Guild Wars 2

I’m trying to figure out the logical reasoning behind so many rewards like the Pristine Fractal Relic and Guild Mission Commendations being limited daily or weekly. The same applies to dungeon tokens limits to a lesser extent, but there are ways to minimize the impact of these limits, and dungeon gear itself is primarily a cosmetic-only “upgrade” aside from some stats not available in crafted/karma armors. I’m not questioning the reasoning behind dragon/meta event chests being limited daily, as those have clear impact on the rare item and ecto markets. The primary issue I see is the limits on ascended gear and the other items available with the same tokens.

Ascended gear doesn’t have any market impact at all, unless someone decides to skip exotics/rares completely and go straight to ascended from masterwork. It’s all bound on acquire, so once you have it, you’re stuck with it. So why is process of getting it so artificially drawn out over a long period of time?

I don’t think it is to keep a hardcore player from gaining an advantage over a casual player sooner. This doesn’t really make sense, as the casual player is likely going to get ascended gear slower even with the daily limits. I doubt the casual player is going to do a FotM 10+ daily, get the max possible Commendations each week, or even do every single daily for laurels. Ascended gear is already setup to be something the hardcore player is going to get faster, and time-consuming enough that many casuals will be put off by it. Would anyone be hurt by having the ability to get more than one FotM “daily” chest, or more than two Commendations per per week? In my opinion, this would open it up more to casual/weekend players, giving them a chance to earn several Pristine Relics in a weekend instread of just 2.

The other likely reason that comes to mind is simply keeping people playing by dangling a carrot on a stick in front of us, while forcing us to wear concrete shoes to slow us down. We were told when the ascended tier was added, that it was a step between exotic and legendary, and was intended to be in between those two tiers in terms for effort/difficulty to get. But are such strict and absolute time limitations necessary for this? To me, that’s a really cheap/cheesy way to keep people playing, and one that is not likely to work well on the casual players, which are probably the majority of the playerbase.

I’m somewhere in between the typical hardcore and casual, and this system doesn’t do anything for me. In fact, it’s done nothing but put me off to the idea of even bothering with ascended gear. I have a considerable amount of time to play, but I don’t do dungeons/FotM constantly because I only do them with friends. I would love to be able to do a couple FotM “daily” runs when my friends are actually on, but trying to organize this once every single day is just not feasible or desirable.

So, what is the real reason behind these reward systems being limited the way they are? And who is it supposed to be benefiting? As someone with 8 level 80s, and no real “main” between them aside from my wvw commander, this is certainly not benefiting me in any way. It’s a ridiculously long process that gets even longer with every piece added. The fact that I have to always use the same character in FotM (since level progress isn’t account based) makes it more tedious.

Simple answer: because it is very easy to get best gear in this game. Note, I’m talking about the difficulty in acquiring the gear, not how much time it takes to get it, and if you remove the time restraint you could have full Ascended on all your chars in a week tops.

Arenanet had to choose between having the best gear inside some horrible super hard raid, or have them on a huge time gate, it’s obvious which one they chose for good or bad, both options have their disadvantages and advantages but both have the same goal: make top gear “harder” to get, so players always have something to do.

Because if it wasn’t time gated, everyone would have everything in a few days and complain about having nothing to do while the devs create new content.

I agree that this timegate is probably better than sticking it all in some super-hard dungeon, but couldn’t the limits be relaxed some and still maintain the same goal?

Even shifting the daily FotM to maybe an “anytime” chest you can do 7 times each week. So you can do 7 runs on a Saturday if that’s your only day to play. The same time constraint, but in a more flexible manner.

As it is now, I think it’s set up for a certain playstyle, and being very harmful to others. Doing everything once every day, on a single character. And if you miss out a day…you’re just out that reward and have to wait longer.

The worst part for me, and I’d imagine quite a few others, is doing this on multiple characters. For those of us that have the time for alts, would there be any harm from having these limits character based?

I’d like to be able to do some extra daily tasks that were character-based to earn some character-bound Laurel type reward. It wouldn’t speed up the process of getting gear for a single char, but it would enable those with the time for alts to put more effort into getting gear for them at the same pace.

Shonie.5297:

Because if it wasn’t time gated, everyone would have everything in a few days and complain about having nothing to do while the devs create new content.

