When was the last time you farmed a specific reward without being heavily timegated?

[Big Thanks]

IMO, the timegate vs. no timegate is a really finicky balance that I don't think Blizzard have nailed yet but I do believe they are trying. As I see it, the pros of timegate are: prevents people from consuming all content instantly, prevents burnout, limits inequality of gear levels. The cons are that it limits freedom of choice and prevents people from gearing up quickly.

I personally think that the main reason why the timegate is in the game at the moment is to keep the hardcore playerbase in check to keep the casual playerbase from becoming too weak in comparison in addition to extending content. With the way content is released in retail the casuals would be constantly farmed in PvP and excluded from PvE by the more hardcore playerbase.

But what happens to the player that came in "late" into the patch?
What does also happen to the person that can only play on weekends and days off?

Both this players i mentioned are heavily punished by the timegate.

Because there is no way for them to catch up.
Even if they decide to "no-lfe" on the weekend or the day they can/want to play...they are presented with a "STOP" sign.

This means, Blizzard-timegates are there to reward "casual-DEDICATED players"
The ones who play everyday.
No one else is rewarded from this timegates. Absolutely no one.

[kamuimac]

IMO, the timegate vs. no timegate is a really finicky balance that I don't think Blizzard have nailed yet but I do believe they are trying. As I see it, the pros of timegate are: prevents people from consuming all content instantly, prevents burnout, limits inequality of gear levels. The cons are that it limits freedom of choice and prevents people from gearing up quickly.

I personally think that the main reason why the timegate is in the game at the moment is to keep the hardcore playerbase in check to keep the casual playerbase from becoming too weak in comparison in addition to extending content. With the way content is released in retail the casuals would be constantly farmed in PvP and excluded from PvE by the more hardcore playerbase. In Classic this works as the content is finite, but in retail there is no way the casual would ever catch up to the hardcore if the hardcore's growth is not limited by the timegate as new content would be released too quickly. While I don't have a source now, I am certain that Ion or someone else has also expressively stated that they want the hardcore players to play with the casuals as much as possible to essentially carry other people. This kind of play would not happen if the hardcore no longer need to repeat content after 1 month while the casuals are barely starting it.

I honestly think there are too many different kinds of players in WoW to not timegate content at all. Blizzard has to choose between completely alienating a part of their audience and somewhat alienate all of their audience. They have gone for the latter option and are therefore slowly bleeding subscribers instead of instantly losing a huge chunk. With Classic I am hoping that they will start appealing more to niche audiences like they used to. I think 'love it/hate it' content is generally superior to 'okay' content in any medium.

well lets take for example visions. i think they are prime example of how they will f... up thorgast in Shadowlands.

you can with relative low amount of farming do 2 runs per week. this is sooo little. its a joke on blizzard part.

but its timegating you so that you wont finish it in 2-3 weeks only "should" be playing for 2-3 months boosting their MAU

they no longer care about players having fun . they care about MAU

[Devilyaki]

That sexy tiger skin for druids.

[vitor210]

Me:
1) Rank 4 PvP Battleground Essence - Blood of the Enemy
2) When i decided to have fun selling Mekgineer's Choppers at a fair price. I farmed the mats for a couple bikes and made some people happy (mostly poor newbies)


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Interesting [Video] on the Topic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1phy6TpgXk

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You are free to discuss what you think about the timegate mechanic for every specific case
example:
-Raids must be timegated for the well being of the game BUT i think is unnecessary in "X" content

2 or 3 years ago when I was farming the Argent Tournament reputation for the Crusader title for my paladin. After being champion with all races of the Aliance, I grabbed the last tabards of the reputations I was still missing (you need to be exalted with the original Alliance races aswell), flew to Arcatraz dungeon in Outlands, put on some music and farmed the mobs there for the rep (while using the tabard). Took me a couple of hours but it felt good to do something without being timegated

[Big Thanks]

Read through the old dev watercoolers and interviews with GC.
A lot of that material is badly indexed because WoW Forums have fucked up every link with their re-design, but you can still search for lot of it.
For example - read this post re: Valor cap from 2013. https://www.wowhead.com/news=209622/...ter-highlights

The last bit is "To ensure that as many people as possible can use their time in-game on something they think is fun and that they enjoy doing, and not make people feel like they have to spend massive amounts of time every day just to reach a theoretical maximum weekly limit of Valor Points."

...which is direct consequence of people burning out because they "had to" grind points. That's why we have caps and timegates.

Thanks for the link! i love this kind of stuff!

But this is not a "heavily" timegated example.
With this timegate you could NO-LIFE in 1-2-3 days and reach the cap easily.

In this case only people who came in late AND the ones who missed an entire week are punished.

