[merged] About the Skyscale Timegate...

[ProtoGunner.4953]

Lol complaining about a time gate of 5 days like there is no future... You will forget about it in 7 days you ever have done that. Get a grip and just play 10mins a day ffs.

[Stalkingwolf.6035]

@Ayakaru.6583 said:While I'm no fan of time gating as it feels arbitrary, i don't think it's as bad as a lot of people make it out to be.They're just preventing people from being done on day 1.I mean, even the story could be finished by in an hour.

Problem is the Mastery blocking getting EXP and shards.So when you dont want the mount you have to do it or you dont get any XP on the PoF maps.And you can not do it quick in 1-2 hours.

its really bad game design.

[Katastroff.1045]

If you dont mind the effort and patience, why are you upset with the fact that its time gated?

[Stalkingwolf.6035]

@coso.9173 said:i dont know I always thought of GW2 as a game where you grind for the thing that you want. and that takes time. legendaries take time, gold farm takes time, most thing take time, I unlocked the other mounts in weeks by slowly doing the collections, it doesn't relaly affect me. I don'treally understand people who'd want to do it all in 1 long kitten run. but sucks for them I guess.

again. the mastery blocks you from getting XP and shards on the PoF maps.

[ProtoGunner.4953]

Holy dude, just go through with the 5 days and you're done. People really overexaggerate this - as if you had to climb the K2 without an oxygen flask.

[sewenewes.4176]

@Rukario.1695 said:

@ewenness.6482 said:

@"Daishi.6027" said:I took the day off tomorrow expecting to play with the new toy and my initial investment and hype for the release, but now I learn that not only is my investment for this release being met with a spit in the face, but now I am locked behind anyone who happened to finish it before reset.

Having to contend with delayed gratification. = Getting spit in the face.

Some world we live in.

Yes, completely ignore the reason for his comment and only reply with your one-liner after misconstruing his reason for being upset.

Some world we live in.

When someone exaggerates to that extent, any point they may have had gets lost in the drama llama style presentation.

Arenanet taking longer than usual or expected with this episode and then time-gating one of the biggest selling points of it can be classed as an unwise decision or a financial mistake. We can argue that the disappointment caused by the time-gate makes people less inclined to purchase gems but we can also argue that this could be offset by the people who are not deterred and may make additional purchases due to the game nudging them to play more frequently and in the process look at the gem store offerings. There is a discussion to be had here.

What it can not be classed as is "a spit in the face" because that undermines both the point the poster was trying to make and reduces the work put into this episode, from the gameplay and writing to the visuals and music, to an act of spite. Writing that doesn't open a discussion and doesn't work as criticism either. It's the written equivalent of a tantrum.

Also, don't take time off from work for online games. It never ends well.

[Kthukludan.2476]

@Obtena.7952 said:I think it's funny someone complains about the time gate ... I guess spending 250G is more to your liking?

I was going to say this exactly: time-gating this is most likely a step to make a flying mount accessible to those who can't afford, or don't want to grind cash for, a griffon, while not negating the value of the griffon for players who already made that investment. Understandably frustrating for some players, but not necessarily unwelcome for others.

[RizelStar.3724]

@"coso.9173" said:i dont know I always thought of GW2 as a game where you grind for the thing that you want. and that takes time. legendaries take time, gold farm takes time, most thing take time, I unlocked the other mounts in weeks by slowly doing the collections, it doesn't relaly affect me. I don'treally understand people who'd want to do it all in 1 long kitten run. but sucks for them I guess.

You got to take in account that mounts were never time gated. So as I've seen in another thread, I'm pretty sure a lot of people made yesterday free to either get the mount or make a lot of progress to it. Only to be met with a unnecessary daily reset that spans a few days. So now one can't even play freely, and the starting collection brings a understandable salt in the community.

It took me a few days to do the Griffon mount, didn't have a daily reset time gate on it, so the need to have put it on the Skyscale so far is not needed. So then logical question is "Why?" and so far I can't make out a reason that makes it "Okay." overall. At least one that makes sense other than to annoy people who don't like timegated content, and to have people who don't care come on to say they don't care. That's all they provided with the timegate, wouldn't have been a difference if someone got it yesterday or today.

