Are timegates really bad?

[tangers58]

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.

Of course they can, they won for a decade. They are just no longer willing to put the resources into the game to keep it running properly

[aceperson]

Is see so many complains in the forums (only forums, never ingame) about timegates. But i don't really get why.

Set asside the quality of the content for the sake of discussion.

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

You will force everyone who wants to stay in the game to do the same if they want to stay competitive at all. I honestly don't think that that would be good for the game as a whole.

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

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 think timegating keeps MMORPGS interesting over a longer period of time. Otherwise you would only have Raids/Mythic+/PVP to do every day and nothing else one week after a content patch dropped which also seems to be not enough for the people who don't like timegating.

I son't want to insult anyone because i know poeple get really agitaited 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?

timegating isn't really that bad but i do think how blizz does it in wow is horrible. a timegate is really meant for one of two things, to build hype for a slowly approaching event (think sunwell boss releases) or to prevent burning out on new content. the problem is blizz just uses the sunwell method (which wasn't liked that much anyways) basically every time they think people need to be gated back a bit. they don't bother trying a fluid system like just limiting the amount of something you can do in a week but letting you do it at any point. people never complained about being time gated from raid instances because you could do those raid bosses at any point during the week.

i'm on the other fence where i've lost all my interest in wow because blizz gated 8.3 too much. visions made me feel the need to farm every daily quest and even though it only takes about an hour each day, it just starts to wear me down and i don't even care anymore that i find the visions fun. i don't get enough fun from the amount of work i need to put in for that system. so no, timegating isn't bad, it's just how blizz does it.

[FelPlague]

Of course they can, they won for a decade. They are just no longer willing to put the resources into the game to keep it running properly

not even close to true, did you know icc took 2 months to open fully? they timegated the raid wings opening.
they also timegated AQ you needed to spend a super long time gathering resources before you could do the raid, wow.
they also timegated legendaries, you couldnt just do the raid, you needed to do it for many weeks to get drops, shadowfrost shards anyone?

[Relapses]

Players on this forum: "I hate having to wait multiple weeks to be able to participate in content."

Also players on this forum: "The game was better was better when it took multiple weeks to get everybody in your raid attuned so they could participate in content."

The problem isn't time gating. The problem is that players have no fucking idea what they actually want.

[kaminaris]

Exactly when there is gating people bitch about it being "To keep subs longer." or something asanine like that.
If there's no gating people bitch about "Not enough content." well no shit even if a patch was the size of Witcher 3 and the DLCs you'd basically no life it for couple days then cry about nothing to do. Or worse, grind it out and complain about being forced to grind it out forever because you have no self control to stop yourself because your worried that other guy might have a 0.0000001% more power than you and that will make you lose your spot on your precious "Totally going to beat Limit and method." raid team.

Yep that sums it up pretty well.

[Yoshingo]

Players on this forum: "I hate having to wait multiple weeks to be able to participate in content."

Also players on this forum: "The game was better was better when it took multiple weeks to get everybody in your raid attuned so they could participate in content."

The problem isn't time gating. The problem is that players have no fucking idea what they actually want.

Hey look another strawman.

[matrix123mko]

I don't like MMORPG games. I want WoW to be RPG.

- - - Updated - - -

Players on this forum: "I hate having to wait multiple weeks to be able to participate in content."

Also players on this forum: "The game was better was better when it took multiple weeks to get everybody in your raid attuned so they could participate in content."

The problem isn't time gating. The problem is that players have no fucking idea what they actually want.

I want to have the same experience as during leveling for entire expansion. I don't like seeing that I have to play dailies tomorrow to progress in story.

[Pandragon]

Story based timegates: no

Rep based timegates: yes

[FelPlague]

I don't like MMORPG games. I want WoW to be RPG.

- - - Updated - - -



I want to have the same experience as during leveling for entire expansion. I don't like seeing that I have to play dailies tomorrow to progress in story.

that is impossible, to give you that many quests, would be impossible.

heres a practice, try to write a book faster then people can read it.
now keep it interesting, making sense, and without errors.
now do that forever.
see how long you can do that for, see how long it takes for someone to catch up to you, and then go "wow this book is over there is no more writing"
well guess what, the second you type 1 word people will already be ahead.


making content takes far, far longer then it does to consume it.
movies take thousands to tens of thouands of hours to make.
but are viewed in only 90 minutes.

[MrDaemon]

timegating isn't really that bad but i do think how blizz does it in wow is horrible. a timegate is really meant for one of two things, to build hype for a slowly approaching event (think sunwell boss releases) or to prevent burning out on new content. the problem is blizz just uses the sunwell method (which wasn't liked that much anyways) basically every time they think people need to be gated back a bit. they don't bother trying a fluid system like just limiting the amount of something you can do in a week but letting you do it at any point. people never complained about being time gated from raid instances because you could do those raid bosses at any point during the week.

i'm on the other fence where i've lost all my interest in wow because blizz gated 8.3 too much. visions made me feel the need to farm every daily quest and even though it only takes about an hour each day, it just starts to wear me down and i don't even care anymore that i find the visions fun. i don't get enough fun from the amount of work i need to put in for that system. so no, timegating isn't bad, it's just how blizz does it.

