Why doesn't Blizzard trust me to play their game?

[melodramocracy]

This is a pretty bizarre outlook on it. Timegating is there to a) ensure that players retain their monthly sub instead of going into a sub-raid-unsub repeat cycle, and b) ensure that players don't feel compelled to spend 16 hours a day playing just to stay competitive.

Not an easy balance to maintain, for certain.

If you have the rl responsibilities you indicate, I don't believe you'd even hit the currently implied time gates in any significant way.

[klaps_05]

Because you will also be the first person to write "Why do i need to run Maw of Souls 300 times for AP?". So it doesnt really matter what Blizzard does, people will always whine regardless.

[Castration]

I'm a grown adult Blizzard

I highly doubt this.

My guess is that you're 11.

[Beefhammer]

Also OP, they have mountains of data that shows people skip over the stuff they make when flying is involved. I don't have an issue with pathfinder. I find it makes you experience the game once they way they intended.

We can argue about when it gets unlocked and should bless over to the next major content patch. I think there should be parts for each new zone the introduce with campaign content. So part one would have been the 3(6) islands. Once you meet the criteria, flying is unlocked. When Mechagon and the other zone dropped, you do part to to gain access to flying innthise zones, and so on until we reach the end or a zone they do not intend to allow flying at all.

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This is a pretty bizarre outlook on it. Timegating is there to a) ensure that players retain their monthly sub instead of going into a sub-raid-unsub repeat cycle, and b) ensure that players don't feel compelled to spend 16 hours a day playing just to stay competitive.

Not an easy balance to maintain, for certain.

If you have the rl responsibilities you indicate, I don't believe you'd even hit the currently implied time gates in any significant way.

They have also said they don't mind if players unsub when they are done with content. They know raiders are a small fraction of players. The time gsting to keep players subbed is more aimed at those that take their time. Besides, pathfinder isn't about time gating in the traditional sense, it's to force players to engage with what they made instead of rushing through just to get flying.

We can have a different argument about creating more engaging content, or content that includes flying. But that is totally separate from pathfinding.

[Flower Milk]

Bigger rewards than average =?

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I think the OP needs gamer friends or get RL friends to game with him. Maybe meet a gamer girl/boy and game together. That's how many spend their game time, with friends/guildmates or a partner.

I have a boyfriend and we do play together. He hates the time gating as well. We both have more time to play on the weekends but we frequently find ourselves hitting those time gated walls and having to play other games together instead. It's starting to seem pointless to spend our free time on the weekends together playing WoW because we always have to keep finding other games to play anyway, so why not just play those games instead of WoW?

Because you will also be the first person to write "Why do i need to run Maw of Souls 300 times for AP?". So it doesnt really matter what Blizzard does, people will always whine regardless.

I definitely would not, I love running dungeons over and over again. In Wrath I used to queue up to do dungeons as a healer even though I didn't need any gear from them just because I love doing dungeons. I'd be the last person to ever whine about that.

As for people saying I'd unsub if they removed the time gates: I play the game less now that there is more time gating. Before time gating on things like flying, playing new races, etc, I barely ever unsubbed to this game. I always found something to do, playing alts, etc. Time gates burn me out on the game and make me want to play this game less, or not at all.

I'd appreciate if this thread was not about me and needing to find a date, and more about WoW and the game itself since this is the WoW section of MMO Champion, thanks.

[Big Thanks]

@Flower Milk

Dont mind the people comparing you and doing analogies about you.
I think you make a great argument and its universally accepted that Blizzard's design is overly "time-gated"

I made a similar post myself a loooong time ago, talking about the excessive time gating.
Its a design choice.

[CrawlFromThePit]

I level a character to max and it's a fun time, and when I hit max level I'm met with some world quest chores to meet my goals of unlocking flying, allied races, better gear, etc. Cool. But then I start doing those chores, and the game is like "that's all the progress/WoW you can play for today, come back tomorrow". Why doesn't Blizzard trust me to play their game more? Why do they put these weird parental control time gated progress walls everywhere? I feel like I'm playing a mobile phone game and I'm about to be asked to pay real money to bypass these time gated progress walls.

I'm a grown adult Blizzard, I can play your game for as long as I feel like it/have the time and still attend to my IRL responsibilities, you don't need to restrict my play time like this by putting everything behind a time gate. I'm not going to stop playing your game either because I've met my goals faster than you've intended me to, that's crazy. You still have so much more for me to do once I've unlocked flying, allied races, etc like making alts, collecting mounts/pets/transmogs and so much else, you do not need to heavily time gate everything like this to try to keep me playing for longer. All it does is just burn me out on the game and make me NOT want to play the game at all anymore because I'm so sick and frustrated with all these time gates everywhere.

