Guild Wars 2

lordkrall.7241:

phys.7689:

Which i imagine is the case, because if the same amount of new people were playing/spending, and staying, it is likely that profits would be the same or higher, but they have in fact gone down consistently since NPE was introduced, even in the holiday season.

I would say it is much more likely about age. It is very unusual for a game to reach up to the same level of profits 2,5 years after release as it was close to release.
Most games tend to stabilize after some time, even without NPEs or whatever.

In fact I seem to recall the profit being lower (about the same level as the first report after NPE) even before the NPE was released.

im not comparing it to release, i am comparing it to the months before npe.

but more telling than anything is the holiday season, it should have made more money during the holiday quarter than the quarter just before it, to actually make less is a sign that the users are either decreasing or less willing to spend money, even during the holiday season (which is the buying season in US) keep in mind profits include gem sales, and you see less interest.
Both are signs that users are not as satisfied with the product as they once were.

Mirta.5029:

dietzero.3514:

Ok? That has absolutely no relevance to what I said. But nice one!

how was what he said not relevant?

When the game came out, you didn’t get a guaranteed yellow for doing world bosses, you didn’t get guaranteed gold for running dungeons, there were no champion loot bags, Spvp didn’t give you anything that you could use in PVE. Your income was less. So much indeed that getting Tier 3 Cultural was considered a huge achievement. Now if you so wished you could get that in a day.

Hence back then compared to now the gold to gem exchange was cheaper. Now it has adjusted itself to what would be equivalent difficulty for earning that gold to gems. If the price was fixed, however a year from now it was normal to count gold in thousands and not hundreds, people would make the money in 5 minutes. Why should that happen?

while you are correct that it has scaled, i have seen no indication that scale is in line with actual buying power, in fact my guess is it is FAR from it.

yes, definately it was harder to get gold before, but was it harder to get a bank slot? no it really wasnt.

oct 7,
1 month after release, cost of 100 gems, 43 silver
at that time i believe you got 28 silver for beating a dungeon path
1 dungeon run = 65% of 100 gems
now, you get 1.5 gold for beating a dungeon, but it costs 13 gold for 100 gems
1 dungeon run =11% of 100 gems

before, each time a monster in orr dropped gold, it got you 1 gem roughly, now each monster dropping gold gets you .06 gems

so yeah inflation happened, but the increase in value of gems is not actually caused by the inflation, its a factor, but even accounting for inflation, gems have gotten more valuable as time has gone on.

lordkrall.7241:

dietzero.3514:

I am betting it is a rather small part of their income. Their 1% whales would have bought most of theirs by now, and new players were scared off by the horrible NPE. Their weekly sales and new flavours are what make them their money.

Yeah, except for the fact that the vast majority of the people shouting about the “horrible NPE” are veteran players that knew how the system was before, thus had something to compare to.
Based on actual in-game experience however I see plenty of new people running around.

And yes, their weekly sales do indeed make them money. But it is also rather silly to claim that they make no money off bank and bag slots.

You also still refuse to come up with what they should add to the store instead in order to replace the loss of income from removing the gem cost of bank and bag slots.

If you have a worse product, it doesnt mean no one will use it, it means less people will use it, or people will be willing to pay less for that product.

if the NPE is inferior, yes you will still see new people running around, but you will see less of them staying than you would have seen before, or they will spend less money. Which i imagine is the case, because if the same amount of new people were playing/spending, and staying, it is likely that profits would be the same or higher, but they have in fact gone down consistently since NPE was introduced, even in the holiday season.

mtpelion.4562:

dietzero.3514:

Crossaber.8934:

dietzero.3514:

Yargesh.4965:

dietzero.3514:

Yargesh.4965:

dietzero.3514:

Crossaber.8934:

dietzero.3514:

Astral Projections.7320:

Sometimes I think ANet shouldn’t have put in the gold to gems option. It seems to make some people feel entitled to free stuff.

Are there even any non subscription based MMOs that give away free bank and inventory slots? If there are MMOs that give away free bank slots, I would bet the people are paying a monthly subscription fee. It’s the subscription fee that allows those MMOs to give away stuff. It’s not reasonable to expect a game without a subscription fee to have the same features. One way or another, they have to have income.

Oh I am sorry. I did not know wanting space to cost a static amount of gold meant free. Next time I will check with you on whether gold is a real currency in the game or not, before I post.

The reason why bank and extra bag is behind gem store.

Gold is so much easier to gain nowadays than launch, but cost for gold convert to gem (that means getting gem store item for free) is increased a lot as well. Therefore, the longer the game life, the more expensive gold to gem cost, on the other hand, it is so much easier to pay cash to buy gem than getting it for free.

If bag and bank space become fixed gold cost, the longer a player stays, the easier they get the item for free. This is the reason why Astral said people are asking for free stuff.

Well he is completely wrong. Also, how much gold can you gain now, compared to 1 year ago? It is probably less.

Might look up what completely wrong means. When I started one gold was a good amount for an hour (personally). Now ten gold is fairly common in an hour.

Ok? That has absolutely no relevance to what I said. But nice one!

Shakes head walks away.

Thank you for your random input. Next time follow the stuff you are quoting. Here:

- Astral believes anything that costs gold is ‘free’.
- Astral is completely wrong.

gold is free, anyone play the game gain gold…

unless, you pay credit card for gold, beware what you’ve revealed….

any item with fixed in game gold is more or less free, because anyone play the game with their own pace, can gather enough gold sooner or later without spending a real world penny. That equal to free in a longer term.

As for gem, the more player convert gold to gem, the less player buy gem for gold, it is the reason why gem is expensive to buy with gold. If the Item cost gem, means the later you buy it, the more gold it cost you. (This is the reason of this thread) This make either players with a lot of free time (able to play a lot for a lot of gold: play to win) or players able to pay with credit card (pay for time). This is a well balanced system imo.

Using your time does NOT mean free. Do you work for free?

Your recreational time is free, because it is not otherwise being used to generate income. You’ve already made the decision to “waste” your time, thus it is valueless.

Gah, ninja’d by TheDaiBish.

If you define free, as costing money your are correct
but valueless is false.
time has value, even if it is recreational time. This is why if someone wants to call a locksmith to open a door, in his off hours, he charges them more, because his recreational time has value. This is why you get paid more for overtime, because your extra time has value.
This is why some people will tell their bosses to noway when they call for some extra hours.

And lastly, this is why people will pay money to be able to spend more of their recreational time doing what they actually enjoy doing, rather than preparing to do it, because that time has value.

Wanze.8410:

Tom Gore.4035:

Wanze.8410:

Tom Gore.4035:

mtpelion.4562:

There are many reliable ways to farm cloth. They are just very different from the ways you farm ores, lumber, and plants.

Many of those ways aren’t able to be quickly targeted though, which is what annoys many farmers.

Using buy orders to salvage requires you to wait. Buying karma armor and forging it requires karma. Running Silverwastes nets you a wide range of materials as well. Killing level-appropriate mobs for armor drops takes time.

I can appreciate the desire for quickly targeting farming, but I can also understand why they aren’t going to add that now. The methods in game right now allow us to achieve the farming result everyone is looking for, they just require you to go above and beyond normal “run to the node and wait” gameplay.

All methods you presented can also be used to “farm” other baisc crafting materials like metal and wood. They’re not farming, they’re kludges to get around the fact that you cannot reliably farm cloth.

Just to loosen your fixation on reliably farming cloth:

Leather cant be farmed reliably as well, yet its mostly worthless. So the fact that cloth isnt reliably farmable cant be the reason why Bolt of Damask is so expensive. Its expensive because its demand is higher.

That’s a fair point, yes. Still, as shown before, the demand of iron is as high or even higher than linen, and yet iron has not become ridiculously expensive because it is reliably farmable.

Introducing such reliable farming method for cloth would inevitably lower their prices. I’m sure you would agree to that at least?

Cloth prices across the board are getting cheaper for 6 months now, with a few seasonal or demographic ups and down. So they clearly already took effective measures to lower their prices, as they gradually go down.
What you are proposing will most definately trigger a price crash.
Why do you prefer a price crash compared to gradually decreasing prices?

its a design flaw.
Its basically a faucet with no control that leaks at a steady rate.
Why not just fix the leak, and add lever to control the flow.

This is essentially the same pattern that was already established on game start, but slowed down, eventually, barring some new demand created for silk, the price will slowly fall, if they have a new demand, the price will spike hard, and slowly fall.

The design requires a maintenance man running the economy to periodically empty the bucket under the leaky pipe, and yet, when people actually want water they just have to sit around waiting for the bucket to fill up.

So the design simultaneously creates too much silk, and at the same time makes people feel its a pain to get silk when they actually need it.

The solution is, reduce silk created without intent
create means for creating silk with intent
reduce obnoxious item requirements on basic gameplay items instituted for the sole purpose of draining oversupplied silk.

