Time gates don't help with player retention

[Labjax.2465]

To get the point across, I will simplify into two main types of people: sprint and marathon. And I say people, not players, because this psychology and behavior applies to life approach in general where circumstances allow, not specifically video games.

Sprint people tend to operate on bursts of high energy prolonged effort, followed by long periods of downtime. In MMO terms, these are the kind of people who take a month (if not less) to burn through content that took years to produce.

Marathon people tend to operate on small effort in the short-term, but on a habitual basis that leads to bigger gains in the long-term. In MMO terms, these are the kind of people who will patiently work through content over long periods of time.

Time gates aren't winning over either. The sprint person confronted by a time gate will tend to first look for a way(s) around it. If they can't find one, they may engage with it for a time, but in the end, their tendency to operate in bursts and then look elsewhere is going to win out. The habit won't get built and the goal will get abandoned, giving them less reason to engage with the game. The marathon person confronted by a time gate will tend to ignore it; they were going to take their time anyway. Some marathon people may even use spreadsheets and other such things to plot out their journey over a long period.

Not everybody will neatly fall into these boxes exactly, but the point here is that you can't change the psychology of the person with a time gate. Marathon people were going to take their time anyway and sprint people are never going to form the habit.

If you want to engage sprint people in the long-term, you have to first accept that many of them won't be engaged in the long-term and there's nothing you can do about it. And when they do, the only way you'll get them to return is if you ensure they have a (positive) memorable experience and/or strong social ties. Time gates might be a memorable experience of the unwanted kind, but they aren't going to get them to come back. And if you want to engage marathon people in the long-term, well MMOs seem to have that down pretty well with long-term goals you can work on incrementally and they don't really need time gates to do it.

So... let go of the time gates. They may have their place, such as in game economy for wanting to ensure a certain item or material stays rare, but when it comes to content and player retention, they do more harm than good. Brute force design in general doesn't make sense, considering these are games people play in their free time and they can put them down at any moment if they so choose and never pick them back up again, but that's a whole other can of worms.

Replace them with mechanics that encourage people to talk to each other (social ties). And mechanics that make it easier to help other people with personal goals that they're working on instead of so much being focused on individualist accomplishments. This game was clever long ago with its revive mechanic where people can easily help others out of downed state. You have it in you to be creative about encouraging people to focus less on themselves and come back for that feeling of being part of something larger.

[Danikat.8537]

Do you mean Anet should get rid of literally all the time gates in the game? For example someone should be able to do as many sets of 3 daily achievements as they can fit into 24 hours and get rewarded for each one?

Or are there specific time gates you consider to be a problem for the players you've described and would like to see changed or removed?

I assume it's the second one, but in that case it would be helpful to say which ones you think should be removed instead of assuming everyone reading this post will feel the same way you do and consider the same time gates to be a problem. Otherwise you run the risk of someone at Anet seeing this post, using it as justification to their bosses for removing the time gate they personally find annoying and totally missing the one/s which bother you.

[Cyninja.2954]

16 minutes ago, Danikat.8537 said:

Do you mean Anet should get rid of literally all the time gates in the game? For example someone should be able to do as many sets of 3 daily achievements as they can fit into 24 hours and get rewarded for each one?

Or are there specific time gates you consider to be a problem for the players you've described and would like to see changed or removed?

I assume it's the second one, but in that case it would be helpful to say which ones you think should be removed instead of assuming everyone reading this post will feel the same way you do and consider the same time gates to be a problem. Otherwise you run the risk of someone at Anet seeing this post, using it as justification to their bosses for removing the time gate they personally find annoying and totally missing the one/s which bother you.

 

Seems like a very cherry picked time gate issue for TC, most likely thinking of a very specific time gate which bugs them. The entire reasoning given reflects that.

 

Why stop at dailies? How about removing time gates from LI, or skirmish tickets in WvW, anyone want to binge their Spvp tickets in a week instead of 3 seasons for that legendary armor? What about some PvE collections? What about Charged Crystals? Let's crash that market right now. What about birthday presents? Why limit players to a year long time gate, just let everyone have every gift right now.

 

It should be rather clear that the claim that time gates do not prologue or extend content for players is strait up false. The reasoning given is faulty at best. The "marathon" person is absolutely not ignoring the time gate. They are simply not affected by it in a negative way. Those 2 are NOT the same. Best example: I've been having a blast selling my Antique Summoning Stones the last few weeks. The "sprinter" person is forced to either take their time and potentially engage in other content or quit. Given the "sprinter" would quit after being done anyway, any attempt to encourage them to diversify their gameplay might be a net benefit.

