Guild Wars 2

You know those movies where all the best parts are in the trailer? That’s what people are suspecting in this case. Particularly since Anet is usually not shy about (over) hyping the amount of content they put out. What they decide to show compared to other companies is just a function of their style of promotion.

In the end, buy it if you think it’s worth $50, and wait for the inevitable sale if you don’t. There’s no need to get angry about the asking price. (The “bait-and-swith” thing is a different issue altogether.)

Bang for your buck? Fallout 4 for sure. You’d be getting a full-fledged game versus an expansion that’s looks to be on the smaller side. And if it is the case that you can cancel Fallout at any time as suggested above, it’s really a no-brainer.

HenleyLegoMan.4987:

It’s possible that there is also a bit of shady shenanigans being done by anet regarding the core game free with expansion:

It’s called sales figures.

Would be easy to say regardless of how many new players buy it, that the HoT expansion increased sales of the core game. Regardless of wether they purchased bundle could use the core game or not.

Anet will probably also release a statement saying that sales of the core game increased with the release of the expansion.

A very tangled web, we may all be caught in….

Interesting. I imagine they can count each HoT sale as two sales (core + HoT)for hype purposes and yet they’ll technically not be lying. I remember some controversy a while back where people claimed they were fudging with some numbers (was it WvW tournament player numbers? Something like that.)

OP’s title is about entitlement yet arguement is about value for the money. In short, he’s just grasping for any argument to justify Anet’s $50.

insanemaniac.2456:

$100k doesnt matter compared to $5-10m

there are like 7m accounts. if even 1% of the entire playerbase buys in to the preorder, your reddit thread is irrelevant.

If 1% of your 7m buys, that’s 70,000 customers, which means $3,500,000 in sales. $100,000 is about 3% of that. That’s a lot to lose in one avoidable screw up.

From what I can tell, HoT has 20-30 dollars worth of content — probably in the lower range (not counting a character slot). If Anet has already priced it at $50, there’s little chance they’re going to lower it by much… so I’ll wait until HoT goes on sale so that I get my money’s worth. No big deal.

If the price of HoT were more in line with the amount of content it contains (max $30) there would have been much less resistance to new players getting the core game for free.

Of course, the bait-and-switch of needing to buy the core game is really bad for their reputation

Khisanth.2948:

Based on where ANet is spending their resources WvW is probably the least played of all the game modes. PvE gets most of the updates. sPvP gets a bunch of tournaments and other events. WvW gets EotM which was added because it was necessary for the Chinese launch.

That’s not how Anet decides to allocate their resources.

The higher ups at Anet have a vision of their game and allocate resources according to their vision. But their vision doesn’t jive with their customers’ vision of the game. Hence the large amount of resources spent on sPvP despite its critically low population.

New players are easier to satisfy as you don’t have to create much (if any) new content for them. Of course it’s super shortsighted, but that does seem to be Anet’s thinking.

Ascended will now be 10% better than exotics. People are preparing for the grind. That’s why.

codiac.5642:

What I find really great about ESO is the UI mod’s you can get for it, they really allow you to customise the UI and see things how you want. If A-Net was going to take anything out of ESO it should be this, their default UI is on par with the GW2 UI, but with community mods it creams the GW2 UI, because each player can get the exact experience they want, regardless of how different their tastes are.

Considering GW1’s UI was extremely customizable, I think Anet actively does not want anyone to have UI different from the default in GW2.

No. If applied to existing GW2 account you get:

Access to GW2 HoT

and that’s all. No additional character slots.

CureForLiving.5360:

… Now if everyone would just take the ‘we don’t know enough’ into considerations while complaining about the price…

They’re asking us to preorder the game now and they’ve simply not shown that there’s $50 worth of content (I don’t think that there is).

The burden’s on them because they’ve long since lost our trust.

Terrahero.9358:

You say you need the base game, then come out with a big 75% discount sale, and then include the basegame into the expansion anyway.
I wonder how many people bought GW2 on discount, thinking they get a good deal in preperation for an incomming expansion.

Precisely this. How far back will they compensate those who fell for this? Not far, I’d guess.

