I think the OP may be a bit out of touch. Same sex marriage is now legal in England, New Zealand and several other countries around the world and recently Ireland…IRELAND that is…voted by popular vote to bring in same sex marriage and that’s a place you wouldn’t expect this to happen.
There’s a really loud, very vocal group of people who yell and scream and stamp their feet every single time social progress is made.
The rest of us accept that people can have and express a view. The OP has expressed his view that he’s against it, but I’m pretty sure most people who work in the game industry aren’t.
Possibly because artists and creative people in general tend to be forward thinkers.
It’s already in the game. If you do the personal story now, you see the old LA.
I think the whole idea was to shake up the playing field and make people rethink about their builds. If all the old builds worked, or even most of them, the whole exercise would have been a waste of time. MMOs are supposed to rock the boat, and most do it more often than GW2 does.
I don’t see anything in HoT so far that would affect solo players.
I see it to some degree. If HoT is similar to the Silverwastes and Dry Top (and that seems to be the case) then most events are group events meaning that individual players stand little chance of completing them. On the other hand, as Belzebu said, the fact that one requires other players to be present does not mean that one is required to interact with them.
I solo stuff in the Silverwastes quite frequently though.
Edit: The OP is talking about grouping, not playing with other people around.
There will never be just an expansion pack. At any point anyone buys any of the titles, they get access to all the current content made before that point.
So if you wait like ten years, you’ll get them all free. I’ll be here playing. lol
There have been a number of changes to the NPE. For example, weapon swapping now unlocks at level 10. Hell the whole thing has changed.
No idea what you’re on about OP. I don’t see anything in HoT so far that would affect solo players.
Good job A-net for fixing things that do work…
Personal story, traits – what’s next ?
At least 3 toons are useless and i wont change their builds because i have 2 toons from every class (engi and necro excluded) now thay are just a bloody waste of spot…
DON’T FIX THINGS THAT WORK for god’s sake.
Except that traits didn’t work. I know you think they did, but they really didn’t. You may have liked them, but when you look at the number of traits that were pretty much never used, you realize that you liking them doesn’t change the fact that it didn’t work.
SOME traits didn’t work so it would be nice not to manipulate facts.
Merging traits isn’t a bad idea. However we are discussing how builds are being created with current trait system which is limiting and unrewarding.
Why? Arguments are in my previous posts. What I see here is people are debating good things about current trait system – yes, there are some good things after patch. Yet for build creation this patch is a butchery. This is what this thread is about so pleas stay on topic. If you can.
I am on topic, though. You say that the current system is butchery and maybe for a small percent of theory crafters that’s true. The problem is a small percentage of theory crafters isn’t this game.
Making the build system more accessible to more people makes sense from a business and playability point of view. I’m playing the same game you are, and frankly I don’t want to spend my entire time looking at build after build trying to find one that’s marginally better. Because that’s not my game. And I don’t think it’s the game of most players.
There are probably more viable options for the non-die hards this way. And you can’t make a game just for the die hards.
The game is changed for reasons. Not randomly. Not baselessly. And if you don’t like it, that’s fair enough. But to say that it’s worse this way, it’s just a matter of opinion. I think more people will be able to get deeper into the game this way than the way it was. Which is just my opinion of course.
Good job A-net for fixing things that do work…
Personal story, traits – what’s next ?
At least 3 toons are useless and i wont change their builds because i have 2 toons from every class (engi and necro excluded) now thay are just a bloody waste of spot…
DON’T FIX THINGS THAT WORK for god’s sake.
Except that traits didn’t work. I know you think they did, but they really didn’t. You may have liked them, but when you look at the number of traits that were pretty much never used, you realize that you liking them doesn’t change the fact that it didn’t work.
What a total cluster this auto-distribution of hero points was. Now I have 5 characters that are foo-bar’d, none of which I want to play.
I cannot believe you failed to include a reset NPC. What kind of game designers are you? It’s not like the path to 80 is fast…
Nice work Anet, you pushed me away from your game.
First of all the path to 80 is pretty fast, certainly compared to most games. People level to 80 in three, four days, so yeah, it’s pretty fast.
