[merged] About the Skyscale Timegate...

[Witch of Doom.5739]

@"Dracyon Imperius.6309" said:It seems the devs are directing people towards this thread and one other (at least that is what Stephane Lo Presti seems to be doing). So constructive criticism is likely to be read. Though I would very much like them to communicate on their plans to address player concern, and not just the "listening to feedback" routine.

I don't mind being directed to one or two threads, but the title of this one really needs to be changed, as it involves so much more than the timegate now.

[Josiah.2967]

Unpolished grinds like this are the opposite of why people switched or started playing GW2 in the first place. This mount goes against everything this game originally stood for. The way this was handled will only cause Arena.net to lose players. This mount gives an unfair advantage (PVE) to be behind such a grind. Sorry, but it can get places the bunny cannot.

If I'm going to do intense grinds, I'm going to go back to WOW. At least they are more polished there and easier to understand/follow.

This mount should be tagged:"less available to players than the griffon mount."

Which is the opposite of what we were promised.

[WinterSolstice.7829]

My rule of thumb is that the more flexible a mount is to breaking a map, the more it should be worth as an effort. This actually holds true to that trait of thought quite well. In that regard it lives up to its end of the bargain. Warclaw arguably also lived up to that well in terms of WvW, but I think if they brought value outside of WvW for Warclaw, that would have been better.

Owning Skyscale, I'd say the effort was worth itself, but I would like to agree on the wasted xp part. I almost wonder if doing almost a reward track sort of xp approach could be a preferable scenario to keep a certain relevancy at all times. I knew once I learned the time gating I was going to half burn out by the time I actually got my mount. What actually gave me a bit more energy to keep going after was the new armors to get and the new masteries making exploration in the new maps easier.

[DeWolfe.2174]

Episode 6 and the time gating has had negative effects on my interest in the game and how much I've been playing. Since game launch this is likely the lowest my interest has been and least amount I'm playing.

[Teefy.5016]

logincraft Charged Quartz Crystallog off

this is what the mount collection did to me. its utter bollox.

[slashlizardy.9167]

I may be in a minority here, and I usually only get on the forums whenever I feel a collection or an achieve has too much of commitment or investment to achieve, but for me, in the case of the skyscale, it had the perfect fit. Thank you anet!

[BlueJin.4127]

I must say, I don’t understand the point of the time gate. For most people, the collection is so long, I doubt they can even get it in the minimum number of days. And if players hit the time gate when they just started playing for that day... ouch.

Only a small percentage of players would obtain the Skyscale in 1 or 2 days without the time gate. And if they get it a few days earlier than they would with the time gate, so what?

[TheQuickFox.3826]

I haven't had any issues with the time gating. At first it annoyed me a bit that there were so many steps needed to complete the Skyscale, but in the end I'm okay with it.The time gating of the collection steps actually was good for me as it helped me to not rush the thing and complete it step-by-step.

As a side note: I had plenty of Charged Quartz Crystals already, so I was not limited by that part of the time gating. I would have no issue with making charged quartz tradable to allow players to buy them off the trading post directly.

[Dracyon Imperius.6309]

Well, I finished my journey an hour ago. And it reminded me of a very simple piece of psychology. When I missed 50 of each currency after a week or two of daily grind, I just said "fuck it, finishing it today." Because it seemed within reach. By dilating steps and making them more daunting than they have any right to be, ArenaNet is just suppressing that urge to, well, buckle up and do it, except for a few very dedicated players. A high barrier to access that will discourage most players when you want to encourage them, nudge them forward. 100 currency is something you can shoot for. 250 is a long, unrewarding slog.

[Obtena.7952]

@"Dracyon Imperius.6309" said:It seems the devs are directing people towards this thread and one other (at least that is what Stephane Lo Presti seems to be doing). So constructive criticism is likely to be read. Though I would very much like them to communicate on their plans to address player concern, and not just the "listening to feedback" routine.

Well ... they do. I just read a thread where Anet rep said they would loosen the requirement on the training for latency issues.

To be fair ... if Anet doesn't communicate, that's not a sign they don't listen or aren't doing something.

[Obtena.7952]

@Teefy.5016 said:logincraft Charged Quartz Crystallog off

this is what the mount collection did to me. its utter bollox.

That is simply an indicator of how engaged you are with the game ... not that there is something wrong with timegating.

[Teefy.5016]

@Obtena.7952 said:

@Teefy.5016 said:

login

craft Charged Quartz Crystal

log off

this is what the mount collection did to me. its utter bollox.