 

Positive effects of time gates:

- dailies/weeklies funnel players into specific content

- value retention and/or creation for certain crafts/crafting professions

- repeated engagement with content over extended periods of time. Even by players who do not enjoy this interesting enough

- alternative way to limit access to rewards besides ramping up the difficulty

- encourage interaction with the trading post, if you can't get it yourself, you might have to buy it from someone

- prevent short burst over-saturation of specific content

 

and the list goes on. Those are just the most obvious. Time gates are not notoriously bad design. Used well, as is done is some cases in the game, they are very effective tools to encourage behavior or discourage behavior, in some cases even protecting players from themselves.

Edited April 14, 2022 by Cyninja.2954

[Ishmael.6740]

I don't really have a problem with time gating, gives a sense of working towards a reward. 

[Aaricia.9758]

Well written, OP. I was able to easily follow your point and I do agree that decreasing the use of time gates would be better. My only question is this: could you give examples of the time gates you believe to be detrimental to the current gameplay? As you've seen, some responders are taking your meaning from one side of the spectrum to the ridiculous side.

[Tachenon.5270]

Time-gated crafting has been known to evoke utterance of varied and sundry colorful metaphors from me. I see no rational, reasonable, logical, or beneficial point to it.

[Cyninja.2954]

12 minutes ago, Tachenon.5270 said:

Time-gated crafting has been known to evoke utterance of varied and sundry colorful metaphors from me. I see no rational, reasonable, logical, or beneficial point to it.

You don't have to like or agree with time-gated crafting. That is fine. Not liking something is a subjective emotion. Pretty much the opposite of logic or reason.

What you can't claim is that there is no benefit to it. One side benefits: the ones benefiting from the value increase of the craft. It's the reason why many time-gated items actually sell at a profit here, versus what is most common the case in MMO markets: at a loss compared to the components cost.

The logic or reason, well that comes down to what aspect of the time gate one looks at:

- it can facilitate trade, aka players have to go to other players for more of said item than the time gated amount allows them to craft themselves

- it can extend the time until completion, thus artificially extending the point of reward

- it can be used to create barriers, in some cases if used correctly to disincentivize or slow down potentially resource wasted crafting

TL;DR:

You can dislike time-gated crafting. I'm sure many do if they are limited by it (just as others are likely profiting off of it, yet maybe not as vocal about how they enjoy benefiting). You don't get to claim it is unreasonable, illogical or provides no benefit based on your subjective emotion though.

Edited April 14, 2022 by Cyninja.2954

[Dayra.7405]

12 minutes ago, Tachenon.5270 said:

Time-gated crafting has been known to evoke utterance of varied and sundry colorful metaphors from me. I see no rational, reasonable, logical, or beneficial point to it.

I like them, when the result is tradable. These are the only ones where you can make some profit by crafting. If you plan ahead, you can craft cheap yourself, if you want them in a hurry you can buy them in the HP and make others happy 🙂

Edited April 14, 2022 by Dayra.7405

[Gibson.4036]

What’s missing here is that there is a third type of player. There are players with the free time and focus to play as many hours a day as the sprinter over the long term of the marathoner. These players are the reason for time gates.

In an open sandbox these full-timers dominate the sprinters and the marathoners. Sprinters keep up in the short term, but find themselves hopelessly behind when they return after their breaks. Marathoners can never keep up with their comparatively small play time.

With a time gate, full-timers are balanced with the marathoners, unable to dominate since they both reach the time gate each play session.  
 

Sprinters are left behind, but there are things that aren’t time-gated they can repeat to balance things out. They also may want to consider that MMOs are designed to be played over time, not binged.

[Tachenon.5270]

14 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

You don't have to like or agree with time-gated crafting. That is fine. Not liking something is a subjective emotion. Pretty much the opposite of logic or reason.

What you can't claim is that there is no benefit to it. One side benefits: the ones benefiting from the value increase of the craft. It's the reason why many time-gated items actually sell at a profit here, versus what is most common the case in MMO markets: at a loss compared to the components cost.

The logic or reason, well that comes down to what aspect of the time gate one looks at:

- it can facilitate trade, aka players have to go to other players for more of said item than the time gated amount allows them to craft themselves

- it can extend the time until completion, thus artificially extending the point of reward

- it can be used to create barriers, in some cases if used correctly to disincentivize or slow down potentially resource wasted crafting

TL;DR:

You can dislike time-gated crafting. I'm sure many do if they are limited by it (just as others are likely profiting off of it, yet maybe not as vocal about how they enjoy benefiting). You don't get to claim it is unreasonable, illogical or provides no benefit based on your subjective emotion though.