Secondly, you’re not completely screwed, as you play through the game you unlock hero points, which will allow you to unlock more traits/skills anyway.
In the old system, most people got to 80 with hardly any traits at all. The reasons there’s no refund is because there’s no refund for unlocking stuff, which is what this is. For example, in the old system, if you bought a skill, you couldn’t unbuy it.
Go out, get a couple of levels and some hero points and you’ll have the ability to unlock more stuff.
Except players who have put a lot of time and effort into the game purposely saved those Skill Points to allow them to NOT have to keep going back to run through the levelling process every time they want to create a new toon.
This was merely a stealth nerf to kill off all those excess skill points and in some way force players to spend countless hours redoing stuff.. .. maybe that’s ANET’s answer to their games poor replay value, but I would hazard a guess the extra character slot sales will fall when players get bored silly of doing it again.
This is not the way to keep maps populated, the way to do this is to create better content that provides players with that " I really enjoyed that" feeling but sadly GW2 lacks that in abundance across most maps that don’t entertain a champ train or shovel exercise these days… there in lies the issue, they made it a mind numbing experience to level, added a dumb chest digging farm, several champ train rotations instead of thinking on how the actual game could keep players interested for longer… now taking away the Skill Point excess to force players back through the maps.. I sense many will grow bored fast and not just vets either.
This is a very strange post. Everyone who gets to level 80 has the hero points to unlock every single skill and every single core specialization. This has nothing to do with stacks of skill point scrolls.
The problem people are having is ONLY with characters that are in the middle of leveling. It’s a transitional problem. They level a few levels and they get a few hero points they can unlock the stuff they want, but this has nothing to do with what you’ve said.
If you bought wings based on how they looked originally and they changed how they looked, you should be entitled to return them, no?
What a total cluster this auto-distribution of hero points was. Now I have 5 characters that are foo-bar’d, none of which I want to play.
I cannot believe you failed to include a reset NPC. What kind of game designers are you? It’s not like the path to 80 is fast…
Nice work Anet, you pushed me away from your game.
First of all the path to 80 is pretty fast, certainly compared to most games. People level to 80 in three, four days, so yeah, it’s pretty fast.
Secondly, you’re not completely screwed, as you play through the game you unlock hero points, which will allow you to unlock more traits/skills anyway.
In the old system, most people got to 80 with hardly any traits at all. The reasons there’s no refund is because there’s no refund for unlocking stuff, which is what this is. For example, in the old system, if you bought a skill, you couldn’t unbuy it.
Go out, get a couple of levels and some hero points and you’ll have the ability to unlock more stuff.
All pve can be solved, therefore no pve can be challenging. You just follow the solution and you win.
Math problems can be solved, too. Doesn’t mean there aren’t challenging math problems.
The traits are not the only problem, since the system doesn’t give bonus stats (Power, Precision etcs) we are now relying on armours (Some of us, crafted Ascended) SO IT IS AN EXPENSIVE INVESTMENT. But now, these armours are unfit for battle because, characters are not getting any boost from the trait system making it weaker or less effective. There’s a way to change the stats, you say? Well, we don’t want to grind for it, we grind enough just to get the armours. This mechanic add more work for to the players and rather restrictive.
Just want to say it is very easy to change the ascended stats it only costs ~5 gold and 10 spirit shards per piece (which should be easily obtainable if the person was willing to spend hundreds of gold on a very small stats increase).
Ouch!
5 gold and 10 shards to do something which previously was free? And only if you’ve laid out the resources for ascended armor?
That’s not a good deal at all!
It previously wasn’t free because you couldn’t change the stats at all. Five gold (x6 armor pieces + weapons) is very likely an extremely negligible sum to those who have ascended armor/weapons. I would have been incredibly angry if there was no way to convert the armor, but since it is so easy to do I don’t see a problem. Newer people who were in exotics and have less gold will have a far more difficult time however.
I disagree regarding stats – the cost was nominal, and after a point, became free. It was actually a really REALLY nice feature. It’s been that way for quite some time.
