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  1. #1

    Are timegates really bad?

    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?

  2. #2
    Elemental Lord
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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.

  3. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by MrLachyG View Post
    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.
    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.

  4. #4
    As always, this isn't a simple matter of "timegate = bad, absolutely and always". There's a lot of sense to gating a lot of things. But there's also ways in which timegating is STUPID.

    Good examples include gating things like Visions - you don't force people to grind currency and be super conservative with Vessels, and you have a nice inbuilt catch-up mechanic to boot. Sweet deal.

    Bad examples include things like the Essences, because you have to do it on every character. Gating it ONCE maybe, okay - but now every alt you make has to wait 4 weeks for Worldvein rank 3 no matter what; grind weeks of dailies for Lucid rank 3; and so on. That's not fun.

    There's a lot of nuance to it, and timegating isn't always the same either. You can stagger it in different ways, make it a gate-once-then-unlock sort of deal, and so on. It's not universally bad because there's so many different ways in which it's implemented.

  5. #5
    Bloodsail Admiral Sharby's Avatar
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    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.
    Honorary member of the Baine Fanclub, the only member really.

  6. #6
    There are no timegates in Diablo 3, and the content locusts devoured it all and then quit long ago.
    TO FIX WOW:1. smaller server sizes & server-only LFG awarding satchels, so elite players help others. 2. "helper builds" with loom powers - talent trees so elite players cast buffs on low level players XP gain, HP/mana, regen, damage, etc. 3. "helper ilvl" scoring how much you help others. 4. observer games like in SC to watch/chat (like twitch but with MORE DETAILS & inside the wow UI) 5. guild leagues to compete with rival guilds for progression (with observer mode).6. jackpot world mobs.

  7. #7
    Timegates aren't always bad, but it depends on what is gated, and how interactive the timegate itself is.

    The Molten Front was heavily timegated, but at the same time felt interesting and I never felt it was being unfair to me.

  8. #8
    I convinced a few people to come back to the game just to do some mythic+ one or two nights a week when we can all get together. With the exception of myself and one other, they've all now quit because of the time gating. As professional adults, we have to all of our shit done in the few hours a week we can spare, when we can spare them. Instead of playing the game at our pace, we are forced to play an artificial pace blizzard has decided they want us to play at. I know people who just recently unlocked flying because they were limited to playing one or two days a week, and there is a finite amount of rep you can grind per day. Doesn't matter if its 2 hours, or 10 hours in a single day, you can only make so much progress and frankly that's bullshit. If you want to timegate shit like mounts and cosmetics, fine whatever, but don't timegate a major progression path. This is now the second patch in a row where they have locked power progression behind what essentially amounts to a need to login daily. It's no better than those "daily login rewards" in the F2P garbage on mobile.

  9. #9
    Like every system it serves a purpose.

    It only becomes a problem when it's either overdone or too obvious implemented.

    In my opinion, a good exemple of a timegate would be Isle of Quel'Danas. Was enjoyable watching a visual steady progress in the area and there was storytelling involved.

  10. #10
    There are two issues. One is making the content last longer to increase money and the other is the players themselves.

    The first is pretty standard. The easiest way to guarentee that more money comes in when your producing shit is to make it last longer than a billing cycle. If it takes 5 weeks to do something, that is way better than it taking 5 days. Instead of 100 percent of one payment you get 80% (or more or less) of two payments while you work furiously to fix anything broken. Thus increases revenue while also trying to lock people U to an addiction.

    The second is that people are dangerous to themselves. They have proven time and time again that they will willingly hurt themselves to try to "keep up". People will make up imaginary standards to exclude others so if you don't want to be one of the others you have to grind. In Legion blizzard even said, a few times, that the fights were not designed around maxed artifacts except for very exclusive times such as mythic KJ. Blizzard saw what people were doing to themselves and made the neck catch up far more forgiving and not compulsory and still people acted like it was mandatory. If you open up the game where you could grind unlimited people would unironically literally die.

    Yeah. Timegates are shit and personally I do get into a mood to just get sit down for the weekend and get it done but the alternative is so much worse. People will actually die if there's no limits. Timegates are the lesser if the two evils.
    Quote Originally Posted by Nizah View Post
    why so mad bro

  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by MrLachyG View Post
    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.
    This is the laziest strawman imaginable.

    ~~~~~~~

    Yes, timegates are bad.

  12. #12
    yes, they're bad.

    they're somewhat tolerable if the time isn't too much, or there's only a couple. but the way they currently use them is awful, and it needs to stop.

  13. #13
    No, they are not.

    People need to chill out.

  14. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by MrLachyG View Post
    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.
    This isn't even remotely true. It's because the content Blizzard currently designs has no legs. It has no staying power. It's low effort garbage. This is the only reason they time-gate things. Because they know people won't stick around anymore.



    The only type of people that advocate for time-gating are those who spend way too much time in the game. Heavily addicted people who spend 90% of their free time in a virtual world.

    "lul getting allied reces dusn't evan take that loong. just log in for a couple of houres a day".

    Yeah nah - some people have lives and can't log in each and every day doing mind-numbingly boring WQ content. They're time-gated only being allowed to do 5-10 WQs a day. Maybe they can only play a decent amount of time on weekends? Why don't you fucking let them grind it out on the only two days they can play? Or at least a large portion of it?

