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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

#171

Post by noncoml »

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_...

> There's quite a bit of skill required

That's false. Skill is not required. It can help you progress faster, but it is definitely not required.

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

#172

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

codingdave wrote: post #97
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?

That question was asked on reddit. Most commenters seemed to think it was too high. The devs said they spent $2 million to make a clicker game, and therefore needed to price it high to recoup their costs. Personally, I feel they should have managed their costs to a more reasonable price point, but I didn't feel like engaging in debate on reddit over the point.

$2 million?!

Yeah...a game like Clicker Heroes should be less than a 1 year effort from a single programmer and an artist.

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

#173

Post by jquery »

mnsc wrote: post #59
jquery wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$30 isn't really steep given the thousands of hours of... ahem... gameplay. It's easily justifiable for a niche hobby purchase. I've been idling Clicker Heroes for thousands of hours and it has a very soothing mathematical zen rhythm to it. I highly recommend it to anyone who's enjoyed Cookie Clicker or other idle-type games. What makes Clicker Heroes extra special is the high-quality design and the lovely math that'…

I'm at the end of cookie clicker and I honestly don't see any interesting progressions forward. I just got 350 chancemakers so now I'm just creating spreadsheets to try to time the "get xxx777777 levels on ascension". But actually this is a feature and not a bug since I actually appreciate the sense of "I'm done for now" that lets me pause gameplay for a couple of months and wait for a new tier building or something…

Heh, I just used JS to get that achievement in Cookie Clicker.

I would say that Clicker Heroes is far less demanding of your time than Cookie Clicker. It's difficult to play Cookie Clicker and be mostly idle. Clicker Heroes only asks a few minutes a week to make meaningful progress. It's a different beast than most clicker games, because your game makes significant progress when you're not playing.

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

#174

Post by chii »

jandrese wrote: post #155
pavel_lishin wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TF2 seems to have done decently with cosmetics.

TF2 has actual gameplay though. It's not just a skinner box with a coin slot.

I'm OK with people buying a skinner box - just as long as it's not possible to exploit their psychology with a coinslot to make money. Sell the whole box, and the user can do what they wish (including cheat their own way into more coins).

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

#175

Post by CydeWeys »

noncoml wrote: post #171
CydeWeys wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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_...

> There's quite a bit of skill required That's false. Skill is not required . It can help you progress faster, but it is definitely not required.

Doesn't this apply to pretty much everything though? You can partake in any activity without skill, you're just not going to get very far.

And I would argue that, since Clicker Heroes has exponential progression (outsiders) on top of exponential progression (ancients), that if you lack skill you're not going to get nearly as far as in any other activity, when measured in absolute terms. My max hero souls per primal boss kill is currently at e132. If you don't know how to optimize ascensions and transcensions properly you're not going to get very far at all, and will make very slow progression even at around e3. That's over one hundred orders of magnitude lower.

(Yes, the game is absurd.)

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

#176

Post by fulafel »

patio11 wrote: post #32
greggman wrote: post #3

it concerns me how many of my friends in free to play game dev are okay with exploting whales for profit.

I go back and forth on this, because there seems to be material disagreement on whether whales are, in fact, a) folks with problems or b) folks with hobbies which are, relative to a single video game, expensive. There is a good presentation from the CEO of Kongregate talking about this here: https://www.slideshare.net/emily_greer/dont-call-them-whales... I share your moral intuitions about exploiting whales if whales…

I think a good benchmark is how you feel about the spending afterwards. There are many stories about people having regrets after spending a lot on addictive Candy Crush type games and swearing off them, but still relapsing to spend again and again.

I think the poster girl from the slides of 40-year old californian MMO player is artificially nice, because $7.5k for a typical Californian isn't much and the social aspect makes you think there's a human connection involved. But this is just the good-for-pr end of the whale spectrum.

(Of course the most artificial part is that she's getting paid by the industry)

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

#177

Post by vanderZwan »

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…

According to Wikipedia, Cow Clicker was first released in July 2010[0]. That would mean that the SMBC Theater's sketch "MMO" precedes it by a few months[1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow_Clicker

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cD69PAIqiYo

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

#178

Post by jack_pp »

volent wrote: post #70
jack_pp wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Oh but wow would've probably demanded 3x more time which would've not been spent in the same fun way. Grinding daily quests is a distraction it is not fun. Want to play PvP? Oh you have to grind battlegrounds 20 hours per week in perpetuity to be competitive in arena. I can play clash royale for 45 minutes a day in 15 minute sessions and be happy with it, it never felt like work.

And that's yearly cost for wow, if you leave the game and come back in a year you have to pay another 60 upfront. I can leave the game and come back to play for free, I won't have any of the new cards but those are hardly essential and you can certainly make a competitive deck with the cards you have if your account is as farmed as mine.

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

#179

Post by pw »

aeontech wrote: post #60
patio11 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I go back and forth on this, because there seems to be material disagreement on whether whales are, in fact, a) folks with problems or b) folks with hobbies which are, relative to a single video game, expensive. There is a good presentation from the CEO of Kongregate talking about this here: https://www.slideshare.net/emily_greer/dont-call-them-whales... I share your moral intuitions about exploiting whales if whales…

Right, but I don’t think 100/mo is quite what is considered a whale. Just as in casino gambling, where I believe the term came from, a whale is someone who throws a few hundred to several thousand into a game in a month, possibly in a large number of smaller transactions so they don’t even realize their running total. It’s the people for whom the “10’000 rubies for 49.99” in-app currency chests are meant for.

I agree that a $100/month is probably on the low end for the whale category. But, I think his broader point is that there’s at least some evidence that the whales in question are, in fact, people with disposable income (i.e. middle class or better; often professionals) for whom pay-to-play games are a substitute for other equally expensive IRL hobbies that are not uncommon among people in that social strata (like, say, golf, tennis, or skiing).
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