I have very little Ascended, 6 characters at level 80, all of whom I have in Exotic, some with multiple sets to suit particular builds. These changes are not friendly to that, and at first exposure, considerably reduce the quality and enjoyment of my play.
Not what I’d hoped for reading the initial press. Not what I expected, either.
But what you said is still false. The cost for changing exotic stats hasn’t changed at all, only changed ascended stats which could never be done before.
sorry you all but guild wars 2 is becoming like world of warcraft.
this is not cool if i wanted to pay for a Expansion for a game ill play world of warcraft and guild wars 2 still has not fix HOM to get your stuff from come on there try to be like wow but guild wars 1 and 2 is better then wow i will say this the only game i like more then gw2 is star trek online they dont make you pay for there Expansion.
You mean if you wanted to pay for an expansion and a monthly fee? Are you somehow suggesting that Guild Wars 2 charges $15 a month like World of Warcraft, in addition to the price of an expansion?
Give me a break.
@Vayne yeah, me too, i tend to have fun even though they want me to pvp like a ninny for this version. this version is excellent for adventuring and for collecting shiny fluff, though i really would like the henchies back so i can do dungeons with em……people are all good and fun till they take hours to make teams then boot you because it’s your first time in that dungeon.
anet needs to save me from their professional cave dwellers, else i’ll never see a dugeon.
I run dungeons pretty much exclusively with guildies, so I never have that problem.
You’re right – it did do what HoT did not – royally screw its playerbase in the throathole.
Guild Wars 2 is almost 3 years old. At about this time, games are regularly sold for bargain bin prices or outright given away. The only real issue was the invalidation of recent sales of the core game (made under false information), and they’ve addressed that issue, plus many other sources of the community’s incessant whining, swimmingly with the community address.
Destiny is about a year old – pretty young for an online game – and its expansions are practically fresh out of the oven. And now it’s going to invalidate those very recent purchases – or punish players for having made them in the first place, by bundling them all into an infinitely cheaper deal.
We are not buying cars what you said is bullkitten. Games do not degrade the older they are stop being so manipulated.
The value of games most certain does degrade. All you have to do is track the price of a game for a period of years. I was in the business of selling games, and there were very very VERY few games that maintained the same price year after year.
Look at Steam and look how cheap some games are that were $60 at launch a year ago, before you say stuff like this.
Okay, so I just want this clarified – there’s no JUST HoT expansion pack? Like what they did with Eye of the North? Because I love this game, don’t get me wrong, but I really don’t want to rebuy GW2…^^;
You’re not rebuying Guild Wars 2, though. You’re paying $50 for the expansion. That’s all. You’re paying $50 to unlock the new content and journey into the new areas, and get masteries and guild halls.
Anet has decided that the core game will be included in that for those who don’t already have it, because they want to remove a barrier of entry for new players. They sort of have to do this because other MMOs are. They have to remain competitive.
But the decision to make the expansion $50 was made before deciding to include the core game.
so you think it’s best to wait ? i’m split on waiting, not sure i want to get into beta because characters usually get re-rolled and they might add new deals – plus i have to spend wisely ….if anet said ’ awww man, come on, back me up’ then i’d buy it….but they ain’t saying that and i’m on a mission to make pvp intelligent again so i have to look like i aint buying.
It’s best to wait if you’re not sure you’re going to enjoy it/get your money’s worth out of it. I’ve yet to buy any product from Anet that I haven’t gotten my money’s worth out of several times over. So for me, it’s a no-brainer. Even if I’m wrong, I’ve gotten so much value out of Guild Wars 2 that even if I added in the value of HoT, it’s almost meaningless.
But yes, if you’re not sure, wait. See what they announce.
Even after that blog post I still don’t feel too hot(pun intended) about the expansion pack. Form what we’ve seen and hear so far from anet it doesn’t seem like much content yet it has a 50.00 base price, unless this expansion is up to caliber with expansions like WoW and FF14 then it’s not even worth it tbh. We need Anet to reveal more about the content coming to HoT so I can finally set my mind at ease(or disappointment).
