[snip]

Time gating, in every case, means the locking of content behind time passed. What you talk about is how some MMORPG especially implemented it. [snip]

[edited to remove quote and baiting]

BlueRaven wrote: »

But isn’t this just... Time gating?

Actually it is time gating, the story progress and the content itself is locked behind a year schedule in the story chapters.

geschmonz wrote: »

Time gating, in every case, means the locking of content behind time passed. What you talk about is how some MMORPG especially implemented it. [snip]

Ummm... Since person after person in this thread seems to be trying to figure out what in eso could possibly meet the definition of “time gated”, perhaps it is you which are using the term incorrectly.

I believe it is commonly understood that time gating implies an artificial with holding of content for a roughly predetermined amount of time.
In eso they just don’t release content if it is not finished yet, that is literally the only reason.
After this chapter there will be a dungeon dlc. It’s not even up for testing yet because it is not finished.

Kiralyn2000 wrote: »

But they're not locking it behind "time passed." They're locking it behind "we still have to make it."

It does not matter if they still have to create the content. Actually, the story progress and the full contents availability is locked behind a year long schedule, and that is all that counts.

What i propose is to split such chapters in smaller DLCs, but tell a story that starts and ends in the DLC itserlf based on the part of the world it plays in. I think, ZOS would also get the money they needs from those who either sub or stay subbed due to subsequent releases of monthly or two-monthly DLCs.

Kiralyn2000 wrote: »

Like I said before, by your definition of "time gating" literally everything that's not released All At Once is "time gated" and therefore bad.

Well, i think time gating is bad, if get a cliffhanger for half a year. My wish is that the story of a released region is told to its full extent with the release of that region.

Kiralyn2000 wrote: »

Television shows, book series (heck, serialized novels, that came out chapter by chapter in monthly magazines", comic books, movie trilogies, sports seasons, game DLC...

Yeah, and i talk about splitting up those chapters into closed DLCs. You might stay subbed to HBO just to see every part of a series every new week, i just do not do that. I wait until the series is fully released to sub then and watch it to its full extent.

Kiralyn2000 wrote: »

(my god, how dare Marvel time gate us with a year between Infinity War and Endgame! /gasp)

Bad example. Every movie has a closed story.

geschmonz wrote: »

Yeah, and i talk about splitting up those chapters into closed DLCs. You might stay subbed to HBO just to see every part of a series every new week, i just do not do that. I wait until the series is fully released to sub then and watch it to its full extent.

I'm going to guess you never watched network TV. Where there was no "wait til it's all available", unless you waited years and lucked into them releasing a season on VHS or DVD. You watched the episode when it came out, and you obsessed with everyone else about that May season cliffhanger until the conclusion came out in September.

geschmonz wrote: »

Kiralyn2000 wrote: »

But they're not locking it behind "time passed." They're locking it behind "we still have to make it."

It does not matter if they still have to create the content. Actually, the story progress and the full contents availability is locked behind a year long schedule, and that is all that counts.

What i propose is to split such chapters in smaller DLCs, but tell a story that starts and ends in the DLC itserlf based on the part of the world it plays in. I think, ZOS would also get the money they needs from those who either sub or stay subbed due to subsequent releases of monthly or two-monthly DLCs

Kiralyn2000 wrote: »

Like I said before, by your definition of "time gating" literally everything that's not released All At Once is "time gated" and therefore bad.

Kiralyn2000 wrote: »

(my god, how dare Marvel time gate us with a year between Infinity War and Endgame! /gasp)

Bad example. Every movie has a closed story.

Not every movie has a closed story, infinity war and endgame as mentioned is the perfect example where a movie literally ends on a cliff hanger, the hobbit is another example I can come up with, anyways the issue here is your definition of time gating applies to literally every tv show, every mmo and many other media format, and the definition you gave doesn't make much sense, the world itself is time gated lol in your definition unless you can teach zos how to release content that they haven't created yet

Time keeps everything from happening at once. It has since almost the beginning of time. You are tilting at windmills with this one.
If you want to only sub two months out of the year and do everything quick as possible fine. Nothing wrong with that if it is how you enjoy the game. Many players like to take their time and mosey about. We get new content each quarter. Might as well be interconnected stories. Whether it is a continuation of a story or a whole new story you get the new stuff once every three months. Keeps the game fresh for those who like to follow the stories and doesn't interfere with players that decide to wait and do everything at once.

Just like you wait for a full series to be released you can wait for a full years worth of content to be released.

Far as I know zos does not time gate any content. It's the one main reason, (among others) that I enjoy eso.
IF zos started down the same road as World of Time gating, (Warcraft) I would be gone faster than Flash. Keep that in mind zos.

For me, all this thread shows is that different people play the game for different reasons and are inspired to keep playing by different things (dungeons and trials, PVP, achievement hunting, item collecting, housing, role-playing, etc, etc.).

I like questing, too, but I tend to take each quest as a separate entity, sometimes part of a larger story and sometimes a stand-alone. I don’t care about doing the quests in order. I may have cared about that once, back in 2014, when the game started, but I stopped caring about it quickly because there were so many other things to do in the game — exploring multiple zones, joining the Mages, Fighters, and all the other guilds and learning their stories and skills, crafting, creating new characters and learning new classes, housing when it entered the game, improving my combat skills, occasionally doing group content, etc.

By now, there are still a few zones where I haven’t completed all the zone stories, and yet I’ve been here (and a subscriber) since closed beta. I haven’t run out of content yet, so I guess I don’t understand the OP’s problem. But I attribute that to having different play styles, not to any inherent flaw in the way the game’s content is released.