Its funny because in BFA there is NOTHING like this...

I think in this particular case it was a HEALTHY timegate for people to not be "overgeared" fast.
Just like Raids are timegated.

[Raisei]

950 points in Archeology.

Why? Uhm... see, the bar was empty... it should not be empty... so I filled it...

*goes back into the corner*

[Mendzia]

Ye, farming elite mobs that give 5rep/kill is such a better system...

Some people on this forum.

For me it is MUCH better system.

[The Butt Witch]

Timegating has multiple purposes:
1. Stopping no-lifers from devouring the content in 2 days, and then whining about having nothing to do and possibly quitting.
2. Helping people starting more recently and alts to not fall leagues behind the curve, with little chances of catching up before the next major content patch arrives to reset progress for all.

Without timegating, people would literally have to login every day just to stay with the curve.

I have many thing to criticize WoW for, but Timegating isn't one of them.

[Big Thanks]

It wasn't meant to be the exact thing, just an example. I'm not your personal google.

Feel free to read through all the old dev watercoolers, there's lot of posts from Cata-MoP era that show how their design philosophies evolved in the "post WotLK-crash".
I'll give you a head start: they don't talk about MAU's or the conspiracies that this forum so often obsesses about. They're actually a good read.

LOL ofocurse they dont talk about MAU's, are you insane? Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.
But a lot of todays timegates (Battle for Azeroth) are right out insane to the point of being obvious that they are not for the "well being" of the game in general.

You literally have to login everyday for months.

Literally...every single day. (example: everything Nazjatar)

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2. Helping people starting more recently and alts to not fall leagues behind the curve, with little chances of catching up before the next major content patch arrives to reset progress for all.

Sorry?
Timegates to the exact opposite It makes people who came in late behind of the curve forever. (if there are no catchup mechanisms)
(example: Everything in Nzjatar at the time had no catchup mechanisms)

Someone who came in late will be behind of the curve...forever

[Xaviaton]

But what happens to the player that came in "late" into the patch?
What does also happen to the person that can only play on weekends and days off?

Both this players i mentioned are heavily punished by the timegate.

If you look at how the timegate functions at the moment I would have to disagree somewhat. Those who are late to the patch cannot catch up 100% it is true, but 8.3 throws gear at you initially and then slows things down as you settle into the timegated grind. That means that the difference between returning players and constant players is reduced. This is also the case with the cloak at the moment, which ties into the amount of corrupted gear you can equip. Furthermore, while BFA screwed this up, the optimal (Legion) patch cycle was so short that if you came late to the patch, there would be a gear reset not too far later, placing you on even ground. Similarly with the weekend players. Visions, Islands bar, Raids, Mythic+ chest, weekly event quest, and the PvP bar are all on a weekly reset meaning you can log in and clear it all in a day if you want to. Only the emissary quests are daily but even if you play just in the weekend you can do 4/7 of these every week. Artifact Knowledge (or whatever it is called these days) also works independent of playtime so it makes catching up easier the more time passes. This is what I essentially mean with Blizzard going for the 'alienate everyone a bit'. Essentially, it makes catching up 100% impossible but makes catching up 60-70% relatively easy. The exception to this is the rep grind, but the rep grind is finite (except for toys and pets) meaning that you can complete it at your own pace (except for essences tied to rep, which I think is almost universally hated).

PS: I don't think this is particularly fun game design, but I think it more or less works the way it is intended to work.

Edit: Also 'dedicated' players is a better description than the 'hardcore' I used, I couldn't find the word I was looking for earlier!

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well lets take for example visions. i think they are prime example of how they will f... up thorgast in Shadowlands.

you can with relative low amount of farming do 2 runs per week. this is sooo little. its a joke on blizzard part.

but its timegating you so that you wont finish it in 2-3 weeks only "should" be playing for 2-3 months boosting their MAU

they no longer care about players having fun . they care about MAU

Oh, I agree! If they keep this formula for Torghast I will be super disappointed. I also agree that the MAU's are their main concern. I think the way they approach this is not to make sure that people are having a lot of fun, but to make sure no one is having an absolutely horrible time as this will keep us playing out of habit. That's what I mean with everything being 'okay' instead of anything being 'love it/hate it'. Take for example the Mage Tower in Legion: A lot of people (me included) really loved this, but another part of the playerbase absolutely hated it because they could not complete it and the rewards were removed. Compare to Islands or Warfronts where, in my opinion, the primary offender is that they are incredibly boring for everyone but everyone can also reap the rewards.

[Monster Hunter]

Last thing I farmed was thuderfury, but that's technically time gated and random as the bindings were one chance a week with raid lockouts.

I guess allied race heretige tmogs. Leveling is a very dull boring grind. Was nice to have it done and dusted.

