Guild Wars 2

I’m genuinely curious, does anyone out there find this to be fun? World Events I can sort of understand, don’t want you to grind the same boss out all day. Laurels are too plentiful now so that’s not a big issue either. But now we move it over to Crafting account bound items. Hoo boy.

Crafting to me feels like a desk job, it seems tacked on and really archaic. Now it’s required to obtain the best-in-slot equipment (which goes against their original concept of earning max gear the way you like to play, may I add). Adding time gated crafting recipes you need in order to make account bound equipment doesn’t make sense at all and makes this feel like a bigger chore than it already is. It’s not player (alts) friendly, it’s not logical, and it’s not fun.

I can sort of see why they want to add this, so players wont complain about getting max gear in a day (because that’s somehow an issue in a game that was advertised to be easy to get to max stats and go skin hunting). But for people with many alts, trying to get Ascended gear is just hopeless. The entire new tier so far seems more like a punishment to obtain and goes against the original concept of earning gear in the first place (except for Ascended Rings).

Making recipes limited once per day (at least ones you need a lot of) is just bonkers. Instead of having a game where people login to play and have fun, you’re turning this into a game where you need to login to click a couple buttons and then leave for a day. Even if you had the materials in your hands to make 300 of the things, you wont be able to craft them for nearly an entire year. It’s sort of a case where you want to play the game, but the game doesn’t want to be played.

If the Devs have said anything about changing this system, or if 400-500 is still in sort of a “beta” state; please let me know. Too much time gated content in a game could potentially flat out kill it because I’m sure some gamers would rather be playing a game instead of logging on to do their time-gated chores.

PS. I’m a few weeks slow because Super Adventure Box has been keeping me occupied. I’ve only just left the Box since Tequatl’s patch so that’s why I’m late to this issue.

PPS. I’ve only gotten Ascended Rings via FotM and have no plans to use Laurels for Ascended Trinkets or Amulets. I’ve also lost all intentions on trying to craft an Ascended Weapon when I saw the recipes had a timer, so you don’t need to say “don’t like it don’t get it”. I’m just wondering if all of this time gated stuff is actually fun for other players or if this is becoming an issue that could hurt the game.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pin3lPfhTxs&hd=1

Time gated or level gated content isn’t the slightest bit fun and I have no idea why game devs keep adding this sort of thing to the games they make. It’s a serious turn off and gives players really good reason to just move on when the next great thing comes out.

Time gated content has been around for a while. (Charged Crystals etc…) I find it strange that people are complaining about something that is meant to slow everyone down so that they don’t chew through the content in a week and cry for “moar stuffus” to do.

Look at it this way: If you could blow through everything and have all the BiS slot gear inside of a week, how long would you keep playing if there was nothing else to do?

I am not the greatest fan of time-gating, as there should be something else to do, but seriously…with everything else that is in need of a fix, this shouldn’t be the number one priority right now.

Xalugami.2096:

Crafting to me feels like a desk job, it seems tacked on and really archaic. Now it’s required to obtain the best-in-slot equipment (which goes against their original concept of earning max gear the way you like to play, may I add). Adding time gated crafting recipes you need in order to make account bound equipment doesn’t make sense at all and makes this feel like a bigger chore than it already is. It’s not player (alts) friendly, it’s not logical, and it’s not fun.

Crafting isn’t required to get ascended weapons. You can obtain them via world bosses, champions, guild missions, or Fractals of the Mists, it’s just a very rare chance. I hope to see them available via WvW soon.

I agree that account-bound time gating is detrimental to those of us who play multiple characters. There should still be some form of time gating, but it should be per character rather than per account.

It also doesn’t make sense that the resulting time gated materials can be sold on the trading post. Rich players can simply skip the time gating, which seems to destroy what Anet was going for with the time gating in the first place (although not as bad as being able to buy legendary weapons on the trading post).

Well, while I’m not a fan of time-gating let’s look at the alternative, low drop chances or ridiculous amounts of materials needed.

What I am not fond of about it is to remember to go to do this and then go there to do that.

If you do that per character then prepare for the “greedy Anet is forcing us to buy more character slots” storm.

I have nine characters, I can only play one at a time. I think it would be unfair if I could just print three ascended weapons per day because of it.

Trading time for money or vice versa is one (or the?) basic idea of a trading post. Let’s be happy that some people can concentrate on other parts of the game and not everything is soul- or accountbound by default.

Rouven.7409:

If you do that per character then prepare for the “greedy Anet is forcing us to buy more character slots” storm.

If it were per character, you’d still have to get each of those characters over 450 in two crafting disciplines to fully take advantage of this, which probably costs more than buying a character slot with gold to gems anyway.

Rouven.7409:

I have nine characters, I can only play one at a time. I think it would be unfair if I could just print three ascended weapons per day because of it.

And if you can get the materials to “just print three ascended weapons per day” then you already have the money to just buy the time gated materials and “print” as many as you want anyway.

I also have nine character slots. I can only play one at a time, and in turn I can only craft materials with one of them at a time, but I can certainly play more than one of them per day.

Ashabhi.1365:

Time gated content has been around for a while. (Charged Crystals etc…) I find it strange that people are complaining about something that is meant to slow everyone down so that they don’t chew through the content in a week and cry for “moar stuffus” to do.

