I had a much longer post here, but decided to wait until they are live so I don’t have to make so many predictions. As I said before in another thread, this is very similar to a system present in at least one other free to play game that I am aware of. I need more information on this one to see if they accentuated the flaws of said system, or did it better.
I’d like to address the reason I believe is the core of why the “one hour timer for guilds” isn’t resonating with a lot of people, though.
Connecting this to a guild wasn’t something they did as an afterthought to share with each other, it was a calculated part of the design. The fact that it is centered around a group rather than an individual makes it a stronger activity hook than if it wasn’t, because you never know when one could appear, even when you are not playing.
The one hour timer is another activity hook that attempts to make people to conform to a certain pattern of play. It doesn’t actually matter how common the pet events are - if the pet events are common enough for the individual to see (say, 1 in 100 PvP battles), there will almost always be one up in heavily active guilds - they have to play a little bit every hour or so to complete events if they want the new things, and you still want to check frequently to not miss one that might be “new”. If pet events are rare for the individual, they still have to check every hour or so (if they weren’t already with tributes), but with still the possibility of having to drop everything for 10 minutes or so to complete a pet event. A person would tend to be a bit more willing to let, say, a handful of gems and dozens or hundreds of glory go for missing a tribute or two if they step away from the game for a while, but what about that one that permanently and passively buffs all your gold gains, or one that makes your stupidly fast and strong meta team even stronger?
Any implementation of this time incentivizes the type of staggered interaction with the game that forms a habit. This is the same principle energy systems work off of, to the long term benefit of many games. But, as I’ve said many times before, I have to express my disappointment that we are moving further in this direction with this game, especially since this is another thing that attempts to prod people out of their already established social groups and patterns of play. Especially for longer term players, where the new thing is likely to be the only thing that even matters, but they have to still continue checking off the boxes for the old things. Once you pass a certain threshold, activity hooks just turn into draconian play requirements. This is, of course, different for each individual, but it nice when a game maintains a relatively steady expectation of activity/play patterns.
Silver lining is they might still have ways that let players avoid interacting with this system. Again, this depends on the implementation. They could be common enough where you fill out your roster fairly quickly, and the end goal centers more around getting multiple copies of fodder to increase their level cap and levels, with monthly new pets making this a moving goalpost. They could rotate through the weekly guaranteed events, with the new releases being that weeks guaranteed events. But thats just me saying “it might not be that bad”. I can still express my displeasure that they felt the need to add another of this type of activity hook in the first place.