People claim to want a free market, and yet they dont want to control their own supply, thats a very basic part of a free market, that is key in properly finding the real price point of an item that people would feel comfortable with.

lordkrall.7241:

Claiming that it would not impact business is quite silly.
Removing a rather large part of their income (and yes, I would say that it is rather likely that bank and bag-space is a rather large part of their gem store sales) WILL impact the income.

There is no company in their right mind that would remove one source of income without replacing it with another source that gives as much or more income.

you are correct, this is a valid point.
Yes, the bank tab situation is not pleasing for many, and yes it does impact your general gameplay, however ANET gotta get paid somehow.

Unless you are willing to pay them in a different way, ask yourself whether its that big a deal.

But i dont agree with people trying to claim its not an advantage, it definately is advantageous, thats why people are willing to pay for it.

Its like by these standards being given a car/insurance/gas is not an advantage, because hey you can walk anywhere, or buy a car. Sure you can, but already having one is definately an advantage.

Lets not kid ourselves

the question is, is it an acceptable advantage, considering at the end of the day, anet gotta get paid to exist.

Crossaber.8934:

Behellagh.1468:

And now we are talking about LS content. Hello, wasn’t this thread about bag and bank expansion costs?

Somebody believed gem store selling extra bag and bank expansion is pay to win.

I can’t think of how these gem store item is pay to win unless, we are playing GW2 for inventory management time attack, the one with faster management speed win, then yes, buying bag and bank expansion is pay to win. We really can’t stop someone plays the game their own way.

But i am a normal player, i play GW2 for dragon, wvw and pvp, so the mentioned items doesn’t make the game pay to win.

lets say you bought the game to play dragon kill, WvW killing, BUT you have to spend some of that dragon killing/WvWing/NPC saving/jumppuzzling/exploring time you have, doing inventory management/gold grinding
so now, the guy who can do all of that faster, is getting more time to kill monsters fight opponents, and save the world. While you are trying to sell items on the tp, buy salvaging kits, sell anything you dont need right now, because you ran out of space, he is killing up them dragons you bought the game to kill.

Lets be totally clear here, the game is actually effected by the economic design, and its not often to make you kill dragons better, but rather so that while your doing that stuff, you are willing to spend money, or give gold to someone else who spends money, so that you dont have to deal with those inventory management issues you didnt buy the game to play.

pdavis.8031:

^^

I didnt factor in each different stat per armor. So 23 different stat types over 6 different skins adds in an additional 828 different pieces, just for light dropped armor. And of course you have about the same for crafted armor, and all the named light armor. So that makes up for the rest, so 3000 isnt that All that far fetched.

Wow plenty of sources for silk…why do people say its so hard to get!?

not sure if you are serious here.
i mean if you are just curious about numbers, thats fine, but to take that information and jump to, wow its “easy” to get, is ignoring so many factors its amazing.

First of all the number means nothing on its own.
there is 150-180 million carats of diamonds sold a year, does that mean diamonds are easy to get?

What are you comparing it to
How much does a player have to consume to use it
How many people need it
How many of these sources are actually cost effective to use as sources
How much do these sources actually yield on average ( i will tell you that from most bags they are far less common than 2 per bag)
How much actual time does it take to specifically farm it

Mirta.5029:

phys.7689:

karma is basically gold

how do you buy karma?

you dont, but it feels generally the same as paying gold for an item
i suppose the karma items that need a big chain to be completed feel a little more thrilling, but the karma earning itself is pretty similar to accumulating gold.

Windsagio.1340:

Mirta.5029:

phys.7689:

i hate buying stuff with gold in a game, the only thing i dislike more is probably buying stuff with real money in a game.

point is, new armors in other games can be goals, in FFXIV i want to craft a certain armor set, i want to get a different set from a raid. Which gives me goals, and things to do in game. Now if these gears are only available in the store, they really do nothing for making the game more engaging.

But i may be a special case

do you have all the dungeon skins unlocked? Because F me after a month I’m only getting close to finishing the crucible of eternity collection. Then there’s all the karma vendor skins. Then there’s all cultural armour skins. Then there’s the special champion weapon skins. Then there’s all the crafting profession backpacks and all the ascended skins that I didn’t unlock yet (every different stat is a different skin), then I don’t have all the legendaries either, not to mention the exclusive tequatl skins. You’re telling me that you have all of it?

I have a pet theory that part of the problem is that there’s no heirarchy for unlocking skins, so it ends up being a bit of a ‘kid in the candy shop’ kind of issue. Most games have an essentially set order for earning (even with crafting tracks), but past level 80 the only ‘ordered’ content is ascended and legendaries, and those only somewhat.

its not about order, its more about being gold based. or extremely grind heavy.

the dungeon aquisition method is decent, but i only liked COE armors,
cultural arrmors look cool, most times, but they are gold based, so boring to aquire
Champion skins drop rates are too low imo.
karma is basically gold
Many of the cooler skins end up requiring items that its easier to get gold for than to play the game normally to get. For example hunting charged lodestones, you will probably make less money, including the lodestones value, than if you do whatever the current best gold method is. So basically they too become gold grinds, just for a ton of gold.

essentially armor can act as a carrot for content, but for me if its just about earning gold it wont be very entertaining.

pdavis.8031:

Wanze.8410:

My last post made me wonder about this:

How many different loot tables include silk scraps?

With all the different kinds of armor, containers etc around, it should be over 1000 different sources easily.

Well for starters according to the wiki. Silk scraps come from:
Bag of Alchemical Materials
Bag of Theoretical Materials
Bag of Alliance Supplies
Large Bags
Heavy Bags
Level 58-80 light armor
Discarded Garment
Rag
Torn Rag
Torn Garment
Beautiful Knit Hat
Beautiful Knit Sock
Beautiful Knit Sweater

Thats 12 sources not including armor.

Armor:
Feathered and Masqurade armor. (crafted): 2 sets: 12 pieces
Dungeon Armor: 8 sets, at 6 per set: 48 pieces
Dropped armor: 6 sets: 36 pieces.
Order Armor: 1 set: 6 pieces (per character).
(I left out karma and WvW armor as you can’t salvage those.)

So we are looking at a total of at least 114 sources. And if each source has a chance to drop an average of 2 scraps. Thats 228 scraps on average for using each source only once.

Thats not bad at all.

Edit: Forgot the different types of large and heavy bags. 15 of each. So there 42 sources aside from armor. So 156 sources, for an average of 312 scraps for using each source once.

no, many of your sources dont give an average of two scraps by far.
and crafted is a loss on silk, it always used up more coming into existence than it salavged into.
order armor… costs gold, you get back silver

many of your sources are really horrible sources

Windsagio.1340:

phys.7689:

Mirta.5029:

phys.7689:

2 week schedule is a lie, Its a 2 week schedule for 6 -8 weeks than a break. and the amount of content per those two weeks doesnt add up.

and we havent actually got a new dungeon/dungeon like content probably since fractured.

but it is true that they have to make money some how. And it is also true that you get a decent value for your initial purchase.

but i would probably pay more for more actual game of substance. The expansion may provide that, we shall see. I honestly dont know though, havent seen them deliver much on par with what the game delivered in the first 4 months in a long time.

14 fractals,
3 new zones,
QA improvements,
5 hours worth of story
and lots of temporary events

That’s what we got in 2 years for free. Even WoW just locks it up in expansions. And once again, which game provides you with new dungeons on a regular basis?

fractals were cool, but we got most of those 4 months after release, and the rest like a year ago.
Quality of life improvements were like 50/50 for me.
5 hours of story is not a lot, thats 3 months in ffxiv

they had some cool stuff, like marionette, and i think it was worth 60 bucks, but most of their interesting content was like a year ago, and the far majority was on release.

and i amended my last post with ffxiv.
look at what they have added in a year, like 12 dungeons 12 raids 2 24 mans, massive amounts of quests, like 10 boss events in game obtainable armors, a new class new crafting recipes etc.

and thats only one year of updates

about comparing content releases

hide spoiler

There have been a ton of new visual things, between the (10? 12? I don’t even know) sets of BL weapons, the outfits, bizarre things like the mail carriers, random single armor or weapon pieces, etc.

… Actually there’s been a ton of purely ingame stuff too, between the SAB skins, the season 2 stuff (amber weapons and carapace/lumi armor), the seasonal skins, the event backs (dragon wings, flowers, mawdry style vines) and odds and ends like the scarlet weapons and the Aether/Teq reskins. New recipes too now that I think of it.

