 335hrs, 70hrs
Expansion 3: 176hrs, 11hrs
Expansion 4: 211hrs, 20hrs

The ‘main’ content is not what kept me playing in mmo’s. It was all the side things (that in GW2 are sadly mainly grinding gold) there are in the world.

However if we would to look at that you can also ask yourself how many time people have spend in the LS things. You really think that is a lot. It’s something people do once and take about 2 hours to complete.. Now I am indeed talking about just the LS alone because you are talking about the ‘main’ content in expansions. So that number not going to be any higher.

I am sorry but Gw2 has that side stuff too but your reply to that was always along the lines of drop rates are just too low! Anything that can be bought with gold with the exception of gem shop stuff of course can be acquired in game. going for the gold instead of the stuff directly is just a personal choice.

No it is no choice. Most things you can not work for directly (it’s not a viable option) and you are required to grind a currency. I do not mind low drop rates at all. That makes stuff more rare what is fine. As long as you can work directly towards it and that is also the most viable option to get the rewards. What is not the case in GW2 for most things in there.

Galen Grey.4709:

The problem with replayable content is generally speaking its content designed to keep you busy for months – years and takes the form of dungeons and raids you need to repeat to get the next tier of gear or to unlock whats coming next. I’d personally take LS over that kind of content any day! Repeating the same things for long stretchs of time is just not fun for me.

GW2 is also trying to keep you busy with grinding for stuff. What you are talking about is a tier grind what is a another topic all together. Expansion do not automatically have to mean a new tier of armor and weapons. Also they have much more then just raids and dungeons it it comes to collecting stuff. How about mounts, mini’s, recipe’s and so on. That is just as much things used to keep many players playing for a long time. Some as part of a dungeon you would need to repeat other things as a reward for a quest or an achivement.

wasted.6817:

Actually, considering how Anet’s lately, Flitzie have a point there. In that state they very well could release an expansion which would put this game straight in it’s grave. Anet’s been very consistent lately with all kinds of bad/debatable decisions etc.

At the same time, multiple of them (not all) including the gem change sames to be related to them earning money with the cash-shop. That is the reason why I so much against that and in favor of expansion. Also the fact that the game has become more and more of a grind (because of that) is not a positive imho.

Galen Grey.4709:

right you dont like anything out of a list of 26 items so that means none of those items exist in this reality anymore hence why you said Arenanet released no Items you can earn. Can you please start disliking wars, famines, deceases and other nasty things? you’d do humany a great service if you start disliking those nasty things so they stop existing as well!

what content has been gated behind gem purchases exactly?

As for stuff like Mawdrey while not released this halloween you can still craft The crossing, Arachnophobia or The mad moon.

What I said is that most is locked behind a currency grind and that is true for 90% of what you summed up there. It’s not even necessary to only be available in the cash-shop as long as it is linked behind a long currency because that gives more reason to convert gems to gold. (Or look at the Halloween skins from 2012 you can now grind the currency or buy the currency for cash in order to maybe win them).

But overall it’s true that the festivals and mainly Halloween and Wintersday (and SAB) had more stuff (compared to other patches) available in-game. That are also some of the best patches imho so maybe just maybe there is a correlation?

Sekai.2987:

i wonder what kind of games you guys played before where you can get the most wanted skins/armor/weapon with freash and fun non grinding content..

because all games i played were in the end the same , you reach max lvl and you farm that one dungeon hundert times to get that skin/armor/weapon drop you want

or you farm /grind money in all possibel way to buy that skin/armor/weapon you want

ps: how is that one meme ?…“if everybody got the ghastly halloween shield , then nobody got the ghastly halloween shield!” , i think thats preatty accurate

Personally I enjoy farming a dungeon or a mob or doing a quest and so on for a reward much more then grinding gold. Because when farming I work directly towards that item and every time I do it there is the thrill that it might drop (if it’s an rng drop) or you know you get it for completing that quest. Also it send you all over the world doing specific content for specific rewards.

In GW2 is all about currency. So it’s grinding some content seeing some number very slowly going up (to slowely, but thats the point because they want you to buy gold or the items with cash) and then you buy it and start over for the next item. While there are multiple ways to grind the gold there is always one most profitable and so doing other content feels like you are doing yourself a disfavor because it takes longer. To me that approach feels like a job while the first feels more like playing an mmo.

About your meme, well Anet did not mind making last years skins available again.

Flitzie.6082:

Another day another expansion thread.
At some point I feel I should voice my own opinion on this.
(Note: I have not played GW1 for reasons I still dont understand, I kind of never had it on my radar. I have no experience with the Expansions of GW1 and what they did to the game)

~

Games dying out is not because of expansions. There are enough games with expansions that do or did just fine (including GW1) but also many non MMO games. Look for example at the Tomb Raider genre that is 17 years old and still going strong while using this model. Release an expansion or a new game then have a gap of 1 / 2 years and release a new game. Those things you talk about can be done with expansions but don’t have to be done with expansions and for that matter can just as much be done with LS patches.

What more important is how fun the game is to play. That is why I see the current approach much more as a problem for the long term. The LS made that they had to turn to the cash-shop approach what made that the game has become very grindy. You can wonder how long people keep being interested in that.

So basically you are asking for good content but somehow you seem to believe that expansions will always result in bad content and LS will always result in good content. Just not sure why you think that.

maddoctor.2738:

A few things:

Guild Wars 2 launched in China on May 15th, about 6 months ago, it’s a bit too soon to release an expansion yet, because it will affect the China version too.

