Question and poll about time sinks.

Some time sinks are good.
Some time sinks are bad.
Some time sinks are annoying.
Some time sinks are boring.
Some time sinks make perfect sense.
Some time sinks should be definetly removed such as extra annoying loading screens.


But if there were no time sinks in mmos we would switch mmos almost as often as our pants.


Oh btw. i kinda liked the crafting system in FFXIV, it was a minigame with tons of skills/buttons and progress bars which atleast for me effectively eliminated the boredom of crafting.

 

I'm more entertained by progress bars than by UT.

 

I dont consider the overworld a time sink, but i do prefer “minigame” type stuff over waiting.(puzzles, physically clicking something etc)

But some stuff i think needs to be behind time, like a rare pet spawn (hint) or a rare treasure or area

Btw i didnt vote cuz they can be good and bad

 

The game loop should not be designed around making it a time sink, but rather be something that give players so much value that they are willing to put their valuable time on it.

Slapping arbitrary long wait/grind time on certain activity is not necessary the same as adding rewards based on the time spent.

 

Much of the travel time sinks have been removed; pass gates open, sieges bypassable. As far as crafting, I think it's necessary. If we could just roll out 100 of the best gear types all at once, and enchant them in the blink of an eye, the game would be flooded with great gear; you can only fail so many times to make a good item. Besides, crafting isn't mandatory. If you prefer hunting, you can hunt all day long and buy your gear from dedicated crafters, which helps the economy. If you're like me, you want to make everything yourself, and you're willing to put in the time to make the best possible gear. Yah, it's not exactly the funnest thing to do in the game, but in end you are left with a feeling of accomplishment when you make that one item that is really good! I have always seen these types of games as a long-term venture, and don't expect things to move fast. From day to day, week to week,etc., I spend time in various areas of the game making my character better. There is no rush or need for instant gratification for me. If I get bored crafting, I go out and hunt. Sometimes I might just feel like hanging out with others and talking. Some days, I may feel like going out and explore, and find/complete quests that I've yet to do. Yeah, they are definitely time sinks, but you control how much. Additionally, if you want a game like this to last you have to slow things down so people aren't left with nothing to do after a few months.

 

Time sinks are necessary in a game like this but I wholy agree that its extreme at times in this game and many hit it perfectly with crafting. There are also also just vastly to many of them. But the good thing is that 2x XP will help. But SOTA is basically designed as an EXTREME time sink. Just look back at the 2 years since persistence and how much grinding you have done.

My alt now sits in a second client every second while I am playing my main doing nothing but grinding yellow bars... to the tune now of figuratively 1000's of hours.

Crafting is still the worst, while 2x crafting xp helps, I think it still needs some engineering to make it take 2x less TIME now. Double the batch's and make them take 1/2 as long to process.

If that were my main, why would I play this game?

Ive been considering a 3rd account on a 3rd client to do nothing but grind those yellow bars.


Time sink example: Im trying to grind my resources of wood and such back up for dungeons. I spent 3 hours yesterday in ulfeim and got about 100 wood, 100 bear/boar heads, 300 hides and maybe 50 carcuses. Mostly because wood is to expensive to by right now. That 3 hours actually didst really net me many resources at all for what we need to do. Then consider the grind I have to do one just those resources, probably 2 hours of looking at yellow bars to refine.

 

I understand the logic of -some- time sinks to create a sense of pacing.
For example, if I'm putting together a piece of armor, I don't think I should be able to just get a pile of random crap and click a button and have it instantly done.
However, I think the progress bars are far too long, especially when you consider the hundreds (thousands) of iterations required in refining, component making, etc. to make a small number of finished products. Its beyond excessive.

The other point I want to make is about the absolute insult of the 'refining speed' passives. Currently, a million XP invested makes little to no noticeable difference. I can shave 20 seconds off my batch time by simply CRAFTING IN A BASEMENT instead of in town. Just moving to a basement saves me twice the time that GMing the speed skills does. If you're going to add passives that increase speed, I'd expect to see that progress bar halved, OR BETTER. I'd expect GM refiner to refine at the speed of salvage. I spend over 30 hours a week on average, easily, just refining the crap I get. I made a second account for it. Its stupid.

