Would you prefer to pay for content?

[Endless Soul.5178]

I'm ok with the system as is, I see no need to change it.

[DeanBB.4268]

I see the LS episodes as part of the overall expansion, so have already paid for them when buying the expansion. I continue to buy gems cards, and occasionally gems directly from Anet, and all my gem store purchases are with real money.

[Just a flesh wound.3589]

It might be worthwhile to pay for LS episodes if some of the current (or old) Black Lion weapon skins and gemstore armor skins were added to those maps as rewards for playing. However I don’t see that happening. What I expect would happen is they charge for LS and continue to charge for cosmetics. At least now we can get the episodes for free.

[Ameepa.6793]

Best system I have encountered so far

[Danikat.8537]

Apologies for not replying until now, I was expecting a lot more free time today than the none I've actually had. But I have been reading everyone's replies.

 

I have to admit I don't know how I feel about this myself, so seeing everyone's responses has been really interesting. On the one hand the system we have now works better for me because I never have to spend money if I don't want to, but I still get to play all the content either way. But on the other hand I guess I'm kind of old fashioned when it comes to buying games - getting the content for free and paying for in-game objects just seems kind of backwards to me.

 

> @Shirlias.8104 said:

> What would be the point of selling episodes for 200 gems?

>

> * Players will pay for something they have now for free

> * ANET won't get anything, since 200 gems are 50g converted more or less.

>

> If you think that they will release more content this way, you are wrong.

>

> They should introduce a new currency only avaible through cash, if they were interested to sell more content.

> But since the Gold > Gems exchange and the fact that now they tend to sell items ( skins or bundles ) with high value ( Mike stated that they get not significant profits through 500/700 gems items ), it would simply ruin something which now is almost perfect.

 

Even if people converted gold to gems to buy it Anet would still get money because apparently all the gems sold on the exchange are originally bought by players and then traded for gold. Also if everyone did it the price would jump up (like it does every time there's a gem store sale) and it would quickly become too expensive for everyone to do that. (Or it would be balanced out by people taking advantage of the exchange rate to buy gold cheaply.)

 

But there's also people like me where 50g every 2-3 months is a lot, whereas $2.50 (or £2.12 in my case) is nothing. I could afford 50g for each Living Story release but it would have a big impact on my ability to buy in-game items, so I'm more likely to spend real money on it instead.

 

> @Ohoni.6057 said:

> Here's the thing, *I* would pay $2.50 per living story release. I would pay more than that, even. *but,* I do not want that to happen because I believe it would be destructive to the game. I believe that splitting the content up into "people willing to pay for this portion" and "people who aren't" will just fragment the community. Some people would buy none of that content, some would only buy the ones that they heard were particularly cool, players would have far more mixed impressions of the game based on that, and maps would have wildly different population sizes. I think it's better that everyone can access all the content (for the most part).

>

> I've said it before and I'll say it again, the issue is not solved by making content have a cost, it's by adding more actual value to the gem store, more armor skins, less outfits, and make it so that people can buy the mount skins they want without being at the whims of RNG.

 

You make a good point about splitting people up. I'm not aware of that being an issue in my other MMO (which does sell DLC), but then that has a lot less group content, you could do the majority of stuff in the open-world solo without much trouble, and dungeons only need small groups anyway. I can definitely see the benefit to not splitting players up and I have to admit that's one aspect I hadn't considered.

 

On the other hand I have to disagree that more armour and less outfits is guaranteed to add more value to the gem store. That might be true for you, but I've never bought gem store armour and I have bought some outfits. The main thing stopping me buying more is that they all share the same dyes. I can always find in-game alternatives that look just as good as gem store armour (or better), but if I, for example, want a casual look for my warrior when he's in town I can either try to find heavy armour pieces that mostly look like cloth and carry around a set with those skins, or I can buy something like the Monk or Pirate outfit and switch to that whenever I feel like it. So for me outfits are better value than gem store armour, but could be even better with some changes.

 

 

[Ohoni.6057]

> @Danikat.8537 said:

> You make a good point about splitting people up. I'm not aware of that being an issue in my other MMO (which does sell DLC), but then that has a lot less group content, you could do the majority of stuff in the open-world solo without much trouble, and dungeons only need small groups anyway. I can definitely see the benefit to not splitting players up and I have to admit that's one aspect I hadn't considered.

 

Yeah, it does depend on how they frame it. I mean an expansion is technically like this, and we do have "All the things," "F2P only", "HoT only," and "PoF only" players in the game now, I assume most active players being in the "all" category, but still, probably a decent split. And that's with expansions that have a very meaty amount of content and new features like added specs and mounts. If it's *just* a story chapter, a map, and some minor new gimmicks, then I imagine a lot less people would bother if they were nickle-and-dimed for it. I think if they went that route they would do better to just have semi-annual or annual expansions that had at least half the content of PoF at $15-25 a pop, rather than quarterly LS updates that were at $2-5 each.

 

>On the other hand I have to disagree that more armour and less outfits is guaranteed to add more value to the gem store. That might be true for you, but I've never bought gem store armour and I have bought some outfits.

 

Well, I haven't bought a lot of gem store armor either, but that's because most of the gem store armor sucked. Most of it was stuff that, even if I were given it for free, I wouldn't bother slotting on any of my characters. But the same is not true of Outfits, there have been a TON of Outfits on the Gem Store where I really liked the look of some or all of it, and if it had been available in armor form, able to mix and match with my existing wardrobe, then I would have snapped them up in a heartbeat. I will *never* buy an "Outfit" though.I've heard at least some people express similar feelings, although this is clearly an area where individual tastes vary.

 

I should also point out that a necessary part of this would be to finally get around to synchronizing the armor weights, so that you can mix and match at will, and if you want your Heavy character to be wearing cloth, he can easily throw on some Light armors. Ideally they would also have some form of "appearance template" system that would allow you to swap a few wardrobe choices at a single press.

 

 

 

 

[Cragga the Eighty Third.60]

(I did pay for most of LS3. )

 

I am happy buying non-essential stuff, when I have some room in the budget. When a new story part comes out, I don't want to have to wait till my bills are paid. What's more, there are those who will never buy it, which means underpopulated maps, which means not enough people to take down that big boss. I like the model of paying for the big expansion, then being able to sit back and enjoy the new stuff as it comes out.

[Electro.4173]

Keep the LS episodes free. I suspect there are a great many people (mostly that don't bother with forums) who wouldn't pay to unlock LS content, and that means maps with lower populations, and that means less playability for everyone. Plus, LS stuff comes with things like mastery points, achievements, ect. that would probably cause some people to cry "pay to win" a lot more than the current model where you can get the new gameplay stuff for free as long as you're around during certain time periods.

 

GW2 having free story updates every few months is also a nice hook to get new players to try the game. And in some ways Living Story is part of the GW2 endgame, and locking part of the endgame behind paywalls would be detrimental.