The November 4th patch should be a massive one, I don’t want to see a F&F Prelude or an Entanglement (first LS2 episode), I want to see something substantial. Once the LS2 kicks off again and players start logging back into the game, then it’s the time to announce the expansion, then release said expansion around April/May of 2015, 1 year after the China release.

Wishful thinking? Maybe. They’ve had a looot of time to prepare this next LS episode, and as the dev already said, Wintersday will be the same as last year, so I expect, the next few LS releases to be rather huge and pave the way for the expansion.

We will see soon enough

Your wishful thinking is not something I would be very surprised to see happening. However if then after that expansion we would go down the same road for the next 3 years as we then did for the last 3 years then it would be very disappointing. And in fact I don’t think they would even be able to because the game would imho then slowly die out.

Personally I always did see the current approach as especially bad in the long-term. Long term being 2 / 3 years. If they would do what you say that might be very smart in expanding that a little but if they keep doing it like this it’s also not more as just expanding on that imho. If there where to change the approach because they did conclude this did not work things might go very different imho.

Galen Grey.4709:

wasted.6817:

Galen Grey.4709:

I dont think anyone is saying lets not have a no expansion ever. Its more along the lines of an expansion alone wouldnt solve content problems because it would most likely result in a huge gaps of time with nothing to do but waiting for the expansion to drop.

Now an Expansion and living story together… ahhhh thats beautiful.

I think some people are saying exactly this and some saying that it’s no rush, let’s take it slooow, which i would mind that much if it wouldn’t be for that long after release now. Huge gaps of time with nothing to do? Well, people, those who actually play GW2 all this time, they do something , right? You’re still catering to that myth that expansion won’t fix or add anything in the long run, but that’s not true. Expansion will make it so, that for some period of time there will be lots of new things to experience for every kind of player and there will be much more content in the game overall, in the long run.

Why do you think long gaps of time doing nothing will be better appreciated then short gaps?

Lets say it takes you on average a full 6 months to explore an expansion and lets go with the industry average of 2 years per expansion. That will leave 1 year and a half of content void. You feel people will be happy with that? when with the living story you’re getting a void of maybe a week and half generally and a month now and then?

Personally I’d rather have content every 2 weeks and an expansion every 3 years then long stretches of no content and an expansion every 2 years (assuming living story will push content back by a whole year which probably isnt the case considering the LS team is just 20 people out of over 350!)

If they would go for the B2P approach it would be once a year. P2P games that do release an expansion once every 2 years also release stuff in-between and usually one bigger patch half-way. Furthermore while personal a good expansion can easily keep me busy for well over a year.

So if GW2 was to release an expansion once a year and had a bigger patch half way there would be no real waiting gap, I would be able to play all the time.
Obviously also this depends on your personal game-play and the way the game is implemented. For example, if mini’s where put in the game in stead of in the cash-shop it would likely have giving me things to do for easily over a year simply going after all of them. Now I don;t even bother because grinding gold or buying them with cash is not what I consider a fun way of playing a game.

And sadly that is how many of the GW2 ‘veterans’ spend much of there time in GW2. Even a person like Wooden Patatoes said many times he does grind a lot sometimes while watching a movie on a second screen. Sorry thats now what I consider engaging game-play.

Galen Grey.4709:

I dont think anyone is saying lets not have a no expansion ever. Its more along the lines of an expansion alone wouldnt solve content problems because it would most likely result in a huge gaps of time with nothing to do but waiting for the expansion to drop.

Now an Expansion and living story together… ahhhh thats beautiful.

If we forget the fact that the LS also means they pay the game with the cash-shop as all those F2P games out there and if we also forget that apparently that then also means expansions take even longer to release. then yes. But taking those things into account then no. Obviously (and let me make this clear) this depends on your preferred game-play.

If you like to do PvP this is not going to hurt you, WvW also less with exception of the lack of new maps and if you like to mindlessly grind a currency all day then you are really in luck. Do not not like to really play but buy a game and then buy items with cash to then show of what you have you are also in luck.

But do you like to go into the world to have fun collecting items, working towards goals and rewards and so on then this is not good.

Galen Grey.4709:

wasted.6817:

I see this “2 weeks after rushing through content, back to complaining on forums” myth is still popular and goes around. How do people even come up with that kind of crap.

2 weeks is perhaps a little exaggerated although true for some hardcore players. For most people a couple of months is more likely.

there is a website that can help shed some light on this. it allows people to post their average play time:
http://www.howlongtobeat.com/

going for a certain very popular mmo if we take how long people took to finish the main content on average and the fastest times we get:

Expansion 1: 50hrs, 50hrs
Expansion 2: 335hrs, 70hrs
Expansion 3: 176hrs, 11hrs
Expansion 4: 211hrs, 20hrs

The ‘main’ content is not what kept me playing in mmo’s. It was all the side things (that in GW2 are sadly mainly grinding gold) there are in the world.

However if we would to look at that you can also ask yourself how many time people have spend in the LS things. You really think that is a lot. It’s something people do once and take about 2 hours to complete.. Now I am indeed talking about just the LS alone because you are talking about the ‘main’ content in expansions. So that number not going to be any higher.

