Are timegates really bad?

[Dracullus]

Look like "timegate" start losing it's meaning (like "MAU") and you label everything as "timegate", including weekly and daily gear/quest resets. I don't remember people people being that whiny few expansions ago, but that probably just my memory, people always were whiny.

This way we forgot what problem with timegating had people in Legion - it was choping content in very small peaces and releasing it in very small parts every week. That's gone in BfA. And to be honest I think it was wrong direction. BfA story feels shorter, we just swallow it first day of patch and forget. IMO every patch should have it's "Insurrection" - 8-9 story chapters, released every week, with ~1 hour gameplay.

[clownpenisfart]

as far as im concerned wow at its best was something that i could have a lot of fun for a few weeks at a time, separated by weeks of doing something else altogether

but hoping that the fun will never stop is a pipe dream and timegating doesnt achieve this, all it does is diluting whatever fun can be found in the game over a longer time

hoping that this would encourage players to keep a sub up for longer rather than not subbing at all is spectacularly idiotic

i dont know what kind of brain damage people have that they expect that a single game should be able to fulfill all of their entertainment needs forever

[Wangming]

If everything is timegated all the time, it is bad. Some time gates are okay. Still not good, but acceptable. But let's be frank. WoW is more or less designed to keep you playing with as minimal ammount of content as possible. The organs of enemies are not guaranteed drops not even for quest items. The way from point A to point B is often unclear and requires you to search for a path where the terrain allows you to progress. And the list goes on. Artificially extending the time you have to play beyond the reasonable is what they do for a living.

[Gaidax]

Madseasonshow, the classic youtuber, already made a list of timegates in current wow.
Here is his list.

So basically a list of activities we can do in modern WoW as opposed to twisting our thumbs all day long in Vanilla?

kk.

[dope_danny]

"is a subtrap designed to 'keep the consumer entangled in our storefront ecosystem' and paying more sub time overall just to upkeep and stretch out content without actually making more new content bad?"

Let me tell you about this hip new concept called "Fun" instead. Something that happens when a game doesn't try to become a second job just to grind out something or wait for it to unlock. You can have fun anytime rather than wait and that means playing something else. Because you want to have fun. Its an alien concept but its got strong groundswell.

Or you vote with your wallets for timegates, grind meters and every other mobage mechanic under the sun to replace regular content update cadence.

[Lei]

Time gate is good when it wants me to do it for the sheer enjoyment. Because it's fun, and fairly gated, and there is an amazing goal at the end.
Time gate is bad, when it's Khadgar in 7.2 and even a caterpillar can tell that it is only a time gate to keep people subbed.
People with strawman arguments is bad. (aka "blizz timegates, people complain, blizz doesn't timegate, people complain!" ugh.)
People who either pretend it to flame or genuinly can't possibly enjoy anything in the game that is timegated (I mean not even the "good time gates"), are the worst.

[FelPlague]

Madseasonshow, the classic youtuber, already made a list of timegates in current wow.
Here is his list.

Maybe you should actually watch the video he does not call those timegates, he is listing all the stuff that can be done every day and week. And how he thinks it's too much.
Nothing to do with timegates. And just how there is too much to keep up with.

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This list is beyond stupid. Calling most of the things on it as "timegating" is being insane.

The list isn't stupid. A guy misrepresenting what he was saying is.

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This doesn't even list WQs.

In the past you could grind rep to your hearts content. Wanna play a Kul Tiran but can only play a decent amount of time on Saturday and Sunday?

Chuck a tabard on and grind some dungeons out. Better yet - AoE grind down some mobs for rep.



Now? Now you can only do 5ish WQs a day. Each rewarding 75 rep. You only need 42000! COME BACK TOMORROW, YOU CAN DO 5 MORE.

"In the past you could grind reps to your heart's content" lol wtf? What reps? Shall we go back to the actual old reps? Like the argent crusade. Kaluk, Oracle's, and all the reps in wotlk that were required for enchants?

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So basically a list of activities we can do in modern WoW as opposed to twisting our thumbs all day long in Vanilla?

kk.

Don't blame mad season, this has nothing to do with timegating, dude is misusing his list. It's about all the daily and weekly content how there is far too much to keep up with when compared to the old just dailies, weeklies, raid, etc.

[Orby]

I personally don't mind them, as someone who prefers the slow progression through the game I like things unlocking slowly as you go. But I see and understand why people want all the content available to actually be available.

The only problem for those that want no time gates is they will run out of content to do and then demand more. Then complain that Blizzard isn't releasing enough content, as long as there is enough to do during that time gate I have no issue with time gates.

[sarkayan]

timegates are needed in a game like WoW, but only occasionally, used sparingly. The problem is that Blizzard is using this thing for everything at all times.

[Daedius]

As a consumer it absolutely sucks, but from a business perspective it's completely understandable.

[Mardux]

As a consumer it absolutely sucks, but from a business perspective it's completely understandable.

This. 100%

[Big Thanks]

Maybe you should actually watch the video he does not call those timegates, he is listing all the stuff that can be done every day and week. And how he thinks it's too much.
Nothing to do with timegates. And just how there is too much to keep up with.

He didnt call them "timegates"...but tell me...what are they?
They are timegated content, are they not?

He called them "chores" or something, cant remember was a while ago.

[ONCHEhap]

FFXIV has virtually zero timegating outside of gear and some things and its still flourishing.


Why?

Because the rest of the game is compelling enough to where once you get BiS you can enjoy the fruits of your labor because there's a lot of vanity stuff to do.