That is simply an indicator of how engaged you are with the game ... not that there is something wrong with timegating.

no, it means that i really want the mount and im going as fast as i can.as fast as i can. hence the bollox. (i choose not to be ripped off at the Auction house, if you were wondering)

Also, as the well known Anet white knight, who ferociously refuses to acknowledge any flaw in whatever Anet is doing, dont bother responding to me. i dont value your opinion, whatsover.

[yann.1946]

@Teefy.5016 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:

@Teefy.5016 said:

login

craft Charged Quartz Crystal

log off

this is what the mount collection did to me. its utter bollox.

That is simply an indicator of how engaged you are with the game ... not that there is something wrong with timegating.

no, it means that i really want the mount and im going as fast as i can.as fast as i can. hence the bollox. (i choose not to be ripped off at the Auction house, if you were wondering)

Also, as the well known Anet white knight, who ferociously refuses to acknowledge any flaw in whatever Anet is doing, dont bother responding to me. i dont value your opinion, whatsover.

It's not because you're black knighting that your opinion is more valid.Why is it that you don't do other things then log in and feed it?

[Teefy.5016]

no, its not because im black knighting. its because this thread is now 39 pages long. maybe i'm on to something.

because logging in and playing the game is a constant reminder of how salty i am about the mount. yes. its a little petty. i admit.

still, bollox.

[kratan.4619]

Anet, Please continue with these types of item acquisition processes. Being able to slowly work towards a goal is what keeps myself, and many others, logging into the game. When I have no long term goals, that is when I stop logging into the game. Also, there is no need for this "transparency" as far as what other collections would be needed for next steps, the only people that want this are ones who just want to work ahead on other steps. As a suggestion, it would be nice for future collections that they use a unique item/currency that cannot even be harvested/earned prior to completing the previous collection. Completing each collection would then unlock the ability to earn the next collection items. Just submitting my own opinion just like everyone else in this thread.

[eldrin.6471]

I finally finished this horrendous collection .long boring and tedious is how i would describe it.Can only hope we do not get a repeat of this.This mount i refuse to buy skins for.

[Obtena.7952]

@Teefy.5016 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:

@Teefy.5016 said:

login

craft Charged Quartz Crystal

log off

this is what the mount collection did to me. its utter bollox.

That is simply an indicator of how engaged you are with the game ... not that there is something wrong with timegating.

no, it means that i really want the mount and im going as fast as i can.as fast as i can. hence the bollox. (i choose not to be ripped off at the Auction house, if you were wondering)

So doing nothing else in the game except logging in, charging and logging out means your going as fast as you can? That doesn't make sense. Doing nothing but a charge isn't related to go fast. I go fast to ... but I do other things as well. if you only log in to charge, you simply aren't engaged with playing the game. Pretty sure the mount collection didn't do that to you.

It's a moot point anyways now that I think about it. There isn't actually anything wrong with what you are doing. it's a big SO WHAT. Sounds to me like somehow, you can't be bothered to log in to the game at all if you can't be bothered to log into the game for something that insignificant. I really don't get the argument you make here ... you HAVE to log into the game for just this task because you want it fast ... but then your implying you don't do anything else in it? Sounds like if you didn't have this task, you wouldn't log in at all.

[Vision.7265]

@eldrin.6471 said:I finally finished this horrendous collection .long boring and tedious is how i would describe it.Can only hope we do not get a repeat of this.This mount i refuse to buy skins for.

There are skins? If they dangled them out early as incentive, I may have bought 'em. Since getting the mount after the first week of release, I'm over it. I can't bring myself to care about them either way. There were suggestions for other mounts and skins for them, but they weren't taken seriously. They just pattern skins off of the ones they had before. So we can expect things like primeval, awakened, starfall, arctic, fire, electric, exalted, forged, etc.

I want an American muscle car themed beetle skin, but I know it won't happen.

[Minax.3284]

The way the Skyscale Collection was handled has me very worried for future content. If I wanted long grinds behind a boatload of RNG as well as a bunch of daily crafts and harvests I'd be playing other games instead of Guild Wars - This sort of grind has never been a cornerstone of Guild Wars 2 and I really hope this isn't suggestive of how future content will be handled. Why is this mount, which supposedly was designed to (unlike the griffon) not be a "prestige" mount and be accessible to "all" players (as long as they own PoF and all of LS4) more of a grind and headache than the mount that actually was supposed to be a sort of "prestige" mount?

I don't mind collections. In fact, doing collections is one of my favourite activities in Guild Wars, because they're usually fun and somewhat engaging and take you to a lot of different places. But the Sksycale ones are absurd. Where is the fun in making us tour the same map three times in a row? Some locations for the first three collections were even almost next to each other.