Galen Grey.4709:

I do and actually I think somewhere in the first months when asked about an expansion they did flat out saying they’re not working on one but not 100% sure. That being said I cant exclude they were already working on expansion content with the intention of releasing it in the future through the living story hence the statement not working on an expansion. Of course all of it this is purely speculation on my part for I lack the ownership of a crystal ball

different people value different things. The dungeons were cool and I enjoyed them too, marionette was amazing in itself but I love story more so for me every living story release during season 1 was like a cake with cherries and all. Season 2 is like a buffet of sweets That being said while season 2 has much better story telling it feels like it has less world impact than season 1 did and biggest reason for that I feel is the change from temporary content to permanent.

would go against the idea of the LS? not at all. I think the issue here is you’re threating the LS as all there is. The living story can just easily be the thread that binds stuff together. It doesnt have the be everything just like the personal story wasnt everything at launch. actually no need to look outside of the living story itself. Dry Top wasnt created exclusively to service the Living story, in fact only small parts of it service the living story the majority of it was meant as new content for players to enjoy. Why cant that same thing happen on a larger scale?

Yeah that was about around the same time they started talking about the Living Story (half year after release) and it was also around the same time I got more active here because for a B2P model to work they should have been working on that back then so thats when I did foresee also all the cash-shop approach and everything that comes with it. Exactly what we did see this half year.

But that was then and they said “if we do this (LS) right there will never come an expansion”. Then later explaining content that you expect from an expansion would be released with the LS. Now we can conclude they failed at that so if they made the turn to that LS approach back then maybe it’s now time for them to see they did fail and have to look at other solutions.

Also not sure how you think I see the LS as all there is. I did say we had less as 50% of what we would normally see in an expansion. That means there is stuff added during the LS like some improvements to the world and like Dry Top and a new dungeon path and fractals and a new world boss. There are things added outside of the LS but all that compared is equal to what you would expect from a expansion that you would expect to have been released by now if that would have been the approach.

The LS story itself (the story I mean not the content) does not do anything for me personally, I haven’t even finished the PS yet. So I do not act as if that’s all there is. There is more, just not the same amount as what we would expect from an expansion what should have been the case by now.

nightwulf.1986:

Players don’t really have a tendency to think outside of short term gratification and I’m sure Anet understands that. Even so, they press on with this concept in an effort to win over the nay sayers.

Like I said in my first post, I did believe they would be able to deliver the expansion we would normally see in an expansion with the Living Story. My reason for being against doing it that way because it meant they would generate the money with the cash-shop and all effects that has to the game.

However this hole LS approach started over 1,5 year ago and got changed (improved) many times by now. By now the time to improve it is over, it should have been good by now. This post was to point out that by now we should have gotten that content. So while for sure 1,5 years ago some people might have been against it for the wrong reasons (don’t really have a tendency to think outside of short term gratification) there conclusion did come out and by now you really can’t use that as excuse anymore. It has been 1,5 year. That is not short term anymore. We are now passed the point where we should have seen the same amount of content you would normally see in an expansion because we are passed the point where you would normally see an expansion even for P2P or F2P games (and I say it again, GW2 was released as B2P and then you expect expansions sooner).

So your argument might have hold up 1,5 year ago and maybe also 1 year ago but not anymore. That was also the point of this thread.. To point out those type of arguments are past there expiration date.

echo.2053:

oh wow who would of guessed you’d make a b2p expansion thread after that last one lol. Oh geez now there’s some kind of expansion schedule for mmos lol. If one comes it comes, if it doesn’t then it doesn’t. Sitting here ranting trying to put pressure on them to develop an expansion when one prolly isn’t even in the works is only going to end badly. You self-entitled kids are what’s dragging games down. There is nothing that says they have to make an expansion every x amount of years. This is why we get those kittenty copy pasted expansions.

If you like how game y releases their expansion every x amount of years then go play game y.

Btw you do know they don’t pay attention to the forum, even if you are able to get their attention, itll just get turned into a cdi for easier storage

What last one? And this is more about the expansion-like content then about B2P. B2P is my reason for wanting expansions while for some other it’s the content they are missing.

And there is obviously some expansion schedule for mmos if you are looking at the marked. However as I explained in this thread it’s not me who came up with that. No I have been talking about expansion since half a year after the release. No it’s those defending this current approach who time after time came up pointing to other mmo’s out there saying ‘we’ should give reasonable Anet time to deliver that content just as those other games took x amount of time.

So now I am here to tell that ‘we’ waiting as long as many of them asked us and to note that the content is still not here. Also to see what the new excuse was and it’s clear what the new excuse was. Did ‘we’ first have to wait for the same amount of time as those other games, now what the marked does is suddenly not relevant anymore.

“You self-entitled kids are what’s dragging games down.” I don’t feel self-entitled but I do say if I dislike something, I think those people who just accept everything is what’s dragging games down.

Yeah I did notice that with the guild QoL that people have been posting about since release and nothing ever got done with and then now we get a CDI and that seems to be what they use. However like I said this was even more for those people who told ‘us’ to wait pointing to those other mmo’s.

I have one subject I do want to still post that is more for Anet and they will likely also not pay much attention to it but at least I did then do my task in supporting the game by saying it on the official forums. Maybe they read it maybe they don’t. But I did what I see as the task the gamers have. Other things that really are adressed towards Anet I will likely only do using CDI topics or topics that do have Anet’s attention like the gem conversion topic had.

Rangelost.4857:

Perhaps my first post wasn’t very clear.

Firstly, players spent about $40 for Guild Wars 2, and are not subjected to a monthly subscription fee. They are not forced to continue playing the game once they have completed it (or parts of it they are interested in). Nowhere in “Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game” is it written that these types of games are meant to provide an infinite amount of repetitive content.