~~

The only thing GW2 has really lacked, the more I look at it, is more dungeon/group content… which as we know was aether path, fractals, and nothing else.

~~~

The ‘obtainable armors’ thing is interesting, in most games they’re necessary because of progression creep and the loot-focus on the game. The GW2 business model is, in effect, opposed to that, which means that you’re usually going to get new prestige items in different ways than the traditional ‘new-dungeon-new-loot-I’m-the-first-to-get-the-cool-new-set’ setup. (with a few blaring exceptions)

i hate buying stuff with gold in a game, the only thing i dislike more is probably buying stuff with real money in a game.

point is, new armors in other games can be goals, in FFXIV i want to craft a certain armor set, i want to get a different set from a raid. Which gives me goals, and things to do in game. Now if these gears are only available in the store, they really do nothing for making the game more engaging.

But i may be a special case

CrashTestAuto.9108:

What confuses me is why we haven’t had information still. The HoT thing is out of the bag. The system is near universally hated. The last thread had 4,000 posts and 200,000 views.

I don’t understand what it is that is so important about staying quiet that it outweighs the damage that’s been/being caused…

its because they dont actually have a working solution yet. They probably have some ideas, but they arent sure if they are actually workable or an improvement. It would probably make sense to run some things by the players, or ask more pointed questions, but that is against the general policy, and they dont really have the infrastructure or staff to handle feedback properly anyhow.

Look at the last thread, tons of suggestions, discussion, brainstorming, and most of it lost because devs dont have the time nor inclination to sift through it all, and analyze what it all really means as whole, for whats good for the game. They are busy people and are basically skimming it looking for cliff notes, while not trying to get upset about people talking bad about things to which they put a lot of effort.

But unless something changes, they will continue to have some real problems, because their style is based on iterations, not genius design, and they arent good enough at getting/analyzing/understanding feedback or having a fast enough turn around time, to make a iteritive development style really shine.

to maximize their iterative development style, they should have set up a test server long ago, as well as a feedback structure/plan that can crystalize feedback rather quickly. 1 year for iteration, and 10 months gathering feedback for a change is not going to give you a lot of positive evolution.

Mirta.5029:

phys.7689:

2 week schedule is a lie, Its a 2 week schedule for 6 -8 weeks than a break. and the amount of content per those two weeks doesnt add up.

and we havent actually got a new dungeon/dungeon like content probably since fractured.

but it is true that they have to make money some how. And it is also true that you get a decent value for your initial purchase.

but i would probably pay more for more actual game of substance. The expansion may provide that, we shall see. I honestly dont know though, havent seen them deliver much on par with what the game delivered in the first 4 months in a long time.

14 fractals,
3 new zones,
QA improvements,
5 hours worth of story
and lots of temporary events

That’s what we got in 2 years for free. Even WoW just locks it up in expansions. And once again, which game provides you with new dungeons on a regular basis?

fractals were cool, but we got most of those 4 months after release, and the rest like a year ago.
Quality of life improvements were like 50/50 for me.
5 hours of story is not a lot, thats 3 months in ffxiv

they had some cool stuff, like marionette, and i think it was worth 60 bucks, but most of their interesting content was like a year ago, and the far majority was on release.

and i amended my last post with ffxiv.
look at what they have added in a year, like 12 dungeons 12 raids 2 24 mans, massive amounts of quests, like 10 boss events in game obtainable armors, a new class new crafting recipes etc.

and thats only one year of updates

Mirta.5029:

Jerus.4350:

I like GW2, but I sure as hell wouldn’t pay a Sub for it. Not unless they started coming out with new sets of dungeons every couple of months like subscription based games do.

what subscription based game does it? Concerning free, WoW does one every 6 months at most, everything else is in payed expansions.
Concerning Wildstar they’re doing quarterly updates, instead of updates every 2 weeks like here.
Concerning Elder Scrolls Online I don’t remember them doing any meaty content updates either.

2 week schedule is a lie, Its a 2 week schedule for 6 -8 weeks than a break. and the amount of content per those two weeks doesnt add up.

and we havent actually got a new dungeon/dungeon like content probably since fractured.

but it is true that they have to make money some how. And it is also true that you get a decent value for your initial purchase.

but i would probably pay more for more actual game of substance. The expansion may provide that, we shall see. I honestly dont know though, havent seen them deliver much on par with what the game delivered in the first 4 months in a long time.

and yeah ffxiv does it;
http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/special/patchnote_log/
about every 3 months you are looking at 3 new dungeons, a 1-4 new 8 mans 24 mans, 2-4 new trials (boss events) assorted new quests, new armors, crafting recipes, etc

pdavis.8031:

rotten.9753:

pdavis.8031:

John Smith (Anets economy guy) has stated several times that silk is working as intended and by design, and yes they do monitor it, and found this is be a good long term solution.

People are forgetting that silk is still super easy to come by. You can get silk from almost every mob in all level 58-80 zones. Either in “pure” form from bags, or from salvaging light armor, or salvagable items. Heck I was able to get 60 scraps (20 bolts) just from salvaging alone doing an hour in Silverwastes. At that rate it will take ~5 hours to make 1 spool of silk weaving thread. Now using all the karma you can get farming SW, you can easily use the conversion to get the linen, wool, and cotton. So you can make 1 bolt of damask in a few days (depending on your play time) just farming all the mats needed. It’s not really that bad.

Ye, by design silk costs 5 times more than mithril and like 20 times more than a leather and you need it 3 times more than mithril. By his design sure. But the next time he’ll change it, it’s also gonna be by design. Everything they do is by design.

Precisely. However, I took your comment to imply that the change was unintended and/or a mistake. The cost of the silk is solely based on what people are willing to pay for it. As of now (according to GW2 spidy) there is a surplus of 138,881 silk scraps in the TP alone. Thats not inlcuding any people have in their banks at any given time. The stuff is FAR from rare and hard to aquire. Although it is very desirable, there is no reason the price couldn’t reflect that. However people are still willing to pay 2s 6c for it. Now if everyone in the game all got together and said “we are not going to pay more than 80c for a scrap of silk and set the buy and sell orders at 80c” Then the price will change to 80c per scrap.

Anet doesn’t control the prices on the TP. Players do. You can argue that Anet does influence the prices through the drop rate, but in the end it comes down to what players are willing to buy and sell for. And silk, being so common, has no reason to be at the price that it is. It is the current price simply because of what people are willing to pay for it. Nothing more.

surplus has to do with a budget, how do you determine if the supply is more than is needed exactly?

Draknar.5748:

Chrispy.5641:

Well, Person A is driving the white car and wants to enter the free for all races. Well, Person B and Person C have a couple dozen wins under their belt, and were able to upgrade to the Green, Yellow, and Purple cars, which, while not much better than person A’s white car, is still better, and the tiniest fraction of handling ability or horsepower matter in a race.

I was with you until the bold part. Why are the different colors “better”?

Are you using an Exotic vs Ascended analogy here? You can’t buy Ascended gear with gold, so how would that factor in?

Since there is an obvious cap to gear/items that can be utilized in WvW, the advantage isn’t so much on the competitive side, but rather if everyone was starting at level 1 with no money. The person who buys gems, converts to gold, will be able to get himself geared up and on a competitively even playing field (gear/item wise) to other WvWers faster than someone who is also starting from scratch but earns money the regular way.

This is really the only case where you could argue “pay to win”. And even then, you are paying to accelerate progress to the limits (level, gear, food) that everyone can achieve. Once you have all of those maxed out, there is no advantage to having additional funds.

Others would argue that the guy that didn’t buy gems to convert to gold could still achieve the same things eventually. But it would be hard to say they would necessarily be able to do it as fast as someone who just bought gold. And progress speed is a type of advantage.

But that said…in the context of competitive WvW, I wouldn’t be able to even compare these two as the guy starting from scratch at level one isn’t involved in competitive WvW. You would have to compare someone who bought gold to someone who is actively in competitive WvW already, at which point there is no distinct advantage to buying gems. You couldn’t “pay to win” competitive WvW, as it were. You could “pay to win” the speed at which you could progress to becoming competitive, but having a bunch of money won’t give you any advantage over a competitive player who doesn’t buy gems.

So it does beg the question, is that “pay to win” if you are just accelerating progress. You mentioned it was a form of “pay to win” but that sounds like more of an opinion than anything else. To me, “pay to win” means someone who pays money has a distinct advantage over someone who does not pay money when in the context of the content in which they are competing.

just because there is an upper limit to an advantage doesnt mean its not an advantage.

i mean by that definition, nothing in real life offers an advantage to the wealthy, because hey, you can earn enough for that eventually.

If they develop new sneakers that give you .1 second faster aceleration, and increase average velocity by .005 meters per second, and the cost 500 dollars, wouldnt the guy with them have an advantage over the guy who doesnt? just because he could eventually earn 500 dollars doesnt mean the rich guy doesnt have an advantage.
lets put it this way, untill the other guy can earn 500 dollars, or get the shoes by some other means, he has an advantage.

In wvw, the advantage to having insane amount of gold is capped, yes, but the team with more gold resources, has an advantage over those with less.