ESO has held my interest for more than 7 years, so even though I didn’t particularly enjoy Greymoor and have my doubts about the upcoming chapter (because companions are so disappointing on the PTS), I am still here and still forking over my monthly subscription fees. So whatever “time gating” is, it doesn’t seem to have any effect on me!

geschmonz wrote: »

But the story content of the actual chapter is time gated.

Really? Like what? Explain. Because I have yet to find anything stopping me when I quest.

omegatay_ESO wrote: »

geschmonz wrote: »

But the story content of the actual chapter is time gated.

Really? Like what? Explain. Because I have yet to find anything stopping me when I quest.

I am feeling like this thread is not communicating thoughts well...

Please correct me if I'm misunderstanding things, but would you prefer that the existing content is created and then doled out to us in bite-sized pieces so you always have something to do? Or that the entire content is bundled and dumped on us at once?

Content takes time to create. Each year, ZOS is putting out 4 Dungeons, 2 zones, a trial, possibly an arena, and whatever new feature they are selling with the trial. We don't know exactly how long it takes them to write the story, record voice actors, design the assets and new monsters, and code the new features from scratch. We do know that each PTS Cycle takes 5-6 weeks, and certification for consoles takes roughly two weeks. I say it's reasonable to assume that it takes ZOS around 9 months to put all the new content together and test/certify it (and 12 months is eminently reasonable when we consider that there are base game updates, balancing on classes and sets, and a lot of work on performance being done on top of *new content*).

ZOS does not appear to develop these all in a giant batch and then slowly release them. Some elements are probably done all together, such as the writing and voice actor work, while many elements are reused. However, some assets that only appear in Q3 and Q4 are likely developed later, and a lot of the balancing for Q3 and Q4 is redone after Q2. In this case, there's some flexibility for if a new feature isn't working for Q2, they can push it back to Q4 or something.

But let's assume for the sake of argument that ZOS did decide to change their development schedule to make it so they had a full years worth of content ready to go at once. What does that look like,, practically? Let's use "The Dark Heart of Skyrim" as an example.

Mega Dump: Would you prefer that all of the content is dumped on us at once? Assuming that ZOS had it all ready to go at one time, we'd get:
Icereach Coven dungeon, Unhallowed Grave dungeon, Prologue quests, Western Skyrim, Blackreach Caverns, Antiquities, Kyne's Aegis Trial, Stone Garden dungeon, Castle Thorn Dungeon, Markarth, Vateshran Hollows Arena, and the Epilogue.

While that seems like a lot of content, the main storyline of Greymoor only takes around 30 hours to compete. I finished Markarth's main storyline in two play sessions.

If your complaint is that you'd rush through the new content and then be left hanging, waiting for more new stuff to play, I fail to see how a "megadump" helps. Its not like ZOS can put out all that amount for brand new content for you every month or two. But hey, at least you wouldn't have to worry about any cliffhangers?


Piecemeal: if the concern is that you do the Chapter and then sit their twiddling your thumbs, such that you want the Chapter split into smaller DLC with more frequent release dates, how do you see that working?

Something like?
Jan 1st - Icereach Coven Dungeon
Jan 15th - Unhallowed Grave dungeon
Feb 1st - Greymoor Prologue
Feb 15th - Greymoor Tutorial & 1st Main Story Quest
Mar 1st - 2nd, and 3rd Greymoor story quests
Mar 15th - 4th and 5th Greymoor Story quests
Apr 1st - 6th and 7th Greymoor Story quests
Apr 15th - final Greymoor quest,
May 1st - Western Skyrim Delves and Public dungeon
May 15th - Antiquities skill line
June 1st - Kyne's Aegis Trial
June 15th - Stone Garden Dungeon
July 1st - Castle Thorn Dungeon
July 15th - Markarth Prologue quests
Aug 1st - 1st and 2nd Markarth zone story quests
Aug 15th - 3rd and 4th Markarth story quests
And so on.

Lots of cliffhangers there, and it really breaks up the flow of the Western Skyrim and Markarth zones, as you can see them opening up piecemeal week by week. If ZOS did this, I think we'd see a return to the railroaded questing that we had before One Tamriel. (So yes, this means ZOS could do it well if they wanted to. On the other hand, ZOS already knows the majority of their playerbase doesn't care for railroaded questing.)


I'm looking at the two options above and thinking that neither seems ideal.

The "megadump" option looks like a ton of content, but when that's approx 9 or so moths of work, well, it's not going to take me 9 months to play it. ESO already has a lot of players who basically show up for the new content, play it, and then go to other games until the next batch of new content. This is only going to make that gap of time longer, because new content takes time to create.

The "piecemeal" approach would require a whole new design to questing in small segmented zones. It could be done, though fans of the open world TES games would find it pretty lacking in the same way they disliked the railroaded questing pre-One Tamriel. And while it would lessen the amount of time in between bits of new content being released, it would be more akin to a TV series running half hour episodes every two weeks. That's not necessarily a great recipe for player retention either.

But maybe you see something different in all that.

Honestly, if you like the "mega dump" style of being able to do all the content in a storyline with no breaks and no cliffhangers, I suggest that you stay one year behind ESO's release schedule.

After the new Chapter launches, the old one becomes DLC, so you could then subscribe to ESO+ for a month or two, binge-play the whole storyline from the previous year-long story arc, and then leave until the next Chapter launches. Rinse repeat, always staying a year behind.

But you'll be waiting a year or so in between sessions of binge-playing ESO, because it's not like ZOS can dramatically speed up their development schedule without cutting corners. Nor is ZOS particularly likely to dump a year's worth of content at once for their whole playerbase, because binge-playing then going to other games for the rest of the year is, uh, not at all ideal for an MMORPG who has to keep the servers active 24/7.