~

The player that is done in those other mmo’s in a few weeks after an expansion is releases and then starts complaining is done after a few hours after a patch in GW2 and then starts complaining. So in that way this does not help.

Personally I managed to keep me busy for a long time in those games. Collecting special recipe’s, leveling alts, collecting special mounts, collecting mini’s, finding rare pets for my ranger and so on, that took me all over the world usually leveling was even more a byproduct. In GW2 as far as that even is available that has become a gold-grind (for what the cash-shop focus is mainly to blame) so that is not fun content to do.
What I am saying with this is that the people rushing to the content are done very fast in those expansion games yes but they are as well here so in that way this approach has no benefit so referring to that is irrelevant. At the same time it does destroy the content that does keep some players longer playing.. Well it does not really destroy it, it turns it into a boring grind.

Let’s not fool each other we both know that also at this moment a huge number of players are just grinding the Labyrinth because that’s what the current approach has ended up doing.. providing a game where people for a large parts mindlessly grind some currency.

And the story driven.. All those other games have a story while maybe that might have been a little better put in the game. This game however puts way to much time into the story imho while of course also that is personal. I don’t really care so much about it. Remember the very first LS patches where one patch added some refugees and then a month later there where signs placed for them and so a story evolved. For me that would have been enough. Then at half a year release a little bigger patch with some content and then continue that story in the same way eventually working up to an expansion. In that way you have a story going on that nicely links all patches and expansions together.

@laokoko
Well the game is based around skins so…

@slamfunction
Yeah it is likely illegal in most countries however it happens in a lot of games and because it’s packed like this it’s not yes seen as gambling. However I am sure that if there every would be a lawsuit against this (in countries where it is illegal or where you need a special license for it) sort of things they would lose it and it would mean a huge change for the F2P market. But thats in a general sense, not specific to GW2.

lordkrall.7241:

IPhyton.2348:

Well the problem is there is no content to earn the gold. Note I said content not mindless zerging or dungeon spamming both of which is not why I play the game.
Is it too much to ask to have fresh and fun content that you can earn gold from?
This whole gems conversion issue makes it clear this game is just being milked for as long as it will last.

The Labyrinth available right now is a rather good way to get rather much money and it is rather fresh and fun.

It’s just mindlessly grinding gold. There might be worse mindless grinds in this game but in the end it’s not more as that.

Had put in a scavenger hunt to earn a skin maybe even only being able to select one and it would be account bound giving you next year a change for a second skin.

Or had put in the Dungeon from first year and have it as a rare drop. That would all have been more fun.

It’s really strange that Anet talked so much about how they wanted to make a game that was mainly fun and not just a grind as many other games but it turned into the most grindy mmo I personally have ever played and earning most rewards is done by grinding gold (or another currency) and buying it. What are not fun ways of obtaining those rewards.

IPhyton.2348:

laokoko.7403:

You dont’ have to gamble. You can just buy it from the trading post.

I think the problem is it is just too expensive that some people felt it is unobtainable.

Well the problem is there is no content to earn the gold. Note I said content not mindless zerging or dungeon spamming both of which is not why I play the game.
Is it too much to ask to have fresh and fun content that you can earn gold from?
This whole gems conversion issue makes it clear this game is just being milked for as long as it will last.

New content to earn gold. That would result in new contend to grind. How about content that directly rewards those things or at least has a drop change in it. Then it would be fun content with a nice way of rewarding.

suffish.4150:

I have seen a lot of people here who dislike the idea of a skin lottery, which I am very surprised at. Personally, I absolutely love the idea and I am very happy that they brought back the 2012 skins in this way.
When I first saw the skritt guy offering the skins I thought ‘WOW, this is such a clever and fun way of giving out valuable skins’ I am considering spending lots of gems on the wrappers even though I pretty much accept that I am doomed to get nothing!
In addition, I think it would be a great idea to use this lottery system in future for exclusive rewards.

Bringing back the 2012 skins is great. They way they do it is the problem.

Don’t know why you consider if clever and fun.. grind grind gind that candy and then likely miss out on it. Thats not fun and I also do not see how thats clever other then trying to get some more gem sales of people baying those things (and then upsetting those people if they did not win a skin).
So from a monetize perspective it’s maybe clever because they manage to trick people like you into buying gems but from a game-play perspective no.

And the lottery system has been used for that for a long time (Mystic forge, BL tickets) and has always got mainly negative feedback. It’s nice to see there is one person who seems to like that. (or get tricked into doing that).

One personal advise for you, stay away from gambling halls.

Talk about it.
It’s very similar to the way the BL tickets work and there has been a lot of complains about that.

It’s not a fun way. Making it as a rare drop in the Halloween dungeon (the one from first Halloween) or a type of scavenger hunt would be much better.

Now it’s just yet another currency grind (those candies are a type of currency) as if GW2 did not have enough of that followed by a lottery.

Some people might think this will be better to keep them very exclusive but Anet did not mind making last years skins and mini’s less exclusive so then they could just as well also make the first years Halloween skins less exclusive.

GW2 was supposed to be all about fun they said and this is simply the least fun way to do it imho.