more food buffs, better gear, more options for builds a HUGE advantage in seige. Generally this evens out among the servers and the people willing to spend, but if you had a server that was willing to spend 50% more than another server on average, there would definately be an advantage if other things were similar.

Behellagh.1468:

Jerus.4350:

Why is no one talking about the Copper Salvage-o-matic? There’s your true p2w right there!

I’m fine with my current bag space at just full 20 slots on all my alts, but that thing… not having to buy salvage kits and take up half a bag for those… man, how are people not up in arms about that thing?

While I have one now but most NPC vendors who will buy junk also sell basic salvage kits. At most I gained one or two slots for spare basic salvage kits. I never retained enough items to bring back to a TP that those slots used for spares impacted my carrying capacity for a session.

The copper fed simply lets me ignore seeing if I need to buy some more BSKs as well as never running out because I forgot to restock.

eh at one point i was doing massive salavges from tp stocks, it was a hassle to return to the vendor constantly, and a hassle to buy new ones, even in rata sum where its pretty close.
with the copperfed, i was able to essentially stand at the tp and salavage mass quantities without returning.
i will admit i have less bad space than many, so its more of an issue for me than them, but yeah its a pretty noticeable effect.

i noticed such a big difference when i forgot to put it in my bank and was playing lowbies without it as well, i had to let a lot of items hit the floor. They too didnt have a lot f bag space, though.

point is it really is an advantage, in either case. Its not the end of the world, but its definately an advantage.

oh yeah, i forgot, when it comes to manufacturing, it is a huge advantage. Lets say you are buying tons of mats for making something else, or gambling in the mystic forge, or salvaging for resale.

huge advantage, that can effect your profits.
of course you can do it with out it, just takes longer.

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Main problem though is, cant salvage rares with it.

Could you clarify the following statement in your post? You can salvage rares with the Copper Salvage-o-matic.

I think you either should have said that “you won’t salvage rares with it” or that “people shouldn’t salvage rares with it”.

you are correct, you can, it just is a bad idea.

Mirta.5029:

phys.7689:

thats because the truth is using karma is not really actually a good way to get mats, most of the time. Because even though some people feel karma is in infinite, it has other uses, other values, and is a resource you have to earn.

lets say you spend 1000 karma to get 2 scraps of linen, lets say thats 3 dynamic events, + the time to go to the guy, mystic forge it, and then break it down.

lets say you need 40 linen scraps for your daily craft, thats 50 dynamic events, at 4 minutes per dynamic events thats 200 minutes.

dont forget though you need 25000-63000 in karma for obsidian shards per ascended piece, so maybe you dont want to burn up 20000 karma a day just for linen.

point is, karma aint free, when you actually break down the costs, you are probably not winning time there

9000 karma = between 20 and 30 scraps of linen.
Tequatl gives 20 000 karma daily alone.

Also I get majority of my shards from fractal relics as those are raining out of my ears.

i think it should be between 10-30, since you can get 1-3 scraps per salvage. but if you say it averages out to 25, i can be with that

sounds like tequatl is a special case then, because far as i remember, nothing else gives you anywhere near that. i remember fractals giving a lot for being high level and doing one 10 levels under your max, and that was like 9k or 12k or something, and that would take probably at least an hour to beat a level 40 fractal, and you would have to already have earned credit for level 50.
which i didnt mention as a method, because it really isnt a viable one for a lot of players.

kinda sucks for a lot of people though since he only spawns 3 times a day, which may not be when you can play, and your map may fail. (if it requires your map to win)

regardless, karma is a resource you have to earn, so i wouldnt consider it to be an easy answer, i mean yeah you could farm 16k extra karma a day for your linen, or you could spend 2 gold, but you are still looking at a lot of work for a decent amount of players, whose regular play isnt earning them a lot of gold, or karma.

A direct method would probably be better.

Jerus.4350:

Why is no one talking about the Copper Salvage-o-matic? There’s your true p2w right there!

I’m fine with my current bag space at just full 20 slots on all my alts, but that thing… not having to buy salvage kits and take up half a bag for those… man, how are people not up in arms about that thing?

i have it, and it truely is a huge advantage, especially if you DONT have massive inventory space. Main problem though is, cant salvage rares with it.

And yeah having a lot of inventory space is still an advantage, one i am not willing to put too much effort into, but an advantage none the less. My friends curse my name when in fractals i have to salvage goods at the treasure chest before going to next zone. And i cant carry around as much different armor set ups, as i might otherwise do. I often end up having to sell things, or toss them faster than i would if i had more inventory/bag space.

that said, i can deal with it. But i wouldnt claim its not an advantage.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Chrispy.5641:

No, you’re doing it exactly right. Your problem is the assumption that if the advantage is small enough, it no longer exists, and also failing to admit that. That is also the problem of the guy who replied to you.

Man, you guys would have fun playing Destiny, where all the weapons’ kill times are balanced to within milliseconds of each other, well, except for the part where those milliseconds count. Same as in this game when it comes to making lots of gold and making lots of gold fast.

Yeah, but let’s stop right here and you can tell me how having an apparent infinite supply of Gold (and nothing else) helps me “win” things like WvW. Or sPvP reward track items. Or Luminescent skins.

I can be sitting on a pile of gold big enough to make Evon Gnashblade jealous and . . . I win what exactly?

Tale Destiny, and I have tried it but it was so not my cup of tea . . . FPS games just can’t be entertaining to me anymore . . . but assume I go fight Crota, Son of Oryx at the end of the raid. Does it matter if I am not set up for complete advantage, so long as I’m actively not trying to die and managing to do the steps needed to be done (kill swordbearer, protect guy with sword, drop Crota with damage, and kill Oversoul when it shows up)? Do I really need to have the bleeding edge?

Experience, and experienced players, have led me to the answer of “no”. Squeezing every advantage point to reach the peak of performance isn’t something which needs to be worried about.

About the only thing I can win is the admiration of people I don’t know, don’t care about, and would probably admire me more if I did it without the Absolute Best. I mean, anyone can wreck a Tigrex . . . but how many people do it naked with a rusty sword?

I never said it was a bad thing, so stop replying to me assuming that I’m being negative just because I called it pay-to-win. Try again, or don’t reply to me. Either way, whatever. you have yet to prove yourself right in any way.

Eh, as I said, I’ve seen “pay to win” in spades. I’ve seen a lot, honestly, which makes me stop and look over at the people who label these things and go “really?”.

Now, on the topic of bag space being an issue and the Gem Store selling things? I’m mostly okay with it – 105 slots from filling up with 20 slot bags and a 25 slot backpack.

Make two of them salvage kits so you can salvage on the run, and do your salvages when you’re auto-attacking something. Sell your wares at any stop by basically liquidating anything (make a bag an Invisible/Safe bag and you can tuck important things there to keep em from selling on accident). Consistently hit your “Deposit Materials” button so you don’t fill up on the crafting materials. Need a bank? WvW Borderlands has you covered. Stash anything in there and if you get a full stack of materials in your storage, fish it out and start a new one.

Not sure how much of an issue it is to have the extra 60 slots to play around with and fill up when you are active about liquidating your loot on a regular basis.

tons of gold is great advantage in WvW, and it was intended to be.
With infinite gold, you can probably get a full map of people playing on your dime.
You can have as much HQ seige as you want
you can outfit all of your soldiers in ascended
you can maintain non stop food buff trays at every castle.

Bringing up spvp, is a bit pointless as it is the only facet of the game designed not to give any advantages at all.

but yes, gold is in the game, so that players can trade in game value, by having infinite gold, you can get everything of value that players can trade. Some things of value actually are advantageous.

just look at another thread where some player was like he just hit 80, went back to lower level areas, and still got owned.
he would be a lot less likely to get owned if he had Pink rarity gear on every slot, food buffs, and top of the line sigils/infusions/runes
heck if you ever did key farming the comparison of newb power to twinked power is tremendous, even within level range.

KyreneZA.8617:

John Smith.4610:

Wanze.8410:

John, did it ever happen that a new feature or game mechanic that was proposed internally by the dev team was vetoed by you because it would have too big of an impact on the economy?

50 Times a week, I am the destroyer of the designers intention to make people happy.

Long suspected that the emphasis on economics (or perhaps economic stability over simple game play) has been at the heart of making this game less fun than it could be. Good to see it confirmed.

I suppose, apart from an editorial, I should also pose a question: Would/not the economy survive/stabilize anyway if every single account/soul bound item was made unbound?

the economy would always adapt and find a new equilibrium, however game design? , and would you be satisified with the new economic equilibrium? those are the questions

Astralporing.1957:

phys.7689:

so yeah the could do it, but they wouldnt really gain much.

Then you’d run into a problem of not being able to fill an empty party spot after someone ragequit/got kicked/dc’d, because most people would not want to join midway and get next to nothing for it.

if the scaling is done properly, they would get the value of whatever their contribution was.
This is theoretical of course, this type of thing is too much work for anet to do at this point, but t would have been a better design.

lets say you did 1/4th a dungeon, you get 1/4th the reward, then it really doesnt matter if you join late or not, the outcome would be the same. Lets be honest, the join late guy has been getting over based on the current system. Thats been causing its own issues in multiple ways.

Olvendred.3027:

Alerno.1425:

Of course if you still use level 65 blue’s on your level 80 character, you will be having a hard time in any zone.