BlackOcean.6903:

First excuse me for my English it is not that great. Second, as I’m reading some forum posts people are “angry” about the prices that ware set on the expansion, I’m also not fond of them but this is why. Lets say that the free game(so gw2 that you get as an extra) is not important for the veterans of gw2 or even someone that bought the game yesterday, but the problem is(at least for me) that I don’t know what I’m getting and when I’m getting it. What did they reveal of this so called “challenging group content”, what is the release date, they did not even reveal all the elite specializations for the classes, when are we getting something revealed because that is what people need. I was hyped about the expansion and will probably be buying it, just not with this info I have so far, because it feels like I’m buying a cat in a sack. What do you think?

Don’t buy it until you have more information.

1. Anet consistently overhypes and under-delivers so why risk it… particularly at the $50 price point.
2. If you buy even though they are giving you no information, you’ll do it again next time. Don’t encourage this behavior.

Zende.1704:

Liisjak.4509:

No. He’ll also need HoT, and then you’ll have another base account which you will give out, and that guy will also need HoT…it’s an endless cycle haha, well the perfect money sink.

And what if I want an account without HoT for, say the login rewards?

You’ll have to use your current account for login rewards and treat your HoT account as your main account. Of course, if another expansion comes, you’ll be starting from scratch again when your HoT account transitions to being a second login rewards account.

Terrahero.9358:

Guildwars 1 did NOT have a precedent of always giving a free character slot with it’s non-stand alone expansions.

The Campaigns added free character slots because they were stand alone. The Eye of the North was an expansion, was not stand alone and did not add a free character slot.

Only the stand alone products added character slots because if they didn’t, how could someone who only bought Nightfall play the game?

And yet they price it closer to a standalone game than an expansion.

The fact is that not everyone is going to buy the expansion immediately. And if getting the guild hall is a one-time event, then people are going to miss participating in it. Will this cause some to buy HoT earlier? Yeah. But a lot more are going to feel left out. Over all, not a good thing, considering Guild loyalty and cohesion is pretty lacking in this game.

MashMash.1645:

I’d be happy to look at paying if I could see what and how much I’m getting.

Unfortunately, I think we’ve pretty much already seen how much we’re getting. I don’t think they’re hiding a massive amount of content as a surprise.

Crimson Clouds.4853:

This sounds like a terrible idea.

1. Arena-net want to make money out of this expansion. Allowing players to bypass this would be terrible business strategy. When it comes down to it, A-net and NCsoft are businesses- they are here to make money, not to conveniently hand out their content for no real-life cost.

-A counter argument for this could be that such a strategy would drive up the in-game gold-to-gem price, simply because there would be even more demand for gems. This would result in more people buying gems with real money because gold-to-gem price would be extortionate. However, I doubt that this would make-up for the profit that would’ve otherwise been obtained through regular purchase of the expansion.

2. For me, this is the most important point, and there are a number of levels to it. You’d be giving the people who are ridiculously rich in-game to have a significant financial benefit over those who are not.

-This is simply unfair. Having mountains of gold does not define somebody as being a good player. In most cases, it means that a player has either been lucky or knows how to flip the trading post. Currently, gold only benefits players as they could buy aesthetic items or convenience items, meaning they have no real advantage over people who have less gold. Being able to buy an expansion with no financial cost is quite significant compared to being able to buy an outfit or some gathering tools for “free”.

-I could delve into many nuances of this idea, but I think you’ve got the point. Either way, I’m fairly sure that this would be against A-net’s ethos. It would also make many players upset: the game is meant to be casual, so why do people who grind gold/play the TP ultimately get the real-term advantage?

-Another counter-argument. It would be a great gold-sink, mainly affecting those with enough gold to consider purchasing the expansion with gems (i.e. the “1%-ers”). It would be a short-term fix though, I’m sure the “1%-ers” would be able to earn the gold back fairly fast.

It works really well for grocery stores (coupons).

A lot of people are simply not going to buy at full price. So either Anet loses their sale altogether, or these people wait for sales — but it’s better to get their money now: who knows when the sales come whether they’d still be interested in the game. People are generally happier as well since they always feel like they got a deal.

And if you’re really worried about people having too much gold, you can always solve this the Anet way: create a new currency! You get this new currency playing parts of the game Anet needs to be more populated (i.e. PvP). In short, Anet pays you to prop up the failing parts of their game.

Pandaman.4758:

So say it’s only $20 worth of content in the expansion, we’ll pay $50 and have $30 worth of gems included, then as more HoT-exclusive material is released we can choose to unlock it with those gems. Or squander it buying pet rocks.

ANet gets their $50 up front, we pay fair value for the expansion, and the remaining amount we paid goes to what we choose (if we waste it all on pet rocks, we can pay ANet another $30 for the gems when the additional HoT content rolls out). Win-win-win.