Galen Grey.4709:

~

Do you think so? To be honest when the game got released (and I was still convinced it was a true B2P game) I figured they where possibly already working on the expansion, and for games that have expansions planned I think thats not uncommon because it helps meaning a expansion that nicely fits with the game if you are already looking into it when designing the original game / previous expansion. Of course it would then have been a very small team that got scaled up later.
With the knowledge of now it’s also unlikely indeed however they might very well have been working on the Southsun Cove stuff. (What was story wise btw still introduced in the most interesting and engaging way, while not yet being part of the LS. Makes you wonder what happed after that)

For me personal yes I rather have that expansion every year in stead of once every 3 years. If that then only means that is how they generate there income and so we can get rid of 90% of the cash-shop putting that sort of things in a fun way in the game and not having this game being so much of an currency grind as it is now.

The temporary content complain was mainly so you would not have to play against the clock (before it as removed again) and new players would not miss out on a lot. Playability was only interesting for a few things like the Molten dungeon that later god added to fractals (without rewards.. one of the things that made it so interesting and fun). The whole LS is told in a story more like a single player story so that does not lent itself very well for re-playability. Now I also can’t say the first season was so much more engaging. The most engaging like I just said was still the Southsun Cove release. That worked also pretty solid. The story was temporary but the content (the map and everything in it) was mainly permanent. However they where not able to do something like that again it seems.

About the Halloween. Last Halloween was already less popular as first year so content-wise there would be less complains if Anet put in some stuff of the first Halloween (like the dungeon) and reward wise there is also not a very engaging way to get anything. Buy tickets for the weapons or grind some candy to get a change to win a skin from first Halloween. That is all not very engaging, just yet another grind.
If Anet designed it so people would still have engaging ways to earn any of those rewards (for example a scavenger hunt or a rare drop form that dungeon) people would also be more happy with it. I don’t think it has much to do with the fact that it is the same content, it’s more that it’s the same content of the lesses of the two and there are not really engaging ways to earn any rewards people might still want other then grind.

I never said it would be enough to create a new map but at the very least it would be enough to change the look of two existing maps or get part of a new map done.

“Conclusion to the Living story season 2 would be us getting access to these 20 full fledge new zones” Why not? Because that would go in against the idea of the LS. Sure they can do that. But if they release 75% of the expansion like content in one bulk the hole idea of the LS (releasing it over time) would not hold up and releasing it as an expansion would make more sense.
And the living story approach means they need to earn money with the cash-shop not with expansion sales with all negative effects that has for the game.

Carighan.6758:

Devata.6589:

I think you underestimate the amount of work that go’s into these LS things. They might not add much from a content perspective but look for example to the Toxic Alliance LS. Kessex Hillls got edited what.. 4 times? There was an instance added that acted much like a dungeon. And during the LS we did see many small instances that all required a lot of work. All the voice overs that had to be done. It really was a lot of work. It just was not very efficient to deliver content.

Hrm, not sure I agree.
I mean yes, it’s a lot of work. But if this much work – and most importantly, this many dev-hours – are needed to produce one set of LS changes over I think 6 weeks in total, then maybe your approach to development needs rethinking.

You should not need this much time for it, you got to streamline the process somehow. Whether you’re doing biweekly patches or large yearly~biyearly expansions. Either way you need to find a way to efficiently create content as a developer (mind you, I am one, just not for ANet :P ).

And yes you’re absolutely right, it is a ton of work. But that should be an obstacle solved years ago as part of the process optimization.

Thats possible and with GW1 they where more efficient it seems. Still simply because of the way the LS works you end up making a lot of things that are important for the story but do not add any relevant content for the player (after having seen the story thing once.. and that is if they don’t skip it because they do not care for the story) so there is always more wasted time.

Galen Grey.4709:

Well I doubt Anet are sitting on content just for fun. If they havent released the big stuff its because its not ready and its not ready not because they’re just procrastinating but because it takes more then the time they had to dedicate to it so far.

Devata if Anet didnt do the Living Story and did an expansion instead with the same amount of people the amount of content they did would be exactly the same amount of content we got and considering the general consensus is LS didnt deliver nowhere close enough content to what people expect from an expansion then we either would have gotten a very sub par expansion or we still wouldnt have our expansion 2 years 1 month 25 days later.

Kexxeks hills was essentially edited once where are you getting the 4 times from? I hope you’re not counting small things like when they deforested a single forest there. I mean even the full edit itself it would have taken less work then creating a full map from scratch. Even if we consider the edited maps to take as much work a screating a new map from scratch that would only have yielded 2 maps for the expansion. at the end of the day living story or expansion doesnt make a difference in terms of development speed. if instead of doing LS the same team did an expansion based on your statement that LS so far is about 50% of what you’d expect in an expansion would mean ti would have take over 4 years.

That being said I dont think any of this matters at all because at the end of the day we know the living story team has always been made of approximately 20 people and we know there are over 350 people working at arenanet so if they’re working on an expansion the Living story would not have a big impact on the expansion time line since the bulk of employees are free to work on it.

It could be true that it’s simply not fished but that does not changes much. If it take them more then 2 years to build 75%? of an expansion and that is then all done around the same time or just one big junk of content (what is unlikely) then it does mean they are not able to release the content over time as what they said they would do with the LS. So if it can only be developed with big junks then again the expansion would make more sense and the LKS does not work. The hole idea of the LS was to release all the content slowly over time.

Not really true. If they focused on an expansion we could have had more content by now. The LS just takes a lot of development time away that does not result in really repayable content in the game as we expect from expansions. Like I did show with the Toxic alliance expansion. For it to work in a LS way they had to update the maps multiple times. But thats all additional work that does not result in really any new content for us. That time could also have gone into changing 3 existing maps a little as part of an expansion (as an example). Now they ended up with 1 changed map.

