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Clicker Heroes 2 is abandoning free-to-play

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Re: Clicker Heroes 2 is abandoning free-to-play

#61

Post by Deimorz »

I'm really surprised to see this from a company that makes, of all possible genres, clicker games.

Clicker games usually have almost no actual gameplay, and pretty much only interest people because they exploit many of the same type of psychological tricks that free-to-play games use to keep players hooked. They're a great demonstration of how the illusion of progressing at something is all you need to keep people interested, even when the only thing they're progressing towards is... the opportunity for more progression.

I honestly don't think that charging people up front will work, especially not at a $30 price point. Microtransactions work for this game style because you can take advantage of all the time people feel like they've "invested" into the game. Once they've spent hundreds of hours progressing, it's not difficult for some people to justify spending money here and there to make things a bit faster. I don't think many people will feel the same way when they're asked to pay $30 before they can even start getting addicted.

Re: Clicker Heroes 2 is abandoning free-to-play

#62

Post by eksemplar »

zylent wrote: post #23
eksemplar wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could but the profitability of free2play games are whales. I don't remember where I read it, but the vast majority of people playing free2play mobile or Facebook games never spend a single dollar. This means that if you set a limit on it, you'd be limiting your profit by an extreme amount. I'm all for it by the way, I think games that sell game affecting content for thousands of dollars are targeted scams portray…

Minor nitpick: League of legends requires you to purchase heroes as they come out, and this gives the player incentive to spend ~5$ every month or so. DOTA would be a better example as you are not required to purchase heroes.

You’re absolutely right, I forgot because I haven’t played it for a lot of years. Back when I played unlocking the heroes was relatively easy, but I can imagine how it isn’t like that anymore considering how many heroes they must have added by now.

Re: Clicker Heroes 2 is abandoning free-to-play

#63

Post by joesb »

zylent wrote: post #23
eksemplar wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could but the profitability of free2play games are whales. I don't remember where I read it, but the vast majority of people playing free2play mobile or Facebook games never spend a single dollar. This means that if you set a limit on it, you'd be limiting your profit by an extreme amount. I'm all for it by the way, I think games that sell game affecting content for thousands of dollars are targeted scams portray…

Minor nitpick: League of legends requires you to purchase heroes as they come out, and this gives the player incentive to spend ~5$ every month or so. DOTA would be a better example as you are not required to purchase heroes.

Not true. You also get points for playing a game. With enough points you can buy any heroes.

With enough play times, you'll have more than enough to buy all the heroes without paying real money and then there's nothing else you can use it for.

Real money is only required if you want to buy skins.

Also, with hundreds of available champion to play you are not really required to play the most recently released champion. Just play from pools of all existing champions until you get enough point to buy new champion.

Re: Clicker Heroes 2 is abandoning free-to-play

#64

Post by jack_pp »

csours wrote: post #26
kelukelugames wrote: post #8

A cute story about whales. Jeremy Lin, the NBA player, talked about getting his teammates to play Clash Royale with him. He was shocked that everyone had better troops than him after two days. Apparently they all dropped thousands.

Clash Royale brands their philosophy as pay-to-advance. You can upgrade faster with real money, but that doesn't mean you will win matches. At some point at the top I assume everyone is spending a lot of money, and is matched up with similar level cards. As a player it doesn't really bug me.

Been playing it for over a year, have all cards up to tournament standard and hovering at about 4k rating. Have spent probably close to 150 dollars on it that i do not regret. It is more fun than wow and less expensive, especially in the long run. Now that i have a solid base of cards i am really not incentivised to spend any more money and probably won't except for the rare 2$ 5x value offers which come up every month or so where as in a game like wow i would have to spend 60 bucks every year on an expansion and another 100 on subscriptions, have to constantly grind so need to invest loads of time.. Ugh

In tournament mode the levels are capped so it is an even playing field where spending money doesn't get you wins. I believe other developers have a lot to learn from their model

Re: Clicker Heroes 2 is abandoning free-to-play

#65

Post by coupdejarnac »

angarg12 wrote: post #45

I'm active in the clicker/idle game scene so I can give a bit of background: It isn't rare lately for people to come to https://www.reddit.com/r/incremental_games/ and discuss possible ways to monetise games. How to best implement microtransactions, opt-in ads, or even some talk lately about cripto mining. Then yesterday someone wrote a post about the 'unannoying way to monetise', which is to make the game paid. http…

Considering a decent NES game cost about $50 in 1987, how is $30 too steep for a game in 2017 that provides many hours of gameplay?