You’d think. But my necro hit lvl 80 using a collection of found gear, all greens, mostly in the mid-50’s, with the notable inclusion of a lvl 35 sceptre. Could still literally just stand still and auto-attack (individual) mobs in starter zones, and still win.

Beating groups obviously took a little more skill and movement (and use of things other than auto-attack)… but it really isn’t at all punishing. Not starter zones.

depends on what part of the zone you are in. different areas have different caps and also your gear is scaled differently based on what the level is. The assumption is he is here doing the harder stuff in the zone, like perhaps a skill point in a cave with massive amounts of spiders and 3 veterans. Or trying to do a jumping puzzle where you have to go one on one with a veteran after having climbed for awhile. Or the Open dungeon where you go underwater and fight a char after solving the puzzles.

point is the difficulty is not the same for every encounter, and your level only helps you if you are actually geared well, or have synergy in your traits, or your traits from stats aligned in a useful way.

some of these area/events were designed with the idea there would be other players around in mind, these are probably the ones they ignored on their way to leveling up, that they are now looking to complete.

Mirta.5029:

Tom Gore.4035:

Maddoctor, if Linen and Wool are so easy to get, tell me why they cost way more than Iron, for example?

I’m super surprised that Maddoctor gave up that method so easily. It was my secret way of making money for weeks now.

The thing about any money making method – other people don’t know about it. That’s why supply for linen stays low. But yes, it’s guaranteed linen.

thats because the truth is using karma is not really actually a good way to get mats, most of the time. Because even though some people feel karma is in infinite, it has other uses, other values, and is a resource you have to earn.

lets say you spend 1000 karma to get 2 scraps of linen, lets say thats 3 dynamic events, + the time to go to the guy, mystic forge it, and then break it down.

lets say you need 40 linen scraps for your daily craft, thats 50 dynamic events, at 4 minutes per dynamic events thats 200 minutes.

dont forget though you need 25000-63000 in karma for obsidian shards per ascended piece, so maybe you dont want to burn up 20000 karma a day just for linen.

point is, karma aint free, when you actually break down the costs, you are probably not winning time there

Thaddeus.4891:

phys.7689:

i think the thing you guys are forgeting is nmost of that poer comes from better gear, and better traits.
With the new trait system, a new level 80 may have little to no concept of their value, and no access to traits that actually help them much. As for gear, they may not have exotics, or even full greens/rares

You can buy a complete armor+weapons+trinkets rare level 80 on the TP for around 4-5 gold.

Anyway, the best is to find a nice guild to help you through all these early step, this can make all the difference. I started the game at launch with my friends so we had to discover the game by ourselves like everybody else at that time. We couldn’t complete some dungeon, we figure out CM by ourself and we explained it to random ppl. Other random ppl figure out other dungeon and explained it to us. We try different build, wasting gold and tokens on different build that weren’t great. But now, with a nice guild you can skip through all that hard job of figuring stuff out.

did you not get the part where the guy said he was new? Why would he assume he needs better gear to go back and be strong in a newer area?
His concept was, ok i just hit 80, let me go back and do the easier stuff, only to find out it wasnt any easier, and for some level ranges and your gear choices, may actually be harder.

Now im not saying it should or shouldnt be easier, im trying basically saying, yes if you want easier fights, even in lowbie areas, you need better gear, and you may want to look at what you have trait points in, and what your actual traits are. Which is counter intuitive for many people, Why would some one think that a peice of level 78 gear is actually worse than a piece of level 10 gear? and yet sometimes that is the case.

discussing this makes me also realize the gear system, in a game with worldwide downscaling, they probably shouldnt have designed it the way they did. Your gear is lying to you more often than it is telling you the truth.

gear should probably have been about stat spread and rarity only.
IE
Cleric armor blue = 20% increase in base toughness 15%base healing 15% base vitality
Cleric armor green=23% increase toughness 17% healing 17% vitality.

then there could have been a lot less junk and useless armor drops, and you would understand your gear is still average if your in a newbie zone with blue gear.

of course then there would be a lot less monster drops, which i am honestly very fine with.

Wanze.8410:

Tom Gore.4035:

mtpelion.4562:

There are many reliable ways to farm cloth. They are just very different from the ways you farm ores, lumber, and plants.

Many of those ways aren’t able to be quickly targeted though, which is what annoys many farmers.

Using buy orders to salvage requires you to wait. Buying karma armor and forging it requires karma. Running Silverwastes nets you a wide range of materials as well. Killing level-appropriate mobs for armor drops takes time.

I can appreciate the desire for quickly targeting farming, but I can also understand why they aren’t going to add that now. The methods in game right now allow us to achieve the farming result everyone is looking for, they just require you to go above and beyond normal “run to the node and wait” gameplay.

All methods you presented can also be used to “farm” other baisc crafting materials like metal and wood. They’re not farming, they’re kludges to get around the fact that you cannot reliably farm cloth.

Just to loosen your fixation on reliably farming cloth:

Leather cant be farmed reliably as well, yet its mostly worthless. So the fact that cloth isnt reliably farmable cant be the reason why Bolt of Damask is so expensive. Its expensive because its demand is higher.

its not black and white, there is a threshold. At certain thresholds of cost people will try to do it themselves.

basically when an item is in excess of its applicable uses, it will have no value.
but when an item is not in excess of its applicable, its value will now be determined partially, by how hard it is to get.

to simplify there are items which a lot of people want, but they arent willing to pay a lot for, because doing it themselves is available.

like the demand for home delivered pizza is high, but if they wanted to charge you 10 bucks, most people wouldnt pay it, because they can spend 8 minutes and get it themselves.
Now if it was going to cost them 1 hour to get it themselves, some people would start paying that price.

Algreg.3629:

You are amazingly confusing, what exactly is your issue? One can only guess.
- exploration past 80: downleveled characters are already a lot more powerful than at level characters for a map. Beside group events, PVE is tremendously easy in this regard. Also, why would you want to stomp through the low level maps anyway? This is content you will miss having at some later point in your game career.
- dungeons: Yes, they seem to be hard at the beginning. And why shouldn´t they be? You as a self proclaimed teacher should really know about the incentives of challenge and self-improvement.

So, to summarize your wall of text, does it indeed basically just say “game´s too hard!”? In that case, no, it is by far the easiest game of its genre I have ever come across – mindnumbingly easy in fact. l2p

i think the thing you guys are forgeting is nmost of that poer comes from better gear, and better traits.
With the new trait system, a new level 80 may have little to no concept of their value, and no access to traits that actually help them much. As for gear, they may not have exotics, or even full greens/rares

Harper.4173:

MithranArkanere.8957:

stale.9785:

The only solution that removes griefing:

You cannot kick anyone – you can only leave.

Then people will do things to force you to leave.

If you want people to stop griefing in instanced content, you make it so doing so is completely and utterly pointless.

• Scale rewards to personal progress on the instance, so anyone who joins just before the boss doesn’t get full rewards, only the ones corresponding to the boss fight based on scaling.
• When players are kicked, instead losing all progress, they are sent to a copy of the instance with the same progress.

And ding, you kick people to get your friend in or to sell the dungeon? Waste of time, your friend won’t get any decent rewards for joining late, just enough to compensate for the time it takes to deal with the boss, and they can still ask friends and guildies to join their copy of the instance so they can finish.

This – while in theory a good idea – would be so broken it would be amazing to see.

Start party with 5 man guild group.
Near the end kick players and split group into 4 groups. Each group invites guildies and fills up so now you have 25 people at the end of the dungeon getting those “minimal rewards” which will probably still be greater than 5 people getting maximum.

You would be creating a pretty good farm though.

according to what they said, they only be getting the rewards for killing one champion, boss chest is one per day anyhow, and you could only do it one time per dungeon run. Seems like a lot of work just for multiplying the amount of people who can get a champion bag by 5. It would be faster for 25 people to just go to frostgorge, or eotm by far.

so yeah the could do it, but they wouldnt really gain much.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

I thought people wanted the expansion and nothing else. Living Story and feature packs suck, remember?

they probably want what they have come to expect with other big MMOs, both.

http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/special/patchnote_log/
http://www.zam.com/wiki/Update_History_%28FFXI%29#2003_Updates

like you see here.

an expansion isnt a favor, its something people will be paying for. Why is it other companies can do both, but asking from the same here is too much?

Now im not saying this is their actual policy, but you imply its one or the other, and i see no reason it should be

Ooguchi.3764:

To whom it may concern,

I recently was asked by friends to join the game Guild Wars 2. I have found the graphics to be both visually stunning, and wonderfully lifelike. Gameplay is smooth and generally flawless. There are many special drops, intense action events, and great special areas of interest. I find myself loving the game, and really wanting to spend much of my free time playing. Unfortunately, there is one aspect of the game that deters from my love of its design. The self-leveling aspect, that levels characters in each realm.

the problem is, learning and understanding the game/systems wasnt required to get to 80.
some things you may not know;
1)your gear matters, when you get downleveled, you gear is down leveled, to have an advantage, use good gear for a level 80