Nevermind the fact that we'll also be grinding mobs in Vabbi for up to 30 minutes each to get the djinn to spawn (and hope nobody who is unaware of the Skyscale collection talks to them or else they become hostile and you get to start over); we have to get frozen (with the only two real options being to go to Claw of Jormag and hope that one of his spawned mobs will randomly freeze you, or buy a specific LS3 episode); we have to get a certain event to spawn in Vabbi that shares spawns with other events and is completely random; we'll be grinding every single LS4 map for currencies; leveling up a profession skill; farm 250 quartz crystals from once-per-day mining nodes and converting them once-per-day into their charged versions -- or spend a bunch of gold bypassing the last two steps. Then we get to farm a boatload of mobs which will randomly drop skyscale treats; do some jumping puzzles to catch our skyscale rascals (or spend gold to bypass this step); craft skyscale food (which again uses once-per-day materials) or bypass this with gold as well. And the list goes on. I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels that this is absolutely mindless, unengaging, unfun content that is meant to be busy-work instead of something interesting to do.

On a different note: Why time-gate some things, and then pseudo time-gate other things that you can bypass with gold? Either you want to time-gate content to keep players busy longer (in which case none of these steps should be bypassable), or you want to push players to buy gems (in which case all the time-gates should be bypassable if you're willing to spend enough money).

To me, it feels like with the loss of such a huge amount of their dev team, they are scrambling to keep players busy (not engaged, busy.) with easy-to-make, low-cost content, excessive amounts of time-gating and a low-key push to get people to buy and convert gems to bypass some time-gated steps; and the thought of eventual future content updates being handled in a similar way is not encouraging at all. If this is the direction the game is progressing, I don't know if I want to keep engaging with it.

[Derdzvero.7051]

Time gating is a cheap and stupid attempt to keep people's working, instead of playing. Timeplans, xls Sheets, tasks.. complete BS in entertainment product. Unless done in milking games, where people are supposed to believe at some point the game is important part of their life and open wallets.. lol, some could probably..

Example: speak to Gorrik and..come back later. Want to reboot ig-6417? Sit there for a week with a character. And so on nonsense.

[JustTrogdor.7892]

The previous 4 day feeding time gate didn't bother me really. It gave the people that started fast on the Skyscale enough time to create guides by the time I got there a few days later. :smile: At least Anet shortened it bit for those that got started later. The one that bothered me recently was the Astralaria I collection. I finally convinced myself to start on a generation 2 legendary and started Astralaria earlier this week. I thought, "Hey I can knock out Astralaria I in a few hours." Then hit a 12 day time gate for the Mini Holographic Zinn a few hours in to the start collection. Haha.

[Forda.6359]

I finally unlocked my skyscale and you want to know what the worse thing about this collection is? The mount isn't even worth it imo. I have mine fully upgraded and it is kinda cool don't get me wrong, the best part is the fire breathing dismount but otherwise I don't really use it and I feel almost guilty even bringing the darn thing out knowing how many people are struggling with the awful saddle collection. I wish the mount did something awesome that forced me to use it above all others like the skimmer when traveling over water or the jackal with the portals. My griff baby is still the superior flier. It's just disappointing especially with all the work that went into it.

[Dami.5046]

We are still here? wow.I have found my baby dragon to be quite useful actually.I really hope thats mount done and dusted.I don't think as a community we deserve any more.

[Forda.6359]

@Dami.5046 said:We are still here? wow.I have found my baby dragon to be quite useful actually.I really hope thats mount done and dusted.I don't think as a community we deserve any more.

People will probably be really apprehensive about the next mount anyway after this one, so I doubt we get another and if we do, the time between this one and the next will be a very long time

[Richard Marcinko.5132]

@"kratan.4619" said:Anet, Please continue with these types of item acquisition processes. Being able to slowly work towards a goal is what keeps myself, and many others, logging into the game. When I have no long term goals, that is when I stop logging into the game. Also, there is no need for this "transparency" as far as what other collections would be needed for next steps, the only people that want this are ones who just want to work ahead on other steps. As a suggestion, it would be nice for future collections that they use a unique item/currency that cannot even be harvested/earned prior to completing the previous collection. Completing each collection would then unlock the ability to earn the next collection items. Just submitting my own opinion just like everyone else in this thread.

ANET please DO NOT continue with this type of process. Not all of us have 18 hours a day to play. I'm currently on the saddle and I am having a hard time finding motivation to play when I know I'm going to be spending the entire time on one map farming currencies. Up to the point of the Saddle was a pain and I hated it but I could live with it. The saddle is just a kick below the belt.