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[merged] About the Skyscale Timegate...


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I thought I'd jump in again in this thread to give some more feedback about the Skyscale collection after going through all I did... which means waiting for Troublesome Skyscales to be unlocked.

I loved a few things about the whole marathon through the maps to get to where I am. Yeah, I grinded it really hard, even though my end-term finals were there too. It was a fun experience to watch my Hatchling grow, as it was a happy moment I got to log in just for that tiny dragon. After that small log in time, I just felt... happy about it, in a certain way. Seeing the little baby grow was something that even my little cousins liked to do - and that's thanks to the time gate. Even though not everyone in here got the chance to feed a baby dragon with its family members, I do think, after reading the posts in here of those that actually paid attention to their hatchling, that everyone enjoyed that small time where we get to connect with a creature, even if it's a virtual experience with no real-life impact - at least not like caring for a dog.

The process of going through all of Tyria was also an interesting one, and it made me encounter a lot of players I didn't know about because I used to solely PvP. It was a huge, painful in the butt grind, but it was also a way to get to communicate with other players. It felt like the game was more than just fractals, raids, WvW, PvP. It felt like a community in a way, one that wanted to help the others (shoutout to the two Commanders that helped me get on top of the highest wall in Iron Marches, that jump is hard).

People, at least from what I've read so far, don't get one of the reasons they made it a time-gated process: it slows down grinds to the extent of creating bonds with others. Not friendship - just people you get to know. I am ready to bet 10 golds that most of the players here actually grinded through the content to get within the time gates, instead of taking the time to talk to others. I bet a lot of players didn't take time to talk in front of Sun's Refuge to other players for the sake of talking. The time-gating isn't there to force you within certain time limits and make you all angry cause you couldn't finish the collection within the time frame. If you haven't noticed yet, at reset, there's an abundance of people just being there and you can say "Hi!" to most of them (if you're not awkward, but that's not Arena Net's fault, now, is it?). It may look like time-gating stuff is just there to force you to play, but in reality, I believe it creates a community to arise. I've never, ever, seen a thread get so high in pages. Even if I see mostly disagreements, you cannot say that you do not see a community from simply time-gating a mount that, in itself, is simply something new to the game.

There's people that feel forced to get it, and I don't get why. If you rather agree to disagree than to accept the fact that having it or not is nothing game-breaking (like the beetle and springer were in so many ways), it feels like arguments are simply not founded... which then doesn't contribute to positive feedback (and by positive I mean constructive) but saltiness and baby-raging. It's not prestige, it's fashions. if you want it for your Fashion Wars 2, then do it. The Skyscale is unique in its fashion, while its mechanics also stand out in certain areas.

It feels useless to say that if you feel like the time-gate is a problem because of its length, then instead of saying ArenaNet did a bad job, send in a solution. I've rarely seen someone come with something good when being told, "Hey, what you did is just bad.". Constructive, positive feedback is nearly always better.

I do agree that the time-gates are somewhat exaggerated. It did, however, boil down to something good, at least for me. 5 hours (for the daily rotations of the game) would have felt... somewhat more realistic. I do not know if it's hard to do, but I do feel like the immersion would have been better.

Feel free to argue about the points I made. It's just saddening to see the sheer volume of comments that have no meaningful... meaning (sorry, my English is very much limited) and pure hatred about not being on a mount instantly. I state my point for clarity: I believe the Skyscale has more fashion impact than game impact. It's not a necessity to get it, nor is it prestigious to have it.

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@coso.9173 said:people who threaten to leave the game because of having to wait for like 1 week for a new mount... isn't it a bit much?

It will be 1 week at best (possibly closer to 2, depending on how the fourth and fifth tiers go).

If you have limited time and/or resources, it could take months thanks to it being timegated to reset. This after the Skyscale was used as a selling point for the episode with zero indication it would be different than the beetle or griffon acquisition.

The timegating sucks and needs to be removed, but that's not the only thing going on. Being misled and all the intentional omissions are other huge factors in the backlash and people quitting.

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  • ArenaNet Staff

Hi,

We've posted an update about the skyscale acquisition here: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/77191/an-update-about-the-skyscale-acquisition/p1#Item_0

As mentioned above, we welcome your feedback but please take into account the previous message I posted and that I'll repost here:

The discussion remained mostly civil so far and I want to thank all of you who contributed respectfully. All of you are passionate about the game and we're reading your posts. There are however tensions in this thread and I want to remind everyone here, whether you agree with a point being raised or not, that we ask all forum contributors to be respectful and constructive. No ad-hominem arguments will be accepted and, if you see a post like this, simply report it, the moderation team will action them (in passing, this is a friendly reminder about the rules that your can find here). You can talk about various aspects of the game, how you feel about them, and generally share your feedback but the discussion here has to remain courteous.