2)your traits matter, it gives you extra stats AND special abilities
3)the game probably didnt teach you how to use your powers to their fullest, do you use combo feilds? do you change your skills around? did you unlock traits? do you understand what the various boons available to you do? do you understand when to use your conditions on your enemies?

it seems hard, but its actually not, once you combine these things it will come naturally and easy, and most things in the open world will probably require 50% of your attention at best.

Ashen.2907:

phys.7689:

Ashen.2907:

I suppose because GS for necro and shield for mesmer are every bit as thematic as GS for mesmer and daggers for necro, etc.

mesmers can wield whatever, they are basically manipulating minds, who knows what they really are wielding even if it looks like a greatsword.

daggers for necros are actually pretty thematic, sacrifice, blood, ritual, that fits daggers pretty well.

my problem with the theme, is shield implies, defense, and tankiness, i dont think mesmer really needed to specialize in tankiness.

Also, though we dont know the details, getting a one hand weapon for specialization implies 2 new skills versus 5 , thats super lame.

Hadnt thought about the 2 skills vs 5. That does seem to merit some attention IMO.

I havent played a necro yet, does their use of daggers look like ritual blood sacrifices and the like ?

ehhh kinda

Ashen.2907:

I suppose because GS for necro and shield for mesmer are every bit as thematic as GS for mesmer and daggers for necro, etc.

mesmers can wield whatever, they are basically manipulating minds, who knows what they really are wielding even if it looks like a greatsword.

daggers for necros are actually pretty thematic, sacrifice, blood, ritual, that fits daggers pretty well.

my problem with the theme, is shield implies, defense, and tankiness, i dont think mesmer really needed to specialize in tankiness.

Also, though we dont know the details, getting a one hand weapon for specialization implies 2 new skills versus 5 , thats super lame.

Behellagh.1468:

By changing the refinement from 2 to 3 and then requiring 100 instead of 50 and overlooking that Damask will be used in quantity in all armors combined to wipe out the silk scrap glut which shot the price up.

Before this it was obvious that it along with other T5 common mats dropped in excessive quantity due to salvaging unwanted Level 80 items. Mithrils’ saving grace was it was also used in weapons which kept the price from bottoming out. Thick Leather doesn’t have a sink so it’s glut has recovered.

I listed this once before, if you craft a full set of each weight of ascended armor, you would need 25,500 silk scraps; 3,600 thick leather sections and 1600 mithirl ore. The 7x difference between the two, need 3 to refine T5 mats is exactly why the silk glut is gone and the price being high Vs still a glut and TP price at minimum.

The rest of the common refined components are in the same ratio, 20 T2; 10 T3; 20 T4. But T5 it’s 100 for light, 50 for medium and 50 for heavy.

Even if they didn’t bump Silk Bolts from 2 to 3 and tripled the requirement of refined T5, you would still need 8,500 silk scraps compared to 3,600 thick leather and 1600 mithril. Demand would still be up there as the price increases in the other cloths still show, so light will still be more expensive, just not as extreme.

Light armor always require twice as much highest tier refined cloth mat as medium and heavy. It’s just that for exotic T6 is dirt cheap, relatively so you don’t notice.

yes, this was always an imbalance in design, and its why initially silk was more expensive than leather and metals. Eventually people didnt need it for their gear any more and the price dropped to vendor.
Which amazes me, you have a problem in your basic item/crafting design, then you basically recreate the problem with a higher factor when designing a solution to another problem.

anyhow back to the point, some form of opt in only method for obtaining cloth should have been in the game, and still has a place. Of course they would have to drastically reduce the amount of junk items, but that has always been the case

Behellagh.1468:

Derigar.7810:

Ardenwolfe.8590:

You might want to tone down how abrasive and confrontational your post is. That said, you can buy a cloth ‘node’ for your home instance. Don’t know if they’re still selling it though.

I don’t think my post was confrontational or abrasive at all. I’m just expressing that I’m slightly irate that as an Elementalist, I need to pay 5x as more for my ascended armour.

And that’s a problem with light armor. They simply extended the default formula for armor to shift from T6 to ascended mats and since light always needed more cloth than the other two armor weights, that didn’t change.

The problem is partially when they created the crafting recipe for Damask silk was dirt cheap, basically at vendor price so instead of 150 of T5 leather or 100 of T5 metal you need 300 T5 cloth (ie Silk Scraps). And because Damask is used in all armor weights, multiply that by 300 Silk Scraps each, the glut was vanquished quickly and the price rose much more than with Hard Leather or Mithril.

So know due to the T5 prices and amounts it’s 57% of the cost to craft Damask Vs 7.3% for Elonian Leather or 15.9% for Deldrimor Steel.

Good news is silk has come down about 40% from it’s peak.

was not a good solution to the problem. It created imbalance, spikes, and theoretically will eventually end up the same way, once enough people finally get enough of it. The production of silk will stay fairly high while the demand slowly dwindles.

If they had a problem with over production
they should have come up with a short term reason to destroy tons of silk.
reduced the amount of silk created without intent drastically
created means for silk to be specifically sought out.

Then the market would regulate the cost AND supply of silk, instead of the economy having to be designed to consume vast amounts of the item that was created without intent.

And they could have created a less obnoxious recipe for ascended items.

Vayne.8563:

I guess the question is WHO made the business plan and what was in it from the start. Business plans are made before projects start. The Living Story wasn’t even a seed then. We know that came later. The business plan predates the living story.

It is completely 100% irrelevant to my argument whether the living story succeeded or failed. The business plan, most likely always called for an expansion and Anet may have wanted to try something else.

That said, the business plan didn’t likely fail because the expansion was likely always supposed to come. Whether the living story was a success or not we’ll likely never know. I’m not so sure the Living Story is over.

the point is the intention was to make money, and expand the game through the living story, that part of the living story is over. Living story as something else? that may continue, but they are no longer looking at it as the primary way to introduce new content and develop the game.

imo, this is probably for the best, the old monetization strategy essentially would have over time made gw2 into an f2p property, box sales will always dwindle as you hit most of your market. f2p builds a certain type of game, that i dont think fits with guild wars overall idea

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

And here is the update to that article and quote (perhaps you missed it, it was at the bottom):

[Update]: Game director Colin Johanson has posted a clarification on the GW2 forums.

Just to clarify a bit, as Mike said there are numerous teams beyond our Living World teams, and some of them are working on much longer term projects which we’ll go into details on much further down the road.

It’s entirely possible some of the types of content which you might traditionally find in expansions would be released through an expansion in the future for Gw2, and it’s possible we’d try something different when it comes to integrating those type of releases.

We have no final plans one way or another about expansions at this time, and certainly haven’t ruled them out, it’s something we’ll discuss more in the future.

yes, and colin johansson also says they had no plans for an expansion. They sent mike out there based on what their current plan was, the plan was being re examined when colin amended that statement, and at some point after, reached the point where they actually had plans.

but it definately wasnt their plan from the go, or else colin is also lying
“We have no final plans one way or another about expansions at this time, and certainly haven’t ruled them out, it’s something we’ll discuss more in the future”

my point was expansion has not always been their plan, and colins quote essentially says the same thing. What it suggests is they around that time shifted from a no expansion plan (what they told mike when he went on tour) to a possible expansion plan (what colin corrected some time after that statement) and finally commiting to an expansion (At some undetermined point inbetween colins speech and the announcement.

So we have my explanation, which has both people being truthful
and Vaynes explanation which has both people lying.

he could be right, however i doubt it, because honestly, there was no advantage to say no expansion plans, if they had expansions planned, it actually would have been advantageous to say that they would eventually do one.

Vayne.8563:

@phys

Anet didn’t say they had no plans for expansions. They said that they were working on the kind of content you’d see in expansions and they didn’t yet know how they were going to deliver that content. Expansion type content can be delivered as an expansion, it can be delivered as DLC.

But NcSoft for a long time now, at their stock holders meetings were talking about an expansion. The very first time they mentioned it they said, there would be an expansion when it makes sense to release one.

You will not find an Anet quote where they said there will never be an expansion. All they said was we’re focusing on our living story content for now. That’s all they were willing to talk about.

At the time, I said why too. Because expansion announcements are like gold. They are timed very carefully. Some companies time them so that they overshadow something the competition is doing. Some time it so it comes out in a vacuum of other titles that might detract from it. You don’t just say your’e going to have one, because that takes the wind out of the sales (pun intended). That’s business.

No the business model isn’t a failure, because no one was fired. The business model is a success because it’s self sustaining. If the company is making enough money to support itself and make profit, it’s a success.

How anyone can even conceivably argue that a company that’s laid off no one is a failure, and continues to hire, I can’t imagine.

The strategy was a success, they were always planning an expansion, they did what every business does and timed the announcement to strategically maximize profit.

As for Life the Board game, I’m not sure that game makes significantly or any more money during Christmas than any other time. Do you have some figures on that. Either way, it depends on what the competition is doing.

