How Idle Heroes Made $100M in a Year • Hacker News Board

Re: How Idle Heroes Made $100M in a Year

#11

Post by sleibrock » Mon, May 06, 2019, 5:55 PM UTC

I just had to stop playing this game because I was basically making no progress every day. It became less enjoyable and more of a chore every 10 hours.

* Progress can be gauged by how far a team of heroes you construct can proceed in the "single player" stages of the game. Getting further into the single player campaign dictates how much experience/gold you will earn when not playing the game.

* In order to make progress, you need to upgrade a full team of six heroes.

* Not all heroes are equal and are graded on a scale of stars from 1 to 10, with 1 being the absolute worst and 10 being the best.

* The best heroes start at a star rating of 5 (I will call them 5* to mean "5-star" and so on). In order to upgrade a hero to 6* and beyond, you need a second copy of that hero and 3 additional 5* heroes of the same faction color to promote it to 6.

The drop-rate of getting 5* hero copies is very low across most opportunities. You can "summon" heroes from scrolls purchased with real-world-money, but the odds are very low here. There are also "prophet orbs", but these orbs are very rare and hard to attain more than one of them per day.

* There are many 5* units in the game, and gameplay-balance wise, not all of them are even remotely good in the later parts of the game. There's two tier-lists mainted: one for player-vs-player, the other for player-vs-monster. If you get a 5* hero unlock and it's not on that list, it's junk and is only used as food for building your 6+ characters.

There are ways to speed up the progress with money, but you will pay an arm and a leg to make about 1/6th of a dent in fully leveling a character. You'll be lucky if $100 USD gets you an inch.

It's very much a lootbox casino game hidden behind an RPG-style idle game. I played it for about a month and I was unable to hit level 90 in time to get a second copy of one of the highest-rated characters in the game (Heart Watcher), so it felt very frustrating and not very enjoyable afterwards.

Re: How Idle Heroes Made $100M in a Year

#12

Post by ordinaryradical » Mon, May 06, 2019, 5:56 PM UTC

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #8

What scares me about modern "casual" games like this one is their ability to extract money from people in a methodical, merciless way. There's no proper defense for most people. I fear our society will end up in a worse place because of businesses like this one.

I think if we could wrap our minds around what is happening psychologically in these games, most of them would be off-limits to children.

What's interesting is that we've decided to define gambling according the rules of the game—in reality, "gambling" is probably more akin to a psychological state that can be induced by many different rulesets and experiences.

Mobile games today are largely thinly-veiled attempts to induce this state in children through various Skinner Box mechanics in order to get at their parents' wallets. Fine.

But the real question is: what happens to the mind of an eight-year-old if they have a gambling simulator in their pocket every day? What happens to their neurological development after five years of exposure to this "gambling" state?

Re: How Idle Heroes Made $100M in a Year

#13

Post by chaostheory » Mon, May 06, 2019, 5:56 PM UTC

X6S1x6Okd1st wrote: post #9

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #8

What scares me about modern "casual" games like this one is their ability to extract money from people in a methodical, merciless way. There's no proper defense for most people. I fear our society will end up in a worse place because of businesses like this one.

Could you elaborate?

These games are a modern version of slot machines. It's habit forming, and it burns time and money. tbf it's still slightly better than things that you see in a casino

Re: How Idle Heroes Made $100M in a Year

#14

Post by ragona » Mon, May 06, 2019, 5:58 PM UTC

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #8

What scares me about modern "casual" games like this one is their ability to extract money from people in a methodical, merciless way. There's no proper defense for most people. I fear our society will end up in a worse place because of businesses like this one.

I wonder about this often. I contend that we are getting better at extracting money from people. Is there some sort of line we will cross at which point the majority of people are psychologically unprepared to resist spending their money in a way that causes them financial harm?

We understand that friction causes consumers to consider their purchase more carefully, so we've worked hard to lower friction, and this has a statistically noticeable increase in users who complete their purchase.

I'm genuinely curious whether we'll eventually reach some sort of threshold where the bulk of the economy is simply driven by overriding our better instincts.

Re: How Idle Heroes Made $100M in a Year

#15

Post by hombre_fatal » Mon, May 06, 2019, 6:04 PM UTC

It's interesting to see the same people who lambast Farmville get addicted to a game like this.

It's like how Fortnite figured out how to get boys interested in dressing up their virtual Barbies so much that players use "noskin" in a derogatory manner.

Re: How Idle Heroes Made $100M in a Year

#16

Post by mdorazio » Mon, May 06, 2019, 6:07 PM UTC

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #8

What scares me about modern "casual" games like this one is their ability to extract money from people in a methodical, merciless way. There's no proper defense for most people. I fear our society will end up in a worse place because of businesses like this one.

I'm with you on this and I think the problem really got started when Zynga began actively optimizing to monetize underlying addiction in its core users years ago. The real solution here is that we need legislation for "casual" games that puts addictive games into the same bucket as gambling, but doing that is going to be really difficult (how do you even legally define bad addicting gameplay?).

Re: How Idle Heroes Made $100M in a Year

#17

Post by yoz-y » Mon, May 06, 2019, 6:08 PM UTC

chaostheory wrote: post #13

X6S1x6Okd1st wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate?

These games are a modern version of slot machines. It's habit forming, and it burns time and money. tbf it's still slightly better than things that you see in a casino

Coin ups existed a long time ago too. Arguably you got even less value from those per dollar spent.

Re: How Idle Heroes Made $100M in a Year

#18

Post by tarr11 » Mon, May 06, 2019, 6:12 PM UTC

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #8

What scares me about modern "casual" games like this one is their ability to extract money from people in a methodical, merciless way. There's no proper defense for most people. I fear our society will end up in a worse place because of businesses like this one.

I think comments like this are too dismissive of how important and valuable games are in many people's lives.

Personally, I fear the opposite, that over-regulation of rapidly changing industries based on fear and anecdata will make people's lives worse.

Re: How Idle Heroes Made $100M in a Year

#19

Post by the_af » Mon, May 06, 2019, 6:13 PM UTC

yoz-y wrote: post #17

chaostheory wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These games are a modern version of slot machines. It's habit forming, and it burns time and money. tbf it's still slightly better than things that you see in a casino

Coin ups existed a long time ago too. Arguably you got even less value from those per dollar spent.

I suppose they have all the downsides of coin ups plus they are also more readily accessible. You don't have to go anywhere to get your fix, it's there in your phone.

Re: How Idle Heroes Made $100M in a Year

#20

Post by the_af » Mon, May 06, 2019, 6:17 PM UTC

tarr11 wrote: post #18

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #8

What scares me about modern "casual" games like this one is their ability to extract money from people in a methodical, merciless way. There's no proper defense for most people. I fear our society will end up in a worse place because of businesses like this one.

I think comments like this are too dismissive of how important and valuable games are in many people's lives. Personally, I fear the opposite, that over-regulation of rapidly changing industries based on fear and anecdata will make people's lives worse.

If you ever talked to anyone in the industry of Zynga-like games about how they think about their customers (i.e. the players), you'd be dismissive too. It's scary.