Time gated content (sucks)

Time gating is a feature of a game where progress is limited by real-life time constraints imposed by the developers. For example, there might be a quest that you can only do once per week. Of real time, not game time.

Time gating is NOT a game where a time limit is part of the rules. Say a game lasts X minutes and you have to score as many points as possible in that time. That's not time gating. Time gating would be if you can only play that game 5 times per day and then have to wait until tomorrow to play again.

Time gating is very common in "free-to-play" games where you can bypass the time gate by purchasing FunBux with real money. It's also common in MMOs. It's one huge reason I can't stick with any MMO very long; I feel like I'm being manipulated or controlled, usually to try to squeeze revenue out of me.

My opinion: There is no game where time gating results in the game being more fun rather than less fun. Can you think of a counterexample? A game where time gating adds fun?

No, it is the worst system ever in the history of games. Any system where you force players to not play your game is a pretty flawed system for obvious reasons, even before you start layering microtransaction nonsense on top of it.

In my eyes, time gated content has one main purpose: to halt progress of the players into parts that haven't even had development finished yet. And with that purpose it makes sense and can sometimes even add to the experience rather than take away from it. Any other applicance of time gating is questionable at best, or at least I can't think of any good reason to justify it.

Crap of clans

Nope, it's really an annoying feature. The MMO implementation, meh, I don't really care. The F2P/mobile/etc version is offensive, though, in that you literally can't even play the game often.

Even the opposite turns me off. If I get "points" for logging in today, and they expect me to do it every day... I'm pretty much done with the game. If they want me to like their game, and only play it for an hour a day. I'm done. If there are microtransactions required for progress. I am also done. Not much of this I've experienced on consoles or PC. But the severity of it in mobile gaming has caused me to pretty much write off mobile gaming entirely

For mmo I can see it if it is meant to keep crowding of areas down. Tree was a lot of it in FFXI and usually it helped people get their turn in. Maybe that's not much of an issue these days with more instanced content.

There really is no reason for it in single player games. With the ftp model I guess it allows me to play a few games for free but I would be ok just paying one price for the full experience.

I didn't know such a thing existed before I saw this thread. That sounds terrible.

There are three kinds of time gating mentioned here and they serve different purposes.

The first kind is what I'll call "timed release" gating (ie. you can't do something before a given date, then it's open for good): as was mentioned, it can be used to block access to parts of a game that haven't been fully developed yet, but knowing they're there serves as a teaser. It can also be in place to prevent content rushing (especially in MMOs) and/or somewhat level the competition field. If you get one fourth of a big raid per week, you'll play for at least a whole month, whereas if you get it all and do it in one week, that's three weeks of your attention dwindling.

The second kind is "forced pacing" (ie. you can't do A more than X times per day/week, and it's the same for everyone): in MMOs, this is necessary to maintain pacing and the stability of the economy. If you know the maximum of token X you can get per week is 1000, then people who don't have as much time to invest won't feel left behind if they can manage to get 800 of them or all 1000 of them. It also means the most hardcore won't be bleeding tokens out of their ears before the first week ends. Likewise with gold rewards, it limits inflation without having to resort to absurdly large money sinks (FF14ARR, I'm looking at you).

The third kind is "pay to play time gating" (same as before, but you can pay to lift the block). That one is there only to make you want to cough up the $$$ to get rid of the blocks. That one can diaf :D

Yeah this happened to me while playing Cut the Rope 2, I was completely stunned that a game would cut you off after so many minutes. Now I know why free to play has such a terrible connitation. Just goes to show mobile gaming is an entirely different beast unto itself.

Destiny has something similar to Endless' second example, running co-op Strikes and multiplayer will only earn so you many marks per week, marks being the currency to buy Legendary and Exotic equipment from vendors in the Tower. You can keep playing for reputation and loot, it just forces you to check out other stuff if you want to grind away for currency.

Ideally they would have the ftp model and then allow some people to microtransact and others to just buy the full version of the game. The trend of not providing you the full version of the game you are buying (with DLC or transactions) is highly annoying and probably won't go away with an entire generation being brought up thinking this is the norm.

It seemed relevant.