So if WoW launches their huge expansion in time for Christmas, of course that’s going to affect the sales of other competitors. That’s precisely what I mean by expectation. It’s why Anet waited till they did to even mention an expansion.

yes they did say no expansion, more than once

I pressed him to tell me whether there would be a Guild Wars 2 expansion this year and he shook his head to indicate no. What about next year, I asked?

“If we do this right,” he answered, “we will probably never do an expansion and everything will be going into this Living World strategy.”

from a eurogamer interview in 2013
But what about making money? Guild Wars 1 survived on paid expansions, editions, add-ons, whatever you want to call them – are we to believe that the boxed sales of Guild Wars 2 and micro-transactions are enough to sustain such a large operation?

“Yes,” responded Zadorojny. “It absolutely is enough.”

business plans change, people adapt, but no this wasnt their business plan, and no no matter how you slice it that was an underperforming Q4.

These people are just people, like you and me, they cant know the whole future, things don’t always go as they plan, they are not infallible masterminds who never miss a beat. They have setbacks, they have failures, in the long term its not about whether they had a perfect plan, but how well they can adapt.

trust and believe that this is not according to plan. Thats primarily why the plan changed. They needed to do something different and rebrand the product. Renew interest, and show people gw2 has a future, as well as make more money from their existing playerbase.

Vayne.8563:

phys.7689:

Behellagh.1468:

phys.7689:

oh yes, and of course some specific businesses do not always expect to profit more during the holidays.

btw q3 2013 =26k
q4 2013=45k

q3 2012=47k (release quarter)
q4 2012=101k

so yeah, lets be specific, gw2 is expected to do better in q4 than in q3, during the holidays, as evidenced by the previous 2 years, and common sense.

Well 3Q12 was only a month plus pre orders and 4Q12, which is when I bought it, while the holiday quarter also was during the first 3 months of a new release.

Also don’t know where you got your 2012 and 2013 numbers from but in million KrW the two 2013 quarters were 24,481 and 33,555 and the two 2012 quarters were 45,841 and 119,013. This is off the NCSOFT quarterly reports so …

i think the game came out in late august, but i will say most of the sales would have been during the 4th quarter.

my bad, was looking at net income,

that said, the numbers still show the same trends, 37% increase last year, and first year big increase.

Point is the games are expected to make more money during the holidays. Part of the reason they release end of Q3, is so they can have a product out for the big season.

the fact that it is down 3% from q3 is pretty bad, even i, who assumed they would have less gains, would have thought they would at least be up 5-10% for the holiday season, and to me that would have been a sign things were below average.

I would say that people were actively displeased/disinterested rather than just not that impressed.

An expansion however can be a great reset, though i dont think this one was optimally timed. Balls in their court now, but i would say they are down some points in the game.

You’re saying games are expected to make money during the Christmas season but individual games may or may not be expected to, depending on how old they are. What you mean is COMPANIES are expected to make money during the quarter.

If a new game comes out before Christmas THAT game will make more money. That doesn’t mean older games from the same company will. Selling games was my business. One a game, any game, was three months old, we sent them back and replaced them with other games, with very few exceptions. Microsoft Flight Simulator, the current version of Chess Master or the Current version of Sim City stayed on the shelves.

Everything else, it wasn’t really worth stocking. Maybe a single unit if I particularly liked the game. That’s how computer software works. I know because I made a living buying and selling computer games.

im saying after its initial burst, after its been out awhile, it is expected to make more money during the holidays.

Life the board game been out for decades? and its expected to sell more units in xmas season than in others.

A cash shop earnings game like gw2 is definately expected to stabilize and then earn consistent profits. What you are claiming is their business plan for the first two years was a failure. That in fact living story was destined to fail, and the cash shop would never make enough money to support the game.

Or, that they lied in all the interviews when they said they have no plans for an expansion, and that living story was how they intended to evolve the game.

just so its clear, the number posted is overall earnings, not just box sales
see the idea with an MMO, is that by constantly updating and creating a compelling world, people will be willing to spend money for years.

Now if people are consistently spending money, its expected they will spend more at certain times of the year, for america, thats xmas season.

anyhow if you want to ignore the numbers thats fine, but no, this is not the way they always intended it, and that q4 earnings was a low point for gw2. If its up to the people at anet, that will be the lowest point they reach for years to come. You can believe they really expected q4 (xmas season) earnings to drop below summer earnings if you want, but that is highly unlikely, and like i said, it shows more than just a lack of new sales, but rather a general vote of low confidence from the existing market.

Behellagh.1468:

phys.7689:

oh yes, and of course some specific businesses do not always expect to profit more during the holidays.

btw q3 2013 =26k
q4 2013=45k

q3 2012=47k (release quarter)
q4 2012=101k

so yeah, lets be specific, gw2 is expected to do better in q4 than in q3, during the holidays, as evidenced by the previous 2 years, and common sense.

Well 3Q12 was only a month plus pre orders and 4Q12, which is when I bought it, while the holiday quarter also was during the first 3 months of a new release.

Also don’t know where you got your 2012 and 2013 numbers from but in million KrW the two 2013 quarters were 24,481 and 33,555 and the two 2012 quarters were 45,841 and 119,013. This is off the NCSOFT quarterly reports so …

i think the game came out in late august, but i will say most of the sales would have been during the 4th quarter.

my bad, was looking at net income,

that said, the numbers still show the same trends, 37% increase last year, and first year big increase.

Point is the games are expected to make more money during the holidays. Part of the reason they release end of Q3, is so they can have a product out for the big season.

the fact that it is down 3% from q3 is pretty bad, even i, who assumed they would have less gains, would have thought they would at least be up 5-10% for the holiday season, and to me that would have been a sign things were below average.

I would say that people were actively displeased/disinterested rather than just not that impressed.

An expansion however can be a great reset, though i dont think this one was optimally timed. Balls in their court now, but i would say they are down some points in the game.

Vayne.8563:

@ phys

Yes, you are supposed to make less every year. Read some business plans, then get back to me. That’s factored in. Expansions are usually released to reinvigorate, but yes, games EXPECT to make less money year and year and often quarter on quarter.

Even NcSoft at it’s investor meetings has said Guild Wars 2 is meeting expectations. You know more than them?

did you look at the graph.
lineage 1 made more money this 4th quarter than last year
lineage 2 made more money this 4th quarter than last year
blade and soul made more money
in fact, of all their games, the only one to make less is gw2.

notice also the graph for their other games are showing fairly stable earnings, or upward trends, barring 4th quarter spikes.
the information is provided, we dont have to guess. Right there, at the same company, other products in the same business, you can see whats can be expected by old MMOs in earning and trends.

Vayne.8563:

phys.7689:

Vayne.8563:

phys.7689:

Vayne.8563:

phys.7689:

but regardless you are expected to earn more in Q4 than in Q3 in america, thats just the way business works. The fact that they earned less during the holiday season shows a pretty large drop off in appeal. take a look at the difference Q3 and Q4 the previous year.

I’m sorry but I don’t think you know enough about business to comment here. I ran a business in America and it wasn’t true for our business. More to the point, the business I ran also sold games, and I know a lot about that business from a retail angle.

I also worked in publishing after that, and again, sales were NEVER expected to go up quarter on quarter for a book or a game. Ever. It was never expected.

Now, I brought up WoW as an example, because no one says they’re unsuccessful, but their profits absolutely flutuate between expansions. They take some big, big hits to revenue just before an expansion comes out and they always have. Are you saying Blizzard is not doing well, because they’re in a similar boat to Guild Wars 2.

Boxed games always have less sales as time goes and and business plans tend to reflect that. Why?

Because when a game comes out, it’s hyped to hell and most people that are going to buy it, buy it when it comes out. A year later, other games are hyped to hell. A year after that other games are hyped to hell. For non-MMOs, 90% of all the copies EVER SOLD are sold in the first 90 days of the games existence. It’s normal for the industry.

Retail stores always tend to want to be better than the last month of the last year, not the month before it. They’ll experience surges for example in December, and at tax refund time.

Do you think resort hotels do as much off season? No. So quarters flutuation. They expect to do more year on year. But that’s a different business and has nothing to do with games.

What you’re saying isn’t only demonstrably untrue, but it makes no sense.

if you are saying you arent expected to sell more games in the xmas season, i dont know what video game retailer you worked at. Just look at q3 to q4 the previous year, its not crazy talk.

We are expected to sell more games in the Christmas season. But you said that you’re expected to do more quarter on quarter and that’s 100% false. For example as a computer store, we do more in the quarter before the summer than after the summer. The summer is the slow quarter, during which we ALWAYS did less than the quarter before.

Which has nothing to do with the rest of what I said which you conveniently ignored. Games sell MOST of their copies EVER in the first 90 days of their existence.

That’s true even of WoW expansions. That’s true of Guild Wars 2. That’s true of most games.

So how would you then think that they’re expected to go up every quarter? What you said about businesses in America is again, demonstrably wrong.

i said q3 to q4, which is for ncsoft, summer/fall season to christmas season.