Look at it this way: If you could blow through everything and have all the BiS slot gear inside of a week, how long would you keep playing if there was nothing else to do?

I am not the greatest fan of time-gating, as there should be something else to do, but seriously…with everything else that is in need of a fix, this shouldn’t be the number one priority right now.

I agree on your last part, there is so much stuff that needs a fix compared to this.

However, I’ve been in full Exotic gear for almost a year now. I like to explore the tiny nooks & crannies of maps, do jumping puzzles a bunch, and help newbies out with stuff. It felt good that I had the BiS equipment tailored the way I want already and I can do anything I want with it (like it was advertised, and just like in GW1 too). The game itself is fun and has kept me coming back every single day since headstart. I even dropped a lot of money in the Gem Store for the Fine Transmutation Stones (now Crystals) needed to get all the skins I enjoy ontop of my Exotic equipment for all 8 of my characters.

Between that and the Living Story, I’ve been overwhelmed with stuffs to do. I never chased down World Bosses so having to keep timers open to see when they’re spawning, and needing to zombie zerg champs in Frostgorge for a ton of materials isn’t very interesting (but that’s sort of off topic since this isn’t about the limited way to farm materials). This is all starting to seem like too much to do unless I stop having fun in the game. Then they just slap a time gate on it because people wanted it harder to obtain the BiS gear, and time gated content is never hard to begin with.

I’m not even sure why they needed a tier of gear to bridge Exotics to Legendaries, because I thought the huge difference in effort is what made Legendaries well… Legendary compared to your average everyday Exotic.
It would probably take me a day or two to think of a new, solid crafting method for 400-500 and Ascended items that would take longer to obtain than Exotics and not include super rare drops, too many materials, or time gated recipes. But that’s usually pointless because ANet doesn’t care.

EnemyCrusher.7324:

Crafting isn’t required to get ascended weapons. You can obtain them via world bosses, champions, guild missions, or Fractals of the Mists, it’s just a very rare chance. I hope to see them available via WvW soon.

Even crafting itself is not that onerous provided you have enough gold, and how you earn that gold really IS up to you. When I think of the complaint “I can’t get this BiS gear the way I want” WRT other games, I think of “unless I grind this specific dungeon/raid over and over, I’ll never have access to this gear”. Crafting can be annoying, but it’s accessible enough to give the greatest number of players a realistic shot at getting the gear they want short of just slapping it all on a vendor for (X) gold per piece.

As for time-gating, it’s not really supposed to be fun, right? It’s a long-standing MMO tradition to keep us in the game longer.

EnemyCrusher.7324:

Rouven.7409:

If you do that per character then prepare for the “greedy Anet is forcing us to buy more character slots” storm.

If it were per character, you’d still have to get each of those characters over 450 in two crafting disciplines to fully take advantage of this, which probably costs more than buying a character slot with gold to gems anyway.

Rouven.7409:

I have nine characters, I can only play one at a time. I think it would be unfair if I could just print three ascended weapons per day because of it.

And if you can get the materials to “just print three ascended weapons per day” then you already have the money to just buy the time gated materials and “print” as many as you want anyway.

I also have nine character slots. I can only play one at a time, and in turn I can only craft materials with one of them at a time, but I can certainly play more than one of them per day.

Now I’m confused. You don’t want the weapons to be sold on the TP, yet in these replies you seem to be only talking about costs?

All I am saying is that I can understand certain decisions, many other aspects are all per account also – and not only the “bad” ones. I’d be happy with a different solution – and talking about that, let’s hope they think about something before ascended armour comes out … right?

@ Xalugami – I would still love to hear your ideas (not being sarcastic) in regards to a different approach.

[quote=2882216;EnemyCrusher.7324:Crafting isn’t required to get ascended weapons. You can obtain them via world bosses, champions, guild missions, or Fractals of the Mists, it’s just a very rare chance. I hope to see them available via WvW soon.[/quote]

Yes, crafting isn’t technically required, but good luck getting first the very low probability of an ascended weapon drop and then the low probability of the stats you want.

If you’re hoping for badges for Ascended weapons — forget about it.

It’s not the time spent that’s annoying so many, it’s the fact that you are forced to log in every day. If you don’t you miss out on:
- fused crystal
- daily reward / achievement points
- ascended crafting

And while first two are kind of optional – you dont actually NEED celestial stuff and daily reward can be replaced by guild commendations most of it – the third one definitely is not optional anymore.
You don’t have ascended weapon in wvw -> you do quite some dmg less (was it 5%?) Add this to the dmg you loose if you don’t wear ascended trinkets it’s even more.

And yes, having to log in EVERY day is for me a very unsavory version of GRIND. Which anet promised to us would never happen in gw2.

But just as with other problems… playerbase and what they really want… will just be ignored. MMOs always end up being the playground of devs… nothing new there.

/edit:
Btw, they could have easily set the timelimit to 7 per week. But they didn’t now, did they? Just ask yourself why.

Another thing is, this really is not returned-player-friendly. Just imagine you have a good friend you want to get to play gw2, and then you tell him: yes, well, this is what you have to do:
1. craft to lvl450
2. you have to now log in every day for 30 days
3. do 5 daily achievements each day
to be able to get endgame equip.
You know, I wouldn’t even be able to explain this to any friend with a straight face and without actually considering ending my time with gw2.

