Why is Legion bringing back time gates?

[Kelzam]

You have an entire 1.5-2 years of this expansion to finish your Class Hall upgrades. If you didn't have a time gate you'd steam roll through it and then whine that Blizzard made it too easy / didn't do enough content / wasn't listening. If they add time gating you complain you can't just blow right through it. Blizzard can't ever win, either way.

[Archibalde]

time gates arent necessarily a bad thing... idk why people keep making them out to be

What's the positive, then? In a game where you pay for the subscription (with money or gold), having content that's essentially "just wait a month" is rather terrible design. There's no gameplay. They could have added a gate in a multitude of ways. Have a reputation grind with a weekly cap, gather items with a weekly limit, anything they've done in the pass that included engaging the player in some activity. It's not like they need to do something complex that only rewards hardcore players, they just needed to come up with something that actually makes you play the game you pay to play.

[gcsmith]

Get a different raid team then. Life sucks. I don't see why other players should be cockblocked because of that. Oh well, if you want people to leave the game, you can have that.

yes, people leave game due to waiting 2 weeks for raiding, at the start of the expansion. Or because the slight delay on content. Seriously, the time gates aren't that big an issue, especially when it's on passive content not active content. Complaining that research time, something that would never have you actively do something, is a gate is like complaining that a microwave meal takes 5 minutes to cook instead of 3...

[Darktbs]

This may help the problem of the "There is nothing to do".But Blizz must not use this as a excuse to have long gaps between patches.

[Dragon Claws]

I don't mind time gates. I see it as something to look forward to.

[Deleted]

Because that's what people are asking for, they want grindy things again. I like that it will take a long time to get all your artifact power, prestige 12 and max rank of professions.

Also people want alts to feel like alts again, so this is a way to make them feel like alts again.

There's anything grindy about a 14 days timer. Now they mixed in some mobile game shit into the already copy/paste of what you see on Facebook.

[Faible]

I got nothing against time gates, unless the reward is something that will be considered -mandatory-, no matter what your own opinion.

I'd prefer things going at a slower pace because less loot is being thrown after you, because you can't pug bloody heroic difficulty raids, because you can't log on 5 min a day and after a month have 3 super good items cause the garrison magically gathered the mats you needed for crafting upgrades..

We all know that everyone will be expected to get to tier 6 asap, you'll be frowned upon if you don't have legendaries cause your output or ilvl will simply be shit compared to others. Not only does this go for your main, but you'll have to do it on -all- your alts you'll want to be semi active on. Nor does this system reward those who dedicate alot more time then others into it, it's just a plain out normalised mandatory thing you'll have to do.

In WoD, I litterally have my bank filled to the brink with baleful items for all my unloved alts, my DPS skyrocketed by 10k simply because I got the legendary and had 5k valor reserve to upgrade it with.

[gcsmith]

I got nothing against time gates, unless the reward is something that will be considered -mandatory-, no matter what your own opinion.

I'd prefer things going at a slower pace because less loot is being thrown after you, because you can't pug bloody heroic difficulty raids, because you can't log on 5 min a day and after a month have 3 super good items cause the garrison magically gathered the mats you needed for crafting upgrades..

We all know that everyone will be expected to get to tier 6 asap, you'll be frowned upon if you don't have legendaries cause your output or ilvl will simply be shit compared to others. Not only does this go for your main, but you'll have to do it on -all- your alts you'll want to be semi active on. Nor does this system reward those who dedicate alot more time then others into it, it's just a plain out normalised mandatory thing you'll have to do.

In WoD, I litterally have my bank filled to the brink with baleful items for all my unloved alts, my DPS skyrocketed by 10k simply because I got the legendary and had 5k valor reserve to upgrade it with.

You can't guarantee legionaries, so you won't be forced to do it.

That said, rewarding people for playing your game more is a good idea, not bad.

[WowIsDead64]

I hate to be artificially time-gated. It have always been nothing, but sub fee grab crap. I want REAL content, not doing some thing again, again and again, because reward is time-gated. Leveling all followers to 675 and grabbing full 695 baleful were enough for me.

[clevin]

The way I see it time gating is one of the most effective, if not only way, of getting people to pace them selves and try various types of content instead of spending the next 48 hours farming required to raid competitively.

The two issues with this are:

1) Why should the game tell me how to play? IF I can and want to play every evening for an hour or two why should I hit an artificial wall just because the average player only plays 4 hours a week or something?