A gaming company is not a software company. Sales are EXPECTED to fall over time for games. This isn’t some half baked theory. This is fact. This is in every game’s business plan. The summer fall thing I said refers to retail in general which deals with all games not one specific game.

In the book industry it was the same. That’s why you keep coming out with new books. Because the old ones, by and large, stop selling. Out of well over a million books published, only the tiniest percentage ever sell more later than they do when released.

Sure there’ll always be an exception like a Harry Potter, but do you really think that books come out, get all that promotion and then a year later people are buying it more than when it released.

You’re defending something that’s literally indefensible.

Are you paying attention to what i am saying?
yes, you are expected to earn less than your opening quarter/year but no, you are not supposed to consistently drop off year after year. LOOK AT THE NCSOFT EARNINGS REPORT almost all their other games are showing fairly stable earnings. THIS IS THE THIRD 4TH quarter earning gw2 history, not the second. The game was a year old last year.

regardless AS I SAID the bigger deal is the loss from Q3 to Q4, aka the summer/fall as compared to the holiday season. That is the most telling thing. Regardless of a generally downward trend throughout the year, you are expected to perform better in q4 because it is the holiday season.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I don’t know….after the second year of most games, it would be unusual for the game to sell more than the previous year. Gamers rarely buy old games at near normal prices in large amounts, even at Christmas time.

this is actually the third year, and the problem isnt that it didnt make as much as last year, its that it has a continued downward trend, with no spike in earning for the holiday season.
last year, its second x mas, it went from 26k to 45k, a 73% gain, this year it went went -3% this after a year with steady declines

yes, this is not a good sign for the product.

also as to not selling as well as time goes on, take a look at earnings of
blade and soul
lineage 1
lineage 2
look at how many of them are earning the same or more in q4 years after release, yes aion is earning more and more consistently profitable

http://www.mmobomb.com/file/2015/02/NCSoft-Sales-2.jpg

i know people are fans, but while you may say its not the end of the world, this is definately not a positive sign.

Vayne.8563:

phys.7689:

Vayne.8563:

phys.7689:

but regardless you are expected to earn more in Q4 than in Q3 in america, thats just the way business works. The fact that they earned less during the holiday season shows a pretty large drop off in appeal. take a look at the difference Q3 and Q4 the previous year.

I’m sorry but I don’t think you know enough about business to comment here. I ran a business in America and it wasn’t true for our business. More to the point, the business I ran also sold games, and I know a lot about that business from a retail angle.

I also worked in publishing after that, and again, sales were NEVER expected to go up quarter on quarter for a book or a game. Ever. It was never expected.

Now, I brought up WoW as an example, because no one says they’re unsuccessful, but their profits absolutely flutuate between expansions. They take some big, big hits to revenue just before an expansion comes out and they always have. Are you saying Blizzard is not doing well, because they’re in a similar boat to Guild Wars 2.

Boxed games always have less sales as time goes and and business plans tend to reflect that. Why?

Because when a game comes out, it’s hyped to hell and most people that are going to buy it, buy it when it comes out. A year later, other games are hyped to hell. A year after that other games are hyped to hell. For non-MMOs, 90% of all the copies EVER SOLD are sold in the first 90 days of the games existence. It’s normal for the industry.

Retail stores always tend to want to be better than the last month of the last year, not the month before it. They’ll experience surges for example in December, and at tax refund time.

Do you think resort hotels do as much off season? No. So quarters flutuation. They expect to do more year on year. But that’s a different business and has nothing to do with games.

What you’re saying isn’t only demonstrably untrue, but it makes no sense.

if you are saying you arent expected to sell more games in the xmas season, i dont know what video game retailer you worked at. Just look at q3 to q4 the previous year, its not crazy talk.

We are expected to sell more games in the Christmas season. But you said that you’re expected to do more quarter on quarter and that’s 100% false. For example as a computer store, we do more in the quarter before the summer than after the summer. The summer is the slow quarter, during which we ALWAYS did less than the quarter before.

Which has nothing to do with the rest of what I said which you conveniently ignored. Games sell MOST of their copies EVER in the first 90 days of their existence.

That’s true even of WoW expansions. That’s true of Guild Wars 2. That’s true of most games.

So how would you then think that they’re expected to go up every quarter? What you said about businesses in America is again, demonstrably wrong.

i said q3 to q4, which is for ncsoft, summer/fall season to christmas season.

Vayne.8563:

phys.7689:

but regardless you are expected to earn more in Q4 than in Q3 in america, thats just the way business works. The fact that they earned less during the holiday season shows a pretty large drop off in appeal. take a look at the difference Q3 and Q4 the previous year.

I’m sorry but I don’t think you know enough about business to comment here. I ran a business in America and it wasn’t true for our business. More to the point, the business I ran also sold games, and I know a lot about that business from a retail angle.

I also worked in publishing after that, and again, sales were NEVER expected to go up quarter on quarter for a book or a game. Ever. It was never expected.

Now, I brought up WoW as an example, because no one says they’re unsuccessful, but their profits absolutely flutuate between expansions. They take some big, big hits to revenue just before an expansion comes out and they always have. Are you saying Blizzard is not doing well, because they’re in a similar boat to Guild Wars 2.

Boxed games always have less sales as time goes and and business plans tend to reflect that. Why?

Because when a game comes out, it’s hyped to hell and most people that are going to buy it, buy it when it comes out. A year later, other games are hyped to hell. A year after that other games are hyped to hell. For non-MMOs, 90% of all the copies EVER SOLD are sold in the first 90 days of the games existence. It’s normal for the industry.

Retail stores always tend to want to be better than the last month of the last year, not the month before it. They’ll experience surges for example in December, and at tax refund time.

Do you think resort hotels do as much off season? No. So quarters flutuation. They expect to do more year on year. But that’s a different business and has nothing to do with games.

What you’re saying isn’t only demonstrably untrue, but it makes no sense.

if you are saying you arent expected to sell more games in the xmas season, i dont know what video game retailer you worked at. Just look at q3 to q4 the previous year, its not crazy talk.
now, of course you are going to sell more when you release, but once you have a stable market you are expected to increase earnings during the holidays. And remember, GW2 is not just box sales, its also gem store. The fact that people didnt spend more during the holidays shows a lack of interest.

oh yes, and of course some specific businesses do not always expect to profit more during the holidays.

btw q3 2013 =26k
q4 2013=45k

q3 2012=47k (release quarter)
q4 2012=101k

so yeah, lets be specific, gw2 is expected to do better in q4 than in q3, during the holidays, as evidenced by the previous 2 years, and common sense.

Vayne.8563:

phys.7689:

Behellagh.1468:

fractal.7039:

There was more issue with his Doomsayers comment then the numbers…. GW2 is far from doom and gloom.

Now Wildstar on the other hand…

I am not a doomsayer. I put those numbers out there, as neutral as possible rather than have a doomsayer take them out of context.

to be honest it was a pretty bad look
to go down 2.1% in the xmas quarter is a pretty bad deal.
but this isnt surprising, the numbers were steadily declining for most of last year.

this also probably why they felt they had to start pushing/promoting an expansion. I hope they have the content to back up an expansion. This expansion will probably determine what type of future gw2 can expect. It wont go out of business, but it may decide the support it will get.

When do you think the expansion started being produced?

It’s not a result of recent numbers. It doesn’t make sense that it should be. I’ve said this before but it bears repeating.

Business plans for games always expect less and less incoming as time goes on. When MoP launched, WoW had 10 million subs and I think it when down to 6.4 before the new expansion launched. Just look at the figures.

Drops are expected. They knew they were working on an expansion. They didn’t announce it until it made sense to do so, which was months after the WoW expansion launched, so people would have been tired of it.

Companies time launch annoucements very carefully. Anet has always met expectations of the business plan or there would have been layoffs.

they have been working on stuff for awhile, was it going to be a boxed expansion? that is unknown. How much stuff can we expect? well going by what they said, it currently seems a bit light, but we dont know the expected cost, nor turn around time till next major upgrade.

but regardless you are expected to earn more in Q4 than in Q3 in america, thats just the way business works. The fact that they earned less during the holiday season shows a pretty large drop off in appeal. take a look at the difference Q3 and Q4 the previous year.

Behellagh.1468:

fractal.7039:

There was more issue with his Doomsayers comment then the numbers…. GW2 is far from doom and gloom.

Now Wildstar on the other hand…

I am not a doomsayer. I put those numbers out there, as neutral as possible rather than have a doomsayer take them out of context.

to be honest it was a pretty bad look
to go down 2.1% in the xmas quarter is a pretty bad deal.
but this isnt surprising, the numbers were steadily declining for most of last year.

this also probably why they felt they had to start pushing/promoting an expansion. I hope they have the content to back up an expansion. This expansion will probably determine what type of future gw2 can expect. It wont go out of business, but it may decide the support it will get.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Another idea would be for more character voice options to actually make then sound younger. I would love for my character to sound like Pinkie Pie. Anet needs to hire Andrea Libman right away!

they will never do voice, they dont want to re enact, or have to do multiple actors for every race.
IMO this is the flaw in extensive VA for charachters, it limits them greatly in terms of what they can realistically design as far as charachter role play/choices/personality