And yes I yes I count the building process. Can’t remember it exactly but I think it started with the chopping down of the tree’s (not a big thing and was only used to added up on but still) and then we did see half a tower I think? Then the complete tower and then the destroyed tower as it is now.

All the work that go’s into the story telling could also have gone into events and npc’s in new maps. A story then you now see once vs those maps and NPC’s you then see all the time.

In the end indeed we know the story about 20 vs 350 people and then it comes back to the not being able to travel back in time. If they are still working on all that stuff in the background they can not release it in a LS way because they would then already need to have done that. If they are still working on those things then they are not able to deliver it in small pieces. What I find hard to believe btw. Some things take longer as other things but much should have been completed by now. The problem they might have is that if that when they release a new race that would normally come with a new bunch of maps but releasing that all at once would go against the LS approach. So maybe that even more so proves the LS approach is not working?

And if they where to release an expansion once a year I would also not have a problem with having a smaller expansion, then a bigger one, then a smaller one. I don’t expect every year to get an expansion the size of what we see in a game like WoW.

TheBlackLeech.9360:

Devata.6589:

TheBlackLeech.9360:

I’ll just leave this here.

The screenshot that_shaman released on April 1?

I don’t know who that is or when he posted the image, nor do I care.

The whole reason I posted the image was to bring hopes into peoples hearts….. to have them imagine the joy and fun a new race would bring….

and to answer the question with “NEW RACES! New races is content we normally see in an expansion!”

Not poop on their hopes and dreams by labeling it as fraudulent and a fake.

Of course its a fake.

We all know we have no tengu race to play…. but that doesn’t mean we can’t dream.

It would have been nice if that would have been added somewhere between the release of the game and now. That for sure but sadly that hasn’t happened.

I was not completely sure why you posted it, thats why I commented that. Anyway, thats clear now

Wanze.8410:

Why should Anet cater towards veteran players? I would say that new players spend more money in the gem store. I played since head start and I have all character slots, bank and bag expansions and other gem store items i need. Even if I would be willing to pay as much for an expansion as a new player is for the box game, the potential of me dropping additional money on the gem store is far less than than the one of new players.

Because new incoming players will become lower eventually.

Nicholas S Lin.6187:

Rangelost.4857:

People pay $40 for a console game, then consider it descent if they get 40 hours of gameplay out of it.

People pay $40 for Guild Wars 2, and after spending thousands of hours in the game, they complain about lack of content.

I don’t even.

Yes, more content would be nice. Yes, not removing content would be nice. Yes, other MMOs love to recolor older content, change some numbers and pretend it’s new content. No, Guild Wars 2 doesn’t need any of that.

Players ask for a new continent, players get a new continent, players complain about having to explore a new continent. Let’s take this moderately, shall we?

Are you for real? seriously? We did NOT get a new continent. Dry Top as currently released is at best half a map – being extremely generous. I would suggest that its actual 25-30% of a map. Southsun is an island group and again is not a continent.

May I ask how old are you? Do you not know that an expansion requires the introduction of a playable race with a integrated back story that includes the existing playable races as significant actors in its plot line(s).

Additionally it must include but not limited to: A new fighting profession, a major additional game mechanic, a new dungeon in addition to what has been release in the Living Story process thus far. And it would of course include a few completely new maps and may also include access to previously locked maps as well as perhaps enhancements of some existing ones.

And who said that an expansion would be free content? I would expect to pay a reasonable one-off payment in exchange for this upgraded content.

Since that is what an expansion is.

I think he did try to say that if people would get a new continent they would complain about having to explore it.

I disagree that an expansion would need to have a new playable race (or any one specific thing for that matter). While it’s one of the most common things to see and what I would like to see I don’t think it’s not that specific. Lets say they added a lot of other things but of everything we would expect looking also at other games (so then we would expect a new race or profession) but would not add that single thing I would still be fine with it.

It should however be something in those lines.

The big problem is they simply far undelivered to what to expect in general from the marked.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

So, Guild Wars 2 must compete with WoW as far as timelines go? A game has failed (in whatever sense you choose) if it doesn’t adhere to WoW’s timeline? Lol.

Guild Wars 2 will release what it will release on their own schedule, I dare say, and not because some other game did whatever in so many days.

Personally, I hope they choose to release all content through the LS or Feature packs, rather than a ‘traditional’ expansion. But, neither you nor I know what is to come. You may get your wish…I may get mine. /shrug

No not on WoW’s timeline. But on an average Time-line to expect that type of content. WoW was simply one of the slowest. It was Anet who said we would get the same content as we would expect in an expansion only the way of delivery was different. Well what most people expect of an expansion is an x amount of content in an y amount of time.
There is an everage that is pretty much based on what other games do. The average is smaller as WoW’s release for it’s first expansion. WoW was simply the slowest and it was us who where ask by the defenders on these forums to be fair to Anet and give them the same amount of time as other games took (what on average is lower then WoW’s!).

Well we did.. we gave that time and ever looked ad took the maximum of what was the standard (maximum as in WoW was the longest).

Anet sure does everything on there time-line and that is then way to slow. It’s deliver under what the market does if it comes to this.

Aeolus.3615:

Game do not need an expansion IMO, what they need is to tune LS to bring the same as expansions over time, some TP souvenirs would cover the price.

Well I think they should simply because the LS approach means they need to focus on the cash-shop what is not good for the game. However that was not the point of this thread.