[ricky markham.8173]

my only complaint is i wish they would have let us know about the time gate before the episode. the actual timegate doesnt bother me. i did beetle too quick and this doesnt diminish the griffon because it takes as much to get it like it should. i love the map best part of this living story( how it is like hot maps and the mega related to it like dragon stand but better). i still dont know to unlock those violatile vendors and wish i knew how to do that and not really caring for them to be locked. id at least like to see what they sell so if i know unlocking them is worth it or not

[slasc.3260]

@"tekhiun.8653" said:First of all, I really think all other aspects of ep6 were excellent. However I see no reason at all for time gating the Skyscale collection, and making it so grindy . Today I ran around the map and collected 56 items, in most cases I had to go to the same location 2 or 3 times to interact or collect different items. Only to find out that I will only be able to get the mount on Sunday at best,since I actually finished the first part 10 minutes after daily reset (so today no progression at all for me).

I have to say that the whole thing feels really disappointing, it wouldn't be hard to believe that most people thought that they would end the story with the mount already unlocked. So please Anet, next time you release something that is going to be artificially timegated like this, at least tell us before hand. "You will be able to start unlocking the mount on the 14th and it may take a week to unlock it, maybe less" , that way we don't build up expectations about it. Also for the sake of future players that might try this, cut down on then number of things we have to interact and collect, maybe just enough so we don't have to back to the same area multiple times. If the goal is to make us come back and play the map as it is now you achieve the exact opposite. This entire aspect of the release was a big let down and all the hype about the new mount is actually gone now , at least for me.

I just finished the Eggs collection, and, suddenly, I can't move forward on this for another 14 hours. Seriously, why? This is how you make your fans angry, ANet; not how you make them engaged in the content.

[slasc.3260]

@Obtena.7952 said:I think it's funny someone complains about the time gate ... I guess spending 250G is more to your liking?

Do we have any reason to think it WON'T cost 250g? The Griffon had collections, too...

[Ygdrasill.9135]

It seems a little silly to time gate it when the entire story can be done in well under 2 hours. I want to get it since it will come in handy for Heart of Thorns which I just recently got (assuming it works there). It could be worse. There's a mount in WoW that I got when I was playing that that took at least 29 days to get doing the same stupid collection quests every day. 5 days at least shouldn't be too bad. I know how many mastery points it'll need so any more than that will now go to my roller beetle which I've been holding off doing the masteries for.

[CJtheBigBear.9610]

I truthfully don't think it's an over-exaggeration. The feelings I put up were forged and shared with others in map chat in Dragonfall, as well as with some guild-mates. Technically, yes, you're right. I can wait, and I will probably have to, since I don't see them changing this. But sinking the time into it wasn't the issue. I'm not afraid to put time into something, but the main problem is that it forces you to play at a certain time if you want it. Compare it to the Griffon collections. When I was doing those, I could take two or three out of my day to hop on and do a few things, then stop and pick back up when I wanted to. As a result, it did take me probably a good week and half or so to fully finish the Griffon, barring the gold-locked stuff, which evened it out to about two weeks. Assuming I spent exactly 2 hours a day, for a week, that's 14 hours of playtime to get the Griffon.

When it comes to the Skyscale, it took me 6 hours today to finish the first of 5 collections. Implying each collection takes the same amount of time, that'd mean the Skyscale collection in total would be 30 hours of work. And that's fine, really. It's a bit of extra work to make up for the fact that there's no gold sink this time around. Myself and others would have no problem grinding through that. But the big problem that arises from the time-gate, is that you are required to have the previous collection done by the daily reset [8pm in EST] to be allowed a chance at doing the next part of the collection. This creates issues, because the player cannot decide when they want to do something, its dictated by the daily reset.

If you log on late, even if you rush to complete the current collection, if you don't make it before the reset, even by an hour, you've just turned a 5 hour gap between collections into a 23 hour gap. Just as well, unlike the griffon, where I could split 6 hours of work across 2 to 3 day without a penalty, if I don't complete the full 6 hours in one day [which many people with limited time can't], it automatically jacks the wait time up by an extra 24 hours while I wait for the reset.

If they wanted to stop people from getting the mount on Day 1, I think a one-time time-gate would have worked fine. While it's true that both the method I mentioned, and the method they chose both stop people from rushing straight through the content, the second option directly affects both people who want to take their time to get it, as well as people who don't have the time to get it. I've seen probably like 6 people now, between the forums and map chat, who specifically took off time from work today and tomorrow to play with the new mount. They got screwed. And they're not to blame for taking the wrong time off, because as far as I know, ANet didn't mention anything about the time-gate until the launch today, so they just got absolutely blindsided.

Anyhow, I've rambled again.