Sounds good — for maybe a more trustworthy gaming company — I don’t think I’d trust Anet’s promises to follow through on future content.

I know they said they wouldn’t, but here’s the idea:

Sell it for significantly more than 50 dollar’s worth of gems (maybe 100 dollars worth?). Players then choose their price, some paying full price, some only converting gold to gems, but many converting some gold and buying some gems. See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination

There’s also the added benefit that it populates the world as players work towards making gold to offset some of that gem cost.

Any economists care to comment? (By the way, does the dev John Smith still show up in the forums anymore?)

ArrogantHero.4965:

People on these forums are complaining about the value of the GW2 expansion. I believe that everyone is titled to there opinion, fair enough. BUT if you have ever went to go see a movie when it first came out YOU ARE A HYPOCRITE!!! You say GW2 expansion cost too much but you will spend $10-$20 to see a 2 hour movie.

By your argument, you’re also a hypocryte if you ever eat out, buy beer, or smoke narcotic substances.

Vanive.3804:

I can wait 2 years for a sale when they throw it out for $10.

At the rate Anet is alienating their customers, it doesn’t look like you have to wait 2 years.

ELF.8496:

Although I must admit, it feels like the a giant carrot (dangling guild halls in front of players) who will feel forced to buy otherwise be segragated from other members of their guilds if they choose to wait for the inevitable price drop.

So if you don’t have the expansion, you won’t be able to enter your guild’s guild hall? That is indeed a carrot, but at the same time sounds like a massive mistake. Most people aren’t going to buy the instant the game comes out no matter how big a carrot you dangle, so all you’re doing is causing customers to miss out on content (opening of the guild hall, for example).

f you’re making your customers feel like they’re being cheated (true or not, irrelevant), that’s a marketing fail.

JustTrogdor.7892:

Lord Kuru.3685:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Something else:

“With a little gold to turn the wheels, the organization will give contracts to guilds to clear these areas of the jungle and, in return, will be able to own these areas as long – as they hold off further Mordrem threats.”
————————————————
Sooooo, if you don’t hold off Mordrem threats you’ll lose access to the area? Does this mean you’ll lose access to the guild hall unless the guild comes and clears the area again?
————————————————-
“Clearing these areas will be tied to the maps they are adjacent to—as the guild halls are physical places that exist on the world map—and the meta-events in those maps. Once a guild gets to the guild hall, they will enter an instance full of Mordrem, which they will need to clear. Once cleared, players will find a large crystal in the heart of the instance that, when interacted with, will essentially cut off Mordremoth’s influence. From that point the hall is theirs, and the guild can start rebuilding it.”

Anet has known for a long time that people hate having to pre-events to open dungeons. Yet this sounds exactly like that.

I watched the live stream and it looked like a one time event that a guild does to earn their guild hall space. I think it was even described as such. So it isn’t like every time someone wants to go to a guild hall they have to complete the event.

The “as long as they hold off further Mordrem threats” that’s bolded above makes me think it’s something you need to open by doing events.

I’d be more cautious. The existence of dueling and GvG will hurt their precious PvP a lot. You think they’d risk that?

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Something else:

“With a little gold to turn the wheels, the organization will give contracts to guilds to clear these areas of the jungle and, in return, will be able to own these areas as long – as they hold off further Mordrem threats.”
————————————————
Sooooo, if you don’t hold off Mordrem threats you’ll lose access to the area? Does this mean you’ll lose access to the guild hall unless the guild comes and clears the area again?
————————————————-
“Clearing these areas will be tied to the maps they are adjacent to—as the guild halls are physical places that exist on the world map—and the meta-events in those maps. Once a guild gets to the guild hall, they will enter an instance full of Mordrem, which they will need to clear. Once cleared, players will find a large crystal in the heart of the instance that, when interacted with, will essentially cut off Mordremoth’s influence. From that point the hall is theirs, and the guild can start rebuilding it.”

Anet has known for a long time that people hate having to pre-events to open dungeons. Yet this sounds exactly like that.

Expansions aren’t worth $50 period. And HoT doesn’t even look like it necessarily has an expansion’s worth of content. So no way the price is fine.

Nokaru.7831:

Meanwhile, no one talks about a massive change to the game:

• Base attributes at level 80 now scale to 1000 instead of 926

That’s almost +400 more stats.