Yasi.9065:

Another thing is, this really is not returned-player-friendly. Just imagine you have a good friend you want to get to play gw2, and then you tell him: yes, well, this is what you have to do:
1. craft to lvl450
2. you have to now log in every day for 30 days
3. do 5 daily achievements each day
to be able to get endgame equip.
You know, I wouldn’t even be able to explain this to any friend with a straight face and without actually considering ending my time with gw2.

This. Every time they update something, I give a rundown of the patches & my experiences with the new updates to my close friends. They haven’t logged in since Aetherblade Retreat, and almost every update has them wondering why ANet is killing their game with such horrible additions. Each time they make fun of them, I question why am I even wasting my time with GW2 myself because it kind of is turning into a big joke.
To my other friends who I want to give the game another look, I find it hard to even find a positive without accidentally mentioning one of the many negatives they’re adding. I haven’t had any luck getting any of them to try playing in ages.

I fear that with time gated BiS Crafting it’s going to cut a lot of people out of the game for good unless its fixed soon. If things keep going towards that kind of content, I don’t think many people will be able to recommend this game at all to anyone without lying to their faces.

I feel like GW2 still has potential, but every update they do is just killing themselves faster & faster. I hope it’s not too late to turn it around. It feels like a casual Facebook game instead of an award winning MMORPG that honestly had a shot at being the greatest on the market.

But that’s all my opinion, so it could be a completely different veiw for someone else.

Herr der Friedhoefe.2490:

Time gated or level gated content isn’t the slightest bit fun and I have no idea why game devs keep adding this sort of thing to the games they make. It’s a serious turn off and gives players really good reason to just move on when the next great thing comes out.

I don’t either they are simply making the posibility of the rest of the people they want to keep, leave. It really is getting that bad.

First they made ascended items from fractal vendors with the promise they’d only be for fractals and other dungeons requiring agony resist. with each new set they’ve released the scores have gotten higher. Then with the second release they made some of them available from laurels. When they realized people could easily replace their gear with ascended with laurels they then made them items you had to craft personally where the materials and the items made had to be a grind, use twice as many materials as legendaries, and could only be made by you for you.

What will they do next? The armor will most likely require the blood of a virgin, the holy grail, an unmarked one thousand dollar bill, the hat of Baron Samedi, and the Chachapoyan Fertility Idol from the first Indiana Jones movie.

tigirius.9014:

What will they do next? The armor will most likely require the blood of a virgin, the holy grail, an unmarked one thousand dollar bill, the hat of Baron Samedi, and the Chachapoyan Fertility Idol from the first Indiana Jones movie.

I suppose we could always go back to the bad old days of “Kill 10 Rats”. At least then the casual players could get their hands on this gear too. As things stand now, no one who only plays an hour or two per day is going to being to able to farm the mats needed for even one Ascended weapon, never mind the armor that is coming.

I can see what’s happening in our guild. Those guys are moving on.

I don’t think they implemented time-gating to make stuff fun so why do people assume it has been put in for that reason?

Herr der Friedhoefe.2490:

tigirius.9014:

What will they do next? The armor will most likely require the blood of a virgin, the holy grail, an unmarked one thousand dollar bill, the hat of Baron Samedi, and the Chachapoyan Fertility Idol from the first Indiana Jones movie.

I suppose we could always go back to the bad old days of “Kill 10 Rats”. At least then the casual players could get their hands on this gear too. As things stand now, no one who only plays an hour or two per day is going to being to able to farm the mats needed for even one Ascended weapon, never mind the armor that is coming.

I can see what’s happening in our guild. Those guys are moving on.

I don’t care for the time gating either, especially since you aren’t truly being time gated since you can by those mats off the TP.

That being said, your statement is ridiculous. I play a couple hours a day and the only thing I am missing is the fragments because I have just been too lazy to run enough dungeons. I have enough of all the other mats to make more than one weapon.

It really boils down to how much gold you have. Those with enough can craft their way to 500 and buy all the mats except a few and have the weapons.

Obtena.7952:

I don’t think they implemented time-gating to make stuff fun so why do people assume it has been put in for that reason?

Of course they didn’t put it in for that reason. Do you think that anyone in this thread thinks that anet intentionally wants to make their game not fun? The point is, time gating to a large audience isn’t fun, so why implement it? Especially when it truly isn’t a time gating when those items are on the TP.

The only reason I have ever heard is that they don’t want people to blow through the content and complain for more. However, I have never heard anyone complain about that other than the fact that they don’t ever update or fix the dungeons which is another argument and a totally legit one at that.

Time gating is not fun. It’s just a lazy way to control the economy because the auction house creates an oversupply of items too quickly.

In that respect, ArenaNet should be proud the tradping post is TOO successful!

Even if they wanted to keep botusers or grinders or whatever at bay and keep prices stable, they could have set the time limit to 7 per week. In the long run it has the same result with it being possible for casual players to get there.

This forced login once per day is just so they can have a nice statistic to present to their bosses / shareholders / whatever.

See? We have x-million active accounts per day.

Sorry, but that’s for me the only plausible reason for this kind of time gating.