TL;DR: This isn't about not being able to wait or instant gratification. Getting the mount was always going to take time and effort to acquire, but the time-gate unnecessarily inflates the time required, which screws over people without the proper time to deal with the inflation, and ironically forces players to rush through the content lest they have to wait even longer.

[Zaklex.6308]

Newsflash: Nothing said you would get your mount on the first day...all they ever said was that a new mount was being released...that's it, nothing more, everything else is the result of players sense of I need it NOW.

[sorudo.9054]

It took me about 5 months to get the griffon, mostly because of rl time.with this limit it's gonna take about 2 years till i get it, that's not ok at all.Remove the gating or just unlock the basics after the story, we can do the collection after we got the mount.

[Zahme.7802]

@ProtoGunner.4953 said:Holy dude, just go through with the 5 days and you're done. People really overexaggerate this - as if you had to climb the K2 without an oxygen flask.

Its not 5 days if you can only play on weekends, then its 21 days ;-)

[tekhiun.8653]

@Zaklex.6308 said:Newsflash: Nothing said you would get your mount on the first day...all they ever said was that a new mount was being released...that's it, nothing more, everything else is the result of players sense of I need it NOW.

It's actually the result of them breaking their pattern and not being honest about it. The griffon and the bettle didn't take this long nor were time gated based on daily reset. Event gated ? yes and that would be fine here. It took me 2 days for each of these mounts, but now it's gonna take 5 for this one just because. Also they should at least let people know that is time gated this way before hand, collecting 61 items just to find out you wont be able to progress anymore, again just because, is not a great experience to put it mildly. I really don't think the community should go along with it, this is a terrible pattern to have in a game.

I am saying again, everything else was excellent in this release however they really dropped the ball here. I know it's unlikely to happen, but during this whole time I will be hoping for a way to just pay to get the mount and not actually care about the collection at all because of how the whole thing was made. Why not just give us this mount during the story and make this collection a skin ? This would be something completely new and actually be seen as something positive.

[Adenin.5973]

In 3 days I am done with this map and game for another 4 months. The story was high quality but the writing was bad and it took like 1 hr. The map is cool but the gameplay is the same since PoF. The map would be nice to farm money but for what? I don't need another legendary and I don't need anything else at this point. The new armor designs continues to disappoint me, like the ones that made it before in the game.

The only thing that might would've kept me playing for at least a week would've been the new mount and that was what I was doing for the last few hours. Looking at a guide and flying to every single spot on the map to interact with like 100 different things.

The ingame UI for it is garbage level, srsly, the lore that it gives me and the excitement while doing it is non existant. It's so bad that a standard WoW 15 year old quest gets me more excited, more lore and worldbuilding and more rewards + a better UI solution, think about that.

Then after collecting all the garbage in the most tedious ways, I think I am finally done, when I read that I have to wait for a daily reset. I think to myself well that's a bummer, but at least tommorow when I log in I have it, but then I read, no another collection and then another day to wait and then another collection.

Who in the hell thought this is a great idea? I mean with legendary collection being a t a point so bad and tedious that even the devs couldn't bare it to create them anymore. This is a game it's supposed to be fun! If you can't for the love of god come up with something interesting then just don't do it at all or give us something already interesting. At least 250g would be interesting,m in a way that you can play the goddamn map to farm that gold. But no, click on 100 random things and then wait.

Very disappointed and I will not get the mount now. I will stop playing the game until the next 2hrs of content get pushed out in 4 months, and will then continue the collection. I will now play another MMO that doesn't bother me with tedious tasks and daily resets like GW2.

[Klowdy.3126]

TLDR: it's a problem because people have no patience.

[Bast.7253]

@ProtoGunner.4953 said:Lol complaining about a time gate of 5 days like there is no future... You will forget about it in 7 days you ever have done that. Get a grip and just play 10mins a day kitten.

It took me like 8 hours earlier to do this first part of the collection. And I only spent that much time because I dedicated my day to it. If you only spend 10 minutes a day to get this mount, it will most likely, if following the same pace, take weeks to get. And I used a guide for the eggs and sick Skyscale parts. For new players that don’t know where to find guides and are doing these on their own, the collections themselves could be a major turn off to the game, not to mention a lack of understanding as to why they can’t continue the rest of the collection.

Either do a long tedious collection with no time gate, or do a simplified collection with a time gate. Doing both is just drastically unnecessary.

