I'm At Peace with the Skyscale Time-Gate

[Starfall Leyline.2481]

BUT

You knew there had to be a but. So okay, the Skyscale achievement line reminds me of the Mawdrey II achievement line. It's obviously clear to me now that Anet is trying to simulate having us actually raise the Skyscale as much as they can without making us wait for years for the little dear to grow up. They want the player to feel less like it's just a 'reward' and more like it's a companion, with a sense of having gone through a process to achieve it. They experimented with that with the Beetle, and I think this is its 'fruition', so I'm going to stop harranging Anet on the time-gate, even though I still don't think the time-gating to the degree they've done is necessary.

(I mean really, A-Net. First time-gated collections and THEN a 4-day minimum sub time-gate for one of those? Especially if you don't have charged quartz ready...)

But anyway... in a weird, possibly masochistic sort of way, I actually like the idea of raising my Skyscale. It's supposed to be a special mount - very much like an ascended/legendary version of a mount. But on that note, with ALL of the effort we need to put into getting it, I think the movement needs to be tweaked (read: improved). I realize that it can't be another griffon, and I realize it can't be infinite flight, but I'd like to see the stamina bar last just a bit longer so it doesn't always feel like a wall-fight just to get the verticality that was so broadly advertised.

At first I kicked back against the time-gating, but after charging through the first two collections, I see what they were trying to achieve and in some ways that made me feel better about it. And even about the skyscale. I'd just feel even better if I felt like at the end I was getting a companion mount with a moveset that felt like "freedom." Just a bit more stamina resilience, or a mastery that gives extra stamina resilience would be enough to make me happy.

...maybe Anet will read this?

[zealex.9410]

Yeah being one of the ppl that "rush the game and dont enjoy it" i usually like some timegated stuff, you can't really do a collection or achievement around growing a companion without SOME timegate.

I enjoyed it in wow and do so here as well when something is like that. Now i think its debatable if a main log in point of the update should have been timegated and or to what extend but i cant but sorta like the way timegate as a system tied with the collection (in some parts).

Ofc ppl should be able to play the game at the own pace and all and i have advocated for that in the past but theres value for some things thats arent build to be everyone's cup of tea to exist.

That being said there are some examples of bad timegates which doesnt really make sense as a concept and that has burned ppl before, looking at you druid backpiece... I can see how ppl arent fond of timegates if previous itterations were that bad.

[Dalrian.6034]

I'm OK with it too! I only get a few hours sporadically, so a bit of a wait is fine for me. There's plenty to do with other collections (armor on the new map), and it should still be seen as a positive that we still have -something- else to intersperse with our endless SW runs or winterberry farms or whatever. I respect that some people have a different playstyle and are bothered, though I expect some of this outrage could've been alleviated with better descriptions and expectation management. If we had been told from the beginning we would be raising these things from egg and it would take time, well of course people would still complain, but at least we'd have known what to expect.I assume ArenaNet knows this, but for every grumpy, all-caps, yelling person on the forums and reddit, that there's also a great number of us players just slowly plugging away and going about our business. The new map is beautiful, and in a month or so I'll be slowly hovering around Lion's Arch on my new dragon. The fix for experience and spirit shards in the meantime is appreciated.

[TwiceDead.1963]

I'm fine with it. Didn't take nearly as long as I thought it would when it comes to the actual work you have to do.

Don't get me wrong, I would prefer if the timegate wasn't there, but the collection is pretty much done on my end, and so I wait.

[Evil.1580]

Thank you! Very well said.Finally someone like me, who enjoy the idea to get your mounts as companions and raise them from babies. Makes the collection so special and enjoyable for me. Maybe some people, can't see this or don't like it - everyone with their own taste. But this makes the connection to the mount so special and is in the real spirit of a true RPG.By the way, I have Nevermore and I had tons of fun while crafting it, raising my chick from little one. Heard that Chuka and Champa shortbow is the same and even that I am not using shortbow I might just craft it in the name of these awesome collections.Thank you, stranger! Thank you ANET!

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

Honestly I've never felt more rushed with a mount. This is the first time where, if I don't accomplish the large set of menial tasks assigned to me for that day, I lose that day. Just to get to the point where I collect the scales had me running amok in the new map for 6 continuous hours of active play. Bear in mind that my hands hurt. A lot. Most of what I do in the game is toon camping and leisure strolls through quick dailies, because otherwise I am in too much agony to do much else.