After all, routines are already there (guild missions are once every week, monthly achievement once every month).

No, they want to force us to log in every kittening day. Why? I only see statistics as a reason for that. Not-flooding tp with mats just isn’t a valid point, a time limit per week or month would have the same result, it would even create some interesting dynamics there which would eventually even out.

cranked.3812:

The only reason I have ever heard is that they don’t want people to blow through the content and complain for more.

I think that’s one reason. It also impacts the economy.

No, it’s not fun. That’s my point. Not everything is done to ensure players have fun. People need to get over themselves a little bit.

I actually like it. I think making the ectoplasm refinement time-gated and account bound was a good idea (spirit wood and Deldrimor are account bound, right? or did I make that up?). It seems designed to ease in the new tier and prevent pay-to-win gaming. True, dark matter completely destroys the latter aspect, but that has nothing to do with the time gate – rather, it’s the account bound part. I wouldn’t mind seeing the limit raised to perhaps two per day, especially if it got paired with either lower resource cost and/or bank limits raised to 500 per stack, but generally I think it’s working well.

Is it casual-unfriendly? Yes and no. I wouldn’t call myself casual, but I don’t play every day, sometimes not even every other day. I just finished my staff this weekend. It’s a reward for investing time and energy.

Is it alt-unfriendly? Well, yes, but…given the gold cost of making just the main weapon for my main toon, the last thing I’m thinking about now is equipping an alt. Again, it wasn’t the time gate that I had a problem with. It was the grinding and buying and salvaging exotics, often for no reward, then running around on a chest circuit (and cycling through 80s to do it) to get empyrean fragments that held me back as much as a week. And now that I have it, I’m considerably less inclined to start a second, although eventually of course I will.

Naranek.3467:

I actually like it. I think making the ectoplasm refinement time-gated and account bound was a good idea (spirit wood and Deldrimor are account bound, right? or did I make that up?). It seems designed to ease in the new tier and prevent pay-to-win gaming. True, dark matter completely destroys the latter aspect, but that has nothing to do with the time gate – rather, it’s the account bound part. I wouldn’t mind seeing the limit raised to perhaps two per day, especially if it got paired with either lower resource cost and/or bank limits raised to 500 per stack, but generally I think it’s working well.

They are not account bound. You can sell em on the TP. So there is no true time gating. If you have enough gold and time you can farm all the mats pretty easily and buy whatever else you need. Granted, the first few days the ingots and planks were VERY expensive, but now they are about the same cost as it would take to make one.

cranked.3812:

They are not account bound. You can sell em on the TP. So there is no true time gating. If you have enough gold and time you can farm all the mats pretty easily and buy whatever else you need. Granted, the first few days the ingots and planks were VERY expensive, but now they are about the same cost as it would take to make one.

Well, so much for that idea. See what happens when I try to give Anet credit?

Alright, so what’s the objection, then? That’s kind of stupid, but if they’re not bound, then there’s no barrier. I guess I don’t really see the problem, or at least not the one the OP does.

Xalugami.2096:

But now we move it over to Crafting account bound items. Hoo boy.

Crafting to me feels like a desk job, it seems tacked on and really archaic. Now it’s required to obtain the best-in-slot equipment (which goes against their original concept of earning max gear , may I add).

If you are trying to optain ascended Weapons via Crafting, you spent about 99% of getting the Materials. You can get those in many many maany Ways -> I do not see how it goes against their original concept of earning max gear.

Making Ascended-Items AccountBound prohibits that it just boils down to Black Lion Trading Company and Gold Selling.
<3

I do not like the Time-Gating, though.

People are missing the point. Originally they stated they didn’t want gear to be a timegate issue and that their game would be different in that people weren’t thinking about gear all the time or grinding or going to the next piece they would be playing the game enjoying it. Well here we are now 1 year later exactly polar oposite of where they said they’d take this game. This has become end game no different than the run of the mill gear grind games out today aside from the leveling gathering and how people don’t have to compete for loot this game is no different than all the rest, not even in the ways they originally intended!

I have a long memory when it comes to these promises and I recall when they originally said that the gear would have no stats. Remember that? yeah…

tigirius.9014:

People are missing the point. Originally they stated they didn’t want gear to be a timegate issue and that their game would be different in that people weren’t thinking about gear all the time or grinding or going to the next piece they would be playing the game enjoying it. Well here we are now 1 year later exactly polar oposite of where they said they’d take this game. This has become end game no different than the run of the mill gear grind games out today aside from the leveling gathering and how people don’t have to compete for loot this game is no different than all the rest, not even in the ways they originally intended!

I have a long memory when it comes to these promises and I recall when they originally said that the gear would have no stats. Remember that? yeah…

Technically, it is not time gated. You and many others are missing that point. All the items that are time gated to an individual person can be purchased on the TP (dowels and planks).

The reality is, it is gold gated. If you have enough of it, you can buy all the dowels and planks. You can buy enough exotics (or use the ones you crafted) too get Dark Matter. Run some dungeons and world events and you have yourself an Ascended weapon. So, all it really takes is a little time (albeit some grind) and lots of gold.

Obtena.7952:

I don’t think they implemented time-gating to make stuff fun so why do people assume it has been put in for that reason?