The point was that they did have had the time to do exactly what you say and that time it now over. By now we should then have had that content. The excuse you give here is what we get from people for over 1,5 year now. And usually that did come with the notion that other games also did take about 2 years to release the expansions.

Anet did got the time to do this and that time is over now. We should have gotten that content by now. In an expansion (as I prefer) or in the LS. The time to tune has long passed.

We (the complainers) can not be accuses anymore of not waiting long enough and Anet can not be excused anymore for needing more time to release or tune. Waiting is over. ‘We’ did what we have been asked (waiting) it’s Anet who failed to deliver. And ‘we’ did warn for that early enough.

Carighan.6758:

Devata.6589:

And thats great. But I rather had paid another €50 for an expansion or twice for a second expansion by now. This it not about expecting things for free.

Of course, but if you look at their dev speed, they couldn’t create expansions. I mean ,consider that they’d have brought out two expansions so far, package everything they’ve done so far, new skills, changes, story, events into two expansion packs. That’s what you’d get. That’s… tiny. And if you want to pay 50€ for such a pack, fair enough.
But to me that’d be the polar opposite of what GW2 was so far, a super-high-value experience. That price level would be more akin to horse armour DLC in Skyrim. :P

I think you underestimate the amount of work that go’s into these LS things. They might not add much from a content perspective but look for example to the Toxic Alliance LS. Kessex Hillls got edited what.. 4 times? There was an instance added that acted much like a dungeon. And during the LS we did see many small instances that all required a lot of work. All the voice overs that had to be done. It really was a lot of work. It just was not very efficient to deliver content.

Based on seeing how much work must have gone into to LS I am pretty sure that if in stead of the LS 90% of there attention would have gone into creating an expansion I am sure they could have released an expansion after a year or maybe 1,5 years for the first expansion (because the first half year they would also have to spend more time on fixing things and adding festivals and so on, but on average one a year).

Those expansions would then maybe be a little smaller then what we might know from a games like WoW but it would for sure have been possible to add much more then what we have so far and would be able to be much more in line with what people expected.

redux.1502:

I’ve refrained from posting during all of this and have just kept up reading, but I think there’s one major lesson to be had here: ArenaNet has made several changes to the game without either A. thinking through the ramifications properly or B. asking for community feedback prior to making a game-changing alteration. There has been an abundance of good changes and community involvement lately, but I think that really does need to extend to some sort of testing arena.

If they really did not see negative feedback coming it would be very sad.

Personally I think they did expected negative feedback and simply decided that if the negative feedback was not to bad the would just leave it in and if it would be a lot they would add something like the option to also convert to 200 gems.
This to try and increase gem-sales.

However the negative feedback was so overwhelming that they had to come back to it completely to prevent any more damage and that much of negative feedback they did not see coming.

That is what I think.

They are simply always trying to push the boundaries of the cash-shop focus. Remember at release how they where defending the boosters and next to that they would only have a very few cosmetic things like costumes (only usable in city’s) and some convenient things like character slots and bank slots.

At release the only really bad thing where that the mini’s where in the cash-shop in stead of in the game. But after pushing boundaries for 1,5 year (they started with most of that about half a year in) look where we are now.

And likely for as long as they keep the cash-shop focus they will try pushing those boundaries.

It’s good to see that finally people did not except this one.

Carighan.6758:

Yeah, I’m in the same boat, Rangelost.
I mean, I wish there’d be more stuff coming. I feel that the dev speed is glacial at best. For everything, content, bug fixes, class changes, WvW, everything.

That being said, GW2 is among the most efficient gaming hours I’ve ever had, with the single cost vs ongoing playtime. Paid ~50€ in the gem store since launch and paid 50€ for the game, giving me 2500 hours played for 100€ so far. Yeah.

And thats great. But I rather had paid another €50 for an expansion or twice for a second expansion by now. This it not about expecting things for free.

Rangelost.4857:

People pay $40 for a console game, then consider it descent if they get 40 hours of gameplay out of it.

People pay $40 for Guild Wars 2, and after spending thousands of hours in the game, they complain about lack of content.

I don’t even.

Yes, more content would be nice. Yes, not removing content would be nice. Yes, other MMOs love to recolor older content, change some numbers and pretend it’s new content. No, Guild Wars 2 doesn’t need any of that.

Players ask for a new continent, players get a new continent, players complain about having to explore a new continent. Let’s take this moderately, shall we?

Many are asking for expansions. So they don’t pay $40,- and ten expect content to be keep coming in for free (keep playing for ever). They expect to pay another $40 for new content. That was the hole point don’t you think.

And yes an expansion usually has a lot of the same type on content with other colors while usually one really new thing is added. I even mentioned that.

Title: Where is the ‘Content you would normally / traditionally see in an expansion’? time is up.

This question is maybe even more for the people who have been defending the LS expansion approach as it is for Anet. But is at the same time also directed towards Anet.

Somewhere around half a year after GW2’s release I noticed GW2 was turning into a cash0shop focus and it was also then that Anet stated about the then just started LS “If we do this right there will never be an expansion” also explaining that the content we would normally see being released with an expansion would then be spread out using the Living story in stead of being released as expansion. However when that did git a lot of negative feedback they said that expansions where of the table, there where working on content and had not yes decides how to release it (wat is an impossible statement but I will come back to that later).

While I personally did think Anet would be able to release it that way my main reason to be against it was because it would mean that in stead of focusing on an expansion every year to earn there income they would need to focus on the cash-shop to earn income with a negative effect to the game. Pretty much exactly as we have seen over the last 1,5 year.