See, normally what I would do is wait for a good day. One where I have plenty of free time and am not in a lot of pain. Then, on this good day, I'd tryhard my way through the entire series of collections and achievements. With this collection, I don't have that option. I could wait two weeks for a good day, then I'd hit an arbitrary wall, then I'd have to wait another week or two for another good day, then I'd hit another arbitrary wall, rinse and repeat. For me to have a healthy rate of play, it would extend the length of time to get this new mount at least seven fold. Maybe more. It wouldn't be such a problem if I didn't have to put the skyscale through college before I get to ride it. There's another problem with taking my time, and that is that the new map isn't going to stay populated forever. Sure, there's a lot of people there now, but what about a month from now? Three months from now? Are all of these events that lock these collections going to still be run by the time I'm well enough to manage them?

This is the cruel irony of this collection. I have to push myself more than ever to meet the deadlines that Anet is throwing my way. Because if I did it at my pace, then I wouldn't get the mount until the end of the year. This whole system is sadistically designed, meant to trick you into making commitments that you otherwise wouldn't, and it all comes at your own expense. It's not cool.

[Nafets.1238]

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:Honestly I've never felt more rushed with a mount. This is the first time where, if I don't accomplish the large set of menial tasks assigned to me for that day, I lose that day. Just to get to the point where I collect the scales had me running amok in the new map for 6 continuous hours of active play. Bear in mind that my hands hurt. A lot. Most of what I do in the game is toon camping and leisure strolls through quick dailies, because otherwise I am in too much agony to do much else.

See, normally what I would do is wait for a good day. One where I have plenty of free time and am not in a lot of pain. Then, on this good day, I'd tryhard my way through the entire series of collections and achievements. With this collection, I don't have that option. I could wait two weeks for a good day, then I'd hit an arbitrary wall, then I'd have to wait another week or two for another good day, then I'd hit another arbitrary wall, rinse and repeat. For me to have a healthy rate of play, it would extend the length of time to get this new mount at least seven fold. Maybe more. It wouldn't be such a problem if I didn't have to put the skyscale through college before I get to ride it. There's another problem with taking my time, and that is that the new map isn't going to stay populated forever. Sure, there's a lot of people there now, but what about a month from now? Three months from now? Are all of these events that lock these collections going to still be run by the time I'm well enough to manage them?

This is the cruel irony of this collection. I have to push myself more than ever to meet the deadlines that Anet is throwing my way. Because if I did it at my pace, then I wouldn't get the mount until the end of the year. This whole system is sadistically designed, meant to trick you into making commitments that you otherwise wouldn't, and it all comes at your own expense. It's not cool.

It's pretty cool tbh. I'm at the middle of the 3rd collection and I don't think I've played more than 4-5 hours for this the past 3 days.

[derd.6413]

i think it could've been implemented better but the hate is overblown

[Dragon.8762]

I also don't mind the time gate. You gotta think; if not time gating, what else could they have done to keep people playing for a while?

• Grinding for hours, days, weeks? For idk, a currency you have to build up in order to purchase a bunch of parts for the mount?
• Introduce a RNG based grind? You collect less items, but its RNG based on when and where you could get all the stuff required.
• Gate it behind a huge paywall?
• Or time gate it. So you can quickly do the time gated portion, and then leave to go do whatever you want afterwards and come back at your own pace.

Granted, I would have also accepted a super long quest time as well. But I'm pretty sure people would still complain about that and call it "busy work."

[Danikat.8537]

I think they could have communicated it better - when they were hyping the skyscale before the episode was released they could have said something like "start on the journey to earning your own skyscale mount" instead of making it sound like you'd be able to get it on day 1.

I'd say I don't mind the time gate, but it would be more accurate to say that for me it's irrelevant - my life is doing far more to prevent me finishing the collection quickly, to the point where I haven't even hit the time gate yet. I finished the main story on Thursday night and got as far as talking to Gorrik and picking up the first scale, then had to stop playing and I won't be home again until Monday. This isn't unusual for me, so it will probably take me a few weeks at least to finish the collection even if it wasn't gated. I suppose it's possible at some point I'll reach a point where I've completed a collection with time to start the next one and can't because it's gated, but then I can go on with doing all the other stuff I still haven't finished in this game, or any of the other games I'm playing.

Which means I also haven't gotten far enough to appreciate how the collections are laid out, but if there is a sense of purpose to it that sounds much better than simply a 'shopping list' of items to find to unlock the mount.

[DanAlcedo.3281]

The timegate is not my biggest problem.

The map was designed around the skyscale.

You now play the map without it and get the mount when the map is already dying.

Its like getting the most powerfull weapon in an rpg AFTER you beaten the secret strongest boss.