Cause Colin Johanson, in a prerelease blog, stated that their overriding metric for the GW2 game design is ‘is it fun’

Just one of the may pre-release ideals that has fallen by the wayside.

cranked.3812:

tigirius.9014:

People are missing the point. Originally they stated they didn’t want gear to be a timegate issue and that their game would be different in that people weren’t thinking about gear all the time or grinding or going to the next piece they would be playing the game enjoying it. Well here we are now 1 year later exactly polar oposite of where they said they’d take this game. This has become end game no different than the run of the mill gear grind games out today aside from the leveling gathering and how people don’t have to compete for loot this game is no different than all the rest, not even in the ways they originally intended!

I have a long memory when it comes to these promises and I recall when they originally said that the gear would have no stats. Remember that? yeah…

Technically, it is not time gated. You and many others are missing that point. All the items that are time gated to an individual person can be purchased on the TP (dowels and planks).

The reality is, it is gold gated. If you have enough of it, you can buy all the dowels and planks. You can buy enough exotics (or use the ones you crafted) too get Dark Matter. Run some dungeons and world events and you have yourself an Ascended weapon. So, all it really takes is a little time (albeit some grind) and lots of gold.

Hmm “little”. You need 500 of each of those things. 17 temple events and 25 dungeon runs.

Anyway who said the time gating had anything to do with fun?
They have pretty much said why it is in place. One mentioned directly and one indirectly.

The direct mention is to have high value craftable items. That is one of the stated goals anyway. I think having the weapons being account bound and making the acquisition of the materials for the vision crystal has pretty much wrecked that. Probably the only reason they are maintaining value is speculation for armor crafting and the raw material cost.

The indirect reason is that they wanted gearing to require a certain amount of time and time gating is pretty much the only guaranteed way to get something consistent from there.

morrolan.9608:

Obtena.7952:

I don’t think they implemented time-gating to make stuff fun so why do people assume it has been put in for that reason?

Cause Colin Johanson, in a prerelease blog, stated that their overriding metric for the GW2 game design is ‘is it fun’

Just one of the may pre-release ideals that has fallen by the wayside.

That’s a matter of opinion. Something being time-gated doesn’t mean it’s not fun. One thing not being fun doesn’t mean that generally, GW2 isn’t fun either.

Khisanth.2948:

cranked.3812:

tigirius.9014:

People are missing the point. Originally they stated they didn’t want gear to be a timegate issue and that their game would be different in that people weren’t thinking about gear all the time or grinding or going to the next piece they would be playing the game enjoying it. Well here we are now 1 year later exactly polar oposite of where they said they’d take this game. This has become end game no different than the run of the mill gear grind games out today aside from the leveling gathering and how people don’t have to compete for loot this game is no different than all the rest, not even in the ways they originally intended!

I have a long memory when it comes to these promises and I recall when they originally said that the gear would have no stats. Remember that? yeah…

Technically, it is not time gated. You and many others are missing that point. All the items that are time gated to an individual person can be purchased on the TP (dowels and planks).

The reality is, it is gold gated. If you have enough of it, you can buy all the dowels and planks. You can buy enough exotics (or use the ones you crafted) too get Dark Matter. Run some dungeons and world events and you have yourself an Ascended weapon. So, all it really takes is a little time (albeit some grind) and lots of gold.

Hmm “little”. You need 500 of each of those things. 17 temple events and 25 dungeon runs.

Anyway who said the time gating had anything to do with fun?
They have pretty much said why it is in place. One mentioned directly and one indirectly.

The direct mention is to have high value craftable items. That is one of the stated goals anyway. I think having the weapons being account bound and making the acquisition of the materials for the vision crystal has pretty much wrecked that. Probably the only reason they are maintaining value is speculation for armor crafting and the raw material cost.

The indirect reason is that they wanted gearing to require a certain amount of time and time gating is pretty much the only guaranteed way to get something consistent from there.

OK, “little” is relative. I don’t mean you can easily do it in one day (although you technically could if you spend all day farming). But, it isn’t like it takes weeks worth of time to gather the fragments and ore.

So there one goal of high value items was a lie or people misinterpreted it because there is no market for ascended weapons as they are all account bound.

Secondly, it isn’t really time gated in the sense that it will take you “x” number of days because that is how many one-a-day items you have to craft. You can buy all that stuff on the TP. So the time gating only becomes how much time you are willing to spend running dungeons and world events/JP’s. Also, how much gold you have.

I don’t really think it ruins any fun of the game for me, I just think the implementation is/was silly. They should have either made it so that you could sell the weapons after crafting them or made it so all the mats are available on the TP. OR, they should have not allowed people to sell the ingots and planks, which would have kept them true time-gated items.

Xalugami.2096:

How is time gating fun?

It isn’t. And you know what? The developers don’t care. Gone are the days when “is it fun” was used as a measure of success. Now it’s all about the daily log ins. And unfortunately for us, the kinds of “content” that garners the most daily log ins is often the least fun.

It’s like waiting in an abrudly line for the bathroom when you have had 3 megagulp sodas and an overactive bladder at a sporting even full of drunk people that may or may not know how to get out of the bathroom stall. The experience is dreadful and agonizing and makes you want to cry, but once you finally arrive and the long awaited moment comes it is glorious and amazing.