However every-time if this discussion came up and people complained about how the LS was not delivering the content we could expect from an expansion Anet’s response was they had things in the background and the people on the forum defending it said it was unfair to ask that from Anet.. We needed to give them more time, maybe the next patch would bring it, they had already made progress bla bla and other games also took much longer to release an expansion. While for me that was irrelevant (I wanted a B2P game, they need to release expansions sooner, those other games are P2P of F2P games) it was at least relevant for people who just had complains about the lack of the content and it was brought up a lot by people defending it.

We got the release dates of expansions of those other games thrown in our face. What was somewhere between 1,5 year and 2 years. In fact of all the bigger more successful mmo’s out there WoW seemed to take the longest (I know many people here dislike the WoW comparison but be satisfied with knowing it’s a negative reference as they took the longest). They took 2 years, 1 month and 24 days to release the first expansion.

You know when GW2 was released? 2 years, 1 month and 25 days ago. So here I am. I (and many with me) waited for over 1,5 year just ask the ‘defenders’ asked us to do and where is it??

Looking at what the LS did bring us we for sure got something of it. It’s hard to really hang a number to it in percentages but it is for sure less then 50% of what you would normally see an a expansion.

And before somebody tells me to again wait for the next part of this LS season to see what they add and so they might still include enough content. No the waiting time for that is over, ‘we’ waited at long and us has been asked. All the those excuses of ‘look at other games’ have become invalid as from now. And even if they would add everything missing is those upcoming patches (so about 10 more maps, an new race or profession, one more dungeon, and at lease one completely new feature like guild-halls or mounts or factions or something like that) that they would still not have been able to spread out the content we would normally see in an expansion over that period but would have still released most in one bunch. While the spreading out was exactly what was the hole point of the expansion.

Then to Anet the question. Does that then now mean we move away from this Living story Approach and back to traditional expansions? Like you said “If we do this right there will be no expansion” but we can now conclude you failed at that attempt. So then it’s time to move back to expansions and then please focus on them, back to the real B2P model. We waited long enough, gave you the appropriate time (in fact much longer because it this was to be a true B2P game we would have seen an expansions much sooner and had the second one by now). Now it’s your turn to make things right.

And about the “we are working on stuff in the background but are still looking at how to release it”. Considering that time-travel is not possible irl that statement does not even make sense if it comes to the LS vs Expansions approach. The idea with the LS was to release the content spread out over the period in stead of all at one bunch. So that means then everything being worked on also needs to get released overtime. It would be impossible to at this moment decide “we are going to release it using the LS” because then you would have to travel back in time to release it considering the time-period we would normally see for content we usually see in an expansion has passed.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

lordkrall.7241:

The thing about this situation is that it will rage like mad for a couple of days and then it will blow over, just like all the other times.

It probably will, but the damage is already done and people will quote this change everytime something else like this happens, like people still mention the “promise” of a scavenger hunt for precursors. It’s food for the flamers and haters, and they like the taste.

You almost act as if those ‘haters’ are then unfairly would mention these things? Maybe they are not hating but just critically about this and pointing to these this is giving examples as proof of there points. That means the more things they have to point to the worse Anet is doing, not the worse those ‘haters’ are doing.

lordkrall.7241:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

I’m with you with the love for Anet and “our” game. Do you really think this was a good move for their business? Just look at all the rage, not only here but in countless other fan-forums too. They won’t make money that way, they will lose customers.

I think the change itself is rather good, but they need to fix the amounts and potentially also add the ability to add custom numbers. But the thinking behind the change as such is good in my eyes.

The thing about this situation is that it will rage like mad for a couple of days and then it will blow over, just like all the other times.

No it will not blow over but that seems to be the same way as Anet thinks about it.

Megaservers did not blow over. People still dislike it just as much but they have said everything there was to say about it on the forums so it’s not active on the forums anymore. That does not mean it has blown away.

People still dislike it that SAB has still not come back. But agains, they have said on the forums what they had to say about it so the raging threads on the forums are gone.. Again that does not mean it did blow over.

Same for all the other similar things. They all did not blow over people simply said what they had to say about it. The game did get worse because of it and likely people did leave (usually not for 1 change but a combination of changes) or gave up hope.

At those saying something in the like of:

I used to spend X amound on gems but now [negative].

Be aware that you where supporting this sort of things by spending money on gems. It’s what keps there cash-shop focus alive. Maybe not enough and that might be while they then get force to become more aggressive and intrusive but you supported this.

I am very willing to support this game and because of that I made sure to have never spend a single dime on gems. I am very willing to spend money on expansions and if they would have released expansions on a yearly base (as what I expected with a B2P model and what I would have liked) I would likely even have both a more expensive CE if available.

You want to support a good game by buying a good game. You support a cash-shop focus and everything that comes with it by buying cash-shop junk.

cesmode.4257:

Curious…where are all of the people that blindly defend the questional decisions and direction of this game? Even they must be like “Wow…can’t really defend it here..”

They are here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Lets-talk-about-the-new-Gem-conversion-Merged/page/15#post4504753

Rage.9723:

Well the new business model seems to be focused on maximizing gem sales over new content. If players start leaving then that will be harmful over the long run.

I have been saying that since about 6 months after release of the game. For ‘long term’ I always figured 2 to 3 years. So we will see soon enough. I Also wonder what the new living story will bring and what will come after that because imo only an expansion and for the longer run a turn back to a true B2P model would be able to undo much of the damage already done. While some of the damage done is already irreversible.