Why do they do this?

They're not doing any of this for you. It's 100% for them. They want to keep you in the game for many days in a row, forcing you to pay for your flying through monthly subs (ideally with WoW token because that's 20$ for them instead of just 15) and by keeping everyone in the game longer this way it makes the game look more alive.

If there was no gating everybody would be done with everything and the game would be empty, as it should be.

[united]

Another thread, another legion of bitter people that resort to lame insults when they can’t think of any constructive reply to the OP’s post.

Stay classy.

[Flower Milk]

They're not doing any of this for you. It's 100% for them. They want to keep you in the game for many days in a row, forcing you to pay for your flying through monthly subs (ideally with WoW token because that's 20$ for them instead of just 15) and by keeping everyone in the game longer this way it makes the game look more alive.

If there was no gating everybody would be done with everything and the game would be empty, as it should be.

The problem is it's not keeping me in the game for longer, it's keeping me in the game far less than I used to play this game before they put time gating on everything. I barely ever unsubbed and took breaks from this game before they ramped up all this time gating. And with time gating, the game is starting to become more and more empty.

I don't think it's working if that is their goal with all this time gating, it seems like it's doing the complete opposite and pushing people out of the game more out of frustration from hitting these time gate walls constantly. Like if I am hitting these time gate walls as a casual player who mostly plays on the weekend, that's not good at all. I'm not a hardcore player by any means at all.

[Drusin]

Because if they arent locked people will endlessly bitch about being "forced" to do endless dailies, islands, etc.

Let them? They are gonna bitch anyways lol.

[Flower Milk]

Let them? They are gonna bitch anyways lol.

Seriously, I don't understand why people would want or be okay with Blizzard designing content around people who are gonna whine regardless of what they do. It doesn't seem like a good reason to put time gates on everything to please people that are never gonna be pleased.

[Big Thanks]

The problem is it's not keeping me in the game for longer, it's keeping me in the game far less than I used to play this game before they put time gating on everything. I barely ever unsubbed and took breaks from this game before they ramped up all this time gating. And with time gating, the game is starting to become more and more empty.

I don't think it's working if that is their goal with all this time gating, it seems like it's doing the complete opposite and pushing people out of the game more out of frustration from hitting these time gate walls constantly. Like if I am hitting these time gate walls as a casual player who mostly plays on the weekend, that's not good at all. I'm not a hardcore player by any means at all.

Your assessment aligns with this Blizzard developer who said his biggest lesson was that "there is no such thing as too many rewards"
He learned in his years of development in Diablo that you should NEVER as a developer feel "fear" for giving all the rewards to players.

He said:

No design is perfect, we will always have problems to solve. It's better to solve the problem of players having everything they want than trying to solve the problems caused by players being frustrated with stingy reward systems.

This is his opinion which aligns with yours:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urijgWXLYck&t=46m50s

In the primal years of WoW development, developers FEARED people would quit if they had all the rewards ingame.
But he thinks this is totally not the case.

[CrawlFromThePit]

The problem is it's not keeping me in the game for longer, it's keeping me in the game far less than I used to play this game before they put time gating on everything. I barely ever unsubbed and took breaks from this game before they ramped up all this time gating. And with time gating, the game is starting to become more and more empty.

I don't think it's working if that is their goal with all this time gating, it seems like it's doing the complete opposite and pushing people out of the game more out of frustration from hitting these time gate walls constantly.

If this time gating didn't work they wouldn't have kept it for so many years. Just because it doesn't work with you doesn't mean it's not working with the majority. Also the game feels empty because sharding is shit and because the game lost most of its players with Cata, not because of time gating.

[rhorle]

I have a boyfriend and we do play together. He hates the time gating as well. We both have more time to play on the weekends but we frequently find ourselves hitting those time gated walls and having to play other games together instead. It's starting to seem pointless to spend our free time on the weekends together playing WoW because we always have to keep finding other games to play anyway, so why not just play those games instead of WoW?

But this doesn't match with what you originally said. You claimed there is so much to do in wow that it doesn't need time gating. But now you are saying you have nothing to do in WoW because of time gating. Why can't you do all of that other stuff once you hit a time gate on a character? If you don't want to play WoW then don't. No reason to create reasons for why the game is bad if you simply don't enjoy playing it.

