oneADseven said:Feyshtey said:Please. No time-gating. Being one of the people that will generally only have an hour or two a day to play (when I'm lucky) time-gating would generally be an advantage to me, and I'm still opposed to it.
I highly encourage VR to not go down the road of developing gimmicky artificial variations of experience based on some naive hope that you can "fix" player behavior. You can't. You'll just create invisible walls that frustrate and annoy your core audience, and generally reduce the quality of the gameplay. Yes, you might have some players that applaud that they don't have to deal with X, Y or Z because of system-whatever. But they will be equally frustrated when they realise they can't get any more xp, or they can't help someone who's wounded, or they can't do any number of other things because of well-intentioned but counterproductive rules.
Well said. The idea of "fixing player behavior" is what makes it feel like a job. It removes the twinkle from your favorite star and gives you a broom while pointing you toward the nearest dust pile.
Liked your anology lol
Ziegfried said:On the subject of time gating I fully understand why Activision/Blizzard went that route...it was a smart move to force players to stay subbed longer. It is one of the best methods to keep those ultra hardcore players around longer becuase otherwise they will blast through the content and quit in the first month, and return for every new content patch blast through it then unsub again. The easier your game is the more players will blast through the content and those of us who have played WoW know full well the game is "faceroll EZ mode" until you get to mythic/hardmode raids. If VR doesn't make things difficult and/or grindy enough then time gating becomes necessary in some form or another. I hate daily quests so you won't hear me advocating for that approach, but as Oozu said there will likely be key mob on a long respawn timer or something of the sort.
You know this exact arguement was used on blizaards forums aswell, and here's my argument =p The time gating made no difference to me as far as prolonging my sub, because players like myself pay our subscriptions with in game currency. WoW tokens, Krono's etc. (but then again those krono's and tokens have to come from somewhere) At the end of the day the time gating really only set me back like a couple of days which in terms of a sub is nothing on a month long scale. And in all honesty i don't think that was their intentions because of that scope. They do however pro-long, rather they have it or are developing it HUGE mini expansions. expansions within the expansions. AKA: Argus, Broken Shore etc. Each with new dungeons and raids etc. But even that i found to be acceptable regardless of reasons, rather pro-longing subs or development i dont know. On that scale its 100% acceptable to me. But on such a small scale of accessing content that is there ready to be played... and required to further the "story line" thats different all together IN MY OPINION.
Feyshtey said:Maybe I'm misunderstanding the OP.
Is time gating by the OPs definition:
A) Requiring a lot of time played in order to grind xp/faction/etc. to gain levels and/or access content?
or,
B) Scaling xp gained for a given player based on the amount of time that player has been in game or gained xp in a given period of time? (Reducing xp gains for like actions after X hours online in a week, as an example).
I'm not at all opposed to A).
I'm completely opposed to B).
C: Requiring lots of faction that could not be achieved in any amount of play time after hitting your "dailly faction cap".
I want it to always be A! B is acceptable just because it doesn't stop me from playing.
Oozu said:Ziegfried said:On the subject of time gating I fully understand why Activision/Blizzard went that route...it was a smart move to force players to stay subbed longer. It is one of the best methods to keep those ultra hardcore players around longer becuase otherwise they will blast through the content and quit in the first month, and return for every new content patch blast through it then unsub again. The easier your game is the more players will blast through the content and those of us who have played WoW know full well the game is "faceroll EZ mode" until you get to mythic/hardmode raids. If VR doesn't make things difficult and/or grindy enough then time gating becomes necessary in some form or another. I hate daily quests so you won't hear me advocating for that approach, but as Oozu said there will likely be key mob on a long respawn timer or something of the sort.
You know this exact arguement was used on blizaards forums aswell, and here's my argument =p The time gating made no difference to me as far as prolonging my sub, because players like myself pay our subscriptions with in game currency. WoW tokens, Krono's etc. (but then again those krono's and tokens have to come from somewhere) At the end of the day the time gating really only set me back like a couple of days which in terms of a sub is nothing on a month long scale. And in all honesty i don't think that was their intentions because of that scope. They do however pro-long, rather they have it or are developing it HUGE mini expansions. expansions within the expansions. AKA: Argus, Broken Shore etc. Each with new dungeons and raids etc. But even that i found to be acceptable regardless of reasons, rather pro-longing subs or development i dont know. On that scale its 100% acceptable to me. But on such a small scale of accessing content that is there ready to be played... and required to further the "story line" thats different all together IN MY OPINION.