But really. Timegating sucks.

Obtena.7952:

morrolan.9608:

Cause Colin Johanson, in a prerelease blog, stated that their overriding metric for the GW2 game design is ‘is it fun’

Just one of the may pre-release ideals that has fallen by the wayside.

That’s a matter of opinion. Something being time-gated doesn’t mean it’s not fun. One thing not being fun doesn’t mean that generally, GW2 isn’t fun either.

Time gating is an exercise in frustration for a player and thus is anti fun.

It’s not fun, it’s an artificial way of slowing down players.

Herr der Friedhoefe.2490:

Time gated or level gated content isn’t the slightest bit fun and I have no idea why game devs keep adding this sort of thing to the games they make.
…….

Simple answer: They need players in the game for a prolonged period of time.

Will it work? We shall see.

It is completely fun.

Everybody likes waiting to have fun.

cranked.3812:

OK, “little” is relative. I don’t mean you can easily do it in one day (although you technically could if you spend all day farming). But, it isn’t like it takes weeks worth of time to gather the fragments and ore.

So there one goal of high value items was a lie or people misinterpreted it because there is no market for ascended weapons as they are all account bound.

Secondly, it isn’t really time gated in the sense that it will take you “x” number of days because that is how many one-a-day items you have to craft. You can buy all that stuff on the TP. So the time gating only becomes how much time you are willing to spend running dungeons and world events/JP’s. Also, how much gold you have.

I don’t really think it ruins any fun of the game for me, I just think the implementation is/was silly. They should have either made it so that you could sell the weapons after crafting them or made it so all the mats are available on the TP. OR, they should have not allowed people to sell the ingots and planks, which would have kept them true time-gated items.

The market is for the materials not the items. In theory people who are impatient could go and by those time limited materials or people who do not play as frequently/unwilling to keep up with the daily chore. Well that is my interpretation anyway.

There is also the unmentioned side effect of removing excess amounts of the lower tier materials although in the case of soft wood log they seem to be imagining the excess.

I do agree that the current implementation isn’t very good and one of the problem is they bound nature of the ascended weapons. Being bound means anyone who wants to make one of them MUST level their crafting high enough so that they can craft those time gated materials themselves anyway.

They could have kept it bound but make ascended weapon crafting lv400 while the materials were made to be lv500. That way you have all these people who can craft their own weapons but not all of them will want to spend the resources to level to 500. In that system people who only want to craft one or two weapons can just buy the materials from the people who did level to 500 and the people who spent the resources to get to 500 would be able to recoup the cost by being one of the few who can supply these items. The lv500 crafters would be able to continue to use that as a money making mechanism while the people who didn’t can go back to ignoring crafting.

As I’ve mentioned before(maybe not in this thread) the rate of acquisition for the account bound materials is just too slow to make wanting to buying the daily items appealing. I am sure there are still people buying them but the design has reduced the potential pool of buyers for these and I don’t know the point of doing that. If everything came at the rate of the Bloodstone Dust then maybe it would have made sense.

Being someone who plays very often this might be skewing things but lets say someone only plays occasionally. They still have to find a way to acquire the account bound items at a faster rate than the time limited ones. Maybe they play infrequently and they can’t be bothered to remember to make the time limited items but they still play the various contents from time to time so they are slowly acquiring the various bits of account bound items. I guess those are the people you can sell the time gated materials to.

Then there is precursor crafting. It’s been mentioned that it will likely involve these materials but if the sum of the parts cost more than buying a precursor directly it will only be useful to people who place a higher value on creating something themselves than being cost efficient.

Khisanth.2948:

(…)

Then there is precursor crafting. It’s been mentioned that it will likely involve these materials but if the sum of the parts cost more than buying a precursor directly it will only be useful to people who place a higher value on creating something themselves than being cost efficient.

Wasn’t that supposed to be only a “reliable” way of obtaining one (besides the TP) to feel more of an accomplishment? I’m not sure, I do seem to remember that our local economist said the was watching the prices as well.

You are probably right, worse it might be that these materials in return will be used to transform them into T8 materials with their own time-gate etc.

But again – and to clarify (which I might not have done earlier) I’m not advocating time-gates – what would be the alternative? Having a random chance for them to drop at Tequatl?

Sure the materials themselves are gated – with the exception of bloodstone dust it seems – but realisticly the same applies to dungeon tokens. Run it once get full reward, after that less.

I’m looking at it as being the lesser of two evils at the moment.

Rouven.7409:

Khisanth.2948:

(…)

Then there is precursor crafting. It’s been mentioned that it will likely involve these materials but if the sum of the parts cost more than buying a precursor directly it will only be useful to people who place a higher value on creating something themselves than being cost efficient.

Wasn’t that supposed to be only a “reliable” way of obtaining one (besides the TP) to feel more of an accomplishment? I’m not sure, I do seem to remember that our local economist said the was watching the prices as well.

You are probably right, worse it might be that these materials in return will be used to transform them into T8 materials with their own time-gate etc.

But again – and to clarify (which I might not have done earlier) I’m not advocating time-gates – what would be the alternative? Having a random chance for them to drop at Tequatl?

Sure the materials themselves are gated – with the exception of bloodstone dust it seems – but realisticly the same applies to dungeon tokens. Run it once get full reward, after that less.