You can claim that my opinion is a 'claim' all you like, but that will neither change my opinion nor validate your own objectively erroneous claim. So there! /e raspberry

[Danikat.8537]

42 minutes ago, Aaricia.9758 said:

Well written, OP. I was able to easily follow your point and I do agree that decreasing the use of time gates would be better. My only question is this: could you give examples of the time gates you believe to be detrimental to the current gameplay? As you've seen, some responders are taking your meaning from one side of the spectrum to the ridiculous side.

If you mean me then I'd like to point out that I did say I assume the OP has specific time gates in mind, I'm just not sure which they are and I think it's important to add that information if they actually want anything to change.

Also as someone who can't play every day and doesn't necessarily want to do daily achievements every day I'm online I would find it useful if I has the option to do them more than once a day. The normal ones are a quick source of gold and AP (I still haven't hit the cap on them) and the more specialist ones, especially the festival ones, can have some nice rewards. I've missed several days of Super Adventure Box dailies because I've been away, if I could have played the ones I missed before/after I'd have completed the Course Load achievement another time this year and gotten another weapon box.

[Cyninja.2954]

22 minutes ago, Tachenon.5270 said:

You can claim that my opinion is a 'claim' all you like, but that will neither change my opinion nor validate your own objectively erroneous claim. So there! /e raspberry

 

I never intended to change your opinion, even stating that it is perfectly fine and understandable.

I corrected your wording and fluffing of your subjective argument which boils down to: I don't like this. Which you have every-right to but is based on emotion and hardly on reason, logic or any benefits or detriments the issue might have.

Edited April 14, 2022 by Cyninja.2954

[Vayne.8563]

I don't see anything wrong with time gating certain content, but other content probably should be less gated. Without discussing specifics the situation is pointless however.

 

Times gates are made to slow people down so people don't get so far ahead that others can't keep up with them. They're particularly useful for new content. However, I'm not convinced that further time gating benefits the game.

Should charging quartz crystals be time gated. In the beginning it makes it so quartz doesn't go nuts in price, but later on, it hurts new players who would take much longer to catch up. Why does there need to be a gate now on charging up quartz?  

Seems to me that times gates should be periodically reviewed and adjusted to see if the reasons they were introduced still apply. I don't think all time gets should be removed from the game, but I'm absolutely in favor of reviewing certain time gates and seeing if they're still needed.

[Cyninja.2954]

1 minute ago, Vayne.8563 said:

Seems to me that times gates should be periodically reviewed and adjusted to see if the reasons they were introduced still apply. I don't think all time gets should be removed from the game, but I'm absolutely in favor of reviewing certain time gates and seeing if they're still needed.

 

That is probably one of the most reasonable approaches and ideas given so far and I agree.

[kharmin.7683]

28 minutes ago, Tachenon.5270 said:

You can claim that my opinion is a 'claim' all you like, but that will neither change my opinion nor validate your own objectively erroneous claim. So there! /e raspberry

Objectively erroneous?  Ok, I'll bite.  Where are your facts/proof that the claim is objectively erroneous?

[Gibson.4036]

11 minutes ago, Vayne.8563 said:

 

Should charging quartz crystals be time gated. In the beginning it makes it so quartz doesn't go nuts in price, but later on, it hurts new players who would take much longer to catch up. Why does there need to be a gate now on charging up quartz?  
 

Charged quartz is still a reliable way to make money, solely because of the time gate.

[Tachenon.5270]

25 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

 

I never intended to change your opinion, even stating that it is perfectly fine and understandable.

I corrected your wording and fluffing of your subjective argument which boils down to: I don't like this. Which you have every-right to but is based on emotion and hardly on reason, logic or any benefits or detriments the issue might have.

Word for word, precisely as originally worded:

"Time-gated crafting has been known to evoke utterance of varied and sundry colorful metaphors from me. I see no rational, reasonable, logical, or beneficial point to it."

See where it says 'I see'? Those two words indicate -- quite clearly, I would think -- that what is coming next in the sentence is a subjective opinion. Now, if I'd said 'Time gating has no beneficial point whatsoever and that is a bona fide, verifiable, incontrovertible, irrefragable fact, and you know it!' your claim that I made a claim might have an objectively valid point. As it stands, however, your point is pointedly pointless. Objectively!

