Guild Wars 2

Theres an increasing trend of time-based achievements in this game.

From the obvious like the Living story only being in 2 weeks, or crafting reagents (Charged Quartz Crystals http://www.gw2db.com/items/78260-charged-quartz-crystal-s), or even the time-limiter of RNG from the mystic forge.

I personally don’t like time being a limiting reagent. Obviously you want to make it hard for people to get certain things, but time isn’t something that should be a factor.

I love how this game has no sub. My work means I am sometimes out of the office for a few days or weeks. Quite simply, if this game had a sub, I wouldn’t play it.

But these time-based items are practically imposing a similar restriction on my gameplay. I can’t progress without logging in every day. That kinda really sucks.

I’d love to see some Black Lion gem items that you could ‘set it and let it hatch’ kinda deal.

So for example if I wanted 20 charged quartz crystals, I could feed it 500 Crystals and it would start a countdown timer and give it to me after 20 days.

I dunno, what do you feel about time-based gameplay? Do you think it’s a good and important restriction? How else do you make items ‘rare’ if not by an indicator of gaming hours?

Personally, it’s okay.

I have work too, so, my mindset is – play whenever I can. If I didn’t get it on time, well, tough luck for me. I have much much more important things to do anyways.

I can’t have the best of both worlds.

I’m not sure why you feel you have to have the crystals faster. Most people forget to even do their daily crystal farm/run.

If you play less it means that you’ll get your stuff in the same number of play days as someone else.

It takes me 30 days of play to get 30 charged crystals and the same is true for you. Yes, I get them faster because I play more…but I play the same number of days without them that you do. Our game time is actually equal.

Time gating works to the advantage of people who can’t play every day. It stops people like me from getting everything in two days, where it might take you a month.

Vayne.8563:

I’m not sure why you feel you have to have the crystals faster. Most people forget to even do their daily crystal farm/run.

If you play less it means that you’ll get your stuff in the same number of play days as someone else.

It takes me 30 days of play to get 30 charged crystals and the same is true for you. Yes, I get them faster because I play more…but I play the same number of days without them that you do. Our game time is actually equal.

Time gating works to the advantage of people who can’t play every day. It stops people like me from getting everything in two days, where it might take you a month.

Interesting, I hadn’t considered that. What you’re saying means it comes down to ‘hours played’ ,rather than ‘time progressed’ for both players.

However, lets say I only am ABLE to play 1 hr a week. Is it fair for me to wait almost a year of my life to get the items I want?

There needs to be a system that caters for all. A system that time-gates the players that play frequently, but still allows freedom for players who can’t play as frequently.

Something like you get 1 item per day, or if you leave it unattended you get 20 per month.

Jatacid.3725:

Vayne.8563:

I’m not sure why you feel you have to have the crystals faster. Most people forget to even do their daily crystal farm/run.

If you play less it means that you’ll get your stuff in the same number of play days as someone else.

It takes me 30 days of play to get 30 charged crystals and the same is true for you. Yes, I get them faster because I play more…but I play the same number of days without them that you do. Our game time is actually equal.

Time gating works to the advantage of people who can’t play every day. It stops people like me from getting everything in two days, where it might take you a month.

Interesting, I hadn’t considered that. What you’re saying means it comes down to ‘hours played’ ,rather than ‘time progressed’ for both players.

However, lets say I only am ABLE to play 1 hr a week. Is it fair for me to wait almost a year of my life to get the items I want?

There needs to be a system that caters for all. A system that time-gates the players that play frequently, but still allows freedom for players who can’t play as frequently.

Something like you get 1 item per day, or if you leave it unattended you get 20 per month.

It wouldn’t be fair if this was some other MMO where those items were needed to play. But in fact, they’re not. They’re not even the best item you can get. Very few people even care about celestial gear. Many people believe berserker (or the condition version of it) are the best gear in the game.

Maybe if this were the hands down best stuff in the game, I could see your point. But truthfully, I have no plans on making any celestial anything.

In Age of Wushu, there is a daily cap of how much xp you can earn in your crafting and gathering professions, but if you don’t hit that cap when you log in today, the cap is raised tomorrow so you have 2 days worth of xp you can earn. Log in 3 days and don’t hit it? the 4th day you’ll have tons of xp you can earn.

I think something similar would be a great addition to GW2’s time-restricted activities. You can only do 1 charged crystal per day, but if you don’t log on Tuesday & Wednesday, then when you log in on Thursday you can make 3 (Tue+Wed+Thu). This continues to keep the playing field level while also allowing players to keep up if they were unable to log in. So they don’t feel like they have to log in to keep up.

I think that’d be a nice way to do things but ANet’s sales team (aka the team in charge) wants us all logging in every day since that’s more eyes to view their gemstore.

I think its perfectly fair as long as its cosmetic or none game depending item. This game dont have any items you need but cant get at any time.
Also when it comes to cosmetics and such I think it would be unfair to players putting down time to get them if any player that play much less can get them in other ways, say buy them or get them faster after a event.
Also it would not be very fun to get everything you want with minimal work, every single one would have it then and none of us would feel like we accomplished something.
In the end it comes down to prioreties.

Jatacid.3725:

However, lets say I only am ABLE to play 1 hr a week. Is it fair for me to wait almost a year of my life to get the items I want?

“Hours played = stuff gained” is the very definition of fair, because it’s the same for everyone. How many of those hours you play per day is totally your business, not Anet’s.

If you were to make a special arrangement that shrunk the number of hours played required to get something, for some people, that would be the very definition of unfair.

However, there’s some truth in what you say. Some people have more time than money, and others have more money than time (in terms of “willing or able to spend on the game”). Traditionally, MMOs have favoured people with more time than money. But recently they’ve seen the virtue of catering to people with more money than time too, much to the annoyance of some people who have more time than money

For those who really aren’t able to play many hours in the day, well, that’s partly what Cash Shops are for – for people who have more money than time, so they can get to roughly where people who have more time than money are (it’s why they sell things like XP boosters, etc.)

this game’s philosophy is to reward those who log in daily. not those that do difficult content, not those that play more, and certainly not those that have a life during the weekdays. there is so much tied to the “1 per day” philosophy that it feels like a job that you have to work at every day or you fall behind. and yet, there’s very little to gain in this game anyway, which is why it feels like a pointless job. all this time gating and nothing to really show for it. the game wants you to log in every day, but for what reason? why does it insist i play by its schedule and not my own? i have my own speculations but i’ll leave it to the reader to draw their own conclusions.

The issue I see is this. Suppose Joe and Dave both play 7 hours a week. Joe plays 1 hour per day whereas Dave plays 7 hours on Sunday. The way the game is, Joe can get all 7 dailies done in the week whereas Dave can only get one daily done for the Sunday he plays.

How you allocate your play time becomes important with respect to daily rewards. This on the surface appeals to casuals but in fact it only caters to a subset of the casuals.

Why do you care about abusive time restrictions? Do you let the game dictate how you spend your only life on this earth? That’s how it sounds like. You log in because you have daily to do. You log out because you’ve done your daily. Does it make your life better in any way that you go out and slay 30 critters to get 1 more achievement point for your game account?

Zenith.6403:

Why do you care about abusive time restrictions? Do you let the game dictate how you spend your only life on this earth? That’s how it sounds like. You log in because you have daily to do. You log out because you’ve done your daily. Does it make your life better in any way that you go out and slay 30 critters to get 1 more achievement point for your game account?

well sure, if you compare with human mortality you can trivialize anything

2/10 for effort