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Well it's a very very late update, but at least they have finally communicated a change and their design philosophy. I get what they were trying to do, although I think by now they should be better at anticipating these things. I'm not overly bothered by the implementation, but one look at it during design should have raised this as a potential issue.

What's done is done and the fix at least makes sense to me

Nearly found all the scales without a guide now lol

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@Zephire.8049 said:

@coso.9173 said:people who threaten to leave the game because of having to wait for like 1 week for a new mount... isn't it a bit much?

It will be 1 week at best (possibly closer to 2, depending on how the fourth and fifth tiers go).

If you have limited time and/or resources, it could take months thanks to it being timegated to reset. This after the Skyscale was used as a selling point for the episode with zero indication it would be different than the beetle or griffon acquisition.

The timegating sucks and needs to be removed, but that's not the only thing going on. Being misled and all the intentional omissions are other huge factors in the backlash and people quitting.

i also don't have much time to play, the griffon has taken me literally MONTHS to make because I don't like to grind and that makes earing gold much harder. so if I can wait 6 months for a griffon, it susprised me that some people cant wait a few weeks. I mean even the beetle took me like 1 month.

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Well, I honestly don't know what to say! I'm happy to hear the in-game day/night cycle will be used instead of a full day IRL! This is fantastic news, and I will pass it onto friends and fellow players immediately!

Thank you, Aenet! That's a perfect compromise that, more or less, suits everyone's needs! Thank you for listening to the community, and thank you for allowing us to even have such an absurdly long discussion about the whole thing!

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I'm glad they're responding with a fix, and although I hope to be done with the collections by the 28th, it will help others going forward. Very encouraging too to know they're reading the feedback and admitting that one or two issues were, in hindsight, a mistake or at least an unhappy experience for many players. Thanks!

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@"Stephane Lo Presti.7258" said:Hi,

We've posted an update about the skyscale acquisition here: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/77191/an-update-about-the-skyscale-acquisition/p1#Item_0

Thanks for the update! Glad to see a multitude of our issues were taken to heart, and I'm very happy to see that the daily tier gating was lowered to being an in-game day, since myself and others believe that to be a much better indicator of growth in respect to Tyria's universe, not our own.

Thanks again for proving to be one of the best dev teams for player engagement and for listening to feedback! :smiley:

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I’m gonna be grateful for that change as I hope for those who don’t get to play as often and those who got rl priorities to take care of can soonenjoy the Skyscale journey(now that it’ll be one imo) since now it’s in game as oppose to daily reset. I presume the 2 hours would still be active when you log off so still not bad.

I gave up the idea of this being for me personally once I knew we’d come near the end of the collection(I’m assuming) and while I’ll soldier through it, I knew it still wasn’t right to just accept time gates revolving around daily resets as something positive. Despite the intent.

Because a lot of companies won’t try anything and I’m glad y’all had the guts to come together and make a change one that in my opinion makes sense. While it’s not on a time that would benefit me and many others in this forum who would like that experience per say it’s alright(for me). Y’all got some respect from me always had but it increased. So thank you for making a change.

Edit: Typing on the phone is a struggle I tell ya.

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I do appreciate the change, I really do, for those who begin later.

Unfortunately I don't understand why this is postponed until the 28th after first adopters have finished, rather than just a hotfix that takes place after today's Daily Reset.

I'll just leave it at that though.

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Wow! I didn't expect such a generous change to the timegates.

I expected maybe a small change to the collection here and there, but nothing this drastic. I'm going to try unlocking my skyscale before the change, but I'm happy for players who work on the collection in the future. (:

I have bought almost every mount skin that's come out so far. I definitely plan on buying more now. Thank you Anet for taking the time to read everyone's feedback.

My friend wouldn't come back to the game because of the skyscale, so I'm hoping this news will make her happy.

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Good to see that it's being changed from a set time between collections to 2 hours. Sad to see it won't happen until the 28th since this seems like something to warrant a hot fix, but it's good to see that in the future people won't have to rush through content to make sure they finish before reset.

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@Rukario.1695 said:I do appreciate the change, I really do, for those who begin later.

Unfortunately I don't understand why this is postponed until the 28th after first adopters have finished, rather than just a hotfix that takes place after today's Daily Reset.

I'll just leave it at that though.

I'd assume its so they can make overall changes to the Skyscale at that point, instead of trickling them in on smaller build changes. After all, by the 28th most people who started on Day 1 will have had their's for at least a week, so they'll be able to do a lot more bug-fixing and the like by then. Just as well, they may decide to make other changes based off the thread here before that date as well.

So while I do agree that it could be done sooner, I can also understand why they'd want to wait.

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I really don't get what all the fuss is about, sure timegates that are not properly communicated sucks... but that's it.