I think it if wasn’t time gated, the actual effort required could be adjusted to compensate for that. But yes, the most hardcore gear addicts would have it long before everyone else…and that is even the case (to a lesser degree) in the current system.

I’d rather have “something to do” other than stat-chasing better gear, but that has been thoroughly discussed in other threads. We have the gear chase, but we can still push for it to be improved upon.

Shonie.5297:

Because if it wasn’t time gated, everyone would have everything in a few days and complain about having nothing to do while the devs create new content.

Which will eventually happen anyway after ascended armor, weapon’s’stuff. And then? More ascended gear? Which will make it even unlikelier to catch up after a break or multiple characters.

IMHO this “complaint” can only be ignored if you don’t want to create yet another standard mmo. None of the people I know in-game ever complained about that there was nothing to do. Some played hardcore WvW, the others casually with either one or 8 characters. We had a blast with the Karka event even though some didn’t get a chest but never complained.

Nowerdays content is just about progression here, progression there. Which in turn has led to almost everyone of our group, including me, to not play anymore.

Kiza.5630:

Shonie.5297:

Because if it wasn’t time gated, everyone would have everything in a few days and complain about having nothing to do while the devs create new content.

Which will eventually happen anyway after ascended armor, weapon’s’stuff. And then? More ascended gear? Which will make it even unlikelier to catch up after a break or multiple characters.

IMHO this “complaint” can only be ignored if you don’t want to create yet another standard mmo. None of the people I know in-game ever complained about that there was nothing to do. Some played hardcore WvW, the others casually with either one or 8 characters. We had a blast with the Karka event even though some didn’t get a chest but never complained.

Nowerdays content is just about progression here, progression there. Which in turn has led to almost everyone of our group, including me, to not play anymore.

Like I said in my OP, if this is the main reason for the timegating/limits, it’s just bad system. To me, that is just a cop-out on actual content in favor of just dangling a carrot that we are only allowed to crawl towards. It’s a stop-gap system that doesn’t work in the long run, unless they keep adding even more gear, which I really hope they don’t do. I’m not saying the game lacks content, because I’m still working on dungeon gear, getting a legendary, and doing a lot of wvw.

I guess I just feel like I’m being punished with a horribly slow system (it’s ok for single character players, but it’s terrible for multi-character) because someone else rushed to get everything on a single character, then complained they had nothing to do.

I prefer a horizontal/cosmetic progression, but I wouldn’t have a problem with the current vertical progression if it was set up to be viable to more than a single playstyle.

I do think some cosmetic items (rare exotic skins, etc) with RNG drops would be something to keep people busy, without creating any issues with how hard it is to get. Just like legendaries and existing rare named items are now. This worked pretty well in GW1 with rare skins dropping only from certain dungeons.

A cop out, dangling a carrot, instead of actual content. Program much?

Actual content takes ages to develop and release. Lest you forget, the Fractals are actual content. They didn’t write them in a weekend. Most good actual content takes so much time, that there’s no conceivable way that ANY developer anywhere in the world could create content as fast as content-locusts devour it. It’s completely 100% impossible.

So what every company does is make it so that it takes a long time to get stuff. WoW hides it behind raids that take a long time to learn, get the hang of and STILL have lock outs on raids. Guild Wars 2 does it the other way.

I prefer the Guild Wars 2 way, personally. Expecting enough content to keep people playing indefinitely shows a lack of understanding of how games are made.

No game I’ve played has come out with more initial content than Guild Wars 2. Then they’ve released the Fractals and some other cool stuff as well. The game is being built, like every MMO gets built. A bit at a time.

Look at how small Rift was at launch, or how much content even WoW offered at launch. We’re six months into the life cycle of an MMO. I think the company is doing pretty good.

In two years, there’ll be a lot more content. But until then, yes, there will be measures taken to slow people down.

I don’t see how that’s a cop out.

Vayne.8563:

A cop out, dangling a carrot, instead of actual content. Program much?

Actual content takes ages to develop and release. Lest you forget, the Fractals are actual content. They didn’t write them in a weekend. Most good actual content takes so much time, that there’s no conceivable way that ANY developer anywhere in the world could create content as fast as content-locusts devour it. It’s completely 100% impossible.

So what every company does is make it so that it takes a long time to get stuff. WoW hides it behind raids that take a long time to learn, get the hang of and STILL have lock outs on raids. Guild Wars 2 does it the other way.

