COG Considers: Have LTEs Become Archaic Practices?
So many video games, so little time. Such is the life of a gamer. Many of us jump from game to game; we play, we beat it, we move on. Sometimes we come back. A few months ago, I beat Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. Now that the game has DLC, I’ll be going back to beat it. I did the same thing with Borderlands 3, when each DLC came out. Unfortunately, even though we go back to games every few months, there are still things we miss out on. See, there are these pesky things called Seasonal Events and Limited Time Events. Even though these events seem to happen all the time, unless you are constantly playing, you are bound to miss out on what they have to offer. Can’t we just… keep them forever?
Unless you live under a rock, you are familiar with Limited Time Events. There was the Thanos event in Fortnite a few years ago. There have been a ton of crossover events in Ghost Recon. It seems that every game has a Winter event during the Holidays or something Valentine’s Day-related in February. There are dozens of events going on right now, as you read this, and you just missed out on a bunch of them already. It’s almost like you have to pick three games and constantly rotate through them to maximize your experience. It’s just too stressful.
Here’s a novel concept: Let’s just add things to games and, like… not remove them. Think about it. When developers add DLC to a game, it’s there to stay. You can come back a year later, play all the DLC for that title, and not miss out on it; it doesn’t expire. Why can’t we do that with events? I get there are things that have to change as the game evolves, like the ever-changing maps in Fortnite, but why keep players from unlocking a Santa hat in July? Why should I not be able to buy a Halloween cosmetic in March that I missed out on?
This isn’t a farfetched idea. There are games that are already heading in this direction. Take Borderlands 3 for instance. Earlier on in it’s post-launch content rollout, Gearbox released the Takedowns, which are like raids. They were permanent features to the game, but they had fixed difficulty levels, so you would not be able to survive without three other maxed out players. A little while later, they held a Limited Time Event where Takedowns would scale to the party, which allowed solo players to do it on their own. That scaling ended up sticking around to this day.
More recently, a newer Borderlands 3 update brought back all three of the game’s Seasonal Events; Bloody Harvest, Broken Hearts Day, and Revenge of the Cartels. Now, you can toggle each of them on or off from the main menu and unlock the rewards and play the missions at whatever pace you choose. Another instance of this is in Marvel’s Avengers, which had an event where players could have two or more of the same hero in one mission, part of the Tachyon Anomaly event. Marvel’s Avengers next update will implement this as a permanent change.
Games are fun, ideally. We can all agree on that. Why put an expiry date on that fun? I don’t want to lay awake at night, wondering about the Pride Month weapon skins that could have been. Whadya say?
Do you think Seasonal and Limited Time Events should be put out of practice? Let us know in the comments below.