I disagree with this. I think that it doesn’t have to be as much content as a WoW expansion because for the last content free year in WoW, people are paying $15 a month for nothing, and then paying $50 for an expansion that people were done with in a couple of months anyway. This to me is not really a good value.
By contrast, people bought Guild Wars 2 for $60 and got hundreds and hundreds (if not thousands) of hours out of it without paying more.
HoT is the entry gate to the new area. You can wait until more content comes out that feeds off HoT if you like until it becomes worth it, but I’ll be there from the beginning, gaining the new currencies, working on the new legendaries, unlocking my guild hall, leveling my masteries, so when stuff is added, I’m not hopelessly backlogged.
The WoW analogy doesn’t work.
People assume that players are constantly paying $15 a month for a year straight, or longer. Some people only pay for a month or two, then take a break until the next major update or expansion comes out. Is that extra $15 worth it? That’s up to each individual to decide. Do i question people’s judgement when they spend $15+ a month on gems in GW2? No, it’s their money, and if they see value on spending money on gems, it’s their prerogative.
The WoW analogy absolutely works. Because some people then don’t have WoW for the months they’re not playing. If they want to log in, at all, they have to spend $15 dollars.
So what you’re saying is WoW users who do this are renting the game for $15 a month plus $40, not including the first month. Which means that if they play for two motnhs, the expansion costs them $55, if they play for three months it costs them $70. And they can’t play after that at all, without paying more money.
Buy another character slot and you won’t have to delete a toon.
You missed the point.
Why do existing players have to pay $60 to play the expac when new players pay $50 and get the whole core game thrown in as well?
New players who preorder get the same number of slots as veteran players who preorder. That is they’ll end up with 6 slots, and they’ll have 9 professions.
If you want the slot that bad, wait till the last minute and preorder then. If you’re going to preorder, what’s the difference if you buy the game launch day or the day before?
Seems that most people do like the change. There’s less choice, but more viable options seems to be the consensus.
Yes it does screw individual builds from the past, but then MMOs change stuff. The ability to adapt to changes is what makes people good at the game.
FIrst of all, I wish people would stop using the term “slap in the face”, because it’s either hyperbole, or you’re misusing it. Either way…
They can’t let you reset the points you’ve bought, because it goes against the idea of unlocking traits. This is only a problem for a character the first time you go through as you’re leveling and in a few levels will work itself out anyway. Just go hunt down some hero point challenges. This is a transitional problem that doesn’t affect new characters at all. Just existing ones, that were caught in the transition.
It’s like skills, In the old days, if you bought a skill, you couldn’t refund that and buy a different skill. The idea was to make the choosing of skills as you level something that has weight behind it. That if you buy the wrong one and don’t have points. you have to wait for the next one. Core specializations now work the same way and for any new character created with give that same issue.
Is it inconvenient? Sure, it’s annoying for a few levels. You play for a few hours and it’s all gone, you’ll have more points, you’ll have unlocked different traits. It’s really a small inconvenience. It’s not a slap in the face.
Because it’s a transitional situation and not something most players have to deal with, there was zero reason to take the developer time to develop a system that would only be used once, during the transitional period.
Don’t you think it took the developers more time to make an algorithm that looked at your current build and then buy skills based off that build then it would of just to leave everyone blank.
I’m not sure there’s even an algorythm, but yes, I believe that they worked out how most people leveling would be affected.
You seem to be laboring under the assumption that most people who play this game think about traits or specializations at all. I’m guessing that’s probably not true. Devs have certainly implied that’s not true in the past.
In the past, when they’ve reset traits, people ran around without any points in traits for ages. They just didn’t have them. In fact, even I’ve gone and found after certain patches with the number of characters I have, that I forgot to give character’s a build.
I’m almost certain more people would have not had builds at all and found the game much harder, than the people who, while leveling are particularly about their build. I mean hell, even knowing about builds, I never bothered with a build while leveling.
So even with characters leveling, it wouldn’t affect me in my play style.
The people affected by this are people with characters like from level 15 to level 79, who care about builds while leveling, who are aware of/conscious of builds in the first place.
