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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

#161

Post by WorldMaker »

Noos wrote: post #142
scrooched_moose wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was seriously surprised this has become a "real" game. I played Cookie Clicker for a couple weeks (and a bit of Clicker Heroes) and always thought they were a parody of the infinite treadmill modern gaming is turning into. At least for me, they made the math behind the grind so blatantly obvious I've lost interest in any game that uses this mechanic for real. I wasn't aware there were people so into these games the…

The entire genre started with Cow Clicker by Ian Bogost, which was a parody of Facebook games at the time and their lack of interactivity. The problem was though that the parody worked as an actual game for many people, and became the thing it criticized while spawning an entire genre of idle games like it. Tv Tropes had an entry that is called something different now, but i knew it as "Truffault was right." It's poi…

Before Cow Clicker there was also Progress Quest [1], which was a similar attempt at deconstructed satire (of fetch quests that were not much more than progress bars), but just as much also paved the way for games/game systems that aren't satire using the same distilled mechanics. (Several MMOs come to mind that have "progress quest" systems to keep players checking in every few hours/days.)

[1] http://progressquest.com/

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

#162

Post by stingraycharles »

cwyers wrote: post #159
stingraycharles wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t expect game mechanics as refined as SimCity, or graphics like that. All I want is a sim game that doesn’t land me into a brick wall after a day because they want me to pay to expand my territory beyond 100 square foot.

And if it was worth it to do that for ten bucks, someone probably would have already. But mobile app consumers are incredibly price sensitive, and so you see the market dominated by crap and F2P, and sometimes even F2P crap.

So you think this is an actual requirement, rather than game studios just trying to maximize ROI by going after the whales using F2P?

I simply find it hard to believe game development suddenly became so much more expensive in the last few years of F2P rise. Isn’t this just about a whole industry discovering an opportunity, and accordingly a new standard of expectations of money to be made ?

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

#163

Post by shostack »

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…

Please tell me crypto mining isn't gaining any traction. The last thing we need is apps and websites trying to hijack our devices to mine behind the scenes.

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

#164

Post by cwyers »

stingraycharles wrote: post #162
cwyers wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if it was worth it to do that for ten bucks, someone probably would have already. But mobile app consumers are incredibly price sensitive, and so you see the market dominated by crap and F2P, and sometimes even F2P crap.

So you think this is an actual requirement, rather than game studios just trying to maximize ROI by going after the whales using F2P? I simply find it hard to believe game development suddenly became so much more expensive in the last few years of F2P rise. Isn’t this just about a whole industry discovering an opportunity, and accordingly a new standard of expectations of money to be made ?

When was $10 for a SimCity-like game ever viable? Even if you say that you can live with reduced graphics fidelity and functionality, that's still a lot of work involved. I don't even think the original SimCity was $10 in 1980s dollars.

I guess the canonical example of "you can deliver a premium gaming experience on phones for under $10" is Minecraft, but unless you can sell the volume Minecraft is, you need to make more per user than they do.

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

#165

Post by GuB-42 »

cwyers wrote: post #42
stingraycharles wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just yesterday I was looking for a simcity-like game for my iPad to play that didn’t use microtransactions. It’s simply not there. Not a single city simulator that you can actually play without paying for some stupid credit system. I was easily willing to spend $10 for such a game, because of the scarcity. I would expect some indy dev to jump into this space, but I guess microtransactions are just too lucrative?

> I was easily willing to spend $10 for such a game, because of the scarcity. Your willingness to pay $10 for a SimCity-style game probably explains the scarcity. If you and enough others were willing to pay $40-60, you'd find that game.

That's a problem with mobile games.

$10 for a mobile game is perceived as expensive. Many people say "I don't pay $15 for a mobile game", even if they are ready to pay $30 for the exact same game on a game console or PC. And if you look at Steam and the Android Play Store, you will often notice that the the mobile version of a game is often much cheaper, even though they are not significantly different.

Upfront payment simply doesn't work on mobile. Looking at the "most profitable" apps on the Play Store, the first non-free app is ranked 78th.

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

#166

Post by vanderZwan »

Retric wrote: post #89
Deimorz wrote: post #61

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 i…

Clicker heroes does take actual strategy to progress as you need to do cost benefit trade offs in how you spend resources. Gold, then hero souls, then log(hero souls sacrificed). Add to that when you reset the world, and how you reset it to gain hero souls or sacrificed hero souls. That said, whenever optimal play is found using a spreadsheet it's not really interactive gameplay.

Sounds like clicker games could be turned into motivation to pay attention in high school economy class

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

#167

Post by CydeWeys »

welly wrote: post #126
arkades wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there's no gameplay! Sorry, I mean to say: there's no inherent evolution of plot or mechanics. It's a game that's literally defined by "numbers increasing on the side of the screen, and microtransactions to make those numbers go up quicker." What would that look like without the microtransactions? while True: i++ print i Done.

These clicker games seem little more to me than an advanced "fidget spinner". There's really no skill or logic required and there doesn't seem to be much of a goal, other than to amass higher points/cookies/cows or whatever.

There's quite a bit of skill required. It's actually quite an advanced math problem to figure out optimal strategy; see here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ClickerHeroes/comments/4rrbpi/math_...

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

#168

Post by CydeWeys »

cwyers wrote: post #164
stingraycharles wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you think this is an actual requirement, rather than game studios just trying to maximize ROI by going after the whales using F2P? I simply find it hard to believe game development suddenly became so much more expensive in the last few years of F2P rise. Isn’t this just about a whole industry discovering an opportunity, and accordingly a new standard of expectations of money to be made ?

When was $10 for a SimCity-like game ever viable? Even if you say that you can live with reduced graphics fidelity and functionality, that's still a lot of work involved. I don't even think the original SimCity was $10 in 1980s dollars. I guess the canonical example of "you can deliver a premium gaming experience on phones for under $10" is Minecraft, but unless you can sell the volume Minecraft is, you need to make…

There are lots of amazing mobile game experiences available that cost under $10 for a one-time purchase. I don't understand why you think they must all necessarily have AAA budgets in the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. One person or a small team of people can easily make an amazing game.

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

#169

Post by ticviking »

viridian wrote: post #107
arkades wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there's no gameplay! Sorry, I mean to say: there's no inherent evolution of plot or mechanics. It's a game that's literally defined by "numbers increasing on the side of the screen, and microtransactions to make those numbers go up quicker." What would that look like without the microtransactions? while True: i++ print i Done.

It's a bit more complicated than that, and you can make decisions which can heavily penalize you. The person above who said that the optimal way to way would involve spreadsheets is correct, but this one isn't. Ultimately you have (when I tried it a couple of years ago) two main resources, and three meta resources. Try to think of each of them as a graph of growth over time. Gold is roughly upstream of DPS, but There…

This is the best explanation of why I'm still hooked on these things I've ever seen.

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

#170

Post by [deleted] »

CydeWeys wrote: post #167
welly wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These clicker games seem little more to me than an advanced "fidget spinner". There's really no skill or logic required and there doesn't seem to be much of a goal, other than to amass higher points/cookies/cows or whatever.

There's quite a bit of skill required. It's actually quite an advanced math problem to figure out optimal strategy; see here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ClickerHeroes/comments/4rrbpi/math_...

[deleted]
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