I prefer the Guild Wars 2 way, personally. Expecting enough content to keep people playing indefinitely shows a lack of understanding of how games are made.

No game I’ve played has come out with more initial content than Guild Wars 2. Then they’ve released the Fractals and some other cool stuff as well. The game is being built, like every MMO gets built. A bit at a time.

Look at how small Rift was at launch, or how much content even WoW offered at launch. We’re six months into the life cycle of an MMO. I think the company is doing pretty good.

In two years, there’ll be a lot more content. But until then, yes, there will be measures taken to slow people down.

I don’t see how that’s a cop out.

You’re right, they can’t keep up with the content locusts. No one could. But I think they are doing more harm than good in trying to keep that group occupied. You can’t keep them occupied with stat progression without making that progression a ridiculously slow progress for other types of players.

I’m not expecting any more content that what we’ve been getting. The cop out I was referring to is expecting this progression element keep people busy, when there are other options that would have taken similar programming efforts and kept more than a single type of player satisfied. This system might be great for the single-character content locusts that do Fractals every day and rush to get every guild commendation possible, but it’s a disaster for those that love alts. To me, that’s a cop out to everyone outside the content locust group. They added something to temporarily occupy one group of players, while at the same time alienating another. Alienating a group that GW2 was touted in pre-release blogs as being “friendly to” and even encouraging it as a playstyle.

The content locusts already have all their ascended gear now anyway, or will have it very soon. They had their rings a couple weeks after the Pristine Relics were added (before if RNG liked them), they got their amulets in February, and now they are finishing up the last guild missions for commendations to get their accessories. They are done, and will move on or beg for more to devour, while many alt-loving players stare in disgust at the year long (and growing) timegate-fest we have ahead of us.

I think Fractals were a nice addition, and some of them are fun dungeons. But I don’t want to do them every day for the next 6 months on the same character just to get 20 rings. That’s 2 rings for each char, and 2 more sets for my guard and ele that commonly use different builds. Minus any RNG luck, that’s 200 days of fractal dailies.

This is the same developer that kept people playing a game with zero gear progression for many years. I know they can do better than this, because they have done it already. I don’t expect more content that what we’ve been given, but I do expect them to at least live up to the points they advertised, and to the standards they proved themselves capable of holding to for 7 years.

mrstealth.6701:

Vayne.8563:

A cop out, dangling a carrot, instead of actual content. Program much?

Actual content takes ages to develop and release. Lest you forget, the Fractals are actual content. They didn’t write them in a weekend. Most good actual content takes so much time, that there’s no conceivable way that ANY developer anywhere in the world could create content as fast as content-locusts devour it. It’s completely 100% impossible.

So what every company does is make it so that it takes a long time to get stuff. WoW hides it behind raids that take a long time to learn, get the hang of and STILL have lock outs on raids. Guild Wars 2 does it the other way.

I prefer the Guild Wars 2 way, personally. Expecting enough content to keep people playing indefinitely shows a lack of understanding of how games are made.

No game I’ve played has come out with more initial content than Guild Wars 2. Then they’ve released the Fractals and some other cool stuff as well. The game is being built, like every MMO gets built. A bit at a time.

Look at how small Rift was at launch, or how much content even WoW offered at launch. We’re six months into the life cycle of an MMO. I think the company is doing pretty good.

In two years, there’ll be a lot more content. But until then, yes, there will be measures taken to slow people down.

I don’t see how that’s a cop out.

You’re right, they can’t keep up with the content locusts. No one could. But I think they are doing more harm than good in trying to keep that group occupied. You can’t keep them occupied with stat progression without making that progression a ridiculously slow progress for other types of players.

I’m not expecting any more content that what we’ve been getting. The cop out I was referring to is expecting this progression element keep people busy, when there are other options that would have taken similar programming efforts and kept more than a single type of player satisfied. This system might be great for the single-character content locusts that do Fractals every day and rush to get every guild commendation possible, but it’s a disaster for those that love alts. To me, that’s a cop out to everyone outside the content locust group. They added something to temporarily occupy one group of players, while at the same time alienating another. Alienating a group that GW2 was touted in pre-release blogs as being “friendly to” and even encouraging it as a playstyle.