I’m looking at it as being the lesser of two evils at the moment.

My (unstated)point is that if they stick with their love affair with the number 250 you’ll end up paying something like 3000g(possibly more due to demand?!) for a precursor instead of 2300 for the complete finished legendary. I am sure it will feel great to overpay by 500% for the privilege of being able to go around insisting that you made the whole thing yourself. You might think “they wouldn’t be that silly” but so far they seem to design based on some ideal numbers and situations rather than reality. The soft wood situation being an excellent example. Some of that might be because the design for these were done months ago but I am not sure if that is a valid excuse.

As for the issue of time gating. I am not particularly concerned, exotics have worked fine. I am not trying to compete for the fastest dungeon speed runs. I rarely do WvW but even if I did it more frequently it would have close to a 1v1 against someone of equal skill before the gear will matter. Even then the differences in build can still have a bigger impact than. Yes it’s an undeniable fact that for direct damage it is a 5% increase but all the difference can probably be obliterated or magnified by a well timed/badly timed use of a healing skill or even the choice of healing skill.

My only issue with the time gating is that the design doesn’t seem to make sense. Do things have to be logical? No, not really but it would make things less confusing. I certainly haven’t considered all the possibilities. Has anyone come up with a logical explanation? I guess “bad excuse for time gating” is another possible explanation.

[quote=2908362;Khisanth.2948:]

cranked.3812:

Naranek.3467:

I actually like it. I think making the ectoplasm refinement time-gated and account bound was a good idea (spirit wood and Deldrimor are account bound, right? or did I make that up?). It seems designed to ease in the new tier and prevent pay-to-win gaming. True, dark matter completely destroys the latter aspect, but that has nothing to do with the time gate – rather, it’s the account bound part. I wouldn’t mind seeing the limit raised to perhaps two per day, especially if it got paired with either lower resource cost and/or bank limits raised to 500 per stack, but generally I think it’s working well.

They are not account bound. You can sell em on the TP. So there is no true time gating. If you have enough gold and time you can farm all the mats pretty easily and buy whatever else you need. Granted, the first few days the ingots and planks were VERY expensive, but now they are about the same cost as it would take to make one.

No true time gating? What crack are you smoking? There are 2 items you can only make one of per day for ascended. Kinda fits the time gating deff, and the true kind too.
Never mind the piles of matts all this takes. From the devs who had the gall to tell us they weren’t in the bizz of making a grindy game. This game has become nothing but grind with the updates this summer. I know it’s driving me away. I barely stay on long enough to cover dailies anymore. Am playing other stuff that is actually fun, kinda what games are supposed to be.

Not a second job.

It’s not. It’s a dry and uncreative way to artificially extend the length of content.

The devs aren’t good enough or don’t have the resources to create real content to keep players wanting to come back, so instead they time gate players to slow them down so that they don’t leave as soon. It also trains players to log in every day or miss out. None of this is happening because it’s fun, but because it’s time gated. Fun is now incidental.

Xalugami.2096:

I’m genuinely curious, does anyone out there find this to be fun? World Events I can sort of understand, don’t want you to grind the same boss out all day. Laurels are too plentiful now so that’s not a big issue either. But now we move it over to Crafting account bound items. Hoo boy.

Crafting to me feels like a desk job, it seems tacked on and really archaic. Now it’s required to obtain the best-in-slot equipment (which goes against their original concept of earning max gear the way you like to play, may I add). Adding time gated crafting recipes you need in order to make account bound equipment doesn’t make sense at all and makes this feel like a bigger chore than it already is. It’s not player (alts) friendly, it’s not logical, and it’s not fun.

I can sort of see why they want to add this, so players wont complain about getting max gear in a day (because that’s somehow an issue in a game that was advertised to be easy to get to max stats and go skin hunting). But for people with many alts, trying to get Ascended gear is just hopeless. The entire new tier so far seems more like a punishment to obtain and goes against the original concept of earning gear in the first place (except for Ascended Rings).

Making recipes limited once per day (at least ones you need a lot of) is just bonkers. Instead of having a game where people login to play and have fun, you’re turning this into a game where you need to login to click a couple buttons and then leave for a day. Even if you had the materials in your hands to make 300 of the things, you wont be able to craft them for nearly an entire year. It’s sort of a case where you want to play the game, but the game doesn’t want to be played.

If the Devs have said anything about changing this system, or if 400-500 is still in sort of a “beta” state; please let me know. Too much time gated content in a game could potentially flat out kill it because I’m sure some gamers would rather be playing a game instead of logging on to do their time-gated chores.

PS. I’m a few weeks slow because Super Adventure Box has been keeping me occupied. I’ve only just left the Box since Tequatl’s patch so that’s why I’m late to this issue.

PPS. I’ve only gotten Ascended Rings via FotM and have no plans to use Laurels for Ascended Trinkets or Amulets. I’ve also lost all intentions on trying to craft an Ascended Weapon when I saw the recipes had a timer, so you don’t need to say “don’t like it don’t get it”. I’m just wondering if all of this time gated stuff is actually fun for other players or if this is becoming an issue that could hurt the game.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pin3lPfhTxs&hd=1

its not. anet lied about everything.