I’m pretty sure that it’s a smaller group than people who level and basically ignore builds until they’re 80. Remember, new characters don’t have this problem. And it’s solved but running around and doing skill point challenges. It’s not like you can’t unlock new core specializations as you continue to level.
FIrst of all, I wish people would stop using the term “slap in the face”, because it’s either hyperbole, or you’re misusing it. Either way…
They can’t let you reset the points you’ve bought, because it goes against the idea of unlocking traits. This is only a problem for a character the first time you go through as you’re leveling and in a few levels will work itself out anyway. Just go hunt down some hero point challenges. This is a transitional problem that doesn’t affect new characters at all. Just existing ones, that were caught in the transition.
It’s like skills, In the old days, if you bought a skill, you couldn’t refund that and buy a different skill. The idea was to make the choosing of skills as you level something that has weight behind it. That if you buy the wrong one and don’t have points. you have to wait for the next one. Core specializations now work the same way and for any new character created with give that same issue.
Is it inconvenient? Sure, it’s annoying for a few levels. You play for a few hours and it’s all gone, you’ll have more points, you’ll have unlocked different traits. It’s really a small inconvenience. It’s not a slap in the face.
Because it’s a transitional situation and not something most players have to deal with, there was zero reason to take the developer time to develop a system that would only be used once, during the transitional period.
Yakuza, the thing is, with influence going away in HoT it’s not going to be the same problem. As far as your comment: “killed the idea behind guilds”, this is only if your idea behind guilds was formed by games you’ve played before. Because I belong to multiple guilds in real life. A guild is a group of people that get together for a specific purpose. Not necessary an exclusive guild.
In real life I belong to a writer’s guild, but I still have other groups I belong to that fill the same function for other things I do. In Skyrim, you can belong as a single character to every guild at the same time and even run them all. So the idea behind guilds is really just your specific idea of guilds, rooted in the experience you’ve had so far.
However, in most MMOs, even though you can only join one guild at a time, each character could join a different guild and many did. Just not on the same character. When I played WoW, I had light side characters and dark side characters and each were in separate guilds. When I played Rift, I had characters on two different servers, and had one character in a US guild for when I was on in those hours and one in an Australian guild for when I was on those hours.
More to the point, in those other games, you didn’t have an account that was on a friend or guild’s list only a character. So your guild/friends didn’t even know you were on when you were repping another guild. It was less honest. Done completely secretly but make no mistake, it was done. A character may have been locked into one guild but not a player.
The only thing Guild Wars 2 does is make it so you can do the same thing many of us used to do openly. It doesn’t change that function of guilds, because there’s nothing in the word guild that means exclusive.
I haven’t weighed into this thread yet but I’ve been watching it grow. I find if funny how people have no issue with murderers, and killers and evil undead things, but somehow a transsexual is off limits.
We’re running around sticking swords into people and killing them every day, but a person who chooses to view themselves differently is somehow a big deal. The people who object, object because it somehow offends their moral code. Somehow it’s wrong to put in the game something that goes against their deeply held beliefs.
Excuse me.
I did not kill a single living being in order to gain “experience”. I spent my time learning various tradeskills and helping out my community with various goods that I produced. And now, I provide numerous services both in crafting and with the use of my water elemental talents, without rampantly slaughtering the local populace or wildlife.
Do NOT shoehorn me in with the societal standard of improving one’s self at the expense of others. You are a murderer who benefits from society’s ingrained notions about life and experience. You need to check your leveling privilege.
lol. Okay. But I don’t see you participating in threads condemning virtual killing happening. It’s the same thing.
I haven’t weighed into this thread yet but I’ve been watching it grow. I find if funny how people have no issue with murderers, and killers and evil undead things, but somehow a transsexual is off limits.
We’re running around sticking swords into people and killing them every day, but a person who chooses to view themselves differently is somehow a big deal. The people who object, object because it somehow offends their moral code. Somehow it’s wrong to put in the game something that goes against their deeply held beliefs.
Well bigotry goes against my deeply held beliefs. Judge people on who they are, not your preconception you have based on some societally installed metric that doesn’t hold water in different cultures.
