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Make us PAY for LW Content!


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So if the numbers truly are down, why not make us pay for the release of each new living world update? For example, when the new episode comes out, why not charge say 7 dollars? Those of us who want the content will gladly pay as that's not really that much at all. Those of us who could care less, can simply not pay and continue on our merry way. I fall into the 2nd category. I haven't enjoyed the LW stuff since Escape from LA/Battle for LA stuff(I'm just not in this game for the story). I would simply buy the content if say it introduced a new food or maybe an area that really brought back the feels from gw1, but that's really not money lost, since under the current system I and people like me wouldn't have paid for it anyway. This way, the work you put into the LW get's rewarded, and maybe some of the money and resources you normally would have spent on LW stuff could be re-directed to I dunno lets say a new WvW map? You know since it's been years and all we had was one new BL map. Meanwhile I dunno what PvE folks are complaining about, at least they get new excellent maps multiple times a year. So please Anet, start charging us for LW updates! Thanks, and sorry to hear about the layoffs, losing your job sucks, anyone who's worked a real job knows the feeling. Hang in there, it does get easier!

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- You got your point but if they start doing that i surely going to stop my journey and please don't take financial issues lightly, 7$ over there worth more than 3 meals may be up to 5 for an entire family in where i live so no. This doesn't mean i disapproved your idea cuz it generally solves some problems Anet currently has (or not, may be).

- I play this game because of its story and my main focus are Story/OW/Occasionally WvW, i personally love to read and follow any kind of stories, if Anet charged each LW episodes i'd rather save my money then buy some more books instead of playing just to process so little in story. Expansions is different matter i would gladly pay for but not this.

- If there is a chance this ever happened and if i'm going to spend my money then my demands would be very high for each episodes got released also a refund within a certain period of time that comes along would be nice so that if i feel the episode didn't meet my expectation i want my money back but sadly this is impossible due to many problems, exploit going to happen.

- Again - NO for me.

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> @"Eros.6801" said:

> - You got your point but if they start doing that i surely going to stop my journey and please don't take financial issues lightly, 7$ over there worth more than 3 meals may be up to 5 for an entire family in where i live so no. This doesn't mean i disapproved your idea cuz it generally solves some problems Anet currently has (or not, may be).

> - I play this game because of its story and my main focus are Story/OW/Occasionally WvW, i personally love to read and follow any kind of stories, if Anet charged each LW episodes i'd rather save my money then buy some more books instead of playing just to process so little in story. Expansions is different matter i would gladly pay for but not this.

> - If there is a chance this ever happened and if i'm going to spend my money then my demands would be very high for each episodes got released also a refund within a certain period of time that comes along would be nice so that if i don't feel the episode didn't meet my expectation i want my money back but sadly this is impossible due to many problems, exploit going to happen.

> - Again - NO for me.

 

That's a very fair point, and I did leave that out, the quality and content would hopefully also increase to a new level to accommodate the new fee.

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There's one thing you should factor in tho, content population. A number of Lw4 maps aren't meant for repeated content, so if there isn't enough people buying the episode, the content may die off even earlier due to low pop.

 

As for pricing, the current price per ala carte EP is 200gems, so 2.50usd.

 

Well... There's a modification that would probably work (the sales model already exists in game), but I would rather use my cash-bought gems for cosmetics, not lw episodes.

 

Tho, don't forget that while lw episodes don't directly generate profit, they are an integral component for why some players continue to buy things from the cash shop.

 

It might seem like only the cosmetics team and expansions team (if there's one) make money, but without all the support teams' (eg the tickets and programming and bugs teams) hard work, the game is dead.

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Yes but the current 2.50 per episode is just for folks that missed out on the content. If they made it 7 dollars for one flat rate no matter if people buy it on launch, or buy it 3 months later, everyone is treated the same and fairly. Remember this wouldn't be 7 dollars every month, their cadence is what 2-3 months give or take? In that period of time I pay 100's of dollars for a cup of coffee on my way to work each day for far less effort(Not 100's per day ofcourse, though I bet that kind of coffee would be freaking amazing!). This is just cheap gas station coffee I buy, I'm sure others pay way more. Would 7 dollars be that big of a difference for content we love every 2-3 months? I mean playing a round of golf is what 15+ a cart, bowling 3 games is what 10 -12 bucks? I think 7 is very reasonable for the effort and work Anet puts in to each story.

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The issue wasn't numbers were down, the issue was spending went up with no return to match. The loss of money wasn't purely due to GW2's performance, but of poor use of resources.