Something to consider is those tokens are not actually free there was a person who payed real cash for them so they are making money off you indirectly. The tokens usually cost more than a subscription would so in theory they make even more money off players such as yourself. You would not complain about the time gating if it was ineffective, obviously it does set you back even if it is only for a few days. For other players it may set them back even farther since not everyone gets to play daily. The goal is to get that extra month of subscription out of players since they know the majority of their content is fast and easy. Players such as yourself may still blast through it before that month ends but what about the ones who don't play daily?
Ziegfried said:
On the subject of time gating I fully understand why Activision/Blizzard went that route...it was a smart move to force players to stay subbed longer. It is one of the best methods to keep those ultra hardcore players around longer becuase otherwise they will blast through the content and quit in the first month, and return for every new content patch blast through it then unsub again. The easier your game is the more players will blast through the content and those of us who have played WoW know full well the game is "faceroll EZ mode" until you get to mythic/hardmode raids. If VR doesn't make things difficult and/or grindy enough then time gating becomes necessary in some form or another. I hate daily quests so you won't hear me advocating for that approach, but as Oozu said there will likely be key mob on a long respawn timer or something of the sort.
Imagine this scenario:
You get to play 2 days a week for a couple of hours. You're ready to go to a new area your friends are in, but the only way you can get there is to do quests that raise your faction enough to unlock the area. The problem is that you are only allowed to do 5 quests every day for a minor amount of faction each. You have to do those 5 quests a total of 40 times each in order to achieve the area unlock.
A person who plays every day will get to that new area in 40 days of consistently completing those 5 quests every day. You will get there in 5 months....
The conversation is no longer about sub retention. It's about splitting up the community, and requiring people to dedicate all their playtime for 5 months to repeating the same exact 5 things over and over every time they do get a chance to play, just to get to content their friends will have abandoned once the player actually gets there.
This is another form of the destructive aspect of time-gating people.
I'm perfectly fine with locking things behind a linear story progression to a point, as long as it's not a rediculously long and purposefully abusive progression. I'm not ok with locking things behind mindless repetition.
nah maybe im not explaining it well enough, It was setup in such a way that a casual would have zero issues getting this done. There was no punishment for taking your time. they made it very clear that these dailys were a huge part of the expansion and should usually be the first thing you do before you do anything else. so if shmoe blow logged in, did his dailys did maybe 2 quests in the questline by the time he reached the point where he needed the rep he should or would already have it. But if you were a player with a lot more time. you did all your quests and you finished 10 quests in the chain that day you would reach that point in the quest chain much much sooner and not have the required amount of dailys done. and Ziegfried i did point it out in the thread you quoted on the tokens costing money from somewhere =p
"(but then again those krono's and tokens have to come from somewhere)"
But all things aside after reading through everyones posts, seems theres a ton of different ways to time gate and in general consensus is time gating is bad. I rest my case =)
Oozu I don't understand your point then. Obviously their system was working since they ended up making more money off you by your use of tokens. So at best you could say their time gating did not slow you down enough and you were still able to use one month's worth of tokens. Somehow I missed your aside about kronos and tokens coming from somewhere as a result my reply was a bit redundant so I apologize. Some of you are attempting to argue that time gating doesn't work, all the evidence is to the contrary. It is an entirely different thing to say you dislike it, I am not a fan of it myself if it is implemented in the form of daily quests/daily login rewards. Yes, a player with a lot more time will finish the quests sooner yet the time gating still slows them down.
As for Feyshtey's reply, I think the issue you brought up is going to exist regardless when it comes to players falling behind. If an MMORPG has levels, faction grinds, gear checks, keys, etc. the new, casual, or returning player is going to be playing catch up. Unless I am completely mistaken about Vanguard and there will be none of that? Perhaps you are saying in your example that the guy who can only pllay 2 days per week is being screwed because he can't just grind the quests multiple times in the same day, but that is exactly why the time gate exists in the first place to slow down the average player who does not play every single day. Honestly my heart is not really in this debate since I don't particularly care for the way WoW did (and still does) time gating. But it is going to exist in some form I am just hoping it isn't the whole "daily quest" crapola I find so repulsive.
I am hoping for a more traditional style of time gating in Pantheon, where you can actually grind a marathon session to catch up if you choose. But the game is going to have to be time consuming enough to keep people subbed or it will need to fall back on gimmicks like WoW used (and still uses!).