WoW suffers when there's no timegating because they devote very little of the game to vanity, it makes sense why they have to timegate everything, because if that weren't the case people would quit or get bored, I agree with this.



The solution is just to make the rest of the non-gear ladder oriented parts of the game fun to do.

the FFXIV community is also not as deep on the autism spectrum as the WoW community overall,that plays a part too

[Thelyron]

They're bad for us and good for them.

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the FFXIV community is also not as deep on the autism spectrum as the WoW community overall,that plays a part too

Being on the spectrum is a prerequisite to be interested in final fantasy in the first place.

[Drusin]

Is see so many complains in the forums (only forums, never ingame)

Come to Area52 Horde side and hangout in LookingForGroup

If everything can be done as fast as you want in, say 8.3, how much fun would that really be?

It'd be great! lol, I can knock out all the shit I don't care about then go back to doing the stuff I want to do. I'd love it.

Grind one weekend of Visions to get rank 15 of the cloak. Grind one week Mobs for the currency to buy the entrance. Or get rid of the currency completly so you don't have to do content at all.
So you are done with everything in two days tops.

<3

Or Suramar. All the story quests and unlocks at day one. Nothing to look forward to. Finished in a day or two.

<3

I look forward to doing what I want to do. Not getting drip fed content on someone elses schedule.

The carrot on a stick is what keeps MMORPGS alive. They can't do content 24/7 like you are playing a single player game because you play these games waaaaaay more than SP Games.

I got way more to do than current content.

I don't want to insult anyone because i know people get really agitated if you don't agree with them on this topic. Please tel me what kind of relevant content you want if there is nothing else to do after a week other then logging in twice a week to raid/do Mythics or PvP?

Relevant is a matter of opinion. Everything I want to do is relevant to me. Everything you want to do is relevant to you.

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if they timegate stuff, people complain about it and accuse Blizzard of timegating so they can keep subs going.

if they don't timegate stuff, people complain about it and accuse Blizzard of not having enough content for them to do.

Blizzard cannot win.

Make more content

[MasterHamster]

Timegates are necessary tools, the problem is when timegates are your "only" real barrier keeping people from plowing through the content.
There are no other, less obvious "gates", such as overall difficulty, gear requirements and so on.
The game used to require higher gear, attunements, reps etc to unlock content, or having content locked behind beating some (some pretty hard) content.

Now when every major content patch is its own self-contained "season" that requires next to no prior time-investment, timegates are just stopping you from going from one impossible-to-lose theme ride to the next.

I prefer content to be gated behind difficulty and gear requirements, rather than getting "chapters" unlocked every two weeks or whatever.

[exsanguinate]

if they timegate stuff, people complain about it and accuse Blizzard of timegating so they can keep subs going.

if they don't timegate stuff, people complain about it and accuse Blizzard of not having enough content for them to do.

Blizzard cannot win.

ergo -> develop more stuff to do.

[Wangming]

Being on the spectrum is a prerequisite to be interested in final fantasy in the first place.

Don't blame us. We got it from our flu shots. Now we play filthy weeb games instead of the super serious king of western MMOs with talking MMOs anime elves, space ghosts, 4th wall breaking seasonal events and entire zone long movie references. :P

[hyphnos]

if they timegate stuff, people complain about it and accuse Blizzard of timegating so they can keep subs going.

if they don't timegate stuff, people complain about it and accuse Blizzard of not having enough content for them to do.

Blizzard cannot win.

Oh enough with the tiny violins for the bullion dollar corporations. They most definitely don't give two shits if the most crazy players run out of content. They care, as evidenced by what they report to investors, about how much time they can extract from players eyeballs and how many dollars they can extract from those same players by increasing the time inputs to the point that many will throw money at the problem.

Timegating is just lazy and punitive and is relying on fomo to get people on every day to avoid losing out on something on offer for a short period of time instead of offering a limited but reasonable amount of progress in weekly chunks for people who can play the same amount of time but only in chunks on the weekend.

Why do they do this? Because they don't want you skipping 5 days knowing you can still do your 6 hrs of playtime and discovering that maybe you can do without their timewasting gerbil wheel within a gerbil wheel that is the cloak and vision bullshit that they just nerfed for the only reason they ever nerf anything, people must have simply stopped fucking with it

That is the state of the game and tldr timegating is bad and a psychological trick and neither you or anyone else should be spouting how poor atvi can't win. They can win by making fun compelling content without the trickery except the idiots they employ don't know how to do it anymore, not even for the high end elites.

[Kiwijello]

I don't mind time gating certain things. Most things actually. However, I want to be able to spend 72 hours straight grinding a single rep if that is what I choose to do.
Right now, you cannot.

Rep is gained from quests / WQ, missions, and other limited sources. I can't go kill mobs all day for small amounts of rep. I am stopped in my tracks when I run out of ways to get to my goal. This happens over and over and over. It's frustrating because that is how I play. I focus.

When my focus is ripped away, I lose immersion and don't want to play. Makes me bitter tbh. I don't mind the main features being gates to an extent, but mundane things, things that should be farmable (PROFESSIONS without DUNGEONS and RAIDS), have been limited because of asinine systems that have locked them to other convoluted systems. I just want to grind out some rep, go to a specific place to get a specific piece of gear (you can amp it up any way you want once I get the BASE PIECE), and for the love of everything, get a PVP vendor. I suck at PVP but I will and have done it (a lot) to, you guessed it, FARM GEAR (coughweaponscough).

Stop stopping me midgame and forcing me to do something else for the rest of the day. Let me do a few things in game for as long as I want. Let me set goals and don't artificially stop my progress. Not playing with people does that for me naturally, don't make it worse :P lol