Why getting more power when there is nothing to kill anymore?

[Asum.4960]

As I said in another thread already, I wouldn't even mind this Timegating in Timegates to reach new Timegates terribly much if it was for some cosmetic, or a horizontal upgrade like Legendary Armor, although it certainly is still annoying, see Chak Eggs, Provisioner Tokens and such, but at least it was always implied with things like legendary armor that they were to be a long term effort.

Locking away the figurehead gameplay feature of the patch like this? That just doesn't really sit well with me.I would have loved to explore the new map with the new mount while working on my masteries for it, and maybe do a collection such as this on the side for some awesome ingame attainable skin for the Skyscale.That I could get behind.The core gameplay feature itself being locked away for this long by design, not by amount of content, not so much.

We could have gotten the base one dye slot Skyscale from the Story, play the map, work on our mastery and enjoy the content and the new feature, while being able to raise our very own special one on the side through these timegates in the form of a unique skin.

People have been asking for ingame attainable Mount Skins forever, and this collection certainly feels worthy of it.This would have generated massive player goodwill and instead of complain Threads with hundreds of pages, people would sing Anets praise.But ofc it would lower gemstore sales for Skyscale skins somewhat, so we can't have that.

Now before anyone comes with some entitlement dismissal, I'm not saying that they had to do it this way or that we deserve a "free" skinor anything like that directly earnable ingame, Anet can do whatever they want.I'm just saying locking a skin away behind so many timegates would have gone a lot better than doing it to the core gameplay feature of the patch itself, and just a skin existing ingame to be earned actually would have generated a positive sentiment in the community on it's own and would feel special, instead of this.

The collections, with exception of the mindnumbing first day, are actually somewhat fun, even though I generally greatly dislike doing achievement guided gameplay like with collections.Would have been great to do them with the new gameplay feature of the Skyscale itself though, all while knowing that after all of this, you get something really special, like a unique skin, instead of finally just unlocking the base functionality of having the mount, just to then finally being able to work on getting the mastery up.

At the very least communicating that the Skyscale was a mid to long term goal to be earned in the marketing leading up the patch would have done a lot to adjust peoples expectations and to lessen the blow for people who understandably thought this was just another situational mount to get rather quickly (as cool as that is), because that's what it is.

[Klowdy.3126]

@"Dragon.8762" said:I also don't mind the time gate. You gotta think; if not time gating, what else could they have done to keep people playing for a while?

• Grinding for hours, days, weeks? For idk, a currency you have to build up in order to purchase a bunch of parts for the mount?
• Introduce a RNG based grind? You collect less items, but its RNG based on when and where you could get all the stuff required.
• Gate it behind a huge paywall?
• Or time gate it. So you can quickly do the time gated portion, and then leave to go do whatever you want afterwards and come back at your own pace.

Granted, I would have also accepted a super long quest time as well. But I'm pretty sure people would still complain about that and call it "busy work."

People will always complain when they don't get exactly what they want. They will try to explain it in a way that doesn't make them sound like a spoiled child, but in the end, their expectations were broken, and they got mad enough at a video game to go write about it. I've seen the "I only get a 2 hours a week," arguement several times. If you have no time to play, not having that one mount doesn't make a difference.

[The Ace.9105]

I'm also at peace with the skyscale timegate and bought ESO.

[Nafets.1238]

@The Ace.9105 said:I'm also at peace with the skyscale timegate and bought ESO.

If you're nice we might accept you back when you're done with that game, like in a couple of days.

[Rasimir.6239]

@The Ace.9105 said:I'm also at peace with the skyscale timegate and bought ESO.Just don't try crafting in that game ... those timegates make the skyscale look like kindergarden in comparison :) .

[Ashantara.8731]

I'm content with this, too, now that the XP bar has been unlocked by the devs. :+1: I'll just leave a couple of achievement for when I finally have the mount. In the meantime, I am going to play through the story and complete the map on all of my characters. :)

[Blocki.4931]

@DanAlcedo.3281 said:The timegate is not my biggest problem.

The map was designed around the skyscale.

You now play the map without it and get the mount when the map is already dying.

Its like getting the most powerfull weapon in an rpg AFTER you beaten the secret strongest boss.

Why getting more power when there is nothing to kill anymore?

Only that the map isn't going to die because the rewards are crazy good.