We shouldn’t even have to have this conversation. We should be past this. We should be more tolerant than this.
Because it’s a big world, there are a lot of people in it, and we all have to live together.
(edited by Vayne.8563)
I didn’t find the old LA boring but I don’t find this one boring either. I definitely prefer the current incarnation.
I like the current system much better, as well. I didn’t think I would, but I do.
HoT Price Feedback + Base game included [merged]
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Vayne.8563
Hi guys,
Anet should give two options then.. easy to solve it: a package to new players with the freebie GW2 core, and another focused to long time players – the ones who have been supporting the game through gem store for instance.
Why someone who never spent a dime on it has more advantages the veterans ones?
I also know that many threads have been posted about it, but possibly, the more complains about, the more Anet will gather feedback about it.
What about all the people who play for free and never spent a dime in the gem store?
HoT Price Feedback + Base game included [merged]
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Vayne.8563
I’m aware that people who bought GW2 during the first quarter will be refunded… and what about the veteran’s – the playerbase who is supporting the game since the very beginning?
Only a character slot isn’t enough…
The refund is because people who bought it recently might have gotten information from the Anet site that misled them. Refunding them isn’t a perk. It’s Anet doing the right thing in regards to something that some had claimed was false advertising. It wasn’t. It was just ambiguous. But it was misunderstood.
Some of the people being refunded bought the game because they thought they had to. This has nothing to do with new players old players. This has to do with Anet doing the right thing.
They know that some stuff has to be toned down. They’ll tone it down. The patch will be adjusted. That’s how balance patches work pretty much in every game. They come out with a patch and they adjust it.
I know guys. I keep telling myself this. But after so long im just losing faith. Were they testing the patch? what did the testers say? Were they waiting to just see if the players were gonna just silently enjoy the even easier content? meh i dunno
i just got 2 friends to reinstall and try the game and they all just chuckled at the easymode and uninstalled 2 hours later. so now im kinda embarrassed i fell for the hype again
Never tell friends to install anything on patch day. That was the first mistake. But yeah the open world is supposed to be easier. On the other hand, AC is harder according to some people.
SWToR started as a sub game, and you can barely play it without paying the “optional” monthly fee. Hardly an example of good business practices if you ask me. Tell me do you still have to pay to unlock your second skill bar?
Have you tried playing GW2 without paying anything? With the incredibly small bank and the few inventory bag slots, only 5 character slots despite having 8 professions? With ArenaNet’s strong focus in adding far, FAR more skins to the Gem Store than to the game? With the scam-like lottery system ArenaNet uses for people who want to get the weapon skins from the Gem Store?
It’s hardly an example of good business practices if you ask me.
Even if I stopped and bought two or three bank tabs, it’s still a lot cheaper than I paid playing Lotro or DDO, and it would be a lot cheaper, because I’d have to sub to SWToR to make it playable.
Once you get the “essentials” in Guild Wars 2, it’s done. And yes, there are people who farmed gold and upgraded their bank without spending cash.
Once upon a time expansions used to cost 40 dollars (Eye Of the North) and came with 2 character slots.
People complained about the price of that just like they do for every expansion that is ever released.
So you’re saying an expansion costs $40 that long ago and now it’s $50 and you think the price has gone up. Do you pay the same price for bread, or milk, or petrol or rent or electricity in that time?
This industry changes very fast. A ten dollar increase in the price of an expansion isn’t even anything to comment on.
Staff used to be 50 people and now it’s 300. It costs much more to make this game. It costs more to make most games.
They know that some stuff has to be toned down. They’ll tone it down. The patch will be adjusted. That’s how balance patches work pretty much in every game. They come out with a patch and they adjust it.
There’s nothing shady going on. The standard MMO Expansion costs between $40 and $50, and that is what Heart of Thorns costs.
They don’t have to give you a discount, and they are giving you a free character slot ($10 value) if you prepurchase.
Furthermore, this is not a subscription… that metaphor is completely ridiculous. Not buying the expansion doesn’t prevent you from playing the core game—it just locks you out of the new content. Try that kitten with WoW. Drop your subscription, and they won’t let you log in.
