Birthday Presents for accounts

It's amazing that someone, the OP in this case, can state an opinion without resorting to drama or emotion, and people still feel the need to respond in a demeaning manner. And, it's not a way to make a point. So, letting loose with zingers and one liners can be quick but not very substantive.

A game account isn't the same as a bank account, so a comparison doesn't hold any value.

Characters aren't money, the account is money. Each account represents a game sold and purchased. Creating new characters essentially increases the life cycle of the game content when juxtaposed with players that only play one or only a few characters.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but ANet is better off if more people delete and re-roll characters instead of just playing a few characters before making demands for more content. Character slots are usually far less in number than all possible profession combinations.

It is curious why ANet decided to reward character longevity versus account and campaign longevity. There's nothing wrong with discussing such things, this is a forum, after all.

Maybe because there's nothing really special about having an account that's a year or two old?

People that play individual characters that long, however, get rewarded for their unique connection to their characters, the world, and the game.

lmao What good would that do!
There would just be loads more people with higher rank so it would be even harder for new people to start HA.

To be honest, i agree that it is character based, NOT account based.

I still have two characters from the early days of GW when only four slots were available and still play them both, in fact they are pretty much my main characters (despite now having another 8 too).

I think that keeping characters alive and not deleting them to make some change (due to new appearences and the like) or getting bored deserves more than just having an account for the same amount of time.

example

a person buys chapter 1 and creates characters then has spent the last 20 months playing wow and not giving Anet a single penny.

why should they get a reward for simply buying the game?

when i create a character i think what will be fun to play and stay with those characters.

Anet decided that a bday present for my kind of player would be nice and did it.

no rewards for simply buying the game as the fun playing the game is your reward

I started playing about 2 weeks after GW's release. I deleted my first character just over a year ago -- not because I was bored with him, but because I wanted a different hairstyle (not sure if I missed the other one when I first created him, or if I was just caught up in the new experience of GW). It was no easy decision to remake him -- I had been thinking about it off and on literally for months because his age+experiences were important to me as he was my first and main character -- anything I had done in GW was first done by him. I had no idea about minipets or birthday presents in general. Since there wasn't a barber NPC, I finally remade him... with all the same features save for the hairstyle.

Now he's just turned a year old (got a mini siege turtle). He's completed everything from before and then some, but his 2nd b-day won't come til next year. I only have 1 other of my "original" characters, but I completely take responsibility for restarting/making the new ones. I guess I'm mostly unhappy about the no barber/hairstylist NPC, but as for the account vs. character age question, there are good arguments for both sides. Maybe we should get something for both?

Actually, I already gave an answer to that question in the same post you are quoting me from...

As for, "a person" that "buys chapter 1 and creates characters then has spent the last 20 months playing wow and not giving Anet a single penny"; well, what's the difference in that regard?

My argument is based on the idea that ANet gets more "bang for its buck" if players stay occupied for a longer period playing released content. Releasing content is an investment and game publishers want it to last long enough without having to rush out new content before they have fully exhausted the "gold mine" of older content.

And, which type of players gets more "use" from the published content? I'd say that it's more likely the person that rerolls characters. People who create characters and never re-roll them will limit their exposure to the content and "need" to have ANet provide new content sooner, new content costs time and money.

The same one that receives the mini-pet that came with the factions and nightfall CE's. For those that don't own either CE, it worked by not spawning the mini-pet until you used a specific command in game, then gave it to your current active character.

i honestly would like to know what idiot started the idea that a chapters content had to last until the next chapter comes out.

this is one thing in the game you have complete control over and takes a year to accomplish.

everybody bought the game so why reward them with a minipet that might be worth a fortune?

it is a characters birthday not an account birthday

different playstyles have different rewards.........simple concept

I'll have to disagree with that. Technically if the players keep their characters longer, they'll eventually run out of character slots and have to visit the Arenanet store to buy more slots in order to try the other classes without having to delete their existing characters in order to be able to get their characters' birthday gifts. Thus the reason why birthday gifts are per character and not the account age. The more characters you want gifts for, the more slots you need to have/buy, therefore it is technically more advantageous for Anet to promote the "per character age" rewards as it promotes the purchase of extra character slots.

You give a free inch, they want a free mile.



*This assumes the mile has an actual use.

It's not an idea that started after the fact, it's more a founding principle off the game design and business model. The time frame, whether it's six months or 12 months doesn't matter, but ANet does need the released content to "last" long enough to suit their time tables. They freshen it up by releasing major updates in between expansions, for instance.


I think rewarding character longevity introduces more of these mini-pets into the game and kind of cheapens the reward.

If the rewards were account based, there would be only one gift per year.

And, I agree, people play the game in different ways, that's a good thing. One way people play the game is via the re-rolling of characters and trying out different profession combinations, avatar looks, starting chapters, etc. ANet even refers to the "ease" at which you can dispose of a character and not have to be tied down like in other games.