Meanwhile you choose to ignore that people are losing 700 stats from traitlines. Not just that… those where stats you got to choose (at least to some degree). Your 400 are spread out evenly, so given any one build you’re getting a ton of worthless stats.

Nightfall and factions had entire new continents worth of maps; a full game’s worth of new skills. Those were worth full price.

HoT looks like an expansion — and is being called an expansion. So why isn’t it priced as an expansion? I will wait to buy until it goes down to a more reasonable price — assuming GW2 still keeps my interest by that time.

Should have just been first in last out: with a change to boon/condi displays that show the correct order that they’re in so players can make informed decisions.

That way skillful play shows up in the form of cover boons and conditions.

At least you (OP) aren’t one of the people who crafted Ascended gear with stats chosen so that they complemented stats gotten from traits! I know quite a few people who did just that.

But only WvW players would have done that: PvP don’t have Ascended, PvE either have all zerkers, or are play-how-you-want players who probably crafted Ascended gear for the skins. So I’m pretty sure Anet doesn’t really care.

Sublimatio.6981:

just spawn a portal, get teleported, avoid combat (sword 2), use wp during evade frames to belka area, spawn portal back, use terminal again, gg profit

(yes you can dps her down to 50% with just 66002 mantras)

The portalling trick is fast enough that the fight doesn’t reset?

frifoxy.6014:

Haven’t given the new trait setup a look yet so can’t really speculate atm

well then get on it!

(j/k… thanks for the write up!)

…that potentially have big gameplay effect

(in spirit of the graying out health bar for condis post: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Gray-out-the-HP-for-future-condition-damage/first#post5140316 )

All of these allow players to make more informed decisions (or more easily make such decisions) during gameplay:

• Show visible effect on those with stability (just recycle rampage-as-one animation)
• Show cooldowns of all sigil and trait effects on bar where boons go (if you want to keep everything client-side, just do it for your own cooldowns)
• All boon strip and conversion as well as condi conversion and removal put under the same system, either:
  a) everything random
  b) first in last out — in which case player boons and condis should always show boons/condis in order: oldest to newest

Anyone have other ideas? Try to keep them really simple.

Thanks everyone!

frifoxy.6014:

6/6/0/0/2 and 4x mantra. Slot in Mental Torment in place of Signet Mastery. As you’re running in – swordsman / warden / illu leap + weapon swap to cancel the aftercast / tw / mantra of distraction / auto attack. When you’re nearing the 50% mark, spam mantra of pain/distraction and shatter. This should get her past 50% pretty reliably.

For this specific encounter I’d even go and use the seaweed salad for extra 10% dmg since phantasms are useless here anyways. This encounter, when solo, you really do have to push mesmer to the limit to kill her. Even on my necro I had easier time doing the 50%.

You think this will work after the specializations update (I don’t think I’ll be logging in again until after the update)? -300 power seems like an over 10% damage nerf .. quite a lot.

Even if you only had 1 necro: with 100 damage per tick and 100 bleeds on the lord, that’s 10,000 damage per second.

You’re not going to be able to dodge it if the fight is 10 v 10 or bigger.

And imagine if the attackers had two or three necros.

Can a solo mesmer do enough damage to Brie in Arah p2 before the 10x damage expires?

As I understand it, phantasms don’t get the buff (WTF, by the way — did they not learn anything from not giving agony resistance to pets in GW1?).

Considering they’re removing stuff like idle animations from the game, I don’t think they’re going to add any new dances.

Lunacy Solacio.6514:

atheria.2837:

Chaba.5410:

Email exploits@arenanet.com

Also use the in-game /report feature and select ‘botting’.

In game reports do nothing – we did this for weeks and not one castle nor anet employee did a thing until it was posted here and to youtube.

In game reporting is a joke – a bad, nasty, mean, joke.

We are supposed to use the forums – according to many emails I have – and now you and others change the rules that WE are being told to utilize?

Wrong answer.

Except in game reporting has worked on many occasions. Just because you haven’t seen it work doesn’t mean it doesn’t work.

The problem with it, though, is that we can’t tell them what we are specifically reporting for, but that doesn’t make it completely pointless or a complete ‘joke’. It needs work but it has never been the forum rules to allow shaming anyone or call out specific individuals. There is a good reason to send to that email address and not post on here, the right people get to directly see it instead of possibly seeing it, you know, like when it is buried on a forum hoping an employee will stumble upon it.