 

A single LW episode doesn't provide 7$ worth of content either, especially when you consider the price each expansion goes for. If they want GW2 to be more profitable it is as simple as providing various content on a more regular schedule. LW episodes offer too little for the 3-4 month gap between each to think it's okay to have 2 year gaps per expansion, in addition to how few cosmetics are actually released throughout the year compared to other games.

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ANet makes plenty of money. What was "not sustainable" was paying for developers working on "unspecified projects" which produced zero revenue. There is nothing wrong with ANet's _current_ business model. If they return to focusing on consistent content releases and expansions, and offering things in the gem store players will want to buy, the studio and the game will be fine.

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If they started charging for living world episodes they would be way better off merging the 3 living world teams into an additional expansion team instead. The entire reason why the LW model "works" is because ArenaNet do not charge you for the episode if you log in on time. Not only does this get more people to play the new map, but it also serves to make people who leave return once in a while, and these players can buy the new gem store items. If you had to pay for the content, less people would return to GW2 for LW releases. After a while, they cost $2.50, which allows Anet to make a little extra money from sales to latecomers, who did not return during the release period.

 

If they wanted to sell these maps, then going for more frequent expansions instead would be a better way to do it. Expansions are a chance to introduce new features and they are capable of generating lots of hype. This makes many players return to the game regardless of the cost of the expansion pack. In addition to this, expansions can simply pull off content better than LW by their very nature. LW is restricted because all maps need to be self-contained since some players may not have all the maps of a season. Everyone who buys an expansion automatically has access to all of its maps.

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> @"Ganathar.4956" said:

> If they started charging for living world episodes they would be way better off merging the 3 living world teams into an additional expansion team instead. The entire reason why the LW model "works" is because ArenaNet do not charge you for the episode if you log in on time. Not only does this get more people to play the new map, but it also serves to make people who leave return once in a while, and these players can buy the new gem store items. If you had to pay for the content, less people would return to GW2 for LW releases. After a while, they cost $2.50, which allows Anet to make a little extra money from sales to latecomers, who did not return during the release period.

>

> If they wanted to sell these maps, then going for more frequent expansions instead would be a better way to do it. Expansions are a chance to introduce new features and they are capable of generating lots of hype. This makes many players return to the game regardless of the cost of the expansion pack. In addition to this, expansions can simply pull off content better than LW by their very nature. LW is restricted because all maps need to be self-contained since some players may not have all the maps of a season. Everyone who buys an expansion automatically has access to all of its maps.

 

i wouldn't be sure that's a good idea. ppl do get burned out if you release too many xpacs too fast

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> @"derd.6413" said:

> > @"Ganathar.4956" said:

> > If they started charging for living world episodes they would be way better off merging the 3 living world teams into an additional expansion team instead. The entire reason why the LW model "works" is because ArenaNet do not charge you for the episode if you log in on time. Not only does this get more people to play the new map, but it also serves to make people who leave return once in a while, and these players can buy the new gem store items. If you had to pay for the content, less people would return to GW2 for LW releases. After a while, they cost $2.50, which allows Anet to make a little extra money from sales to latecomers, who did not return during the release period.

> >

> > If they wanted to sell these maps, then going for more frequent expansions instead would be a better way to do it. Expansions are a chance to introduce new features and they are capable of generating lots of hype. This makes many players return to the game regardless of the cost of the expansion pack. In addition to this, expansions can simply pull off content better than LW by their very nature. LW is restricted because all maps need to be self-contained since some players may not have all the maps of a season. Everyone who buys an expansion automatically has access to all of its maps.

>

> i wouldn't be sure that's a good idea. ppl do get burned out if you release too many xpacs too fast

 

Well, it's either that or they find a way to make LW content last somehow, despite the limitations of that system which I already mentioned.

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> @"Ganathar.4956" said:

> > @"derd.6413" said:

> > > @"Ganathar.4956" said:

> > > If they started charging for living world episodes they would be way better off merging the 3 living world teams into an additional expansion team instead. The entire reason why the LW model "works" is because ArenaNet do not charge you for the episode if you log in on time. Not only does this get more people to play the new map, but it also serves to make people who leave return once in a while, and these players can buy the new gem store items. If you had to pay for the content, less people would return to GW2 for LW releases. After a while, they cost $2.50, which allows Anet to make a little extra money from sales to latecomers, who did not return during the release period.