The content locusts already have all their ascended gear now anyway, or will have it very soon. They had their rings a couple weeks after the Pristine Relics were added (before if RNG liked them), they got their amulets in February, and now they are finishing up the last guild missions for commendations to get their accessories. They are done, and will move on or beg for more to devour, while many alt-loving players stare in disgust at the year long (and growing) timegate-fest we have ahead of us.

I think Fractals were a nice addition, and some of them are fun dungeons. But I don’t want to do them every day for the next 6 months on the same character just to get 20 rings. That’s 2 rings for each char, and 2 more sets for my guard and ele that commonly use different builds. Minus any RNG luck, that’s 200 days of fractal dailies.

This is the same developer that kept people playing a game with zero gear progression for many years. I know they can do better than this, because they have done it already. I don’t expect more content that what we’ve been given, but I do expect them to at least live up to the points they advertised, and to the standards they proved themselves capable of holding to for 7 years.

I think you’re underestimating how fast the average player clears stuff and how much some types of players (not me) need to be kept occupied. When I was young, I had to find things to do. Nothing really competed for my entertainment time. Times have changed since then and if you don’t provide at least the illusion of things to do you’re going to lose a whole lot more players. It doesn’t have to be good. It doesn’t have to be reasonable. It has to be busywork. For me, that kind of thing is not necessary but I think it would be dangerous for any game to underestimate the importance of this.

Surely you remember the number of nothing to do threads from a few months ago. Now they’re the exception, not the rule.

Vayne.8563:

Surely you remember the number of nothing to do threads from a few months ago. Now they’re the exception, not the rule.

This was discussed a little in another thread, not sure which, and there’s a good chance it’s deleted or tossed into one of the mega-threads. An attempt to compare the number of “nothing to do” threads to the complaints about ascended gear and grind/timegating. It seemed to lean towards the “nothing to do” threads being less common, but it’s nearly impossible to get an accurate picture with threads being lost/deleted/merged.

If I had to guess, I’d say that a good portion of those players left before any of this was added, and that quite a few never looked back, and never will at any time in the future. But, as with the forum threads, we will never know the real numbers behind it.

Forums being what they are, that was likely a situation of one vocal minority vs another vocal minority. The majority of players were most likely happy with the existing content/things to do. Anet’s decision about the “problem” was to actively appease one vocal minority, while creating another vocal minority that was adversely effected by their solution to what was, to them and the majority of players, a non-existant problem.

As a member of the latter vocal minority, I don’t think there was a a problem from a game standpoint. The content locusts surely did not have 8 level 80s, fully geared up for every build they would want to run, and had every legendary/rare named weapon they wanted that soon after the game’s release. If they really wanted something to do, they could get a legendary for an alt, collect every rare weapon they like, do wvw or spvp. They surely had options for things to do, but they chose to ignore them in favor of wanting progression of a single character. There is nothing wrong with wanting that, but Anet handled the situation by giving them what they wanted despite the fact that it was detrimental to another type/group of players.

In the end, we have the content locusts/vertical progression-lovers that are temporarily satisfied, the alt/horizonal progression-lovers that are permanently dissatisifed, and the majority that will continue on like none of this ever happened. My opinion is biased here, but I think I’d rather let the impossible to satisfy group fade away and focus on the group that was satisfied with things as they were. Anet chose to attempt to satisfy the locusts, for whatever reason.

I’m just trying to find the logic in appeasing one small group, at the cost of pushing away another (seemingly somewhat larger) small group.

It’s “Gated Content” an artificial slow down designed to force players to login so they will get certain gear..over a long period of time..

mrstealth.6701:

Vayne.8563:

Surely you remember the number of nothing to do threads from a few months ago. Now they’re the exception, not the rule.

This was discussed a little in another thread, not sure which, and there’s a good chance it’s deleted or tossed into one of the mega-threads. An attempt to compare the number of “nothing to do” threads to the complaints about ascended gear and grind/timegating. It seemed to lean towards the “nothing to do” threads being less common, but it’s nearly impossible to get an accurate picture with threads being lost/deleted/merged.

If I had to guess, I’d say that a good portion of those players left before any of this was added, and that quite a few never looked back, and never will at any time in the future. But, as with the forum threads, we will never know the real numbers behind it.