I think the time investment should be in material acquisition, or some other value add - not pointless -staring at progress bar-. Staring at progress bar adds nothing to the game except yawn. It would be marginally more acceptable if you could set all batch sizes to a max of 1000 and just let it go while you did something else - you'll time out eventually. It'd be even better if you could just load items up on the smelter and come back later and they'd be sorted, as we've seen become more and more prevalent in games nowadays. This is because players want to be out doing stuff and having fun, not shackled to a table for 10 hrs a day. If you look at my forum post count almost ALL my forum activity is done while waiting on progress bars. Because progress bars are not immersive, they are not intersting, they are literally me tabbing out of the game to find something else to do while I wait.


Re: Travel, well, I've never understood the need to make players sit through 20 load screens to get from point A to B, and I'm glad this has finally been looked at. Its a huge step.

 

Yeah, I didn't know which way to vote either.

Vanguard had the most interesting, immersive and challenging crafting system of any MMO I have ever played. That game took the time to make social and crafting interactions as challenging, and as rewarding, as combat. I enjoy Everquest 2's crafting as well. In both those games, I could log on and just craft. Newer MMOs seem to be built on the "click and wait" system, which I find non-entertaining, which would meet the OP's criteria for a time-sink.

I would also list waiting-for-NPCs or Lunar Rift alignment as non-entertaining as well.

But, I find overland travel in this game to be entertaining. I just wish there wasn't "tier-gating" at all the passes. I want to explore, even as a lowbie.

Some of the scenes seem pointless though. I enjoy interesting zones, with lots to explore, kill or gather, but I find myself asking: "why?" Maybe I've been playing themepark MMOs too much, but I want something to connect... maybe a bit more hand holding, or something.

 

I can't vote because there are too many variables not accounted for with Yes/No.

But I can give a few opinions.

I generally don't mind the crafting bar because I do other stuff while crafting. I'm smelting now as I type. Is this good or bad? I don't know. I kind of like a small amount of AFK gaming. I used to really like that Virtual Villagers (I think that was it) where you would leave for a while and come back and they would have gotten something built. Same with Fallout Shelter. Crafting is the extreme short end of that spectrum, agriculture and brewing is on the high end.

So then the question is, is agriculture a time sink? Or since you can go do other things and just let it grow, is it not? Is crafting a time sink? Or since I can type here while it's happening, and just let it... ooop one sec need to start the next batch... go is it not?

Would I enjoy crafting more if it were instantaneous? Probably not. Will I pay new players to craft if it takes them two seconds to make me 1000 timber? No.... not that I don't want to give them opportunities, but I'd just feel like a dumbass for paying people to click two buttons and hand me back a product with no other input on their part.

Would I enjoy crafting more if there were a mini-game involved? Perhaps. If it were Civilization I would be totally down for that. If it's something that gets old after a few hours then I'm going to not want that, it will actually drive me away from crafting because I don't want to do something boring repeatedly just to say I'm interacting. It has to be "good", which is never going to be good for everyone.

Still haven't had to reload my batch a second time, so really I've only wasted about 10 seconds of time doing the actual crafting while I typed all this.

 

The poll question is too general and vague to be meaningful/useful.

 

@Mac2 I completely agree with you on Time Sinks. I just don't have ample time to get into and do things ALL of the time. I love this game and many others, but... there are times when the sink of time is an annoyance. With crafting... I've been trying to setup things so that I have a massive stack of ore at a time, then... I will set that up and switch over to working on a document for the business or get to designing a tool or anything else, coming back to the game when I hear the smelting is done, just to setup another smelting run and... then back to work!

BUT... most of the time, especially once I grew my Teleport List... I can feel like I have "done" something in the game in 30 to 45 minutes, which is my usual amount of playtime.

It's why I'm very happy with the removal of some of the travel issues. It's also why I can play games like Eliteangerous, as that game, while it does have travel time sinks here and there... (45 minutes to get to a single landing port in very rare systems is insane), I don't HAVE to go to those places... often. Most of the time 15 to 40 minutes let's me accomplish a good number of things and that's great!

Which brings me to my feeling of absolute dread with what they are doing with Star Citizen... I love the concepts, I love the universe they are weaving, but... they keep announcing more and more elements that amount to needing to sit down for upwards of 2 hours to accomplish anything that would feel meritorious. Don't even get me started on their insistence of making all of those MASSIVE multi-player ships that will have terrible AI that means you have to work to herd cats (other players) to hop in and feel like they've done something in that 45 minute window you MIGHT have...

 

The best time sink for crafting is the time it takes to kill animals for skins, mine for the various ore and "Farm" certain mobs for items that can be scavenged for the small chance of receiving patterns or special component bits.

