Time gates don't help with player retention

[Dante.1508]

I agree op all they do for me is push me away.... I can stomach them for maybe 3 months then i leave again for a year or more.. great designs.

On 4/15/2022 at 12:02 AM, kharmin.7683 said:

Why do new players need ascended gear?

The same reason everyone else does to be competitive and for better survival..

Edited April 16, 2022 by Dante.1508

[Labjax.2465]

48 minutes ago, Dante.1508 said:

I agree op all they do for me is push me away.... I can stomach them for maybe 3 months then i leave again for a year or more.. great designs.

The same reason everyone else does to be competitive and for better survival..

I feel you. I encountered something like that recently myself. I had accumulated enough skirmish tickets from grinding reward tracks in WvW after I returned to the game that it wasn't too bad getting a piece of legendary armor. But after that, I was looking at the prospect of getting more pieces and I'm just like... I don't like WvW enough to do that. Too many weeks and every time I miss getting all the way to diamond, means even more weeks. So the fastest way is some weird unrealistic hybrid between sprint and marathon play, where I play heavily enough to get diamond every week, but also habitually enough to do it consistently each week for a big number of weeks. Doesn't make sense. So for that and other reasons, I just haven't been doing WvW anymore.

[Khisanth.2948]

3 hours ago, Dante.1508 said:

I agree op all they do for me is push me away.... I can stomach them for maybe 3 months then i leave again for a year or more.. great designs.

The same reason everyone else does to be competitive and for better survival..

Then you should prepare to be disappointed because ascended isn't going to provide much of either

[Kelly.7019]

yea but honestly as someone who likes to grind ap. It was way too easy in the past to do all the cheevos in a day and then be bored with just grinding the same map over n over for loots. VS still grind the map but doing it once daily vs a 4 hour farm. It all depends on the tasks. If they are clearly pointless go kill 10 mobs and bring something back then that's a poopy task. If it weaves into the narrative and is exciting and you get something worthwhile from doing 1/10 of a ten part task then that's more interesting.

Edited April 16, 2022 by Kelly.7019

[kharmin.7683]

8 hours ago, Dante.1508 said:

 

The same reason everyone else does to be competitive and for better survival..

Perhaps new players might learn to play the game first before worrying about being competitive or survival, although, survival in open world really doesn't require ascended gear. 

[Mickey.4207]

On 4/14/2022 at 3:02 PM, Labjax.2465 said:

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.

 

WOW is perfect example of how time gating chase players away. 

Edited April 16, 2022 by Mickey.4207

[Dante.1508]

6 hours ago, Khisanth.2948 said:

Then you should prepare to be disappointed because ascended isn't going to provide much of either

I have ascended gear on at least 50% of my characters, its a huge boost in pve and helps a ton.

[Mickey.4207]

1 minute ago, Dante.1508 said:

I have ascended gear on at least 50% of my characters, its a huge boost in pve and helps a ton.

Yep i will rather focus on ascended Armor. Legendary is just to show off your blings. 

[Dante.1508]

1 minute ago, Mickey.4207 said:

Yep i will rather focus on ascended Armor. Legendary is just to show off your blings. 

Legendary helps a ton in convenience with builds outside of that its just vanity.