What are your thoughts on egg timer gameplay?

Community General Discussion
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For a lot of mmo’s in the past and some in the present, their evolution was tied to a mechanic that minimizes emotional investment and rewards in favor of timed progression that often end up feeling like a chore. a chore you complete with the hopes that one day the timers will mean less and the rewards you gained mean more. Game developers have nicknamed this egg timer gameplay, where you basically can set an egg timer of sorts that decides when you play and why. In a game like Eve online this essentially makes up the vast majority of the game where you are leveling skills and building things in game set to time-gates. An example in WoW would be the weekly chest, how many of your guidlmates or fellow players engage with a patch for 2-4 weeks only to fall back on only logging once or twice a week for their timed reward structure? How much does this affect your personal backend enjoyment of the game? Because it seems like the current team working on WoW have, over the years, relied more and more on these types of mechanics.

I wonder how much of the player base feels empty satisfaction without really being able to put into words whats going on.

Its clear that these types of mechanics are necessary in some form for a great game, and so it seems to come down to balance. balancing egg-timer gameplay aspects with an open world that has set reward you can emotionally invest in. Why do we play games? Do we play because we want the fun fake stuff handed to us week in and week out, or do we play for the experiences that bring us joy and meaning through player interaction and such?

WoW is a succesful game that seems to have fallen into this trap, and in the modern era there seems to be a near constant scramble to fix everything about the game in hopes of getting us more invested into something that, at the end of the day, is tied to a timer and not our engagement of a diverse and fun world.

in the beginning we had around 3 timers that really mattered for the reward structure, 7 day raids (very difficult to do tied 40ppl), 3 day raids (just long enough for casual players), and the pvp promotion 7 day timer. Now almost everything about the progression of your character is tied to a time-gate. we dont even get content on patch release days, its timed out as well.

Do you feel this is a major contributing factor to your enjoyment of the game? Are these timers fracturing the player base more and more as the weeks go on?
Is a game more or less fun when you can predict the outcome based on nothing but a timer?

I’ll try to avoid my own personal opinions on the subject, as they clearly do not matter, but i am super curious how the rest of you feel about this. For those of you who played classic does this seem like a major design flaw with the current game that goes largely unnoticed or talked about?

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Are you referring to the multitude that have left because they found the game empty and unrewarding, or some other demographic?

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well it could be them or people that have stayed. i imagine that those who left because the game felt unrewarding have felt the empty satisfaction, so im wondering how many of the people who stay, feel that as well without really knowing why, but still play because it’s the game they want in some form and maybe things will change for the better eventually.

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I like to turn it to the right, wait a bit and hear the bell ring. Sometimes I turn it right, then force it just slightly left to hear the gears inside whirr. A fun variation is to turn it, then close my eyes and count and see how close I can get to the actual ‘ding’ in my head.

Don’t even get me started on the digital ones, I can press those buttons all day. And spell some rude words.

Wait… what?

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Must be too early - not a single thing made sense in this for me.

I prefer not to over think why I am having fun anyway.

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Basically, do you think things like weekly chests, dailies, capped azerite from islands, all raids on a 7day CD, rep-gating etc make the game better or worse? Do you think more or less people login for a timed reward or login because they genuinely enjoy the game?

the egg timer refers to old mmorpg’s where you would gain a skill or item opportunity every hour or 30 minutes or even 15 minutes, so you would login just for that one thing, then log out and reset your timer and just wait. and then maybe one day the game would be better somehow.

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I think having a variety of different types of content is a good thing. Not everyone likes the same things.

I actually don’t see anything wrong with that type of thing. If you didn’t have that then the game might not even exist because some people would just play hard for 2 months, get what they need and then quit.

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cool, so for you the balance is just right then.

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Catering to speed-runners was a bad thing. No time to appreciate the level design or search for secrets when everything goes by in a blur.

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I do like the option of the game having something in place that says, “Hey, if you only want to engage with the game for a short while, here are some things to do every day that might get you something cool”. I’m OK with Emissary and World Quests.

Where I am unsatisfied with the game is my lack of choice in how I progress my character. Gear drops have always been random, but I don’t have any talent point system to build a character on, the Azerite system is (at least for today, tomorrow will be different) a mess, reps are held only to a limited number a day. At least in MoP I could grind at my own pace the reps.

There is so much randomization in the game that I feel like I’m in this contradicting world where things don’t matter but they also don’t. I don’t have a lot of control over the secondary stats on items I’m given but I don’t have have a lot of option in getting the ones I want so I’m forced to either get really frustrated with the apparent lack of progress or just concede it really doesn’t matter that much…which then makes me not care about the items at all.

Same with my abilities. So many of my abilities have “the chance” of doing something, and I have very little control how often it happens, and thats frustrating. One thing about classic that I really like is that all of my stats mattered and when I got a piece of gear or a new ability, I could easily measure how useful that ability to me is.

So yeah, sorry, rambled there for a moment, but my point is: Time gated stuff is not necessarily a bad thing, but I need a reason to invest in my character and gear isn’t enough when they shower you in it.