Re: Clicker Heroes 2 is abandoning free-to-play

#66

Post by joesb »

IanCal wrote: post #34
cortesoft wrote: post #9

I wonder if you could still have free to play, but just had a limit to how many different things to buy. Say, you could buy everything for $60. That way, you don’t have to worry about someone spending thousands because they wouldn’t get any more than if they spent $60.

One issue with that is that it cheapens the other route you can take. If you need 100 hours to unlock all the characters (playing through lots of times was common for fighting games I recall) but you advertise you can buy them for $60, it puts a price on your time and takes the achievement of spending those hours getting better and puts it as "worth $60".

There are more to the life than the destination.

That's why some people make their own furniture, while other can buy it for $100.

Re: Clicker Heroes 2 is abandoning free-to-play

#67

Post by joesb »

Lazare wrote: post #14
Pxtl wrote: post #2

I love this essay. Thinking about people who've damaged their lives on addictive gaming.... those people behind the four-figure numbers on the spreadsheet of Whales. That's sad as hell. But... it's a clicker game. A hilarious-looking clicker game... but a clicker game. Would anybody spend $30 on a clicker game?

> A hilarious-looking clicker game... but a clicker game. Would anybody spend $30 on a clicker game? Well that's the thing, isn't it: A lot of people spent a lot more than $30 on Clicker Heroes 1. So yes, obviously people will spend $30 on a clicker game. The question is whether they'll do so via an ethical business model.

The problem is, without the free-to-play model, they now lose the essential parts of any products, marketing.

Anyone who download the free game and talk about it or recommended it to a friend is free marketing.

With enough friends talking about the game or play it without paying, one person in that group will spend $30.

But without the groups existing in the first place, that same person may not interested in the game enough to buy it.

Re: Clicker Heroes 2 is abandoning free-to-play

#68

Post by skocznymroczny »

colmvp wrote: post #27

I hope (though I'm not truly that optimistic) in a decade that the trend of F2P will have passed. I find them extremely parasitic, exploiting human behavior. I also hate the term free-to-play, because it purposefully hides the fact that for many games, you either need to grind a lot to acquire content/in-game currency or have to spend a lot.

I think that there is a big gap between predatory mobile style F2P and other F2P games. I like the F2P games.

In the past, you had to spend money to have something to play and the game would last you for a short while. Nowadays, if you are into competitive gameplay, you can just install League of Legends, DOTA2, TF2, Paladins, Starcraft 2 and lots of MMOs and play for years without paying anything. In most of these games, you only pay for cosmetic stuff, or for early unlocks, but they aren't really necessary to progress.

That's the good side of F2P. But then you have the nasty "you run out of energy, pay $5 to recover" games, which milk you each step of the way and aren't fun at all without paying. These should be frowned upon.

Re: Clicker Heroes 2 is abandoning free-to-play

#69

Post by joesb »

chki wrote: post #56
ge0rg wrote: post #55

We made a lot of money from these players who spent thousands. They are known to the industry as "Whales". I haven't seen this addressed yet, but what if the whales we are seeing are not poor addicted victims nor rich people but simple fraudsters? It really makes sense if you are a person with access to "unlimited" credit that you can't spend in a way that can be traced back to you. There is so much credit card fraud…

But is it really worth commiting fraud to beat somebody in Clicker Heroes? Doesn't every transaction you make with a stolen credit card increase the chance of getting caught/no longer being able to use the card because it gets blocked?

Don't know how it is in Clicker Heroes, but many game allow player to "gift" other players.

So you can use stolen credit card to buy lots of gems. Then post on a web board offering to gift cheap gems to people for cash.

Re: Clicker Heroes 2 is abandoning free-to-play

#70

Post by volent »

jack_pp wrote: post #64
csours wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clash Royale brands their philosophy as pay-to-advance. You can upgrade faster with real money, but that doesn't mean you will win matches. At some point at the top I assume everyone is spending a lot of money, and is matched up with similar level cards. As a player it doesn't really bug me.

Been playing it for over a year, have all cards up to tournament standard and hovering at about 4k rating. Have spent probably close to 150 dollars on it that i do not regret. It is more fun than wow and less expensive, especially in the long run. Now that i have a solid base of cards i am really not incentivised to spend any more money and probably won't except for the rare 2$ 5x value offers which come up every mon…

You paid $150 and make it sound like it's a lot cheaper than the $160 that wow would cost you for the same period of time.
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