And I’d like to further the sentiments that this kind of game design is exactly why I got absolutely sick of world of Warcraft. Just day after day of the the same fetch quests and chores with that shiny carrot on the stick. I didn’t like it with the golem backpack, but it was a cosmetic item. Wayfarer’s Henge was a cosmetic item.

Here we have a map that is heavily designed with this new mount in mind, but our only option is 1. Do over half of the story on a character if you want to be able to borrow one. 2. Borrow it, collect something or get dismounted and have to find a new one that will last one charge.

And these collections are just dull in general, at least so far. You essentially make three laps around the map looking for clickable items in abstract places while dealing with the frustration of knowing that these laps would be significantly easier if you didn’t have to backtrack or go out of your way to find a mount to borrow or just the right amount of ledge to use your springer to leap onto.

I think it gives a worse impression and creates more angst with the map than is deserved. I don’t usually agree with the statement that mounts should be solely obtained within the story, but I think for this one instance it probably would have been the better decision.

[Vyrulisse.1246]

The time gating is annoying. The real problem is how utterly devoid of fun these collections are. Busywork designed to keep you busy and not actually give you anything of worth for doing each step. The entire unlocking process for this mount is like an amalgamation of every bad MMO design idea rolled into one.

People defending this I just want one thing: Please tell me at least one good reason why time gating and boring collect-a-thons are a good idea and an asset to the game? Just one legit reason is all I ask. Artificially stretching content out over days doesn't make it more content.

[RizelStar.3724]

It’s something about this time gate, like it’s really silly. I’ll admit, it’s easier to be upset than to understand, so my initial in game and rl feeling when nearing completion to newborn was emotional base.

Still giving it thought, a timegate like this is unnecessary. So I’ll shed some light on the internet badasses(I need popcorn guy for example), newsflash guy(I forgot names as of typing this), and “IDC” people, would it have bothered y’all if it was not timegated?

What if it was gold based? I do like the term “It’s a marathon not a sprint” mentality that’s how I think overall. Ironic right?

[Genesis.8572]

Suggestion: ArenaNet should not lock your Crystal Desert mastery experience bar but instead allow you to continue getting spirit shards with your Desert masteries until you have fully unlocked the Skyscale (sans its mastery point track).

[Adenin.5973]

@"Traveller.7496" said:Skyscale collections suck. It's no wonder they didn't give any details on it, since they knew people will hate it. I have no idea why it has to be a) a huge grind and b) time-gated. Heck, even the griffon collection was easier. The new mount stuff is getting more and more ridiculous with each new one.

It's not even the "huge grind" aspect. MMOs are at the end of the day always grindy games. The thing is that this grind is in every popular MMO FUN and it also can have tons of different ways to grind.

Collections are a very special "grind". It's the most tedious, unrewarding and boring grind that you could imagine, it's as fun as reading a phone book and timegating is just something that wants to make a good portion of players log off immediately once they encounter it.

[Cristalyan.5728]

@ZDragon.3046 said:

@Trise.2865 said:How many times do we have to tell people not to blast through content in 10 minutes? to take their time and enjoy it? They never learn...

The thing about that is anet sells the living world updates on new features and contentStory(in this case) a MountA Map~~ The legendary weapon ~~(some times) a raid or fractal

They already sold the Legendary weapon. Almost 4 years ago. And they already took our money for it. How can you forget this? This weapon

does not belong to this LS episode

. It is a HoT weapon. The good part is that we can say that now HoT is a complete result. (I was close to say it is a

finished

result).

@"Obtena.7952" said:I think it's funny someone complains about the time gate ... I guess spending 250G is more to your liking?

Hm. I think it's funny someone is able to see only the two bad options. What about no time gate and no money? Like ...... the Raptor for example?

If you look at the actual team, I think the gating is (almost) normal. Fewer and fewer ideas from the GW2 are respected now. For GW2 this is an absurd timegate. For other games (in which I bet many actual developers from ANet were involved) this is a normal thing. Other absurd enormities? TWO kill 1 000 monsters achievements. In one small map. If you compare with the previous "Slayer" achievements you can see we had 1 000 mobs in the entire Tyria. Even in PoF we had 1 000 desert creatures as an achievement - but in four large maps. Now we have 2 x 1 000 in a small map.

The way the collection are structured also show that quantity / repetition / time spent on map / player frustration are the mai factors. Not the enjoyment / fun.

And again, we can have (in the future, if the devs will learn what GW2 means) no time gates and no large sum of money for something advertised as the central feature of a LS episode.