Why is Legion bringing back time gates?

[Tijuana]

Time gates are about one thing - concern among the capital behind the creation of video games that they will be sued and/or receive bad press as a result of horror stories about people destroying their lives as a result of playing video games for long hours. Activision Blizzard absolutely does not want another story about someone dying after a 20+ hour World of Warcraft marathon, or losing their marriage/friends/family/whatever as a result of isolation based on their game.

Time gates give a publisher and developer a design argument that they are doing their best to help players play responsibly, which they may very well have to use in court at some point.

There never used to be time gates at all in any video game, back before the industry became mammoth and capital had a lot to potentially lose through their game design.

It's not just that at all. Nobody wants another raid teams lack of employment to the the primary reason they got beat to the end boss.

[Zka]

Bringing back? Do you mean KEEPING? Because every significant thing has been timegated in WoD.

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Not obvious, shortsighted. It's impossible to add content fast enough to keep up with the players unless you slow them down.

You don't need to slow down players if the content has sufficient replay value.

[Deleted]

I'm personally happy they gate some content, especially given that most content is not gated.
You want a balance of both imo.

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Orrrrrrrrrrrrrrr ... the devs listened to feedback and made adjustments based on it. You can quote the BC day 1 raid availability if you like, but I also remember a lot of complaining by progression groups back in those days, saying that the early expac experience was balls because nobody could take time to enjoy levelling etc.

Some like gating - some hate it, and that is ok. But there is more logic to gating than there is to not gating ... so throwing a cynical tantrum and calling it pathetic just because you don't like it is immature.

They are not gating content though they are gating a upgrade. You already have 100k resources from doing content this is just waiting a few weeks for a button to light up. It just feels excessive to me.

[Huehuecoyotl]

Content isn't free. Do you want to pay more per month, or more per expansion?

Blizzard can make a lot of excuses, but lack of income really isn't one of them. When your MMO is bringing in a billion dollars a year, the "content isn't free" argument isn't just irrelevant, it is laughable.

[Cwimge]

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.

On a side note tho, they did seem to change the rank 6 upgrade so it's no longer how you unlock the 3rd relic slot, which means there is far less player power attached.

I still maintain it's not the players burden to treat their entertainment like some rare commodity that must be doled out and made to last

[Mechonics]

So you don't burn through completely all content in 3 months and whine for the next 6+ months that there is nothing to do. Nobody can code content faster than it can be consumed. So it gets gated or repeated or both.

Or you just make the gear available from the content not fucking god level and make dungeons/world zones harder and BAM people can't pull 30 mobs at once and things inherently take longer.

Funny how that works right? Like...how the game used to be? Challenging....what a stupid idea.

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Bringing back? Do you mean KEEPING? Because every significant thing has been timegated in WoD.

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You don't need to slow down players if the content has sufficient replay value.

You need to change your signature Makes me giggle reading it.


Also - what I said above. You don't need to gate content if the content is already difficult.


Player power needs a nerf, gear needs a nerf (epics should not come from world quests, blues should 90% come from dungeons, quests give greens). World quests/mobs are harder to complete/kill.

Creates content that you can't steamroll because you don't outgear it instantly when hitting 100. Player power is too high, we're insta-gods after the first raid tier when it comes to world content/heroic dungeons and ALL of that is instantly worthless.

[Breccia]

To make you subbed longer

This, plus...it's "only" class halls. It's not like they're locking out the wings of ICC.

[Allenseiei]

Because every game that has content that actually lasts more than a week has it time gated or else everyone burns through it instantly.

Lets take a look at WotLK, where ppl said "most subs best exp":

1. Naxxramas was out at the start, it was cleared 2-3 days after release.
2. Ulduar: dont remember if it had time gated wings.
3. ToC and the Daily hub was time gated. The raid was 1 boss per week and the dailies were locked by reputation levels, which were locked behind the amount of dailies that you could do a day.
4. ICC each wing was time gated, 1 wing per week.

[Kallisto]

Blizzard can make a lot of excuses, but lack of income really isn't one of them. When your MMO is bringing in a billion dollars a year, the "content isn't free" argument isn't just irrelevant, it is laughable.