The entire reason people post here — risking infractions — is that they’ve reported countless times either in-game or via email, and have seen no action. The guy says exactly that in the post you quoted.

Astralporing.1957:

Lord Kuru.3685:

Astralporing.1957:

Then use name change contract on that crafting character, and continue to use it for crafting while you explore your new race (and old name) on a different character.

But a new character means going through NPE.

The trait part (which is the real problem of the NPE) is going to be changed soon anyway, so it shouldn’t be a problem. Also, there’s something called tomes of knowledge.

It might actually be worse. At least right now you can tome yourself to 80 and spend ungodly amounts of gold to buy all the traits (which then get reset when the new trait system hits).

In the new system it looks like grinding 65 skill challenges is going to be mandatory.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Lord Kuru.3685:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Living World teams could generate content, perhaps on a monthly rather than bi-weekly basis.

Content was never generated on a bi-weekly basis. It’s unbelievable people fell for the “bi-weekly” hype: It was maybe four bi-weekly LS releases every six months. That was how much content Anet was capable of putting out which means they simply can’t put out expansions and LS at the same time.

It’s unbelievable that people have such short memories. It seems you’ve forgotten LS S1, which did bi-weekly updates for over half of 2013. It wasn’t until after Wintersday, 2013 that ANet slowed down, which coincided with the push to the China release.

Flame and frost:

Prelude: 1/28/13
Gathering storm: 2/26/13
The Razing 3/26/13
Retribution 4/30/13

That’s once a month for four months.

Secret of Southsun 5/14/13
Last Stand at Southsun 5/28/13
Dragon Bash 6/11/13
Sky Pirates 6/25/13
Cutthroat Politics 7/23/13
Queen’s Jubliee 8/6/13
Clockwork Chaos 8/20/13
Twilight Assault 10/1/13
Tower of Nightmares 10/29/13
Nightmares within 11/12/13
Fractured 11/26/13

May to December (the next one after Fractured came end of January 2014): 11 releases in 8 months

A total of 15 releases in 2013. And they never had bi-weekly releases for more than 5 fortnights in a row, taking multiple one-month breaks.

Bi-weekly would have meant 26 releases in 2013: not even close. And I won’t even say anything about how small some of these releases were.

Not sure exactly what you’re asking, but if you’re looking for the recipes for making verata’s sword or chest armor (for example), you can buy those on the TP for really cheap.

The alternative is to farm SW for them to drop, but the drop rates are really really low — trust me, I did exactly that until I discovered they weren’t accountbound (I never got any verata recipe to drop, by the way)

emikochan.8504:

Lord Kuru.3685:

Yes Mawdrey gets rid of your dust, but saving you gold by not crafting it and deleting your dust saves you money in the end. You won’t ever break even from Mawdrey: you’ll either quit the game first or GW2 will shut down before that happens.

Considering that I didn’t spend any gold on it, I broke even pretty quickly. The quest to get all the parts was really fun too.

Opportunity cost.

1. put 100 stacks of bleed on tower lord (possible since they have tons of health)
2. epidemic(s)
3. defenders die within 2 seconds

This is going to be hilarious.

Jockum.1385:

Whats 2. for you? Wildstar?

It would be very sad if Anet has to choose. Anet had years to develop content, there should better be some amount of content coming.
Dunno how many centuries it took them to develop all those GW2 basic dungeons and areas…

If HoT really consists of only three open world maps (as some speculate)…well….look at drytop or SW. I don’t think this will keep GW2 alive on the long term.

In three years, all they managed were two mini-me sized maps. I think a lot of people are expecting a Factions or Nightfall amount of content but I’d be surprised if they put out even a traditional expansion’s worth of content.

As for dungeons, Anet’s already made it clear they have no interest in creating dungeon-type content. The “challenging group content” we keep hearing about is almost certainly more Vinewrath.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Living World teams could generate content, perhaps on a monthly rather than bi-weekly basis.

Content was never generated on a bi-weekly basis. It’s unbelievable people fell for the “bi-weekly” hype: It was maybe four bi-weekly LS releases every six months. That was how much content Anet was capable of putting out which means they simply can’t put out expansions and LS at the same time.

To be honest, I’d be surprised if HoT actually contained what’s traditionally considered an expansion’s worth of content — much less a Factions or Nightfall’s amount of content, which I think a lot of people are expecting.

Astralporing.1957:

Then use name change contract on that crafting character, and continue to use it for crafting while you explore your new race (and old name) on a different character.

But a new character means going through NPE.