I dont like time gating or grind or anything of the sorts, when its for essentials. And top-tier gear is definitely an essential in an MMO.

And i was under the impressing GW2 wasnt going to do it, figured that would be a big plus in a non-monthly fee model. No need to artificially throw up barriers to stretch the content out. A trick to keep people playing without having to make new content every two weeks.
Thing is theyre pushing out bi-weekly content anyway. So i just don’t know why they do it.

Would you think it is fun, if you have nothing else to do anymore? Take it slowly, it is an MMO, you can play it for years. Why complain if you can make your ascended maybe 3 weeks later than just now. This is no ‘i-want-fast-and-easy-to-get-rewards-cell-phone-game’. Get used to it.

Pray For Kosmos.5849:

its not. anet lied about everything.

…and your statement is just a rather large exaggeration, not a lie?

Terrahero.9358:

I dont like time gating or grind or anything of the sorts, when its for essentials. And top-tier gear is definitely an essential in an MMO.

And i was under the impressing GW2 wasnt going to do it, figured that would be a big plus in a non-monthly fee model. No need to artificially throw up barriers to stretch the content out. A trick to keep people playing without having to make new content every two weeks.
Thing is theyre pushing out bi-weekly content anyway. So i just don’t know why they do it.

It might be essential in some other MMO but in what way is it essential GW2?
Even the “newly improved” world bosses do not need them.

You might have a point with WvW but even then only after you’ve set aside the other factors involved there like coverage, coordination and other issues. If everything else was equal then yes the side with better gear will have an advantage but the current situation is far from everything else being equal.

Time gating was a mechanism in subscription based MMOs to keep your subscription active. If it takes longer to do something, chances are you’ll cough up your fees next month. (ANet even mentioned the “time wasters” you find in subscription MMOs and that they would “not do those things”)

Time gating can also be used as an effective throttle to minimize some impacts to the economy. Selling crafted high-end items for example.

With those two ideas in mind, it does NOT make any sense for GW2 to be time gated because it’s not subscription and the high-end crafted items are all account bound.

Maybe they want to keep their active player base numbers high (i.e. we have 100,000’s of players logging on daily!!!! — never mind it’s because they have to in order to finish their first ascended weapon).

Sleel.8365:

cranked.3812:

Naranek.3467:

I actually like it. I think making the ectoplasm refinement time-gated and account bound was a good idea (spirit wood and Deldrimor are account bound, right? or did I make that up?). It seems designed to ease in the new tier and prevent pay-to-win gaming. True, dark matter completely destroys the latter aspect, but that has nothing to do with the time gate – rather, it’s the account bound part. I wouldn’t mind seeing the limit raised to perhaps two per day, especially if it got paired with either lower resource cost and/or bank limits raised to 500 per stack, but generally I think it’s working well.

They are not account bound. You can sell em on the TP. So there is no true time gating. If you have enough gold and time you can farm all the mats pretty easily and buy whatever else you need. Granted, the first few days the ingots and planks were VERY expensive, but now they are about the same cost as it would take to make one.

No true time gating? What crack are you smoking? There are 2 items you can only make one of per day for ascended. Kinda fits the time gating deff, and the true kind too.
Never mind the piles of matts all this takes. From the devs who had the gall to tell us they weren’t in the bizz of making a grindy game. This game has become nothing but grind with the updates this summer. I know it’s driving me away. I barely stay on long enough to cover dailies anymore. Am playing other stuff that is actually fun, kinda what games are supposed to be.

Not a second job.

The items you are referring to, deldrimor ingots and softwood planks (which are the once a day gated items) can both be purchased on the TP for about what it costs to buy the mats to make them. So, technically, the only gating of time is what it takes you to acquire the fragments and dragonite ore.

juno.1840:

Time gating was a mechanism in subscription based MMOs to keep your subscription active. If it takes longer to do something, chances are you’ll cough up your fees next month. (ANet even mentioned the “time wasters” you find in subscription MMOs and that they would “not do those things”)

Time gating can also be used as an effective throttle to minimize some impacts to the economy. Selling crafted high-end items for example.

With those two ideas in mind, it does NOT make any sense for GW2 to be time gated because it’s not subscription and the high-end crafted items are all account bound.

Maybe they want to keep their active player base numbers high (i.e. we have 100,000’s of players logging on daily!!!! — never mind it’s because they have to in order to finish their first ascended weapon).

Maybe there are more reasons for time gating than the two you have accounted for.

Obtena.7952:

juno.1840:

Time gating was a mechanism in subscription based MMOs to keep your subscription active. If it takes longer to do something, chances are you’ll cough up your fees next month. (ANet even mentioned the “time wasters” you find in subscription MMOs and that they would “not do those things”)

Time gating can also be used as an effective throttle to minimize some impacts to the economy. Selling crafted high-end items for example.

With those two ideas in mind, it does NOT make any sense for GW2 to be time gated because it’s not subscription and the high-end crafted items are all account bound.

Maybe they want to keep their active player base numbers high (i.e. we have 100,000’s of players logging on daily!!!! — never mind it’s because they have to in order to finish their first ascended weapon).

Maybe there are more reasons for time gating than the two you have accounted for.

I’m definitely not an expert like most people in these forums. If you can think of others please share — I’d love to read your opinion.