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I find it too much as it is now - I’d prefer not to be consulting menus and progress bars the whole time I play. For me it distracts from the open world rpg aspect

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No this is great i made this topic because, while i obviously enjoy the game immensely i was recently challenged on this idea, and just thought this would be a good place to get a second opinion on it.

i noticed over the past couple years more players logging in only breifly to do only one thing or the other, and it kind of concerned me.

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All players should be forced to refer to m+ as “egg timer dungeons”.

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Let’s see here. Will try to grab them all butni just woke up. Thoughts still mega fuzzy muh dude.

I don’t lignin for a weekly chest. I just grab it because I know itnis there. The chestnis an incentive sure. However I am trying to do more than a 10 key not for rewards but challenge.

As to dailies I typically do 4 a day. I do them not because I want to perse. I do them for the paragon gold. Itnis a good way to grt an easy 3-5k. I buy my expansions and other games with Blizzard Balance. So the gold is a good motivator to me.

Islands in will give you the egg timer. I don’t enjoy them. I tolerate them for the reward. I have not done a single one since I hit 50. Raid cooldowns don’t bother me. Anything non mythic can be repeated and loot elibablr for a bonus roll. Itnis a good way to target drops. I have only done a rep grind once. It was in Silithus. The rest just came naturally, or with rune cloth I was already getting haha.

I will admit I would dedicate my first hour in Ultima Online a lot of time for maximum use of power hour. So I get your point.

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This is a faulty metric, however. What are those players free time like? Why are they only logging in to do that? Is it because the game is not fun or they are busy?

Would they still be subbed or would they unsub if they could not log in, jump into something, and log out as desired.

Without actually talking to them it can be a very flawed, skewed metric.

Fonexamaple, I logged in last night, saw not a lot were on, cleared my emissaries, and logged out. Not because of an egg timer. I work weekend doubles. I had already done a 16 hour shift the day before, got very little sleep, and did it again yesterday. It will take a spot on group for me. To do my Siege 15 like that. They weren’t on, so I moved on.

Of they were on we would have done a warm up key to see if I could function properly.

So be careful with that anecdotal data. Sometimes it does not tell the full story.

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The egg timers are legit. That part of the game is great and rewarding. Gives you something to do and look forward to. Meanwhile the world part of the game is just bland. Engaging with what community? No one even talks in trade chat anymore. It’s all speed run spam. There’s not much motivation to login daily. The only thing motivating ME at the moment is old content for transmogs, rep achieves, etc. Grinding Shaohao rep for that mount feels like a more rewarding effort than doing any of the current WQs except for the azerite and weapon reward days when they happen.

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I’m trying to understand this. If I tell my nephew that he has to wait until Christmas to open his gift then I’m minimizing his emotional investment?

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I’m not into the egg timers myself. I used to do it, log in, do my weekly mount farms, my daily quests, ect. Then I burned out. When I came back I told myself I’d only do what I want to do, not what I thought I SHOULD be doing. And it turns out what I like to do is farm islands for mounts and leaving the wqs undone

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Not on a yearly basis, timing matters here, if you told your nephew every three days you get a gift, how long before he gets bored of that? if ever?

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To start off - I think there are some people who genuinely enjoy getting rewards, so for them these are not disjoint options. I’m not hugely motivated by gear rewards but I do think they’re nice, so I suppose to some extent I do find it’s nice to log in and get stuff. I don’t do Mythic+, though, so I don’t get that particular reward.

I do think weekly, daily, and longer-term rewards (like the once-per-cycle warfront rewards or once-per-tier bonuses from e.g. quests) enhance the game. I don’t want to play a game where the primary means of getting stuff - whether that’s item levels, gear bonuses, whatever - is just mindlessly grinding it at all hours of the day. For a single-player game that’s not as big of a deal since I can just, you know, not play, but for an MMO that’s simply not a viable option. If players can diverge too far in power then what’s even the point of trying to play group content, or harder solo content, if you don’t have the hours to commit to grinding? At best you’re just spectating while Grindy McHasEverything kills all the mobs. Conversely, of course, if there’s no difference between players then what’s the point of having gear in the first place?

So I do think there’s an inherent need for some kind of limit to how much stronger you get from playing the game more. Weekly, daily, longer-term limits are a good way to accomplish that because you can have a variety of rewards at different levels of time investment with a lot of fine control. You can say “okay, someone who spends X hours per week on this, that, and the other thing will end up at this level, someone who spends Y hours will end up at this level”.

The other thing I like about it is a sense of optional guidance. When I log in, there’s a bunch of things presented to me like “hey, do you want to do this?” and sometimes, I find myself thinking that something hadn’t occurred to me, but sounds really fun. Plus, for people who haven’t been playing for 15 years and aren’t familiar with the breadth of gameplay, rewards are a fine way of getting them to try new things, because even if it doesn’t blow them away with enjoyment at least their time wasn’t totally wasted.

What I dislike about some of the systems is chiefly the degree of randomness. I don’t do dungeons very much any more because it’s just not rewarding to spend an hour on a run and get a handful of Azerite and a smattering of gold. I’m not necessarily sold on the idea of moving to a primarily vendor-based system, though. It just feels rather… lifeless.