Time limit to re-enter dungeons

[Betelgeuzah]

So lets make the Hardcore players play like casual players. Wow. Stunning that this makes logical sense to ANYONE. CASUALS are casual for a reason. They don't have the time to run a dungeon 5 times in one night because they don't play 5 hours at a time, or even 5 consecutive nights a week. THEY ARE GOING TO GET GEAR SLOWER BECAUSE THEY PLAY LESS NOT BECAUSE OF LOCKOUT TIMERS.

Casuals are casual for a reason. They get bored easily, they have no patience to go to an instance time and time again and get little out of it because the content is balanced for hardcore population.

The hardcore, on the other hand, is less likely to quit because he always has goals to aim for, even if they're locked out. He is much more serious about the game, beyond the point of quitting because he is bored. He might complain, but he will put up with it. He is more likely to get addicted too.

Guess who is easier to keep playing? The moody casual who has no obligations, or the sirius business-HC that will make up stuff to do if forced to, instead of quitting?

It's an easy choice, and unfortunately not the choice you would hope for.

Short term f2p ? dont make me laugh.

Considering the estimated lifetime of the game, yes, a short-term F2P.

[DurtiMonkeyToe]

Higher drop rates, for one.

/lies .....

Casuals are casual for a reason. They get bored easily, they have no patience to go to an instance time and time again and get little out of it because the content is balanced for hardcore population.

The hardcore, on the other hand, is less likely to quit because he always has goals to aim for, even if they're locked out. He is much more serious about the game, beyond the point of quitting because he is bored. He might complain, but he will put up with it. He is more likely to get addicted too.

Guess who is easier to keep playing? The moody casual who has no obligations, or the sirius business-HC that will make up stuff to do if forced to, instead of quitting?

It's an easy choice, and unfortunately not the choice you would hope for.

Lol whatever.

It's like saying. "Let's let anyone enter the olympics and what we'll do is let the fat, sloppy, joe schmoe get a 2 minute head start because he is too lazy to exercise and actually run the race as it was intended to be run."

Ridiculous.

[Amineri]

It's been interesting catching up with this thread. So many posts in such a short period of time! Clearly people feel pretty passionately about this topic .

This is a looong post, and I'm sorry for that. But this isn't a simple subject (as much as people may like one-liners and zingers ).

I don't really see what's the big deal. it's not making the dungeons shorter or anything. If it take 20 runs at 1 hour each to get the items you want, you'll spend 20hours in the dungeons. Be it in 1 day or 1 month, it'll still be 20 hours. The hours in dungeons and doing something else is still the same.

It's as if I was comparing 2 games that were about 40 hours long, first one finished in 2 week during the summer when i have more free time and the second one finish in 2 month during school. I won't be thinking that the first one was way too short, only 1 week worth of playtime while the second one was a way better purchase, 2 months of playtime. In the end they both took about the same time.

I believe this is a valid point. The actual details of the raid dungeons, their difficulty, multi-pathing, etc, will determine the re-playability of these dungeons. Thus, a given dungeon has a certain life-span in terms of number of repeats. This number will vary from player to player : some may feel 'done' after a few visits, and some will feel 'done' after more.
~~> The actual length of content is determined by the dungeon content, not by a lockout timer.

Let's take a player that will be 'finished' after 20 runs through the dungeon, and each run is an hour, so, that's 20 hours worth of content. Timer or no timer, there is 20 hours worth of playable content for that player.

Now, if a 24 hour timer is added, the "pro-timer" crowd is correct (in one sense). The content is stretched out to last 20 days (at least). But in another sense that is NOT right, because adding a timer does not create 20 days' worth of content -- there is still 20 hours worth of content, but now the player must experience 1 hour of content interspersed with 23 hours of some other content. If there is no other content, the player will log off, and only log on every 24 hours, experience the 1 hour of content, and then log off.

If there is other content (like say, settlement quest hubs), then the player can go experience some other content while waiting for the timer to cool down. However, the dungeon timer doesn't create this new content -- all it does is force the player to go do something else other than play through the dungeon.

When anti-timer people tell the pro-timer people "if you want a timer, just don't go in the dungeon", I take it as the following: if there were a timer on the dungeon, what would these pro-timer people be doing while the timer is cooling down? If there is other content to go do, then that content could still be done. It isn't necessary to repeat a dungeon over and over until you burn out on it. Buuut, if you want to, go ahead! Then you can go play the other content.