Forums being what they are, that was likely a situation of one vocal minority vs another vocal minority. The majority of players were most likely happy with the existing content/things to do. Anet’s decision about the “problem” was to actively appease one vocal minority, while creating another vocal minority that was adversely effected by their solution to what was, to them and the majority of players, a non-existant problem.

As a member of the latter vocal minority, I don’t think there was a a problem from a game standpoint. The content locusts surely did not have 8 level 80s, fully geared up for every build they would want to run, and had every legendary/rare named weapon they wanted that soon after the game’s release. If they really wanted something to do, they could get a legendary for an alt, collect every rare weapon they like, do wvw or spvp. They surely had options for things to do, but they chose to ignore them in favor of wanting progression of a single character. There is nothing wrong with wanting that, but Anet handled the situation by giving them what they wanted despite the fact that it was detrimental to another type/group of players.

In the end, we have the content locusts/vertical progression-lovers that are temporarily satisfied, the alt/horizonal progression-lovers that are permanently dissatisifed, and the majority that will continue on like none of this ever happened. My opinion is biased here, but I think I’d rather let the impossible to satisfy group fade away and focus on the group that was satisfied with things as they were. Anet chose to attempt to satisfy the locusts, for whatever reason.

I’m just trying to find the logic in appeasing one small group, at the cost of pushing away another (seemingly somewhat larger) small group.

I moderated fan forum, before I started posting here, I’ve since left, but I know for a fact that there were tons of posts about nothing to do at 80 and then they stopped. So my information isn’t just from these forums.

Dante.1508:

It’s “Gated Content” an artificial slow down designed to force players to login so they will get certain gear..over a long period of time..

= a cheap way to artifically extend the game’s length and keep players coming back.

Guess what, it’s not working too well.

Shonie.5297:

Because if it wasn’t time gated, everyone would have everything in a few days and complain about having nothing to do while the devs create new content.

^This.

And honestly it’s much better than grind gating, doesn’t force people to grind yet leaves time to devs for making new content.

Red Falcon.8257:

Shonie.5297:

Because if it wasn’t time gated, everyone would have everything in a few days and complain about having nothing to do while the devs create new content.

^This.

And honestly it’s much better than grind gating, doesn’t force people to grind yet leaves time to devs for making new content.

The grind is what is being gated by time. The carrot is more powerful gear. Dailies/monthlies/guild missions/fotm are the activities you grind to get the carrot. Standard MMO fare. Even WoW, which I assume you would refer to as ‘grind’ gated, has time gating as well. There is a limit placed on how much valor you can earn and how many shots at given gear you have each week. Standard MMO fare. There is absolutely nothing new or different here.

Raine.1394:

Red Falcon.8257:

Shonie.5297:

Because if it wasn’t time gated, everyone would have everything in a few days and complain about having nothing to do while the devs create new content.

^This.

And honestly it’s much better than grind gating, doesn’t force people to grind yet leaves time to devs for making new content.

The grind is what is being gated by time. The carrot is more powerful gear. Dailies/monthlies/guild missions/fotm are the activities you grind to get the carrot. Standard MMO fare. Even WoW, which I assume you would refer to as ‘grind’ gated, has time gating as well. There is a limit placed on how much valor you can earn and how many shots at given gear you have each week. Standard MMO fare. There is absolutely nothing new or different here.

Except that you don’t need the ascended stuff to do dungeons, or WvW, or SPvP. You can do just fine without them, and that IS different.

The only “gated” content in this game is the higher level of the fractals. People who care about the higher levels of the fractals will get the stuff they need running the fractals. Nothing else in this game requires that grind. There’s no raid you’re locked out of, no dungeon you can’t do because you don’t have it. You can even see every single fractal without a single piece of ascended gear. The lower levels might have mobs with more health, or bosses that do agony, but it’s just the same thing, getting harder and harder.

There’s a major difference between having to grind to play content, and not having to grind at all, if you don’t want to.

Raine.1394:

Red Falcon.8257:

Shonie.5297:

Because if it wasn’t time gated, everyone would have everything in a few days and complain about having nothing to do while the devs create new content.

^This.

And honestly it’s much better than grind gating, doesn’t force people to grind yet leaves time to devs for making new content.

The grind is what is being gated by time. The carrot is more powerful gear. Dailies/monthlies/guild missions/fotm are the activities you grind to get the carrot. Standard MMO fare. Even WoW, which I assume you would refer to as ‘grind’ gated, has time gating as well. There is a limit placed on how much valor you can earn and how many shots at given gear you have each week. Standard MMO fare. There is absolutely nothing new or different here.