People seem to forget few things, LS5 will not require the skyscale, in fact unless they change their policies in a major way no upcoming content will require mounts beyond PoF core set. They even called Skyscale a prestige mount comparing it to Griffon, so it will be very much optional.

So, unless you are hardcore achievement hunter currently there is no pressing need for the Skyscale, other than just to have it for the sake of having it, and there will not be any such need going forward. In the event that they would design content that requires this mount they would either provide mount rentals or roosts on any maps that include such content.

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@CJtheBigBear.9610 said:

@Rukario.1695 said:I do appreciate the change, I really do, for those who begin later.

Unfortunately I don't understand why this is postponed until the 28th after first adopters have finished, rather than just a hotfix that takes place after today's Daily Reset.

I'll just leave it at that though.

I'd assume its so they can make overall changes to the Skyscale at that point, instead of trickling them in on smaller build changes. After all, by the 28th most people who started on Day 1 will have had their's for at least a week, so they'll be able to do a lot more bug-fixing and the like by then. Just as well, they may decide to make other changes based off the thread here before that date as well.

So while I do agree that it could be done sooner, I can also understand why they'd want to wait.

Yea I think this is most likely the case, here is to hoping you won’t auto grab the walls and instead use a hotkey. I know there is some other good changes, I read Kidel’s thread/discussion saw some good ideas in there.

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Many thanks for the update, and even more thanks for the change.

I greatly appreciate the change to match Tyria time. Although I find the idea that "it doesn’t make sense for your skyscale to go from an egg to fully grown in a day" logically offensive in a world with too many impossibilities just happen for story reasons, matching the Tyria day/night cycle actually makes sense in terms of timing limitations.

As for learning from this, I hope the clearest lesson is that we'll take effort, we'll even take timegates - just make it cool/make sense, rather than going for maximum delay.

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@CJtheBigBear.9610 said:

@Rukario.1695 said:I do appreciate the change, I really do, for those who begin later.

Unfortunately I don't understand why this is postponed until the 28th after first adopters have finished, rather than just a hotfix that takes place after today's Daily Reset.

I'll just leave it at that though.

I'd assume its so they can make overall changes to the Skyscale at that point, instead of trickling them in on smaller build changes. After all, by the 28th most people who started on Day 1 will have had their's for at least a week, so they'll be able to do a lot more bug-fixing and the like by then. Just as well, they may decide to make other changes based off the thread here before that date as well.

So while I do agree that it could be done sooner, I can also understand why they'd want to wait.

Whereas I agree with you in general, I don't see any problems with fixing this specific issue today (24h wait between collection unlocks changed to 2 hours)--much like the Mastery Point issue.

This would only allow more feedback on the mount and masteries before the 28th, if any other changes are planned at that point in time.

By the time this change comes to pass, a good chunk of people who had problems will have had to just deal with it in its entirety.

However, I don't expect them to do this after announcing the decision with the 28th.

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@"Stephane Lo Presti.7258" said:Hi,

We've posted an update about the skyscale acquisition here: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/77191/an-update-about-the-skyscale-acquisition/p1#Item_0

As mentioned above, we welcome your feedback but please take into account the previous message I posted and that I'll repost here:

The discussion remained mostly civil so far and I want to thank all of you who contributed respectfully. All of you are passionate about the game and we're reading your posts. There are however tensions in this thread and I want to remind everyone here, whether you agree with a point being raised or not, that we ask all forum contributors to be
respectful and constructive
. No ad-hominem arguments will be accepted and, if you see a post like this, simply report it, the moderation team will action them (in passing, this is a friendly reminder about
). You can talk about various aspects of the game, how you feel about them, and generally share your feedback but the discussion here has to remain courteous.

This is really good! I don't mind some level of gate so long as it is reasonable, the fact you can progress every 2 hours instead of 24 is perfectly in line with what I'd consider reasonable. I'm very happy that starting next week the following waves of players will be able to progress substantially within their play time.

As a first/second waver I do wish this change will affect us (presuming we will have access this week), but I'm really happy this company I have invested my time and money in all these years is willing to work and compromise with the players, and accept the feedback to achieve the best possible quality and experience.

I thank you very, very much.

(Gonna buy some gems just to show my appreciation)

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"In the May 28 update, we’ll reduce the time between collection tiers from 24 hours to 2 hours, to reflect the passage of a full day in Tyrian time rather than in real world time."Pretty sure somebody said this already but that's exactly the kind of reaction I was waiting. And I wanted devs to know that. You're awesome as usual. Mistakes happen. Nobody's perfect but your reaction is perfect. It fits with lore and it fits with confort. The kind of thing you want when you play a game. Some kind of limitation but you don't really feel it. I like devs so much when they act like this. (-: Just sad they had to react and didn't think about this while creating the collection. "You never stop to learn" right ? (-:

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