    Fuck being able to log in and do the content you want like the good old days hey? Maybe I just wanna spam some dungeons with friends for some Justice/Valor points whilst also getting a bit of rep from a tabard. Oh I can't do that because Blizzard are fuckwits who force me to grind boring ass WQs. Cool.


    The game thrived when there was minimal time-gating. It ain't thriving anymore. Guess why? Garbage minimal effort content that is heavily time-gating to give it legs.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Yoshingo View Post
    This is the laziest strawman imaginable.

    ~~~~~~~

    Yes, timegates are bad.
    Strawman arguments are a Blizzard Fanboys best friend.

    Gotta resort to something when their favorite mega corporation is becoming harder and harder to defend.
    Last edited by DemonDays; 2020-02-21 at 03:51 AM.

  15. #15
    Proper flow makes time gating seem trivial or otherwise a side-objective while you do other things. Unfortunately Blizzard is aware of this and designs their gating to be out of the way, time consuming or just tedious to accomplish. If they allowed you to grind these things effortlessly while providing a substantial experience no one would care at all if say, it took a week to unlock an allied race.

    Of course people would still complain, but if the game is fun despite having these measures in it to prevent burn out, that's a positive. Right now they're a detriment to enjoyment and that's not what the content should do.

  16. #16
    There really isn't much *meaningful* timegating in 8.3.

    You could assemble a team of dedicated players and plow high m+ keys of 14 or higher for tons of hours and get everyone geared up with 465 gear. Everything else is kinda secondary. Even just plowing m+11s for 460 gear drops is gonna get you way ahead of 99% of everyone else.

    Almost forgot your free 475 item from professions like engineering which gives 475 hat.
    Last edited by Kokolums; 2020-02-21 at 05:03 AM.
    TO FIX WOW:1. smaller server sizes & server-only LFG awarding satchels, so elite players help others. 2. "helper builds" with loom powers - talent trees so elite players cast buffs on low level players XP gain, HP/mana, regen, damage, etc. 3. "helper ilvl" scoring how much you help others. 4. observer games like in SC to watch/chat (like twitch but with MORE DETAILS & inside the wow UI) 5. guild leagues to compete with rival guilds for progression (with observer mode).6. jackpot world mobs.

  17. #17
    I think timegating is good for things like gear progression. Then just because someone has 24/7 to play they can't get that much better stuff than someone who still plays a lot but has a life outside of WoW.

    I think timegating stuff like rep for allied races is awful (if it's going to be exalted and WQ til your eyes bleed).

    What also sucks is as a healer not being able to do the content healing and earn some type of rep. I have spent 90% of max level as DPS even though my joy is healing because I want the allied races.

  18. #18
    WoW used to be:
    Get to level cap
    Do dungeons to gear up before raids
    Do weekly caps for slow and steady "expansion story line" and/or "power creep"

    WoW now:
    Get to level cap
    Do dungeons, world quests, endless AP grind before raid.
    Do a quest chain that progresses you the entire length of a "expansion story line" each patch in a day or two.


    Old WoW you could play "intensive" for a week or two at a game expansion release and then raidlog and play 3-4 hours per week to do your character progression. All the other time you could spend doing side parts of the game like collecting achievements, collecting mounts, collecting transmog, you could do PvP/PvE if that wasn't your typical adventure, you could even play on your alts or other games!
    Modern WoW on the other hand never stops being "intensive", I found raids to be more relaxing than outside raids. I hadn't looked at achievements, archeology, pets, mounts or alts in ages before I burned out and quit. I've since learned that people in the guild have moved their alts to different (multiple) accounts so they can multibox Islands, world quests, mana pearl shit and all the rest so they can save time... How insane is that? people are paying more to play less!
    9thorder.com | Recruiting exceptional players!

  19. #19
    IMHO, it's not the IRL time-gating that's the problem, it's the inability to catch-up if you miss a daily/weekly/bi-weekly "chore".

    For example, in PvP, every 500 Conquest you get a reward, which is capped at once per week... however, it accumulates, so if you miss a week, you can make it up the next week and grind out both rewards. Yes, you miss the weekly cache (something else I despise), but atleast there's some catchup.

    If you can play every day and get the chores done, then time-gating isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's when you miss a day and fall permanently behind that's the core issue with current WOW IMO. Time played is secondary to "how many days can I login for 30 minutes at a time this week".

    The same applies to new/returning or re-rolling players. I mean, FFS we still have essences gated behind daily follower quests from 8.2 with zero ability to "grind the shit out of it" on a rainy day. You've literally gotta log in daily and do the limited quests. Every day you miss is another day before you get Rank 3.
    Last edited by Dakara; 2020-02-21 at 04:23 AM.

  20. #20
    I think the obvious answer is to ask yourself why the only games that time gate content are MMOs, live services, and awful F2P apps that run at a glacial pace and charge you to speed things up. There's a reason nobody designs their games like this unless it's directly tied into the business model. Giving the player control over how fast they consume content is great for everyone with the exception of the tiny group of people who take competitive progression so seriously that they play the game in a way they don't enjoy just to stay at the front of the pack.

    Ideally a subscription-based game like WoW should keep players engaged with evergreen content and innately fun core gameplay, but time gates are sadly a very cheap and easy alternative to keep subscriptions ticking over. It's easier (and more importantly, more financially reliable) to design a decent game that keeps people playing by drip feeding content than it is to design an amazing game that keeps people playing because it's a joy to engage with.

    If time gating was a genuinely compelling part of game design then we'd see it in more types of games. Its absence from the vast majority of titles speaks volumes.

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