MeinMMO demon Cortyn is annoyed about more and more events and engagement checks in games. Especially Overwatch and WoW have become very annoying.
Actually, we live in a dream world as gamers. There are more games than ever before. The selection is gigantic, and even the smallest niche genres are somehow catered to.
However, this also creates a problem. Because those who offer live service games that rely on players remaining engaged for as long as possible and spending money repeatedly must compete with numerous games.
It’s about capturing the target audience’s attention, and this is achieved through more and more “FOMO”, more and more events, and more and more things that want my “engagement” – meaning ensuring that I interact with the game for as long as possible. With the latest patches, World of Warcraft and Overwatch have developed in an annoying direction.
That said, I want to emphasize again: I really enjoy most Blizzard games. Right now, I am having a lot of fun with the Stadium mode in Overwatch. I also enjoy playing World of Warcraft quite a bit, and an occasional game of Hearthstone is always good.
But it’s the amount of mechanics that is supposed to entice me to spend even more time on even more days in the game that is now putting me off.
Countless missions that say: Play every day!
Overwatch is currently the worst example. I think that Overwatch is in the best state gameplay-wise it has been in years. The normal game mode is in a pretty solid state, and the Stadium mode is the best thing that could happen to the game and has long replaced normal matches for my friend group and me. I could play it for hours every evening right now.
But now it is the game itself that holds me back. Because when I log into Overwatch, it is the sheer amount of tasks that overwhelms me. Let me break down what all wants my engagement in Overwatch:
- The Battle Pass. It basically runs the entire season and is standard in most shooters now.
- Daily tasks for more XP for the Battle Pass.
- Weekly tasks for more XP for the Battle Pass.
- The “Excavation Initiative” event, where I have to win a game on 3 days a week over 6 weeks.
- The “Anima Strike” event with its own reward path, where I have to complete daily tasks (on multiple days) to collect enough points and receive the rewards.
So much is shouting so loudly “Play me, play me!” that it no longer motivates but now seems overwhelming and daunting that we often think: It’s not worth trying. It’s just frustrating.
What these events demand in terms of time commitment is sometimes beyond good and evil. The current “Anima Strike” event wants me to complete 50 games in a week. 50 games in my favorite mode – meaning Stadium – corresponds to about 25 hours of gameplay (including wait times between matches). That’s 3.5 hours a day or two to three very, very intense evenings that stretch late into the night.
Now, there are so many “engagement” mechanics that we find ourselves thinking more and more often: Oh, let’s just not play at all. And that’s despite the fact that we generally enjoy the game. But this sheer amount of tasks hangs over us like a sword of Damocles, constantly saying: “If you’ve already started, then you might as well finish it!” … or: “If you don’t intend to see it through, you might as well not start at all.”
It gets even worse at the end of a season when the Drive event is active for a few days. Here, you have to win ranked games within 5 days to receive a special display image and a new weapon skin for the next season. This is a very strange kind of pressure that also caused one of my friends to have a complete burnout – but when I look at Reddit for Overwatch, it seems many feel the same:
Time-gating has always existed, but it’s different now
In World of Warcraft, it’s the same. I love the game. I’ve been playing it for over 20 years now, and I believe I will still play it in 20 years, now that it has housing and more and more great RP features. But I also really enjoy WoW’s PvE.
Even though time-gating in WoW is nothing new and has been part of the game since Vanilla (although many vanilla fans love to ignore this), the current extent is really disruptive and restraining. Whether it’s about unlocking things like the Omnium Folio or a questline for the ritual sites. Now it even states in the quests that this is a “Week 1 of Week 6” quest, basically telling me: You will be doing this for the next 6 weeks if you want to experience the end.
It’s annoying. It’s immensely annoying. A couple of times such mechanics could entice me, but the more frequently and aggressively they occur in the game, the more I detest it and think: This is not worth my time. This is such a stupid attempt to grab my attention that I find it insulting.
Without such mechanics, I would play more
I would probably play both games – Overwatch and WoW – even more without such mechanics. Now these mechanics have become an obstacle where I often make up my mind: I will just completely avoid them and do other things.
That bothers me immensely. I don’t want my favorite games to tell me how much I should play. I want them to give me incentives and then I can decide how and when much time I want to spend on it.
Especially now in the summer, when the weather is nice, I could just go out for one or more evenings, I don’t want games to deliberately exert pressure – they sometimes do that all on their own (like obligations in a guild or during raids), but those are social obligations. That doesn’t need to become part of the gameplay as well, and it’s getting worse rather than better.
But how do you see it? What do you think of the number of events and “engagement” mechanics that are proliferating in so many games? Can you easily ignore them? Does it deter you from playing a game at all? Or do you even find it great that there is always something to do?
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