Stop QQing. If it’s too expensive, wait until it goes on sale.
Says who? SWTOR was 20, other games have been less. 50 USD for a tiny amount of content is only possible because of people who have invested significant time into the game and they feel compelled to pay it. It’s like a drug dealer increasing his price after the first charge, lol.
SWToR started as a sub game, and you can barely play it without paying the “optional” monthly fee. Hardly an example of good business practices if you ask me. Tell me do you still have to pay to unlock your second skill bar?
If you had the core game on disc, the amount of downloading you’d need to do to make it into the current game is about equal. 2.5 years of changes and updates. Why is a disc even a thing anymore?
You bought Guild Wars 2 X number of years ago for $60. A new person would have to buy the core game AND the expansion. Now that’s when there’s only one expansion. In the future, there’ll be two, maybe three. So you’re asking new players to part with an increasing amount of money. As that number goes higher you get less and less new players, the death knell of any MMO, since all MMOs suffer natural attrition.
well, to be fair, that’s what we did for Guild Wars 1.
I understand what you’re saying and I agree that having the core game and expansion being separate 60 dollar purchases isn’t ideal. I just thought that some common ground could be found
That’s what you did with Guild Wars 1 10 years ago, when there was no competition in that space. And no. You didn’t. Because in Guild Wars 1, you could buy Factions and never have bought Prophecies. You didn’t have to buy Prophecies at all, ever.
But today the competition is high and it’s what the competition is doing. That’s just the reality.
This industry changes as fast as any industry on the planet. What Anet did ten years ago is largely irrelevant.
Maybe they don’t need to push the presales, and they’re happy to wait.
The reasons for this decision are two fold. First, Anet’s own FAQ implied people needed to buy the game, when it was decided to include the base game in the HoT box. So people felt misled, and rightly so. It was worded badly. So Anet is making good on that, because they need to.
But about the decision to include the core game in the box…let me just say this.
You bought Guild Wars 2 X number of years ago for $60. A new person would have to buy the core game AND the expansion. Now that’s when there’s only one expansion. In the future, there’ll be two, maybe three. So you’re asking new players to part with an increasing amount of money. As that number goes higher you get less and less new players, the death knell of any MMO, since all MMOs suffer natural attrition.
This isn’t about you. It’s not about vets. It’s not about anything but business. If the game doesn’t survive and move forward, Vets don’t have a game either.
WoW is doing it. If you own the core game of WoW and buy the current expansion, you get every expansion of WoW made between for free.
EQ has been doing it for a long time.
This is what businesses have to decide. Should they keep giving us more and more, because they want to remove a barrier to entry for new players? Don’t new players help EVERYONE?
This isn’t some attack on veterans. It’s how the game moves forward.
There is going to be one new class and ONE NEW MAP.
Yes, it will be layered like a lasagna but it will NOT have a dungeon with inbuilt “free” armors and weapons.
Instead it will have oh so meaningful open world content, which amounts to pretty much the sameish living world Zerg content we already saw, just more static.Yes the GvG stuff is cool and their maps are a nice touch, looking great. Albeit they seem too humongously huge and will probably end up too empty at the end of the day.
ALL of the above is fact and to me simply not worth 50 bucks, especially when that price was pretty much set by some Chinese market analyst to determine the profitability of this game in the next fiscal quarters.
THAT´S the real reason for this current pre-order hype, and I´m sorry guys but you´re falling for the old bait&switch like … {insert appropriate expression}.
I wish people would stop saying there would be one new map, because they’re 100% demonstrably wrong. There will be one new region, which is not the same as a map.
In addition there’ll be other stuff, some of which we haven’t heard about yet. But just the fact that you’re capitilizing misinformation makes me wonder how much you actually know about HoT.
I’m sure this is all news to Anet. It’s great that they have players like you to teach them how to run a successful multimillion dollar business. /s
I think a lot of players think they know more about the business than they actually know. At this point, I’m pretty sure the veteran players that feel spurned by this are a minority and there’s always attrition in any MMO when an expansion comes out. No MMO has a 100% uptake of an expansion.