Ah I loves me some Extra Credit. Though outside of MMOs I can't think of any reasonable use of these mechanics. And even then, I hate most things about MMOs. And mobile companies are just being ridiculously money-grubbing, so any justification they try to give is by default, unrealistic and generally unreasonable

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Originally Posted by Vyk

Ah I loves me some Extra Credit. Though outside of MMOs I can't think of any reasonable use of these mechanics. And even then, I hate most things about MMOs. And mobile companies are just being ridiculously money-grubbing, so any justification they try to give is by default, unrealistic and generally unreasonable

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They had a good episode on MMOs and why they adopted that model as well, though it's hard to find.

Essentially, it's just money grubbing as well. It's an attempt to get the player to adopt the game as a small part of their regular life, rather than just play through to inclusion and drop it. It's a necessary component of getting them to keep shelling out for subscriptions and such.

Personally, I just don't have time for MMOs anymore, so that model really turns me off.

I've played plenty of games that have this kind of content, but I've never payed to get around the constraint. Like others, I'd rather just pay for a full game, and if I can't, then there are other games I could play fully without any constraints. I hate it, but why not if people are willing to pay?

I've seen a lot of different versions of "forced pacing" in MMOs, some successful or necessary, others less so. I felt that FFXI had too much of it, in too great an extreme, and FFXIV doesn't have enough.

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Originally Posted by Skyblade

Personally, I just don't have time for MMOs anymore, so that model really turns me off.

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Yeah, I can't make a game part of my everyday life for more than a week or two. And it'd have to have some pretty stellar pacing and content for even that and MMOs aren't set up that way. The only MMO that's ever really interested me is The Old Republic, because I've heard it has a great one-player story, can be enjoyed without being forced to join a guild, or do raids, or whatever else MMOs force you to do. I can enjoy my game, my story, my pace, blow through it if I want, and be done. Respect to BioWare for that one

I will say for The Old Republic (if I remember from the bit I played), you still had dungeons to do to continue the story. These required multiple people to do, and it's really no more solo friendly than something like XIV (which also focuses a good bit on story). The community I played with in The Old Republic were pretty jerkish too. I tried to do a few of the low level dungeons for the first time (and I'd say it was my first time too), and I'd immediately get kicked from groups because I was watching the cutscenes in the dungeon to play for the story. Every time. XIV so far seems to have a much nicer community for that.

Not that that matters for this thread. I do hate the time gating thing that exists in a lot of free to play models. I generally don't play free to play games though. I've got XIV and then I have mostly more old school rpgs that I'm going through.

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Originally Posted by Vyk

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Originally Posted by Skyblade

Personally, I just don't have time for MMOs anymore, so that model really turns me off.

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Yeah, I can't make a game part of my everyday life for more than a week or two. And it'd have to have some pretty stellar pacing and content for even that and MMOs aren't set up that way. The only MMO that's ever really interested me is The Old Republic, because I've heard it has a great one-player story, can be enjoyed without being forced to join a guild, or do raids, or whatever else MMOs force you to do. I can enjoy my game, my story, my pace, blow through it if I want, and be done. Respect to BioWare for that one

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This is true, and it does make The Old Republic my favorite MMO.

Unfortunately for the game itself, it does mean that it lacks staying power. Once you've completed the story (or several stories, since each character class has a different, personalized one which is well worth playing), there isn't a lot of incentive to keep going back. The expansion stories aren't as personalized, and are way shorter, and the daily grind is then all that remains.

Still, WELL worth playing for the class stories, especially since it's available as a Free-To-Play.

Time gated content is a sadly necessary evil in MMOs for pre-mentioned reasons. I don't like time gated content outside of MMOs, though. For an MMO to get around time gates, they would need to give enough content to keep everyone interested for much longer times, and that would probably require a massive sub cost and/or be incredibly buggy and/or have an awful economy and terrible stability of population.

Pokemon Gold/Silver kind of had time gating for not-super-important events not directly related to the main plot. Like certain Pokemon only appearing at certain times of day, different events available on different days of the week, that kind of thing. But none of it was required to advance the plot, so that was one instance where time gating was done well, imo.