[Kalisandra]

Indeed. I prefer time-gating, as I'm generally in no particular hurry to finish a grind and would rather spend 2 hours a week for 10 weeks than 40 hours in a row. I'm a big fan of the emissary system for that reason.

I prefer efficient methods of gaining rep to be time gated. For example, lots of rep from doing a relevant dungeon but only the first time you do it in a week. Emissaries count here, but the random way they turn up isn't great. Then there should be other, less efficient ways that are less gated but still limited (WQs, for example). And finally, there should be a way to no-life your way to exalted if you really must do it right now, say farming mobs (open world or dungeon) at 5 rep each. Ideally this last method should be one that becomes easier as the content becomes older so that people coming into an expansion late, or going back to finish up rep grinds from previous expansions don't get trapped by the gating and can do the grind reasonably quickly. This last requirement suggests dungeon runs and mob-grinding in dungeons is a decent mechanism (possibly with the tabard system of LK and Cata or the 'choose your faction' system of MoP), because it goes from a slow group activity to a fast one within an expansion, and a solo activity once the expansion is done.

[Byleth]

Yeah, no. Fuck mindlessly farming Laughing Skull mobs for hours and hours on end.

Or, you know, just do it the easy way now and buy rep tokens with time warped badges :P

[Polarthief]

I can't believe how many ignorant people in here prefer time-gating. You do know if they weren't awful and intentionally making bad decisions, you could have a time gated rep that takes 10m a day for 1k rep (that's 42 days btw) just be not gated and still let you earn 1k rep in 10m. The former *forces* you into one playstyle while the latter lets you farm it at your pace. It's incredibly selfish to want the option that treats you like an idiot and doesn't give you the freedom to do it whenever you want.

As my example, I just farmed 2500 of those Intact Demon Eyes yesterday from Antoran Wastes. Was it a pain in the ass? Sure, but it only took me like 3 hours or so instead of the 2 MONTHS of doing 20~40m dailies in Uldum+Vale to get exalted. If designed right, anything can be a time gate if you choose it to be or a quick farm if you'd prefer instead.

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I prefer efficient methods of gaining rep to be time gated. For example, lots of rep from doing a relevant dungeon but only the first time you do it in a week. Emissaries count here, but the random way they turn up isn't great. Then there should be other, less efficient ways that are less gated but still limited (WQs, for example). And finally, there should be a way to no-life your way to exalted if you really must do it right now, say farming mobs (open world or dungeon) at 5 rep each. Ideally this last method should be one that becomes easier as the content becomes older so that people coming into an expansion late, or going back to finish up rep grinds from previous expansions don't get trapped by the gating and can do the grind reasonably quickly. This last requirement suggests dungeon runs and mob-grinding in dungeons is a decent mechanism (possibly with the tabard system of LK and Cata or the 'choose your faction' system of MoP), because it goes from a slow group activity to a fast one within an expansion, and a solo activity once the expansion is done.

This also kinda works, but once an expansion is no longer relevant, the non-gated option should be as good as or more lucrative than the gated options. I saw people doing Argus WQs yesterday while farming those eyes and I felt so bad for the alliance who weren't around when it was relevant just to unlock their allied races without a quick "grind it in a day" way. It was so dumb.

[lollerlaban]

There's been timegating ever since the game was introduced, let's not kid ourselves.

[Beefhammer]

Outside of the original Deathcharger in Strath during TBC, nothing that didn't just come naturally through playing. Farming isn't fun so I just never really did it. Even reps, I just got those through normal play eventually, nothing where I focused solely on on task to complete.

[Zyrinx]

Heritage armors during korraks.

Was never into it, until I was. Now I miss it because regular leveling definitely draaaaaaaaaags.

Also the godforsaken island expedition crates. I hate them and they hate me, but here we both are.

[qactuar]

There's been timegating ever since the game was introduced, let's not kid ourselves.

I'm glad there are people who actually realize this. Time gating is not new at all, not even uncommon, but the community today compared to the community back then seems to care a lot more about how it 'negatively' affects their experience. Why is that?

[DechCJC]

I don't know why we can't have both, mobs that give a tiny amount of rep but dailys/weeklys that give a lot more and require less effort. As long as the rewards aren't so good that people aren't going to feel 'forced' to grind it, why can't it just be down to personal choice if the reward is worth the effort or not?

Time-gating is disgusting any time you play more than one character or take a prolonged break, content is restricted to you for literally no reason. Time-gated content should be global, it should release across a set amount of time for everyone at once, meaning at week 1 you can do 1 weeks worth of content and if you join at week 3 you can do 3 weeks of content.

This is especially the case for previous expansions content.

[Venziir]

Zandalari heritage armor I think