[Rasimir.6239]

@"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:There's another problem with taking my time, and that is that the new map isn't going to stay populated forever. Sure, there's a lot of people there now, but what about a month from now? Three months from now? Are all of these events that lock these collections going to still be run by the time I'm well enough to manage them?This argument comes up again and again, but I have to say I don't get it. I next to never do content when it's new in this game, since I don't enjoy the rush people are in to devour the new content, nor do I enjoy that the number of tryhards that don't care for anyone but their own advantage seems to be a lot higher just after release. Once the frenzy of new releases has died down I can enjoy the content, collections, achievements, whatever in peace, and I have yet to find anything that becomes impossible or the fabled "empty maps". I even do most of the stuff again weeks or months later on my second account, and never had any problems with empty maps and impossible events on that account either. Fun fact: a couple of weeks ago I noticed I still had to kill the leyline anomaly for the beetle collection on the second account, content even I would've doubted would still be run, but it was just as easy to find a raid for it in lfg as it had been back when I did it on my main account.

I've been playing a couple of hours a night on the new map (with map and say chat turned off to avoid the unpleasentness and thoughtless spoilers new releases tend to bring), enjoying map and events and casually collecting my scales and handing out medicines, and I have yet to hit the first timegate. If you don't have a lot of time to play, no matter the reason, there really seems to be no need to rush this collection. It is involved and I am certain neither I nor you will be the only one taking their time with it and playing all the associated maps and events for a long time.

[Absconditus.6804]

The only timegate so far that I genuinely dislike is the daily reset one. If you don't finish a stage of the collection before the daily reset, miss it by just a tiny margin, well tough luck, wait another day before you can do anything. The third stage of the larger collection is a perfect example, you have to feed the little thing, 3 times maximum per day, for 4 days. You likely get the other collections done on day 1, and then all you get to do for the next 3 days is to press a button 3 times. That's not fun. After you have fed it the last day, guess what, you got to wait for the daily reset to continue on top of that. That's just stupid. The daily reset timegating is what I think they should abolish. Whatever other timegates are in the collection, fine, they can remain, though it is a terribly designed stage where all you get to do is click a button 3 times for the entire day. That part is boring.

[arielwind.8921]

I'm fine with timegates. Anet built up griffon unlock plans for months, and players had finished for few days referenced from web. So, I think Anet made it this time.

Here's a plan that people could be less frastrated.Not as game system but a real pet of yours. think how you get trusted from pet or horse.Reknown Heart of mount version. Any of followed activities affect progress bar. (maybe slowly)

1. Feed. with ingredients of Central Tyria. maybe easy cooked one with lower level recipes.
2. Practice to ride. Mount race or Mount Adventure.
3. Take some fight, journey together, not as a mount but a companion like ranger pet. Boss event, mini instance, whatever.

I believe that Anet and players have more better ideas.

[Starfall Leyline.2481]

I agree with several people here in that I think the wait should have been telegraphed. It should have been sold with labeling on the package "Raise your own Skyscale!" As one person aptly put, expectation management is everything, and most people (including myself) were initially upset because we were hyped for the mount and then slammed into the time-gate wall.

In actuality, if you can only play an hour or two every week/few days, you probably won't have an issue with the time gating. You might get through half of one of the collections, maybe two. It took me 3 hours with a guide. So while I sympathize with you on that 'last day' where you complete the collection after having your time split up by RL, the good news is that the daily reset timegate won't have that much of an impact on you.

But I still think the mount should be stronger for all the effort you need to put into it. There's rumors that we're going to get another living story season. If that's the case, it wouldn't surprise me if it included new masteries for the Skyscale mount, to sort of simulate it 'growing up' and getting stronger. At least, I hope they do, because as is, I think the mount is under-powered. The griffon's talent is its ability to fly fast and do acrobatics, but the Skyscale's 'stamina' bar feels too flimsy to really make it 'equal' to the griffon in its own unique way. If the stamina lasted 20-30% longer, or there were a mastery to increase it (not just wall-jump), I'd say yea, that's a great mount.

But in closing yes, Anet's big mistake was making it sound like you were going to just hop away with your own dragon right away. I'm going to go toss balls for my Nightfur-cough... Skyscale for catharsis.

[Danikat.8537]

@Rasimir.6239 said:

@The Ace.9105 said:I'm also at peace with the skyscale timegate and bought ESO.Just don't try crafting in that game ... those timegates make the skyscale look like kindergarden in comparison :) .

I was thinking the same. If encountering time gates makes you quit a game then ESO is absolutely the wrong game to pick up!

(Don't get me wrong, it's a great game in a lot of ways, but this is not one of them.)