In two hours of mining, with nothing particularly special, I MIGHT get enough ore to crank out a single Full Plate torso AND maybe a helmet or pair of gloves.

I'll need another hour or two of mining to get the gold and silver to Masterwork and Enchant said armor. Not to mention... I'll need a Gem for that Socket too, which I should already have enough of piled up by the time I do all the rest of the mining and gathering.

The actual process of smelting, smelting for 2nd Tier Ore, Banging out the components and then final assembly... it doesn't have to be SUCH a time sink. If they halved it, still leaving some progress bars in place, I wouldn't complain.

 

I think maybe the clearest way to describe the two types of time sinks that I'm talking about is to classify them as active or passive. Active time sinks are things that take a lot of time, but you're actually interacting and playing the game to achieve some goal. Passive time sinks are things that require you to just wait for something to happen.

SotA has a lot of active time sinks other than grinding xp. To do quests you have to run all over the place, talk to people, explore, solve puzzles, etc. Crafting nice gear requires large quantities of resources, and gathering large quantities of resources takes a long time. I think it's probably pretty hard to have a game with meaningful progression without this kind of stuff, but whether or not they're good depends entirely on if people enjoy the journey towards their goal. If the only part of something that people like is the reward, it's probably not good.

Passive time sinks are usually just dumb, because if someone wanted to sit around and wait for something to happen, it's not even necessary to load up a game. There's no difference between waiting for a boat, or waiting for a spawn, or waiting for a progress bar, and doing nothing at all. When people are just waiting for something, there is no game play even happening. Sometimes passive time sinks provide more realism than some completely immersion breaking alternative, but it's hard to imagine any scenario where there aren't other alternatives available that don't require waiting for something to happen and also aren't completely ridiculous.

 

Yes, its the passive ones that get to me.

 

Can most of us agree the progress bars on crafting are too long though? 3-4 months of macs time has been spent in front of crafting tables, and on the past 3-4 months I have been using alts to do all the refining.

 

Refining definitely needs a major speed boost. At minimum 50%, probably closer to 75%. No reason a serious crafter should be forced to buy second and third accounts to refine while playing your main.

Didn't answer the poll though because it really just depends.

 

I agree the poll is just too black and white, but the comments from this have giving me some insight into time sinks and has let many of us share our opinions. I think its been a nice civil discussion so far.

 

Wait... how does that happen? Is basement crafting a thing they purposefully implemented as being faster?

 

Its performance related.

If you go into a small basement with minimal/no deco, you will complete batches faster. Part of this is the small time between crafts when it 'pulls' items from your inventory and they flash red for a second. Part of it is just general fps. If the crafting bar lags a bit, you craft slower, its not standardized. Someone with a slower machine will craft slower. Its been like this since before persistence. We did various tests on this (emptying inventory, being on private mode rather than multi, etc.)

A batch of 20 items takes approximately 2 and a half minutes under normal conditions. In a very deco heavy area, with 5-6 people hanging around, a few training on the dummy etc. sometimes it takes closer to 3 minutes. If I go into my basement that has nothing but a crafting table and turned off the baked in lights, I can get that down to 2 min 12 sec - with zero change in skill or tools, simply by being in a less laggy area. A friend of mine consistently comes in a few seconds faster, I can only assume to due better latency (I'm in Europe) or just a better computer. I'm consistently a few seconds faster than my husband in "ideal conditions" just due to the hardware I've got (he's got my "old" machine).

Likewise, if I run shroud on my second monitor just refining while I play another game on my main screen, you start noticing an even bigger slow-down (depending on what it is I'm playing on main screen). This is more or less expected, but it seems that the crafting 'times' are all client side. This is why I grumbled very loudly when they added the 'refining speed' skills that add a paltry 20% bonus. I save more time just going into a basement than I have by investing over a million producer xp per skill. I still think they should add something like a 100% speed increase, or even MORE. Taking a 1m 12sec (half the time) every 30 items is still "too long".

You actually get penalized for crafting socially with many people around making lag, which seems counter-purpose. I've often considered dismantling my operation and moving it underground, but we have a steady stream of traffic of people coming to town for crafts, coming to group with me while I'm crafting for GM training (either crafting or adventuring, as we've got a dummy at the crafting area), and just general social traffic, museum tours, etc. Its a pretty busy POT. So I deal with the slow-down sometimes, but if I'm doing the "bulk refining watch craft bars while doing something else" thing, which is often, then I take my crap into the basement.