This is exactly why time gating sucks. You need to grind everyday to stay relevant or if you play alt you need to wait ages to do something. They could just timegate by weeks but anything you haven't yet done should be able to be done in just one day. They should make weekly quests which would unlock on daily basis and you could do them all in one day if you haven't done them. Even emissaries could be 7 instead of 3. Let people enjoy the game and play whenever they want. Also reputation gains should be increased when you already finish them on one of the characters.

Devs are not dumb. They do this just to increase sub time. Even legendaries in legion. You really think it took them whole expansion just to make system where you could buy any legendary you wanted? It was obvious its system designed to keep you playing hooked up by rng to get what you want. Corruption is same shit. And nobody can fucking tell me that corruption is better than TF because it isnt. Corruption is way more rng.

They no longer design game to be fun, you could see that when they eradicated every single option to level faster than their designed ultra slow system.

[Relapses]

Hey look another strawman.

So you mean to tell me that there aren't players who both dislike the current version of WoW but also prefer TBC's version of WoW? Because you really don't need to look further than any one of the thousands of "What's your favorite expansion?" threads for proof of this.

I stand by what I said. You ask 100 players what their favorite version of WoW is and you get 100 different responses. There is no universal answer. The question posed by the OP is intrinsic to a given player's emotional attachments to a period of time within the expansion they preferred. At the end of the day, though, time gates have existed in WoW since the beginning and won't be going anywhere. I just find it a pinch ironic that the same people who dislike the current iteration of time gating will point to previous expansions as examples of when it "wasn't as bad," when in reality... it was probably worse.

If time gating in WoW is a problem for you, then you shouldn't be playing a MMO.

[Yoshingo]

If time gating in WoW is a problem for you, then you shouldn't be playing a MMO.

And again strawmanning the complicated issue as a binary choice is just so incredibly disingenuous. Nobody said that there should be no time gates, but its really just verging on lying to suggest that its the same now as it was always.

[Relapses]

Nobody said that there should be no time gates, but its really just verging on lying to suggest that its the same now as it was always.

I'm not suggesting that it's the same. For somebody who loves to use the word strawman to diminish an argument you should know better.

If it isn't clear: I'm suggesting that the time gating in TBC/Vanilla (specifically attunements) was far worse for the overall health of the game than any of the time gating that people bitch about today.

edit: Guess you edited that part out. /shrug

[Skildar]

I've really enjoyed Suramar and never understood why people were against timegating this scenario.
But Suramar was good! And when they tried to do the same with the broken shore it was a horrible patch because there was no scenario, just a new stupid chore to do each week, and there the timegating made no sense

[Relapses]

I've really enjoyed Suramar and never understood why people were against timegating this scenario.
But Suramar was good! And when they tried to do the same with the broken shore it was a horrible patch because there was no scenario, just a new stupid chore to do each week, and there the timegating made no sense

Because people have opinions. I hated Suramar with a fiery passion. It was the main reason I didn't reroll a character: I didn't want to have to experience that awful, terrible fucking quest line again.

[owbu]

Timegates are like grinds and RNG. They are an important tool in an RPG to make content last longer and solve a lot of pacing problems when used in moderation.
But if you overuse them to hide the fact that you forgot to make unique content, your players will start to notice and will stop caring about your game.

If the game gives you a quest to kill 15 demons and then asks you to wait a week, you fucked up.
If the game only lets you farm 2000 valor per week, that is giving you a goal to aim for and limits the chance that you will burn out after a week because there is nothing to do.
Both are timegating, only the first one is bad.

[Skildar]

Because people have opinions. I hated Suramar with a fiery passion. It was the main reason I didn't reroll a character: I didn't want to have to experience that awful, terrible fucking quest line again.

If I recall correctly suramar was never mandatory for your rerolls, you could do the dungeons and raid without doing the whole zone scenario

[Relapses]

Timegates are like grinds and RNG. They are an important tool in an RPG to make content last longer and solve a lot of pacing problems when used in moderation.
But if you overuse them to hide the fact that you forgot to make unique content, your players will start to notice and will stop caring about your game.

If the game gives you a quest to kill 15 demons and then asks you to wait a week, you fucked up.
If the game only lets you farm 2000 valor per week, that is giving you a goal to aim for and limits the chance that you will burn out after a week because there is nothing to do.
Both are timegating, only the first one is bad.

How is only one bad? Because you said it was bad... so it's bad? I agree that there are degrees of time gating which are less transparent than others but it's a bit overbearing to say one version of time gating is better or worse than another since no two people's opinions of how content is time gated will ever be the same. (ie, some people may prefer killing 15 demons then waiting a week because it feels more deterministic than filling a VP bar.)

- - - Updated - - -

If I recall correctly suramar was never mandatory for your rerolls, you could do the dungeons and raid without doing the whole zone scenario

At the time, I was raiding in a Mythic guild and didn't have much of a choice. I would've had to have done the content if I wanted to play the game at the level I felt comfortable.

Now, you can point out that this was a me issue and not really a Blizzard issue and you'd be correct. But it still doesn't impact my opinion that Suramar was unfun content that I did not want to do again.

[alduron]

The only timegate I had a real problem with was the original battle for hyjal one in tbc, which required 25 kael and 25 vashj kills, at a minimum.

[Relapses]

The only timegate I had a real problem with was the original battle for hyjal one in tbc, which required 25 kael and 25 vashj kills, at a minimum.

My favorite thing about this is that Blizzard eventually meme'd themselves about attunements.