Jump to content
  • Sign Up

Do you think account bound/timegated materials are healthy for the game?


Cerioth.7062

Recommended Posts

So my friend asked me about this and I decided to make a poll here on it. I think the question is rather multi-faceted and there are many factors to consider. As examples you can think of the ascended materials like bloodstone dust, or the LWS3/4 mats that can be farmed. I think having the LWS3-LWS4 kind of mats gives people something to work towards and keeps those maps from being deserted.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think if it's either accountbound or timegated, it's for a healthier game economy.

Timegated tradeable materials allow a market to develop where the profits are paid by those who are impatient.

Accountbound makes it so some rewards have to be acquired personally, and not just reduce the whole game to buying everything off. Also, if people could resell their gear after they are done with it would cause prices to fall even lower than they already are.

To me the only item where they do this wrong is charged quartz: they are both accountbound and timegated, so a player has to just accumulate it whenever in case some day they need a bunch of it. And if they don't, it just promotes an annoying gate to resources that doesn't help the market either.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Healthy for Guild Wars 2? I guess.Healthy for a game that has the chance to do something else (as in, if it is in development)? No. It's a cheap workaround to having to deal with deeper economic issues and how to keep players occupied and playing the game, but in the long run causes a rat's nest of potential problems.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Even though I hate farming LS map currency, I have to admit it motivates me to play the game to earn them. In my case, I play a lot of WvW and receive the map currency from the reward track as a side reward. They are a great source for ascended trinkets so obviously they should be account-bound! Besides, the current material market is a mess. If everything ends up undervalued then there's no fun farming for anything.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't think its healthy to force players to log in every day in order to still progress or otherwise halt their progression.

I cant and dont want to play every day, and Im not going to turn on my computer just to press a button in GW2.

And while being completely inactive naturally shouldn't be completely without concequences, I feel that being able to "save up" on a limited number (between 3 and 7) of daily tasks, WHERE that make sense, would be very welcome. And/Or maybe double up daily opportunities for x days or whichever to earn back those daily tasks, not so that people save 7 days and just do everything on the weekend.

I'm thinking of quartz, and possibly ascended materials, and maybe some other very limited use materials. And NOT daily meta chests or fractal dailies or whichever.

I have to note its not completely necessary to change ofcourse, but any change in this direction, would at least make it feel like the game dictates your daily schedule if you want to keep progressing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@mauried.5608 said:Why not then make everything account bound, so players have to get everything themselves?Why woudnt this make the game even healthier?

Is their a particular reason you're using a slippery slope argument?

In general it's not a bad thing for some things to be tradeable especially things with an rng acquisition.

On the other hand in runescape you can choose to make your account unable to trade and quite a few people enjoy playing that way

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I want to say upfront. I do not think Raids should have time gated rewards with weekly reset. Just give diminished returns.

But as for everything else, it is needed to keep longevity in the game, and promote retention rates.Is it annoying? Sure, because a lot of people are impatient in today's age of gaming. "I want it, and I WANT IT NOW" mentality, is one of the most unhealthy things in a gaming community, not time gated content.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It depends on how it is done. For example, take timegated crafting recipes:

Right now, you have to craft timegated recipes daily or you'll miss craftings. Which limits your possibilities for making your own weekly schedules. They are basically an annoying hassle and a shackle.And that is bad.
But some things are better not crafted too often, so there has to be limits on how much they can be crafted.

Enter Daily Crafting Quotas.

Instead having a single daily use, those recipes should accumulate a daily quota. A single value that increases every daily login, up to a cap.
The cap would be there to reduce the size on disk taken by these quotas. So it could be 15 so it uses only 4 bits, or 28 to match the number of daily login reward entries.You would still have to login daily, but you would have the freedom to choose when you use the quota you have accumulated.That way you could gather materials every day, then have a day for crafting, and craft until you use up your accumulated quotas.

Since not everyone can login daily, there could be ways to get 'quota' without logins. For example, a new chest in the options of the "Chest of Loyalty" could be a "Chest of Lost Time" that when opened gives a consumable that can be consumed to get 7 daily quotas, or they could be an NPC you can pay with coin to save or recover missed quotas, while still maintaining the max possible amount you could have earned in the missed time.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

In a game with a trading capability, there has to be some kind of logic which defines what can be traded and what cant , but in this game its very hard to see what that logic is .It would make more sense to either have everything can be traded or nothing can , or explain somehow what the rationale is for what can be traded.eg whats the rationale for some legendary weapons being able to be traded , but others cant?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Imho healthy game should both have stuff you trade for to maintain reasonable economy and stuff you have to earn, at least to show off that you actually played the game to get something in the said game. Accountbound stuff in general is supposed to make you do something yourself. I do believe that acquiring some specific things SHOULD require you to actually play the game, or do that one specific kind of activity. Owning stuff should be a way to show what you did to get this, not only how long you grinded Istan to buy it of TP. This is also why I'm not really happy with the fact that you can buy Legendaries off TP(even though I'm nowhere close to acquiring one). Timegated stuff is a little more tricky, similar argument could be made about timegated materials but they are indirectly tradeable anyway so it won't really hold.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

No, it is grindy by nature, it hinders farming and trade. I would love to buy many of the account-bound materials on the trading post instead of getting them through weeks or months of repetitive gameplay. And I'm sure others would love to make serious gold by farming these items and selling them on TP.

I always loved to trade in MMO's, and dislike bound items for this reason.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The game needs long-term goals. People always rush to top level, get all the mounts and gear etc. they can as fast as they can, race though the story - and then complain they don't know what to do because there's no 'endgame'. It's clear that they won't slow down and make goals that keep them engaged unless the game is designed to compel them to do so. One of the appeals for me of GW2 is that when you start playing you simultaneously have immediate access to so much content, and that you can anticipate spending years playing this game.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I wish a lot of the account bound stuff wasn't, and I think it's actually bad for the economy that it is account bound. When something is account bound it's either desired or garbage. There are no other values for it because it can only my used or discarded. Skins that are acquired through chance should always be tradable. If you don't want it, someone else will. Items that are crafted should be tradable. I shouldn't be forced to craft something in order to have it. If someone else wants to craft it, they should have the ability to sell it, and I to buy it. That's good for the economy. Things acquired through collections should be account bound.

Time gating is just annoying more than anything else. Especially when you don't realize it's going to be time gated. That's especially annoying. It would be nice if things properly identified themselves up front about being timegated.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...