On the other hand, if there ISN'T other content to play beside the dungeon, then how would a timer make the game more enjoyable? There would be this dungeon content, but you as a player are locked out of it.
~~> A timer doesn't create content, it just forces the dungeon to be interspersed with other content.

One of the other issues with having a timer is that it encourages people to try and conform their RL schedules around playing the game. As Yoshi-P put it:

Also, on a related note, we’ll be changing the way guildleves work in 1.19 to do away with the feeling that you’re somehow being penalized for not filling the daily quota of levequests.

I've seen quotes from people in the military, who might be on duty for 2 months, and then have 2 solid weeks to pour into the game -- timers do not suit that type of schedule. People have a wide variety of lifestyles, for one reason or another. Do we as a community REALLY want to exclude / punish people that can't organize their life / schedule around playing FFXIV?
~~> A timer punishes those players who can't conform their RL schedules to the FFXIV timer schedule.

Now for the flip side
There are positive things to be said about timers. People who run theme parks deliberately pace access to rides for a variety of reasons. One, it paces people, and is more cost-effective. But on a more positive note, waiting can actually enhance the experience, by creating a sense of anticipation.

Most roller coaster rides (that I've seen) pace the lines to be around a half hour to an hour. They usually have energetic music playing, and you can see the coaster and hear the people screaming. It helps set the mood for the people that are going to experience it. Something along these lines could help extend the pacing, create excitement, and enhance satisfaction. Actually implementing it like this ... pretty damned hard.
~~> Waiting to access content can increase anticipation, so a timer could add value.

Sorry for the long post!
TL/dr -- I tried to summarize with the bold bullets

[Arcell]

Casuals are casual for a reason. They get bored easily, they have no patience to go to an instance time and time again and get little out of it because the content is balanced for hardcore population.

See now I disagree with that definition of Casual. I would consider myself casual only because of my mentality and play time restrictions on some days. I can't consider myself hardcore because I'm not constantly striving to be the absolute best as fast as possible. Also I can't play 12 hours a day when I have work/college. Thus I would consider myself casual. However that being said I have every intent to play the shit out of those dungeons until I have all the items I need and as long as people in my Linkshell desire to keep going in.

[Firon]

sky is open world content. not instanced. problem? Not to mention you had to farm "currency" in the form of triggers to even do the content. That in-itself is it's own "timer" and stretched the content out much longer than it would have if you could just pop the gods w/e triggers.

Good try though.

Just like you have to run thru the dungeon for 30+ mins to get the tot he boss oh wait.....

[Xatsh]

Square is simply making a major mistake with this, same one they made with NMs.

Atm I highly question if they will be able to keep up with the playerbase with that re-enter period time. There will be group doing it 6-8 times a day and it will lead to burn out or simply them completely clearing out a dungeon in a week.

This is just bad game design honestly... unless the drop rates are abysmal the dungeons will have less then 1 weeks life to them and they will fade away to nothingness. If the drop rates are bad.. therefor extending the life of them, people will get sick of doing them from spamming.

Square simply cannot produce content fast enough to warrant this style gameplay in every aspect of the game... they said it themselves it takes 6 months to add new assets to the game.... so why continue to release every piece of content with less then a months life to it when it takes 5-6 fold that long to make new stuff.

[DurtiMonkeyToe]

See now I disagree with that definition of Casual. I would consider myself casual only because of my mentality and play time restrictions on some days. I can't consider myself hardcore because I'm not constantly striving to be the absolute best as fast as possible. Also I can't play 12 hours a day when I have work/college. Thus I would consider myself casual. However that being said I have every intent to play the shit out of those dungeons until I have all the items I need and as long as people in my Linkshell desire to keep going in.

Don't you know you are arguing with someone who already has ALL the answers?

[AeraLucis]

Well, at least when my friends log on to my linkshell and ask for my help in a dungeon, I won't have to responds 75% of the time with "Sorry, I can't. I already did my dungeon adventure for the day. Can't re-enter that dungeon yet... Guildleves?"

[lunardemon]

Talk is cheap , like your opinion of what I said . When its time to pay show your support for crappy content by putting your money where your mouth is . Then I'll buy , until then your just spouting crap out your mouth to hear yourself talk . pal

[Rentahamster]

Considering that their plan is "implement new content, see how players utilize content, collect data, collect feedback, and use what they learned to tweak the new content and apply their lessons to any future new content", I really don't see how a 5 minute time limit is so horrible.

We're still in the testing phase. Just play the damn game.