I can do this all day. But I'd really rather not, if its all the same to you. /e salute

[Vayne.8563]

15 minutes ago, Gibson.4036 said:

Charged quartz is still a reliable way to make money, solely because of the time gate.

Okay but if you're a newer player and you want to get a set of celestial gear, that sorta hurts you a bit.

[Bobzitto.8571]

I can see the point of some of the time gates we have for purely economic reasons (like quartz or ascended mats) but I do think they hurt new players or people looking to craft new sets of ascended gear. Easy solution, allow players to craft unlimited amounts of these resources but only the first one of the day is tradeable. People who don't have the resources at hand and want to avoid farming for them will continue to rely on the trading post (either buying raw mats or the finished product), while players who accumulated resources won't have to get the mats drip-fed to them. 

 

GW2 would also benefit from a system like Lost Ark's, where not doing something daily allows it to accumulate so you can reap the rewards on a different day, albeit at a slight loss. In GW2, if you miss the daily 3 one day, the following day it would give you 3g50s instead of 2. A player doing it every day is still at an advantage, but people who can't do it everyday are at less of a loss. Considering how much daily stuff some of us try to farm, depending on what we're working on, it would be pretty helpful.

[kharmin.7683]

Why do new players need ascended gear?

[ugrakarma.9416]

4 hours ago, Labjax.2465 said:

Replace them with mechanics that encourage people to talk to each other (social ties). 

No, thanks.

The disaster of ED meta is already showing its harm.

The devs should learn that they will always lose players when try fix the players instead of fix the game, most ideas on GW2 that ended in disaster(specially alienating casuals) walked that path.

The Xpac is infested with time gates? fix the game, make a better xpac, instead of rushed content.

 

 

 

Edited April 14, 2022 by ugrakarma.9416

[Bobzitto.8571]

19 minutes ago, kharmin.7683 said:

Why do new players need ascended gear?

 

Nobody needs anything in this game. Question is, what is the harm in reducing the timegate to obtain it for anyone who wants it? If I want to spend the whole day gathering to craft a ton of ascended mats/gear for myself,  why can't I?

Edited April 14, 2022 by Bobzitto.8571

[Cyninja.2954]

46 minutes ago, Tachenon.5270 said:

Word for word, precisely as originally worded:

"Time-gated crafting has been known to evoke utterance of varied and sundry colorful metaphors from me. I see no rational, reasonable, logical, or beneficial point to it."

See where it says 'I see'? Those two words indicate -- quite clearly, I would think -- that what is coming next in the sentence is a subjective opinion. Now, if I'd said 'Time gating has no beneficial point whatsoever and that is a bona fide, verifiable, incontrovertible, irrefragable fact, and you know it!' your claim that I made a claim might have an objectively valid point. As it stands, however, your point is pointedly pointless. Objectively!

I can do this all day. But I'd really rather not, if its all the same to you. /e salute

 

Glad we agree then. The use of those quantifiers made no sense and served no purpose besides make it seems as though your opinion presented was more than a subjective opinion.

[Cyninja.2954]

5 minutes ago, Bobzitto.8571 said:

 

Nobody needs anything in this game. Question is, what is the harm in reducing the timegate to obtain it for anyone who wants it? If I want to spend the whole day gathering to craft a ton of ascended mats/gear for myself,  why can't I?

 

You can. All those materials can be sold and in turn that gold used to buy the necessary materials from others in case you want to speed up the process.

Meanwhile, those ascended materials can be sold by others who are not in need of them for a slight profit.

The developer has a net benefit of players using the trading post.

The market is benefiting because now players don't directly compete for the materials, making them spike when many want them at the same time, but rather for the time gate.

Edited April 14, 2022 by Cyninja.2954

[Gibson.4036]

1 hour ago, Vayne.8563 said:

Okay but if you're a newer player and you want to get a set of celestial gear, that sorta hurts you a bit.

Ah, the fourth type of player, the newcomer. I guess that would go to a separate discussion of what should be available to a new player easily, and what should be expected to take some time.

Someone newly buying EoD or PoF will get a free set of exotic celestial gear for their first character. And stat selectable gear is not difficult to get in HoT.

I'll admit personal bias. As someone who plays an hour or two a few times a week, charged crystals are one of the main ways I make a steady, small income.

To your original point, agreed that it would make sense to review time-gates periodically to see if they're still helpful. With the prevalence of ascended gear now, are ectoplasm refinement time gates still necessary?