@Rasimir.6239 said:

@"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:There's another problem with taking my time, and that is that the new map isn't going to stay populated forever. Sure, there's a lot of people there now, but what about a month from now? Three months from now? Are all of these events that lock these collections going to still be run by the time I'm well enough to manage them?This argument comes up again and again, but I have to say I don't get it. I next to never do content when it's new in this game, since I don't enjoy the rush people are in to devour the new content, nor do I enjoy that the number of tryhards that don't care for anyone but their own advantage seems to be a lot higher just after release. Once the frenzy of new releases has died down I can enjoy the content, collections, achievements, whatever in peace, and I have yet to find anything that becomes impossible or the fabled "empty maps". I even do most of the stuff again weeks or months later on my second account, and never had any problems with empty maps and impossible events on that account either. Fun fact: a couple of weeks ago I noticed I still had to kill the leyline anomaly for the beetle collection on the second account, content even I would've doubted would still be run, but it was just as easy to find a raid for it in lfg as it had been back when I did it on my main account.

I've been playing a couple of hours a night on the new map (with map and say chat turned off to avoid the unpleasentness and thoughtless spoilers new releases tend to bring), enjoying map and events and casually collecting my scales and handing out medicines, and I have yet to hit the first timegate. If you don't have a lot of time to play, no matter the reason, there really seems to be no need to rush this collection. It is involved and I am certain neither I nor you will be the only one taking their time with it and playing all the associated maps and events for a long time.

I think part of it is perception. If you're used to only playing the latest maps at release then everything else will seem empty. I had a similar discussion about dungeons a few years ago - I said it was still possible to get a group together in a reasonable amount of time because it's never taken me more than 20 minutes, and was informed that 20 minutes is completely unacceptable and by then some people would expect to have finished the dungeon at least twice.

[Jora.5471]

@"Dragon.8762" said:I also don't mind the time gate. You gotta think; if not time gating, what else could they have done to keep people playing for a while?

• Grinding for hours, days, weeks? For idk, a currency you have to build up in order to purchase a bunch of parts for the mount?
• Introduce a RNG based grind? You collect less items, but its RNG based on when and where you could get all the stuff required.
• Gate it behind a huge paywall?
• Or time gate it. So you can quickly do the time gated portion, and then leave to go do whatever you want afterwards and come back at your own pace.

Granted, I would have also accepted a super long quest time as well. But I'm pretty sure people would still complain about that and call it "busy work."

Simple, the solution: After removing time gate from Skyscale. Create more achievements that isn't tied to Skyscale instead.

We can have more regular acheivements and some of them can be time-gated optional achievement that only gives 10 ap and a bag of stuffs/ascended item chest. The people who plays GW2 a lot, will have stuff to do even after the Skyscale quest is done. The people who doesn't play GW2 will slowly get Skyscale at their own pace, and still have more stuff to do.

If people don't want to do that, then its fine. Encouraging is better than forcing.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

@Rasimir.6239 said:

@"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:There's another problem with taking my time, and that is that the new map isn't going to stay populated forever. Sure, there's a lot of people there now, but what about a month from now? Three months from now? Are all of these events that lock these collections going to still be run by the time I'm well enough to manage them?This argument comes up again and again, but I have to say I don't get it. I next to never do content when it's new in this game, since I don't enjoy the rush people are in to devour the new content, nor do I enjoy that the number of tryhards that don't care for anyone but their own advantage seems to be a lot higher just after release. Once the frenzy of new releases has died down I can enjoy the content, collections, achievements, whatever in peace, and I have yet to find anything that becomes impossible or the fabled "empty maps". I even do most of the stuff again weeks or months later on my second account, and never had any problems with empty maps and impossible events on that account either. Fun fact: a couple of weeks ago I noticed I still had to kill the leyline anomaly for the beetle collection on the second account, content even I would've doubted would still be run, but it was just as easy to find a raid for it in lfg as it had been back when I did it on my main account.

I've been playing a couple of hours a night on the new map (with map and say chat turned off to avoid the unpleasentness and thoughtless spoilers new releases tend to bring), enjoying map and events and casually collecting my scales and handing out medicines, and I have yet to hit the first timegate. If you don't have a lot of time to play, no matter the reason, there really seems to be no need to rush this collection. It is involved and I am certain neither I nor you will be the only one taking their time with it and playing all the associated maps and events for a long time.

Before I wrote this post, I spent the whole day waiting for Death-Branded Shatterer. Every two hours, I would come to Jahai, and see that nobody was doing it. There were no commanders hosting it. There was nobody waiting for it, either. As active as map chat was while debating the skyscale, nobody would do shatterer. Even when I tagged up myself, barely anybody showed up.

This is one of the many events where people just don't show up anymore.