The last time I played WoW, you could walk out of that time gated content empty handed many times, and had to fight over what you wanted. I can safely say that I’ve never had to fight over anyone with /roll for the gear I worked for in this game. Plus, you get some form of currency everytime you do said content to work towards what you want. Lol, we have it EXTREMELY good. Anyone who thinks otherwise should go raid for a few months in WoW, and see if they have the gear they want.

Because casuals ruin everything. Any kitten can log in and chop down 10 trees and get 5% closer to that piece of gear. But if arena net made challenging PvE content that droped that gear casuals would cry because they would have to use their brains instead of standing on a rock to negate any kind of mechanic or actually learn how to play their class.

Games are about making money, and pandering to the lowest common denominator works, there is really ZERO reason to even touch the PvE side of this game. WvWvW is beyond boring/broken the only thing that makes this game worth playing is SPvP and thats not saying alot.

Does anyone see a benefit to this, from a player perspective? Other than extending the process and keeping more people in the game for you to play with, is there anything good this does for you?

Maybe some of you like that hardcore players have a limiting fact that prevents them from getting ahead faster. I can’t think of anything else, which is why I’m asking.

My reasons for this thread were mainly centered around the impact this timegate has for alts/multi-character players. So does anyone else think the current system is too restrictive for alts? Would character based timegates be better?

I’m not doing FotM all that often, and my guild is only doing a Guild Missions (we only have Bounty and Trek) a couple times a week(I can only get rewards once anyway), so my daily progress on this gear chase is limited to the hour or so it takes to do the daily. My timegated wait is 8-10x longer than a single-character/build focused player. I have more than that hour a day to play, so should I be able to use some of that time to get some progress on my multiple characters at the same pace?

Because ArenaNet is terrible at balancing progression. So they dress it up with time gates.

Pretty sure anet said themselves they found players getting things too quickly so what better way to slow that down than gated content which artificially extends play time

I look at it this way that ppl did not want to grind but if they could grind they would call it such so Anet removed the ability to grind events to get this gear. Daily and weekly are a way to deal with grinding and simply removed it as a chose to play in the game. Its like ppl who hate RNG but also hate all the different types of currency but in fact its these currency that are a counter to RNG.

All of this is in effect due to what ppl have been saying on the forums.

Raine.1394:

The grind is what is being gated by time. The carrot is more powerful gear. Dailies/monthlies/guild missions/fotm are the activities you grind to get the carrot. Standard MMO fare.

I do agree with this. It is a grind, it’s just spread out over time. There would probably be more people complaining about the grind if the timegate wasn’t there. The amount of grind is a lot less than the grind in some MMOs, but that doesn’t take away the fact that it’s still a grind. My problem with it is that there is nothing I can do to make gearing up my 8 characters any faster than going throw the entire wait 8x longer. That’s a minimum of 6 months of doing everything I can get to earn rewards, and I’m assuming there will be more pieces added before that six months is up…adding more months to the process.

I’ve seen all of the Fractals, and I think my guild has killed every one of the bounty bosses at least once. I’ve seen all the content there, so the reasons left to do it again are the rewards. The same applies to the other dungeons in the game, but the difference is those dungeons offer only cosmetic “upgrades” to gear.

RoRO.8270:

Pretty sure anet said themselves they found players getting things too quickly so what better way to slow that down than gated content which artificially extends play time

I thought that was more for those that already had legendary weapons. There were already so many things to “work on” other than a legendary. It’s not like we had no gap between karma/crafted exotics and legendaries. A lot of the named weapons even take a considerable amount of the same items as legendaries, like various Gifts and lodestones. At the time this new tier was added, myself and everyone I play with, were still working on getting exotic gear for our characters. I’m still doing that for trying alternate builds for my characters.

Jski.6180:

Its like ppl who hate RNG but also hate all the different types of currency but in fact its these currency that are a counter to RNG.

I don’t mind RNG, as long as it’s not the primary(or only) method of getting something “required” or better. This was a lesson learned with FotM early on. The tokens, etc are a nice way to make sure those not lucky with RNG get rewarded, but I think RNG still has a place. For example, a rare chance for a dungeon chest to give you a “super token” or enough tokens get an entire set of armor.