At what point does "isn't free" becomes irrelevant? Sorry but no company in the history of humanity is going to take a profit loss. It is dumb, actually no outright moronic to even think it.

Every company in history: We could do X but it will give us less money, so lets not do X

[Mechonics]

At what point does "isn't free" becomes irrelevant? Sorry but no company in the history of humanity is going to take a profit loss. It is dumb, actually no outright moronic to even think it.

Every company in history: We could do X but it will give us less money, so lets not do X

Looks at US government operating at a loss......

[Varaben]

I would rather have effort gates but wtv

What's an example of an "effort gate?"

[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.

Things can be grindy without timegating them.

Jsut thought i would inform you on that.

Grinding is a part of any mmo.

Timegating is taking away player choice of how to play the game.

So you have all saturday off and can grind all day so you can catch up to your guildies? To fucking bad LOL. You can grind for 20 minutes and then you have to wait 24 hours before you can grind again.

Are we having fun now?

[unbound]

Talking about the class hall in this case. It takes roughly a month of real time regardless of how much you play the game to fully upgrade your class hall and I kind of wonder why..

The requirements are already fairly step from a resource perspective adding two weeks to complete the last step of it seems overkill. I don't really see the purpose of it. If it is to act as a nerf it seems bizarre since it is going to be available roughly around the second week of mythic.

I don't know is there something I am missing? Making things take a long time to upgrade and tying large amounts of player power to that just seems like a kick to the nuts for alts.

Most likely because there will be lack of content again. Time gating is a substitute for content that may take time to complete instead. Much cheaper just to time gate it than develop content around the activity.

[Video Games]

So you don't burn through completely all content in 3 months and whine for the next 6+ months that there is nothing to do. Nobody can code content faster than it can be consumed. So it gets gated or repeated or both.

The best solution to that is launch with multiple raid tiers like in bc, but fuck that idea anymore I guess.

[Pakmanisgod]

Time gates have been around since Vanilla. Ony scales for Nefarian were aquired and capes distributed pretty slowly. Initially Kael and Vashj only dropped one vial per week for the BT amulet forcing numerous runs before you could even set foot in BT. Wrath introduced time gated raids in the argent tournament and ICC. Cata had gated raids as well. MoP had dailies and reps that might as well have been forced time sinks.

I don't know which methods you don't consiter time gates.

[Mechonics]

what's an example of an "effort gate?"

attunements/keys - Which honestly are GIANT story openings to explain to people what the fuck a raid instance is all about.

Unlike Highmaul....like why the fuck were we even there? Don't even remember....

[Zerref]

Time gates have been around since Vanilla. Ony scales for Nefarian were aquired and capes distributed pretty slowly. Initially Kael and Vashj only dropped one vial per week for the BT amulet forcing numerous runs before you could even set foot in BT. Wrath introduced time gated raids in the argent tournament and ICC. Cata had gated raids as well. MoP had dailies and reps that might as well have been forced time sinks.

I don't know which methods you don't consiter time gates.

Don't forget the months of the entire guild farming mats and boss items and rep (Hydraxian *shudder*) to forge one legendary item for one member, to boost raid output.

[Deleted]

attunements/keys - Which honestly are GIANT story openings to explain to people what the fuck a raid instance is all about.

Unlike Highmaul....like why the fuck were we even there? Don't even remember....

There is basicly no difference between a timegate or a gate locked by a rep key fyi.

Attunements that has a semi long questing story behind them is an option though.

[Pakmanisgod]

Don't forget the months of the entire guild farming mats and boss items and rep (Hydraxian *shudder*) to forge one legendary item for one member, to boost raid output.

Ah yes, resist gear. Ugh...

[Zerref]

attunements/keys - Which honestly are GIANT story openings to explain to people what the fuck a raid instance is all about.

Unlike Highmaul....like why the fuck were we even there? Don't even remember....

I loved the attunements/keys, and i sadly never got my Hand of A'dal title, but the whole point of the gated Legion is because Blizzard has stated they want you to take in the environment and story, learn why you are here and doing things. Which is also why they came out with Chronicles Vol. 1 and the Illidan novel. Just wanted to say I agreed with you whole-heartedly.