It is okay to play other games. It is healthy to play other games.

[Trend]

its universally accepted that Blizzard's design is overly "time-gated"

You may want to look up what the word "universally" means. In the real world, with the correct definition of the word, this thread is proof that it is not universally accepted that BfA is overly time-gated, given that many people are expressing an opinion that it is fine. If your opinion was universally held it would have been designed differently since the Blizzard designers are also part of the universe.

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Another thread, another legion of bitter people that resort to lame insults when they can’t think of any constructive reply to the OP’s post.

Stay classy.

Keep ignoring the constructive feedback that does not align with your position and simply dismiss it all out of hand as illegitimate. That is sharp of you.

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And what if you feel m+ is a annoying waste of time that was shoved in to make up for their lack of actually engaging dungeons by making them "harder" and timed in order to push player engagement when it was waning? and instead would rather do world content and would prefer to not be told after a point said content was pointless due to a timegate?

What are you talking about? Until mythic+ dungeons have never been hard for anyone but bad and/or newly max level characters. And world content has always been quickly pointless after hitting cap. And wtf would that have to do with a time gate? I don't know what game you've been playing but it does not sound like World of Warcraft.

[Big Thanks]

You may want to look up what the word "universally" means. In the real world, with the correct definition of the word, this thread is proof that it is not universally accepted that BfA is overly time-gated, given that many people are expressing an opinion that it is fine. If your opinion was universally held it would have been designed differently since the Blizzard designers are also part of the universe.

Could you at least give a reason as to why WoW is not overly time gated?
The only non time gated content in the game is Mythic+ dungeons...and is a fairly recent content.

World quests
Reputations
Essenses
Weekly cache chests (PvP and PvE)
Weekly quests
Mana Pearls
Flying
World Bosses
Raids
Allied races
...

[Trend]

I don't think it's working if that is their goal with all this time gating, it seems like it's doing the complete opposite and pushing people out of the game more out of frustration from hitting these time gate walls constantly. Like if I am hitting these time gate walls as a casual player who mostly plays on the weekend, that's not good at all. I'm not a hardcore player by any means at all.

Honest question: what is the content that you want to be able to do that time gates are preventing you from doing? Are you a completionist who is just trying to finish off reps / essences / AP / whatever or is there some kind of end-game content that you want to use those things for? I personally have never gotten to a point where I have said "well there is no more reason to keep playing right now due to time gates" because I PvP, raid and do mythic+ and only raiding is affected by time gating at all in that you can really only do a given raid on a given character once a week. So I'm just trying to understand how you play and how exactly time gating is affecting you.

[BananaHandsB]

better question. Why should Blizzard trust you?

[Trend]

Could you at least give a reason as to why WoW is not overly time gated?

Not interested in trying to change someone's clearly made up mind because it is unproductive and I do not care whatsoever whether or not you agree with my opinion. I also did not throw shade on your opinion, I just said you used the word "universally" wrong, which you did. You can hold whatever opinion you want. It's just silly and unfruitful for you to pretend that everyone agrees with you, especially when they clearly don't.

[Flower Milk]

Honest question: what is the content that you want to be able to do that time gates are preventing you from doing? Are you a completionist who is just trying to finish off reps / essences / AP / whatever or is there some kind of end-game content that you want to use those things for? I personally have never gotten to a point where I have said "well there is no more reason to keep playing right now due to time gates" because I PvP, raid and do mythic+ and only raiding is affected by time gating at all in that you can really only do a given raid on a given character once a week. So I'm just trying to understand how you play and how exactly time gating is affecting you.

The content that frustrated me the most was honestly being able to make a new character of a different race. Having the motivation to make a new character, having a name picked out, thinking out a fun back story for said character in my head, only to be met with a time gated grind was a really bad feeling. By the time I unlocked the allied race I was going for, I didn't even have any motivation left to make a new character, it was totally gone.

Imagine if you were playing a game of D&D with your friends, and the dungeon master was like "okay so in order to play the race you want to make your character as, you're gonna need to play a different character for months in order to earn enough reputation to play as that race". It would defeat the entire purpose of playing a RPG starting out customizing your character and getting to play as an interesting race that you want. People would quit because they'd think that the dungeon master is crazy for doing something so nonsensical like that.

That's what it feels like to lock something as important as making a new character of a different race behind a time gate, it was the final straw for me.