It’s the same principle as a slot machine. How many people would keep tossing in quarters for hours and hours if it gave you back 26 cents each time? But they will sit there for hours and happily lose money for that small chance of winning big.

Time gating like this is not a legitimate way to keep players around. The way you keep players, and get more, is by adding new content – new things to do in the game.

The last 3 weeks have just been:

-Log in
-Do daily Fractal
-Do daily
-Log off

It gets boring VERY fast, and gets you to the point where you ask yourself “Once I get all this daily stuff I’m grinding for, what then?”. You then quickly realize that there’s nothing else to do. You will always be repeating what you have been doing from the beginning.

Hope you guys realize this time gating thing was made as a measure to stop all those people from coming here again to cry there is no endgame all day.
You’re blaming Anet for something the majority of this community has requested.

EzRemake.1860:

Time gating like this is not a legitimate way to keep players around. The way you keep players, and get more, is by adding new content – new things to do in the game.

The last 3 weeks have just been:

-Log in
-Do daily Fractal
-Do daily
-Log off

It gets boring VERY fast, and gets you to the point where you ask yourself “Once I get all this daily stuff I’m grinding for, what then?”. You then quickly realize that there’s nothing else to do. You will always be repeating what you have been doing from the beginning.

I’m not to that point yet, largely because of not focusing on a single character. I do want a legendary for my necro (maybe more later), but getting the others in good gear is a priority over that because I like being able to pick any one of my characters for any activity. My necromancer has the commander tag, and will get the legendary, but that it not the only character I want to play in wvw.

The content available at release has been, and still is being, enough to keep me with things to do for a couple thousand hours. I don’t know just how many people ran out of things to do, but I doubt it was anywhere near the majority.

I agree with you that these daily goals are not enough to keep people playing. If I was only working on a single character, I would have a legendary by now. I probably would have had it a while ago. My focus would have shifted to other weapons, maybe a 2nd legendary or some of the Mystic Forge weapons. After that, if all I had left to do was daily FotM and a daily for Laurels, I would either leave or focus solely on wvw.

Red Falcon.8257:

Hope you guys realize this time gating thing was made as a measure to stop all those people from coming here again to cry there is no endgame all day.
You’re blaming Anet for something the majority of this community has requested.

There is no end game though. Time gate grinding is not an endgame, it’s a tranquilizer. Actual end game would be content to persue. Once you get all your ascended gear, you are right back to stage 1 : nothing to do.

Red Falcon.8257:

Hope you guys realize this time gating thing was made as a measure to stop all those people from coming here again to cry there is no endgame all day.
You’re blaming Anet for something the majority of this community has requested.

We’ll never really know of the majority requested it, but I highly doubt that group that wanted it was a majority. The outcry against it was from a group at least as large, if not larger.

To me, their crying over “no end game” or “nothing to do” was largely invalid. Maybe there was nothing to do that appealed to them, but that does not mean there is nothing to do. There was a decent sized group that rushed to get legendary weapons, but was that really the only thing for them to do? GW2 has 8 professions, 5 races, 21 legendary weapons, and numerous other weapons that take a huge effort to craft. If someone decides to ignore all of that, why does that mean there is a problem with the game?

I do think it’s reasonable that Anet wanted to do something to appease this group, but they needed to do so in a manner that was not damaging to other types of players. The post-November outcry that is still continuing today is proof that they failed to do this.

EzRemake.1860:

There is no end game though. Time gate grinding is not an endgame, it’s a tranquilizer. Actual end game would be content to persue. Once you get all your ascended gear, you are right back to stage 1 : nothing to do.

I don’t think I’d say there was no end game. The actual end-game goals (at release) are the same as the ones GW1 had. Going after rare/prestige weapons that were only cosmetic upgrades. The difference is how those are acquired. With GW1, most of them were RNG/luck from doing a certain dungeon or other end-game area. GW2 takes the route of making them all a set grind of gathering materials, some with horribly low drop rates (thinking about lodestones here).

People seem to find the former method more enjoyable, and I’m not talking about just for games. As with the slot machine reference earlier, people tend to enjoy getting lucky more than slowly working towards a goal.

Ask yourselves one simple question: Which of the following would you find more fun/enjoyable?
1) Working an hour at your job to earn $15, knowing that no matter what you do, you are getting no more or less than $15.
2) Playing a slot machine(or any other sort of money gambling game) for an hour, and making (or even losing) $15, but knowing you have a chance to win $1500.