But, my point is that there seems to be a better reason to reward accounts than characters, that's all I'm saying.

I would say the opposite. People that don't re-roll and stick with their characters get more "use" from it. They take the time to go all the way through the game and then take the rest of the characters through the same. Sure, many people have deleted a character or two after completing a whole campaign if they decided they wanted different hair or any number of reasons. But it's not like anyone goes out of their way to complete a campaign, immediately delete that character then complete the campaign again and repeat ad infinitum. What usually happens when people constantly re-roll is that they do it less than a fifth of the way through the campaign because they're just so indecisive they're not sure what it is they want their characters to be. I wouldn't call that getting much use out of it.

Yes, that is one way ANet counters a trend in a sound business fashion, but I would guess more people delete characters than go purchase additional slots to create new ones. But, I am only guessing.

I have all 3 campaigns but haven't purchased any additional slots because there is usually at least one character I haven't got attached, too. I have left one Monk in Pre-Sear and will always have at least one there to help friends who start in the game there. If I had to predict my next character to get deleted it would be my warrior who just got to Post-Sear.

and that is where the time obsessed are flat wrong for GW.

they need repeat sales not continued play

they do not have a monthly fee and do not need constant play to keep revenue coming in.

all that is needed is that a PVE person who plays the quests/ missions/ explores feels that they really got their moneys worth of fun even if they only played a month before finishing that chapter.

they put it aside for 5 months and hear about the next *even better* chapter coming out.

they remember how much fun they got last chapter and get this one and beat it in a month and are wildly happy they got it.

want to bet they get the next one when it comes out?

repeat sales not the time played is their business model.

I completely agree with the OP. Gifts should be directed at slots and even stockpiled until a character is created. I won't lose sleep over that not being the case, but I certainly see how the current setup is frustrating to those who had no idea there were going to be perks for filling all slots immediately and never re-rolling them.

Afterall - are we being rewarded as loyal customers or obsessive geeks?

The term "use" refers to mileage, if you will and not miles covered. The more a player is occupied with the content the better. If a player deletes every character before leaving Pre-Searing without seeing any other content, then that player still has "new" content remaining to discover. Players that suck the marrow out of the game arguably are doing so at a faster rate because they aren't re-rolling.

Additionally, those players may be less reluctant to play another character through the content they so readily devoured.

I am not saying one playstyle is superior to the other, only pointing it out from the perspective of a content provider regarding the consumers of their content.

If rewards are generally given to encourage certain behavior, it seems that ANet would seek to reward accounts and campaign ownership more so than a character's lifespan. And, aren't primarily PvP players kind of out in the cold with character longevity rewards?

Well, why reward a 2 year-old character if "time played" isn't the objective? And, I agree, time played isn't the objective. But, that's exactly why I feel the character longevity reward flies in the face of that concept.

Granted some people do park their characters for months between expansions, but most people keep playing, often re-rolling. People attracted to a "free to play" game do so because they can't or won't pay to play other games between chapter releases.

Also, ANet can't have a ghost-town and tumble-weeds greeting new adopters of the game, so having people re-rolling helps to revitalize at least some of the neglected areas.

If you look at the pros and cons of character longevity as a value you start to conclude that from the content provider's perspective, re-rollers are more beneficial to the game. Re-rollers effectively recycle the content and keep earlier content areas alive.

If that's where you're going with this, I'd have to side with Loviatar. There's no reason for them to need a player to be occupied with the content. That only holds true for subscription games.

Encouraging players to keep their characters and not delete them means that sitting around on these same characters for months, they've likely taken them all pretty far through the campaign. Still under the impression that continuing with the same characters is the beneficial thing to do, people would have taken their characters through the existing content quite thoroughly and would be anxiously awaiting more content to buy so they have more to do with those same characters(rather than just being satisfied to do the same old content with constantly re-rolled characters and then have no/need desire to buy the next campaign).

As far as PvP'ers are concerned, what could Anet possible give them anyway? One free unlock every twelve months? A lot of the serious PvP'ers are already UAX anyway.

OK, let's take what you are saying to the full extent.

If all of us "behave" as you say ANet would prefer us to behave, we would play our characters in a chapter and then stop playing for a period of time until the next chapter was released.

Now, what happens to the poor schmucks that adopt Guild Wars during those 'dead times"?

Ghost towns aren't very appealing to new players, there's no one there to make fun of them or, maybe, even help them. I played Asheron's Call 2, trust me empty towns/zones in an otherwise decent game can pretty much ruin things. (also)

Also, a large part of a game's marketing comes from people actually playing the game.

"O, yeah, Guild Wars, I play it for 3 weeks after a campaign comes out but then it gets boring." That isn't exactly a great way to increase market interest or game sales.

PvP, considered by some to be hugely important, relies on an influx of people, many of those people try their teeth out in PvE for a period of time before hopping into PvP.

edit: added AC2 link, neat article <sniff>