2) What about the player who doesn't play most days but likes to play a ton on one of their days off and *wants* to spend hours in a row farming up rep or something?

Before someone chimes in about no lifers remember that people spend hours watching sports passively on weekends and many others watch an hour or two of TV many nights. There's no reason those are acceptable activities but playing a game for that same schedule is somehow no-lifing it.

[Zurok]

Im okay with this, hopefully halls are more satisfying then garrisons.

[Kokolums]

There's other creative ways besides time gating. You could install a mechanic where you can get x amount of XP per day. But if you go beyond that, you take on additional risks like losing xp for failing quests or for dying or something. Or how about hunter-killer NPCs that patrol the world and if you go over X amount of XP per day, you get flagged and those NPCs can hunt you down from time to time.

Straight up time gating is rather uncreative and boring, its true.

[SoulSoBreezy]

Just seems overly excessive. I could understand a time gate or a massive resource project but both seems a bit to much. My goal is to interact with the class hall as little as possible and the idea that I effectively have to mark a day on a calendar to keep its progression going is off putting.

Aren't you?
You prep the research, and you don't have to go back until the research is done. And there's a hard limit.
If anything, weep about having to go back to turn in AP.

- - - Updated - - -

There's other creative ways besides time gating. You could install a mechanic where you can get x amount of XP per day. But if you go beyond that, you take on additional risks like losing xp for failing quests or for dying or something. Or how about hunter-killer NPCs that patrol the world and if you go over X amount of XP per day, you get flagged and those NPCs can hunt you down from time to time.

Straight up time gating is rather uncreative and boring, its true.

Or consistent, depending on the narrative you're trying to drive.

[Deleted]

There's anything grindy about a 14 days timer. Now they mixed in some mobile game shit into the already copy/paste of what you see on Facebook.

You don't even have to do many of the missions, and i'm pretty sure you don't need the class hall upgrades, they're just there to increase times etc. Also i mean other things in the game are pretty grindy like the things i named.

[Deleted]

Hmmmmm complaining about time gated content in wow when its been around since tbc ? Is there something in the water because the IQ has dropped to double digits around here and the posters have went feral.

But on topic gating content has more benefits than disadvantages because from a business point of view it makes the content you have made last longer. From a player point of view the "majority" dont get left behind and it allows players to enjoy other aspects of the game like collecting/profs/pvp and alt play. The only people this really affects negatively is the "Need to do it all now" crowd and they dont even make up 1% of the play base.

Time gating can lead to developers slacking on content though (not like blizzard needs a reason) but if done right with new content coming out it can lead to an enjoyable relaxed progression path for the players to enjoy.

[Bohannon]

time gates arent necessarily a bad thing... idk why people keep making them out to be

The only time gets I don't like are when they are holding back like an hours worth of content so they can extend it over 3 month period. Like the Garrison campaign, could probably do all those chains in an hour but they instead hold it back for once a week, to give this illusion there is 3 months worth of content, because there are 5 minute quest chains every week. It's just an excuse for them to be lazy and not make more story chains. If they doubled the amount of chains, and released it every other day, there would be no problem. No one complaigns about 5.1 for example. So it's not necessarily a bad thing, but it certainly can be, when it allows the dev's an excuse to be lazy.

[wing5wong]

The only time gets I don't like are when they are holding back like an hours worth of content so they can extend it over 3 month period. Like the Garrison campaign, could probably do all those chains in an hour but they instead hold it back for once a week, to give this illusion there is 3 months worth of content, because there are 5 minute quest chains every week. It's just an excuse for them to be lazy and not make more story chains. If they doubled the amount of chains, and released it every other day, there would be no problem. No one complaigns about 5.1 for example. So it's not necessarily a bad thing, but it certainly can be, when it allows the dev's an excuse to be lazy.

They arent going to make content every other day. That would result in a mindboggling amount of content after a year, and take even more time to develop
That's just not feasible.

The garrison campaigns unlocking a week at a time is good, and were never intended to be 3 full months worth of content. just 1 single storyline

[TheEaterofSouls]

Are profession mats time gated in any way?

[wing5wong]

not sure, crafted probably 1/day as with every other expac.

[Justpassing]

Well why not? If you could add as little content as possible and still make it last, wouldn't you?

And I'm not being salty here, just being realistic. If I was the head of Blizzard I'd do it too.