Imagine you are blizzard and you’ve spent weeks maybe a month maybe 2 creating something and its ready for release.
So you release if its not timegated the players will likely burn through all of it in 1-3 days potentially so then complaints of “this is the patch? this is all there is?” will probably start flooding in.
Meanwhile on the other hand if you do timegate it you get things like “are we playing the week within?” because you are trying to make the content you spent like a month and a half on last more than 2 days.
So in other words no matter which path you choose you are still cooked.
This is under the assumption that there’s not a lot of content, if they don’t time gate it and it has as much to do as legion for example, you don’t have this lose-lose anymore
Content will only really last you longer than a few days if you try to go around and collect. If you are only there for player power and or the story you will blitz through it at light speed.
If they released the entire argus or suramar storyline at 1 time people would have been done and finished with it in a week max probably less. And then it would probably be back to the raid grind or whatever repeatable end game content there is.
but when you think about it whats the point of drip feeding it over weeks? some will burn through it and those types probably arent even the ones complaining about it they just play something else. or you slowly do it over 6 weeks. the point is if its done in 3 days to begin with then what type of content are you actually giving the players anyway? some cosmetics and an enchant to grind? when you already have trivial content and then forcing a minor amount of engagement per week in the middle of an already extreme lull in the season probably is just doing too much already. make something other than grinding an old scenario for a currency to buy a cosmetic off a vendor ffs is more to the point i think. the gating it just feels like a spit on the ground after you have been slapped in the face
I agree that some people would finish it in a week. With time gating that just means the week is 8 weeks later or something. What I’m saying is, if visions weren’t 6 hours of content, and more like 100, yes some people might still finish that in a week but most people would be very satisfied with that.
Time gating is only a problem when the stuff ends before you want to stop playing. If you have a LOT of content, people don’t complain so much but the problem is making a lot of content is also a lot of work. If you don’t have a lot of content, what you should do is make it very replayable and they already have the answer. For me, I’m an M+ player so I always have enough content even though it’s a lot of the same stuff.
People play for gear, so let visions drop unlimited gear, that’s boosted ilvl in visions only (like how pvp gear works - it doesn’t impact the rest of the game if their gear is too good). Then give people 0.3% more HP and damage done per full clear vision, scaling infinitely, watch people do crazy amounts of visions.
it would take me about 3 months just to get max level and i would probably change my mind a couple times and end up taking a full year to find my main and pimp it.
no timegating needed when theres enough content/grinds.
its a totally different game now. they never have a substantial amount of content to throw in front of the hungry wolves. they would need to work on a secret wow 2 for 10 years to be able to drop enough content for that 2004 feeling.
*AI could probably do it, pump enough content to naturally timegate without overworking devs
You’re looking at this too binarily, just as they are, good content in an RPG doesn’t rely solely on what is produced by the developers, it also gives players the tools to make their OWN content.
And this is where WoW has failed up till housing next expansion, everything is on rails, you either do their content they force you to do and that either lasts too long or too little or nothing at all.
Housing on the other hand can be hours of creative fun and is also optional.
As for people just here for the numbers and to speed run the game, they are not the audience an MMORPG should be trying to keep happy, there are games for that.
Oh boy if we could make M+ dungeons for each other like some M+ builder, just give us empty maps, full NPC and spell database and let us set up the %, timer, etc, this could be infinity hours of content right there
Day 1 after only like five horrific visions I was done with it until next week. I’d take being able to do all of it right now. This is just embarassing.
The content is so shallow nowadays they have to time gate it. Kind of like subway call their subs footlongs when they are 10 inches and put a corporate measure serving of meat on them.
a) A hypothetical group of players who have the time and inclination to grind the game by playing an inordinate number of hours will burn through the content, and then a subsection of those players will complain about not having any content. In which case, who cares? Why should the game be designed around those people, or a desire simply not to hear their complaints? That’s absurd.
b) There really is just that little content, in which case complaints about not having content are pretty well justified.
Visions were HEAVILY criticized back then, vessels being a part of that.
This isn’t BFA. This is literally copy pasted content from 3 expansions ago that became available 1 full month after 11.1.5 released. There’s no reason for any additional timegating (besides corporate greed)
I feel like there’s a very important distinction between being timegated and being drip fed, I don’t find anything necessarily wrong with having stuff be timegated, basically everything in the game is in someway (professions have concentration and knowledge caps, raids have lockouts, M+ has vault, Delves have bountifuls, PVP still has conquest caps right?), but it’s when it’s so painfully low “flow” is when it gets ridiculous, like it’s very obvious to see how little content visions actually is on paper, but is being stretched even more thin to “cover” three weeks.
If you release 30 minutes of content yes people will say “that’s it?”
Now if you release lots of content and a few hardcore people farm it for 24 hours straight and then complain they’re bored that’s on them and you’re right you can’t win. But most people will laugh at them