The problem isn’t the goals. The problem is everything that is considered “endgame” is just the same content being repeated over and over again. There are only 2 dungeons that are for level 80s only.

Endgame is something that offers the level 80s content to do. In GW2 you just go back and do the dungeons you’ve already done at a lower level, and you do them over, and over, and over.

If there were 4 level 80 dungeons, that were exclusive to level 80s only, like Arah, then you could have a bit more of an argument that there is end game – because there is more content geared for the end of the game.

GW1 didn’t have this problem, level cap was reached very fast, and then 90% of the content of the rest of the game was all for the level capped. You could argue the whole game was “end-game”.

The explorable modes for dungeons scale down for level 35, 45, etc, but they are geared towards being completed by level 80 players with exotic gear. It’s not like most other games where a level 80 can just sweep through a level 40 dungeon solo. Downscaling keeps the content valid, even for level 80s. Downscaling could help to make the entire game end-game content, but the downscaling in the open world still leaves most areas as trivial for a level 80.

Even so, I would prefer some more dungeons that were level 80. The downscaling system does kind of wreak havoc on stats like +crit damage, healing power, and condition damage.

Encouraging players to log in on a daily / weekly basis helps establish the game as part of a routine, which helps retention.

Dailies are huge in that respect, and I bet they have research about membership in huge guilds backing up the rewards tilted to encourage that.

It’s all about customer engagement and retention.

mrstealth.6701:

Does anyone see a benefit to this, from a player perspective? Other than extending the process and keeping more people in the game for you to play with, is there anything good this does for you?

Maybe some of you like that hardcore players have a limiting fact that prevents them from getting ahead faster. I can’t think of anything else, which is why I’m asking.

My reasons for this thread were mainly centered around the impact this timegate has for alts/multi-character players. So does anyone else think the current system is too restrictive for alts? Would character based timegates be better?

I’m not doing FotM all that often, and my guild is only doing a Guild Missions (we only have Bounty and Trek) a couple times a week(I can only get rewards once anyway), so my daily progress on this gear chase is limited to the hour or so it takes to do the daily. My timegated wait is 8-10x longer than a single-character/build focused player. I have more than that hour a day to play, so should I be able to use some of that time to get some progress on my multiple characters at the same pace?

I see a benefit from it. It increases the life of the game for a lot of people, which is a benefit to me. I don’t see how people don’t think this is a benefit.

If people leave the game, and the game has less people (and some people do once they have their characters kitted out), then there’s less people. Zones are less busy. PvP is less busy. WvW is less busy. Especially a game with open world events like this, less busy is bad. In Guild Wars 1 this would have mattered a lot less. You’d take your heroes and go, but not here.

This game was designed for a lot of people to be playing. So people have to remain playing. If you don’t see that having more people playing is beneficial to the game, I’m not sure what to tell you. And yes, more people playing means more cash flow, means more available content in the future as well.

Some people see the forest, some people see the trees. You can call any number of trees without endangering a forest. But Anet pretty much has to look at the forest as a whole. These decisions which are business decisions are also good for the game.

I completely agree about GW2 being a game that needs to be populated. But none of this has really helped that at all. FotM actually hurt it at lot by drawing people into “must do” instanced content. What we need is something to get people into the open world as a whole, not just getting them online for 30-60 minutes to do a few dailes in Queensdale.

The only encouragement to fill the open world is those daily tasks, and people either get those with activities they were already doing (like FotM or dragon/meta events) or by going to the starter/low level zones. The level 30-75 maps are still empty most of the time.

The only time these maps get populated is during events with a chest, and that’s from people going to that map and leaving as soon as the event is over. The map isn’t populated, one tiny part of it is populated for a few minutes.

Someone running around on a new level 5 character might benefit from the dailies crowd if they can manage to hit an event mob before 20 level 80s steamroll the entire thing in seconds. This happens at quite a few starter-zone events, especially in the few hours after dailies reset. It’s the players that choose to behave that way, but the dailies are an encouragement to do so.

Get to a level 50 map like Timerline Falls, and you might as well be in a single player game. Last time I was in that map (this past week) I saw more bots than I did actual players…and I only saw 2-3 bots.