This is an extremely competitive environment where even the top dog in the industry lost 3 million subs in a very small amount of time.
And none of the other games out there are much more successful than Guild Wars 2. So there are 2 possibilities.
1. None of the developers out there know the stuff you put in this post.
2. It isn’t as easy as you make it sound.
I know which one I’m going with.
This is a pretty vocal community, but I’m not really seeing an outcry. Seems like there’s far more support than complaints, which is odd for these forums. I think there probably is less choice…but I like the choices I do have better.
PTS are pretty much a waste of time. One of the biggest examples of PTS fail was Reckoning in WoW. When a guy stacked it so much that he one shotted a world boss. It was hotfixed within 24 hours but did the Blizz devs stop to think “Ya know, with this unbound and stackable 1,000 times isn’t this a bit much?” Nah.
With the way Arenanet operates, they can’t afford to test internally. They don’t have enough time and people to dedicate to it. Can you really pull 20 people from their computer to go test a world boss, run around in WvW and expect the game, expansion and other projects in the works to continue smoothly? Nah.
Besides, if you think about it, every day you play this game, you’re playing on a PTS because they release new builds live and fix things live. Better than WoW where they let bugs run rampant for 6 months to 2 years, fix them in a patch and break the entire game for a week.
This is how GW1 was done and people loved it.
Anet has an internal test team called the QA team. They do test.
If you bought the core game from the Anet site, you’re actually entitled to a refund, if you purchase HoT.
The downscaling formula was, rightfully in my view, adjusted. It’s harder to one shot things now. lol
I’ve played games with PTS servers, especially Rift. Didn’t change a kitten thing. They had plenty of patches they had to completely revert because they didn’t work. PTS servers are not a panacea.
HoT Price Feedback + Base game included [merged]
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Vayne.8563
The expansion for FFXIV is $40 not 50$ and its 60$ if you wanna buy the entire game. Why do we not have that option if we already have the game?
Really why?
I must add that FFXIV expansion has more features unlike ours and we know that because we saw with out own eyes what it had.
Yes! Yes! You’re right. I admit it! You have won the argument.
You have marely paid $100 for all the content in FFXIV and you played for years. Those $15 that you pay each and every month, they don’t count for anything. I bet you any amount of money that FFXIV uses that JUST to keep all the servers open. They’re actually not a business at all, but a charity, who provides you all of this great content completely free of charge. /s
If you’re comparing a subscription game to a game without a sub, and you’re going to say the only price you’re paying for content is the price of the box, you’re either deluding yourself, or you’re not paying attention.
FFXIV launched with the game is such an abyssmal state, they had to pretty much say sorry and make a NEW game. And yeah, the new game is better. But they took your money for the old crappy game, which you played for how long, before they finally released the new version, for which they charge the $60 box price and 15 dollars a month, for a traditional MMO that breaks very few boundaries, that I tried and didn’t like anyway. Because you know, killing those five cactus and going back to cash in my quest is very 90s.
Yes, if you love the Final Fantasy series, you might be able to stomach that kind of antiquity, but a lot of people tried and and couldn’t stomach it. I wouldn’t play it if it were free to play.
But it’s not. It’s the base game, and the expansion and $15 each and every month. If they have a million subscribers, they take in roughly twice what Guild Wars 2 takes in in cash every single month.
Sounds to me like it’s not cheaper at all.
But you did not pay again for Guild Wars 2. You’re paying for Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns, the next title in the series. That’s how Buy to Play games work.
You can continue to play Guild Wars 2 as long as the servers are up. There is nothing stopping you from playing it. Play it all you want. You got what you paid for.
What you’re not entitled to is everything, forever for free. You’re entitled to access the game you paid for, Guild Wars 2.
Because by that logic, Anet isn’t obligated to provide you infinite content or even an expansion. They can simply not offer any upgrades at all, ever, and you could play the game forever.
The expansion is an expansion, which is to say a new title appended to the old one. The new title is Heart of Thorns. It’s trademarked. It’s new.
But you can still play Guild Wars 2 all you want. Just not Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns.