Guild Wars 2

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Would it be wrong of the developers to encourage people to play their game every day?

From a developer-viewpoint, of course.

Should the goal be to have players playing every day or making your content so enjoyable they want to play every day regardless of whether there is another time gated mechanic they will miss out on if they don’t? League of Legends is vastly more popular than GW2 (lets ignore that they are different genres) and while there is a daily mechanic (first win) it’s nothing compared to the levels GW2 takes it, yet League of Legends has no problems getting players to log in every day. It’s because players actually enjoy playing the game every day, not because they feel pressured to log in or lose their bonus points.

So yes, when the developer starts using limited time content and time gates as the primary (or anything other than incidental) motivator to play every day, something is seriously wrong. Wanting players to play every day is fine. Using time gates and temporary content instead of truly enjoyable and compelling gameplay is an abomination. Last time I played League of Legends, Halo, Mario Brothers, Pokemon or any other truly great game I didn’t have less fun because it wasn’t time gated.

Time gating is old school MMO design which should be abolished back to the dark ages of MMOs. Unfortunately ArenaNet isn’t as “progressive” as they wanted us to believe and are more than willing to compromise on good game design to promote daily log in metrics.

morrolan.9608:

For a game thats meant to be aimed at casual players why the need to get them to log in every single day?

Like I said the fortnightly content should be enough to keep players coming back for a few days every fortnight.

I’m guessing it increases the chance you will spend money on the cash shop as opposed to if you only login once a week

I suppose it would work that way for some people, but even on the weeks that I actually log in every day, I still never spend any money, so that logic definitely doesn’t work for me.

Celtic Lady.3729:

I suppose it would work that way for some people, but even on the weeks that I actually log in every day, I still never spend any money, so that logic definitely doesn’t work for me.

Ultimately, I think that’s exactly the idea behind it. That you or I don’t fall for it doesn’t matter, Zynga has taught us that LOTS of people do fall for it.

darkace.8925:

That you or I don’t fall for it doesn’t matter, Zynga has taught us that LOTS of people do fall for it.

Well, you’re right, of course. lol If my playstyle represented a majority of MMO players, the MMO companies would either be bankrupt or they’d be running their games a lot differently. Hehe.

Time gating and DR = makes sure people who spent time in the game doesn’t go too far ahead of those who spent little time.

If anything it makes me play less and less per day. Thank you anet for giving my life back.

Wukunlin.8461:

Time gating and DR = makes sure people who spent time in the game doesn’t go too far ahead of those who spent little time.

I don’t buy that with regards to charged quartz crystals. The gear it’s used to make is of the same tier and the stats offered give no competitive advantage over someone wearing any other exotic-tiered gear. And even if they were better than the other exotic gear (they’re not), letting players sell them on the Trading Post would have instantly leveled the playing field.

darkace.8925:

Wukunlin.8461:

Time gating and DR = makes sure people who spent time in the game doesn’t go too far ahead of those who spent little time.

I don’t buy that with regards to charged quartz crystals. The gear it’s used to make is of the same tier and the stats offered give no competitive advantage over someone wearing any other exotic-tiered gear. And even if they were better than the other exotic gear (they’re not), letting players sell them on the Trading Post would have instantly leveled the playing field.

You are thinking too logically. Forget about the viability of the stats for now. Everytime something new that comes out there are a bunch of people who wants to get them. Time gating the mats means people who barely plays the game can get then at the same pace as those they consider “hardcore” players. Giving them a nice sense of accomplishment. Making them account bound also means those “hardcore” players doesn’t get more wealthy then they do.

darkace.8925:

Wukunlin.8461:

Time gating and DR = makes sure people who spent time in the game doesn’t go too far ahead of those who spent little time.

I don’t buy that with regards to charged quartz crystals. The gear it’s used to make is of the same tier and the stats offered give no competitive advantage over someone wearing any other exotic-tiered gear. And even if they were better than the other exotic gear (they’re not), letting players sell them on the Trading Post would have instantly leveled the playing field.

Yeah but thats because its a test case for the introduction of ascended armor.

Shiren.9532:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Would it be wrong of the developers to encourage people to play their game every day?

From a developer-viewpoint, of course.

Should the goal be to have players playing every day or making your content so enjoyable they want to play every day regardless of whether there is another time gated mechanic they will miss out on if they don’t? League of Legends is vastly more popular than GW2 (lets ignore that they are different genres) and while there is a daily mechanic (first win) it’s nothing compared to the levels GW2 takes it, yet League of Legends has no problems getting players to log in every day. It’s because players actually enjoy playing the game every day, not because they feel pressured to log in or lose their bonus points.

So yes, when the developer starts using limited time content and time gates as the primary (or anything other than incidental) motivator to play every day, something is seriously wrong. Wanting players to play every day is fine. Using time gates and temporary content instead of truly enjoyable and compelling gameplay is an abomination. Last time I played League of Legends, Halo, Mario Brothers, Pokemon or any other truly great game I didn’t have less fun because it wasn’t time gated.

Time gating is old school MMO design which should be abolished back to the dark ages of MMOs. Unfortunately ArenaNet isn’t as “progressive” as they wanted us to believe and are more than willing to compromise on good game design to promote daily log in metrics.

They tried making a fun game at release and guess what A lot of people on this forum whine continously about how there is no goal or something to “work” on. Arenanet thought making a big world and putting content will get players to keep playing that didn’t work, so they are wisely using the true and tested methods that MMO players seem to enjoy.

Finally, you are making the extremely flawed comparison. You cannot compare an MMO to mario brothers or any single player game. An MMO can only function with players and it has a prepertual team working on it and generally cost more than a single player. Mario on the other hand once Shigeru is done working on a mario they print it and move on to a new project. Once Nintendo sold their copy it really doesn’t matter if anybody plays it or not they got their money, MMORPG are not that lucky.

Anyways, I see a lot of complaining I don’t see anybody coming up with solutions especially the OP that loves to whine, but seems averse to coming up with recommendations. It is the job of the developers to attempt to get players to play their games, you the player have the option of simply walking away and not playing ball.

Astralporing.1957:

Galen Grey.4709:

Which one would you go with?

With diminshing return. Let’s say you can craft one t7 mat/charged crystal daily. If you want to craft more, you can, but each additional attempt will cost you double. Third attempt – double again (and so on). Then (in case of ascended gear, you can drop this step for celestial exotic sets) repeat the same with armor pieces, but on a weekly basis.
Now, someone that wants to farm like hell to get their gear set faster, can, but will soon hit ridiculous cost levels. Casuals are mostly unaffected (and if they want to get their gear just a little bit faster, it should also be within their reach.

Wouldn’t something like that be far better than what we have now?

Note: The above example is not too well thought out as far as precise mats calculations go. I am sure it could be designed far better, and finetuned to give reasonable time brackets (whatever “reasonable” would mean).

Thats actually a good idea but there is just a little problem I can see. That will most likely drive the quartz crystals up in price like mad as hardcore players will be paying a premium to buy as many crystals as possible to craft their whole set in a day.

Further more it would not address the central issue in my opinion which is you dont want hardcore players to run out of reward to work towards too quickly. Hardcore players by definition play a lot thus are likely pretty rich. Being the ones that play the most they’re also the ones you want to motivate the most by giving them goals to work towards. Yet with this system most of these will be done with their whole ascended set in days and then they’ll be left with no goal to work towards after that.

Amun Ra.6435:

I think they are doing these kinds to things to make players want to log in everyday…this reeks of desperation. I think they are losing players and trying to keep them playing the laziest way possible…time gated material.

I honestly could care less for the charged quartz…just my opinion on why they are doing things like this.

It will be interesting to see what happens when the other big MMO’s come out.

Ohh come on. Do you honestly think that a player who ends up disliking the game to the point of not wanting to play any more will magically be compled to log in to create his daily charged crystal? If you dont care about the game to the point you dont want to log in you will not care about missing out on a crystal you have no use for (the crystal is pretty useless if you dont play the game dont you think?)

Calae.1738:

It’s just a cheap technique to get you to log in everyday. It’s more costly to develop actual content.

yes because guild wars 2 is the slowest game to release new content right?

anzenketh.3759:

Question for everyone just to get a feel for things.
Just a question to get the feel for things. Would time-gating be ok if it was once per day per character as apposed to once per-day per account?
I personally think a lot of alt aholics would be ok with this. It allows them to progress the character as a character not as a account.

This might work if crystals were soul bound rather then account bound.

Galen Grey.4709:

@shifty
thats is precisely why time gating is a good idea here. You want people to take 30 days to acquire 1 item but you certainly dont want every single one of your players to spend as much time as the ones who play a lot spend, like say 60hrs per week. with charged crystal mechanic you’re still making sure it takes 30 days to acquire 1 item (well provided this is what the mechanic is intended for lets not forget all this is just speculation) but instead of forcing everyone to play 60hrs per week you’re just asking them to invest 2-5 minutes each day leaving the rest of the game session free for them to play what they enjoy rather then farming a ton of materials .

That flies in the face of what I’ve been talking about. Yes it prevents the hardcore people from playing 60 hours a week, but those players want to play that much. You as a game designer might give them something to do in those 60 hours if you’re not against it, but time-gating is not one of them. The casual players do not want to log in every day, but now they feel obliged to since it does only take a few minutes to charge a Quartz so why not log in to do it and log out? Is that really the kind of thing you want to happen in your game? It’s work, not fun. NO ONE is having fun charging Quartz. People have fun running dungeons and doing events, and it would be nice to get charged Quartz in those contexts. Now it’s just another kitten example of kitten grind.

The solution is incredibly simple and they already implemented it in Guild Wars 1: prestigious items that are easy not to care about, yet still provide the prestige hardcore players can strive for. That, and WvW, PvP, guild events, helping out other players, creating alts, the Living Story, etc. There is no reason for you to not know what to do in the game, and if DESPITE all those things you still get bored, go play another game; Anet shouldn’t care if that happens.

I have no idea how some of you think this is just a cheap way to get people to play daily. Seriously it takes like 5 seconds to create charged crystal. 1 minute if you want to factor in mining the node once per day. If its a day in which you dont feel like playing and you log in just to create this crystal it will involved a parked alt who will flare into existance at a point of power and will be visible in the game world for the 5 seconds it take for the progress bar to fill. Then that player will log off.

I am sorry but I just cant see this as lazy design to make people play. Especially when they’re releasing new content every 2 weeks. No other MMO that I am aware off does anything like that. They’re anything but lazy.

To me its crystal clear this is about solving the dilemma of having long term goals while avoiding grind nothing else. Instead of asking people to play specific content for 30 days like crafting current ascended gear requires. using this method they can leave people free to play what they want without restricting them in anyway.

Besides we don’t yet know if crafting will be the only way to get Ascended armor sets. Maybe they’ll be spread out across all other mediums like FoTM, Laurel vendors etc… That way those who want the ability to speed up their gear acquisition can go farm FotM those who dont want to farm/grind can go farming for example. There is no need why we cant have multiple ways to get ascended gear that are targetted for different playstyles just like it is with exotic gear right now.

Shifty.5187:

Galen Grey.4709:

@shifty
thats is precisely why time gating is a good idea here. You want people to take 30 days to acquire 1 item but you certainly dont want every single one of your players to spend as much time as the ones who play a lot spend, like say 60hrs per week. with charged crystal mechanic you’re still making sure it takes 30 days to acquire 1 item (well provided this is what the mechanic is intended for lets not forget all this is just speculation) but instead of forcing everyone to play 60hrs per week you’re just asking them to invest 2-5 minutes each day leaving the rest of the game session free for them to play what they enjoy rather then farming a ton of materials .

That flies in the face of what I’ve been talking about. Yes it prevents the hardcore people from playing 60 hours a week, but those players want to play that much. You as a game designer might give them something to do in those 60 hours if you’re not against it, but time-gating is not one of them. The casual players do not want to log in every day, but now they feel obliged to since it does only take a few minutes to charge a Quartz so why not log in to do it and log out? Is that really the kind of thing you want to happen in your game? It’s work, not fun. NO ONE is having fun charging Quartz. People have fun running dungeons and doing events, and it would be nice to get charged Quartz in those contexts. Now it’s just another kitten example of kitten grind.

The solution is incredibly simple and they already implemented it in Guild Wars 1: prestigious items that are easy not to care about, yet still provide the prestige hardcore players can strive for. That, and WvW, PvP, guild events, helping out other players, creating alts, the Living Story, etc. There is no reason for you to not know what to do in the game, and if DESPITE all those things you still get bored, go play another game; Anet shouldn’t care if that happens.

how does this prevent the hardcore player from playing 60hrs a week?

That goes both ways though. There are two types of casual players really. The real casual player that understands they’re casual and act like a casual player and the casual player who is a bit impatient. The impatient one will probably feel completed like you’re saying but If I am that type of a casual player who feels compeled to log in every day because I just cant find it in me to wait 2 months 1/2 to get a single piece were as if I log every day i can get it in 1 and I want my ascended gear set and it takes 250 ectos to build one piece out of the 6/12 cant you argue you’re forcing me to play everyday now because otherwise it will take me years to get my ascended gear set if I only play 5 hrs per week? And in that case wouldnt it be better to have a system where I just log in 2 minutes per day and get this crystal rather then even though I dont have the time i have to log in for hours to farm those ectos?

I beg to differ. spending 2 minutes to create a charge crystal is nothing it will not ruin my fun in any way. If I miss one its not a big deal, I will get it tomorrow. What will most definitely not be fun is if I have to farm who knows how many fractal relics or who knows how many mist essences etc.. It will not be fun If I have to get 250 karka shells or if I have get 250 ectos for every single piece of the armor set! Thats whats not fun, I dont want to run fractals all year, I want to play the content I feel like playing. You said “As a developer you probably want to keep giving things to your players so they can entertain themselves” and "Collecting gear is not even fun. It’s the actual game-content that is fun. " How is requiring 5 vials of mist essence, 250 ecto, 1 gift of ascension and 1 exotic item (actual currently craft-able ascended item recipe) which means for a full set that becomes 60 vials of mist essence, 3000 ectos, 12 gifts of ascension and 12 exotic items going to give content for players to have fun? you’re will be basically locking the in the fractal of the mists for all the year to get all that stuff. Is that really more pleasurable then spending 2 minutes getting your charged crystal then being left free to play whatever you want ? Sorry I just dont see it.

That is already how it is. Sure Ascended gear have better stats but they’re not needed for anything. I dont have a single ascended piece and play the game very happily without them I assure you.

I see all the usual “sages” are out in force issuing proclamations of “lazy design”and “forcing people to log in” but I seriously doubt that’s the intention given the pace of updates recently.

While time-gated rewards can be frustrating for those who can usually spend time or other resources (such as gold) towards obtaining things they desire,, it does serve a useful purpose by helping those without the ability to spend a lot of time or gold feel they can make progress towards obtaining these rewards with only a small investment of time.

To give you a personal example, my play time has been severely cut down for the past month or so, so I’ve been having to focus my time in-game a lot more than normal on “getting stuff done”, and in that context, spending a few minutes to get a charged crystal means I can make progress towards obtaining celestial armor each day without having to defer some of my other goals.

morrolan.9608:

marnick.4305:

But on the other hand, it doesn’t require 3 hours raids 3 times a week either like it was in WoW to get end-game crafting materials. It’s not necessary to dump hours and hours into farming specific items, which would put hardcore 24/7 players in control of the economy.

I don’t like either system, both are attempts to keep players logging in regularly on a treadmill.

Except quartz isn’t part of a threadmill. It’s an option, for most professions the inferior option. To have players log in regularly is the definition of MMO, has nothing to do with threadmills.

What would be your alternative? To have everything on the TP, out of reach for the casual player? I kindly disagree.

marnick.4305:

To have players log in regularly is the definition of MMO

You are using some pretty non-standard definitions here.

marnick.4305:

What would be your alternative? To have everything on the TP, out of reach for the casual player? I kindly disagree.

Do the current lev 80 standart exotic prices on TP place them beyond reach of a casual player?

darkace.8925:

Vol.5241:

You know, if this game had a monthly fee you’d have good reason to complain.

But it’s not enough.

I’m sorry, but you don’t determine for me what is and isn’t worth complaining about. I think it’s an foolish design decision. You’re well within your rights to tell me why it isn’t, but you’re wasting your time and mine when you tell me it shouldn’t bother me.

I don’t usually agree with you but this yes i do.

A.Net should give an in game pop up window (like when you join a sPvP match) once per account. In the pop up window there can be a questioner that A.Net can draw information from about how the player base feels about time gating and such. At the end give the account a title or a mini or a small amount of gems or something as a thanks/reward.

They can then look at the account cash spent/desires to keep people playing that spend money if they are interested in making the doughnuts. Or they can just use that gathered data as they see fit.

Galen Grey.4709:

Calae.1738:

It’s just a cheap technique to get you to log in everyday. It’s more costly to develop actual content.

yes because guild wars 2 is the slowest game to release new content right?

This is actually a point I’ve made in another thread. With the 2 week content releases they shouldn’t need to indulge in such anti player designs. From what I understand there are no plans for quartz beyond the celestial armor and trinkets which makes the time gating ludicrous.