> > >

> > > If they wanted to sell these maps, then going for more frequent expansions instead would be a better way to do it. Expansions are a chance to introduce new features and they are capable of generating lots of hype. This makes many players return to the game regardless of the cost of the expansion pack. In addition to this, expansions can simply pull off content better than LW by their very nature. LW is restricted because all maps need to be self-contained since some players may not have all the maps of a season. Everyone who buys an expansion automatically has access to all of its maps.

> >

> > i wouldn't be sure that's a good idea. ppl do get burned out if you release too many xpacs too fast

>

> Well, it's either that or they find a way to make LW content last somehow, despite the limitations of that system which I already mentioned.

 

i don't think monetization was ever the issue in the first place but even then there's got to be better ways to monetize a game then this

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I'd be willing to pay for Living World episodes, although they'd have to massively increase the amount of content to justify more than doubling the price like the OP suggested. But paying 200 gems (£2.13 for me) would be reasonable.

 

Although since the smallest amount of gems you can buy with real money is 800 there may be months when I have to wait to get the new episode because I'm prioritising buying other things and can't justify spending money on a game (especially since those are likely to be times when I barely have time to log in to play it). It does also mean I effectively have to buy 4 episodes at a time, so I suppose I could save the gems until the episodes come out. But I think I'd be more likely to buy gems with gold instead, and apparently that's a lower return for Anet. (Yes I know gold bought gems have to be bought with real money by the person trading them, but Anet's justification for the mount skin prices was that items below 400 gems don't produce a profit for them because so many people use gold, while it's more beneficial for them if people buy gems and use them directly.)

 

It's an option (and it might also help with new players getting so angry that they're "punished" by buying the game later and having to buy "the story" separately having already purchased 1 or 2 expansions), but I don't think it's a simple solution. It's something that would need to be considered very carefully and you'd need some good promotion to bring players around to the idea of paying for something many of us previously got for free.

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> @"patton the great.7126" said:

> So if the numbers truly are down, why not make us pay for the release of each new living world update? For example, when the new episode comes out, why not charge say 7 dollars? Those of us who want the content will gladly pay as that's not really that much at all. Those of us who could care less, can simply not pay and continue on our merry way. I fall into the 2nd category. I haven't enjoyed the LW stuff since Escape from LA/Battle for LA stuff(I'm just not in this game for the story). I would simply buy the content if say it introduced a new food or maybe an area that really brought back the feels from gw1, but that's really not money lost, since under the current system I and people like me wouldn't have paid for it anyway. This way, the work you put into the LW get's rewarded, and maybe some of the money and resources you normally would have spent on LW stuff could be re-directed to I dunno lets say a new WvW map? You know since it's been years and all we had was one new BL map. Meanwhile I dunno what PvE folks are complaining about, at least they get new excellent maps multiple times a year. So please Anet, start charging us for LW updates! Thanks, and sorry to hear about the layoffs, losing your job sucks, anyone who's worked a real job knows the feeling. Hang in there, it does get easier!

 

Lol $7 ? For 2hrs of content. No thanks. And then I would also never buy any expac again, since the expacs have almost no content and everytime you criticize that you get pointet towards that "the LS is part of the expac". They would've to massively step up in amount of content to be worth $7, like 5 times that amount.

 

2-4hrs is probably what most ppl get out of current LS releases, that's jut laughable

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A lot of people already pay for this like returning players and new players. And this community largely seems to consist out of people who are total cheap skates and don't want to pay for content or the end of the world is near whereas at the same time they don't mind other people footing their bill via overpriced macro-transactions. So I would imagine that in that sort of community this would be a really bad idea.

 

Listen, putting more money into the game isn't going to fix this layoff problem and it won't suddenly give them more people again. If you really think you want to support this game, just buy the bloody stuff in the gem store. The solution is already there, you don't need to come up with more ways to spend money when you haven't used the existing ones yet. I'm sure that very few people have all the cosmetics and have all the upgrades their account can handle.

 

There are plenty of things to spend money on. If you think spending more money on the game is going to make things better then buy gems for real money. I mean you don't even have to use the gems. Just buying them will do. So why an extra forced charge for content? Buy gems out of appreciation for the game for all I care.

 

But the thing is that if you make people pay for LS chapters, that means you want to force other players to drop more money on this game. That's not going to end well. Some people will simply not buy them and complain about it. Others will stop playing and in the end that means less players again and that leads to less spending.

 

If you want to save this game by supporting it financially... buy gems. The option is already there.

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