Ziegfried said:Oozu I don't understand your point then. Obviously their system was working since they ended up making more money off you by your use of tokens. So at best you could say their time gating did not slow you down enough and you were still able to use one month's worth of tokens. Somehow I missed your aside about kronos and tokens coming from somewhere as a result my reply was a bit redundant so I apologize. Some of you are attempting to argue that time gating doesn't work, all the evidence is to the contrary. It is an entirely different thing to say you dislike it, I am not a fan of it myself if it is implemented in the form of daily quests/daily login rewards. Yes, a player with a lot more time will finish the quests sooner yet the time gating still slows them down.
As for Feyshtey's reply, I think the issue you brought up is going to exist regardless when it comes to players falling behind. If an MMORPG has levels, faction grinds, gear checks, keys, etc. the new, casual, or returning player is going to be playing catch up. Unless I am completely mistaken about Vanguard and there will be none of that? Perhaps you are saying in your example that the guy who can only pllay 2 days per week is being screwed because he can't just grind the quests multiple times in the same day, but that is exactly why the time gate exists in the first place to slow down the average player who does not play every single day. Honestly my heart is not really in this debate since I don't particularly care for the way WoW did (and still does) time gating. But it is going to exist in some form I am just hoping it isn't the whole "daily quest" crapola I find so repulsive.
I am hoping for a more traditional style of time gating in Pantheon, where you can actually grind a marathon session to catch up if you choose. But the game is going to have to be time consuming enough to keep people subbed or it will need to fall back on gimmicks like WoW used (and still uses!).
I guess you misinterpreted my original point to the OP. Regardless of rather time gating works or doesnt work, rather it does something or not. It was detrimental to me in a way that it forced me to play a different game then the one i wanted to play and I didn't like it. Thats it, As far as extending out sub's etc. well yah thats exactly what time gating does. Thats why they do it. But honestly... Pantheon wants to be seperate from your every day mmo. They want to be the greatest thing out there. Don't extend my subscription with Time-gates. Do it with enjoyable content so if i beat it all, i'll make an alt. Don't make a shitty game that I only want to play through once with content blocks every step of the way just because I happen to spend more time playing than joe bloe does.
Time gating to keep players on the same level is such a stupid idea. There is a reason why there are players in two categories, Casual and Hardcore. I've been on both sides of the spectrum. Some folks say well my friend is hardcore and he played this many more hours than me and now he's way ahead. Well petition that friend to help you out. Get him to break camps, farm you some gear to interact with you still like real friends should do. And if your hardcore friend leaves you in the dust and doesn't interact with you any longer because you're a casual well.... maybe get some better friends?
Seriously though, Make your Main content if you wish, and then make something harder for the hardcore if you need to, Or make it all casual and the hardcore players will blast through and be done with it. Its all about picking your audience. In any aspect of life don't try to please EVERYONE with one thing, You never will. But yah I don't know i see some folks arguing time gating is great for players to catch up to the folks with more time. But why should they be punished simply because you have less time? As a casual its not like you're being punished for trying to catch up, you still get to check out the same stuff and do the same stuff you just do it a little bit slower. Where as in the latter making other folks wait behind time walls just seems silly to me.
In the end I mean as a casual you'll experience content or you won't Its hard to judge and im curious to see where the open world will work. Because as someone thats been on both sides a lot on everquest and WoW. on EQ as a Casual I never saw raids, I didn't have the time to respond to bat phones for targets, I couldn't poop sock etc. As a casual it was just to hard for me to raid. But then TLP Phinigel came out with instancing and then all the sudden bam casuals were getting raids. You could plan a time and a date to do your raids and sure you're not doing it as often as a hard core guild hitting open world targets but you could still squeeze em in. You could get on the same level as those hardcore players it just took a little bit longer. and honestly thats how it should be.
On WoW they hugely bring up the floor, Rather is with rep, changing loot power in lower tier stuff etc as the expansions move on. As a casual there i never got into MYTHIC level raiding but i still could feel up there. But as a hardcore player raiding in Mythics I loved that i was rewarded with better loot and there was an obvious power gap that made me proud of my time when i went to do stuff with my more casual friends.
Topics kinda de-railing on my end now but whatev's. My moral of the story now is: Let your players do their thing. If they come into a "hardcore" game with long grinds etc with a casual mindset thinking they're gonna be the biggest and baddest on the same tier and par with far less time as those with more well they simply chose the wrong game and thats how it should be. But all bull aside, Let your players do what they want when they want and how they want to do it. If you have content available for play don't lock that behind a stupid timer. Put it behind flags, keys, faction and what have you but don't lock those flags keys and factions aswell behind a timer based daily cap give me a way to grind the hell out of it so i can get that faster than the casuals. Even if you made it so every day i did the dailys and got 500 rep which is a huge chunk towards said flag then just add some mobs i can go find and grind for 1 rep a piece for hours on end. I'll still do your dailys but when i'm done with em I want to keep playing your game. I don't want to log out and wait for those dailys to reset I want something else do to.
TLDR: If you have content available for play don't lock that behind a stupid timer. Put it behind flags, keys, faction and what have you but don't lock those flags keys and factions aswell behind a timer based daily cap give me a way to grind the hell out of it so i can get that faster than the casuals. Even if you made it so every day i did the dailys and got 500 rep which is a huge chunk towards said flag then just add some mobs i can go find and grind for 1 rep a piece for hours on end. I'll still do your dailys but when i'm done with em I want to keep playing your game. I don't want to log out and wait for those dailys to reset I want something else do to.
Its an option lol....
Maybe I should have said Weekly Gates... Not that I'm in favor of either, but in the event that it is found necessary to slow progression to a reasonable amount, a weekly maximum on progression, be it accumulation of rep or whatever, would still allow for those with limited play time to keep up
That's only IF it is ever deemed a problem that certain players blast through content
Personally, I agree with the posters that prefer no limits on progression, since time gates seem targeted toward the players at the launch of new content, without regard for the far greater number of players and alts that will be navigating that content long after launch
Preechr said:Its an option lol....
Maybe I should have said Weekly Gates... Not that I'm in favor of either, but in the event that it is found necessary to slow progression to a reasonable amount, a weekly maximum on progression, be it accumulation of rep or whatever, would still allow for those with limited play time to keep up
That's only IF it is ever deemed a problem that certain players blast through content
Personally, I agree with the posters that prefer no limits on progression, since time gates seem targeted toward the players at the launch of new content, without regard for the far greater number of players and alts that will be navigating that content long after launch
Don't extend my subscription with Time-gates. Do it with enjoyable content so if i beat it all, i'll make an alt.
When i see daily quests in an MMORPG, I feel a little kicked out of the game ... There is night and day in the game already, but these NPCs only give me the quest every real life day? RL time should not matter in the game itself, other than "Damn, already that late? I have to work tomorrow!". But daily quests do not fit into the lore of a fantasy world with its own day and night cycle.
However, you could do it like this: The quest is always available, but the mobs dropping the required items only spawn at (game-)night. It is a timesink, but fits into the lore and you dont feel pushed out of the game. Also its exciting to look at the imaginary watch and see that you have one in game hour to get the last drop, otherwise you have to wait till next night.
Matrulak said:When i see daily quests in an MMORPG, I feel a little kicked out of the game ... There is night and day in the game already, but these NPCs only give me the quest every real life day? RL time should not matter in the game itself, other than "Damn, already that late? I have to work tomorrow!". But daily quests do not fit into the lore of a fantasy world with its own day and night cycle.
However, you could do it like this: The quest is always available, but the mobs dropping the required items only spawn at (game-)night. It is a timesink, but fits into the lore and you dont feel pushed out of the game. Also its exciting to look at the imaginary watch and see that you have one in game hour to get the last drop, otherwise you have to wait till next night.
Or you could provide content that makes you feel less like a FedEx driver delivering the same ******** package every day for a month.
I dont want to use the day/night-idea to do the same quest again and again (did i say that? I didnt meant to). Content is of course king. However, sometimes the quest designer wants to make the quest more diverse and challenging. If it fits to the quest, reducing the availability of the quest items only a at a given in-game-time might be a good idea.
Think about it this way: Quest designer wants you to hunt mobs for one day and night (in game). He can reduce the spawn or drop rate of the quest items and let you farm a day and a night, or he could increase the spawn/droprate and you can farm only at night. Same time effort, but the quest might be more memorable.
I know, this is a bit offtopic to timegates. However, since i dont like timegates, i would like a quest like this, even if it is pretty similar to timegates. It fits into the game, the lore, and to the feeling to be part of the world.
In a well built adventure game, I would hope there is no such thing as "farming"
"Hey guys, we should let this person in our village and treat him as a friend because he killed 7,000 turtles for me! He's a true hero!"
vs
"If you really want to prove you are a friend to my people, hunt down that giant beast that is ravaging the outskirts of our village, or do something about that den of bandits that we hear is based somewhere in that forest..."
I think some people are missing the point of the post. I don't think ayone is asking to beat the game on the first day, the point is more that if I need to gain 2000 "stuff" to do the "thing", if I want to sit for sixteen hours and farm "stuff" to finish that up, I should be able to do that without only being able to get 200 "stuff" per day and be forced to spend ten days on that single task. I can't stand time barriers, daily quests or anything that smells similar, and I hope it's something we can avoid with this game.