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> 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 prog

> 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 First time I heard about clicker heroes game was 2 hours ago, reading your reply. Guess why it took me 2 house to reply? That’s right, I’ve been clicking and clicking. It’s crazy how something so pointless can be so addictive. I have to agree with you. I would definitely not pay $30 up front to play it, but once you get hooked, I can see how easy is for people to start pouring money into it.

chii 9y ago
> pay $30 up front to play it i'd rather pay upfront than be nickeled and dimed afterwards. Esp. if the production quality of the game is up to scratch (e.g., no unrecoverable bugs, good looking graphics/sound, and intuitive UI etc).
- arkades 9y ago
  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.
  - chii 9y ago
    how does tetris work then? You press button in response to what's on the screen. The clicker does have _some_ choices you have to make - it's just an easy choice most of the time.
    - pavel_lishin 9y ago
      I think the difference is more that there are no _penalties_ in clickers, and usually no way to _lose_.
  - viridian 9y ago
    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 are additive, multiplicative, and even quadratic effects than may be applied to that relationship in the form of hero powers, items?, etc. However, since by design the relationship between hundreds of effects (mostly in the form of hero powers) isn't clear, some purchases are easily 100,000,000,000,000% better than others, which is to say one wastes your gold. It's more of a long term time based math puzzle than a game, but there is definitely an evolution of mechanics, as you put it. Also despite the name, I'm pretty sure you pretty much never click in it past the first 10 minutes.
    - ticviking 9y ago
      This is the best explanation of why I'm still hooked on these things I've ever seen.
  - mattmanser 9y ago
    A huge chunk of gaming revolves around the mechanics of progression and getting new things. There will be an audience for the game, because they like this type of game. MMOs have been wildly popular in the general community, precisely because there are no significantly complex mechanics. Yes, there can be, but a very small portion of the player-base are engaged at that level. You don't need amazing aim. You just press a sequence of buttons. The plot is often totally incoherent and a lot of people skip it. And plot can be supplied by the player's imagination, fitting in with existing fantasies they hold (writing fantasy dialogues for your virtual pet, or I'm the king of the realm, building it by clicking things). Even FPSes are changing, in Blizzard's Overwatch, the most loved/despised hero Mercy[1] is "skill-less". You're not trying to get head shots or twitch aim or anything, you're keeping 5 bars full while moving around with very simple mechanics. And love it or hate it, you can't deny it's brought in a lot more diverse set of players to the game, I've never heard so many female voices in an FPS. It make me think that games can be thought of as combinations of several elements, plot, progression, mechanics, difficulty, etc.. Some people like parts part of that. They hate other bits of it. The progression thing seems to be one that's very easy to "exploit" through gambling mechanisms, it seems to be some sort of built in congitive mechanism that probably benefited us when you needed to plan ahead to build a shelter, or go on a hunt, or go out and get X berries, or anything that required a multi-step process for future planning. [1]Overwatch is a 6 v 6 first person shooter team game where there are lots of different characters to choose from that have very different weapons, skills, and roles, including healers. Mercy is a healer who can heal using a beam that requires extremely basic aim and can fly from player to player. This has allowed players without highly developed aim or positioning skills to enter the game and enjoy it, and then gradually develop those other skills to move to different heroes. The general consensus in the community is that this has allowed it to be much more accessible and fun for people who haven't been playing Halo/CoD/Battlefield from the age of 12.
    - Noos 9y ago
      Mercy is as skilless as Reinhardt or Winston though. Winston's gameplay is absurdly simple; find a healer or squishy, jump in, chase them around, and then jump out before you die. Reinhardt is just keeping a shield up, and knowing when it's safe to do your easily telegraphed rush. The reason why they are easier is because you need effective tanks and healers in the game, and hard healers or tanks as the only option will make players just be DPS instead. This is why Ana always sucks and never solved the problem of adding more healers; if you like sniping, widowmaker or hanzo is better, and if you like healing, Ana is really hard to heal effectively with due to lack of defense and the need for precision much more than any other healer.
  - welly 9y ago
    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.
    - CydeWeys 9y ago
      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_outsiders_rule_of_thumb/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ClickerHeroes/comments/4rrbpi/math_...
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      - noncoml 9y ago
        > 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.
        CydeWeys 9y ago
        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.)
  - andyhmltn 9y ago
    With due respect that's completely wrong. Clicker games have been a thing long before microtransactions were around and popular. I remember sinking an hour or two into cookie clicker: http://orteil.dashnet.org/cookieclicker/ http://orteil.dashnet.org/cookieclicker/
  - pavel_lishin 9y ago
    > 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." That's demonstrably not true. Universal Paperclips[1] had a progression, with new game elements becoming unlocked. Spaceplan[2] had a plot, and quite a bit of humor, and was absolutely worth paying for. [1] http://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/index2.html http://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/index2.html [2] http://jhollands.co.uk/spaceplan/ http://jhollands.co.uk/spaceplan/
    - lfowles 9y ago
      Spaceplan is pretty great. Glad to see these mechanics maturing into something that can support an engaging story. (Kind of like the progression from Super Mario Bros to recent Mario titles, I suppose!)
- criddell 9y ago
  I have no problem paying for additional levels. I don't like paying to alter the game experience, but I do like paying for more game.
- jandrese 9y ago
  But if you pay up front the whole concept of paying to make your clickies refresh faster (IE, the entire business model of clicker games) goes away. What's left after that?
  - pavel_lishin 9y ago
    TF2 seems to have done decently with cosmetics.
    - jandrese 9y ago
      TF2 has actual gameplay though. It's not just a skinner box with a coin slot.
      - chii 9y ago
        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).

chii 9y ago

> pay $30 up front to play it i'd rather pay upfront than be nickeled and dimed afterwards. Esp. if the production quality of the game is up to scratch (e.g., no unrecoverable bugs, good looking graphics/sound, and intuitive UI etc).

arkades 9y ago
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.
- chii 9y ago
  how does tetris work then? You press button in response to what's on the screen. The clicker does have _some_ choices you have to make - it's just an easy choice most of the time.
  - pavel_lishin 9y ago
    I think the difference is more that there are no _penalties_ in clickers, and usually no way to _lose_.
- viridian 9y ago
  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 are additive, multiplicative, and even quadratic effects than may be applied to that relationship in the form of hero powers, items?, etc. However, since by design the relationship between hundreds of effects (mostly in the form of hero powers) isn't clear, some purchases are easily 100,000,000,000,000% better than others, which is to say one wastes your gold. It's more of a long term time based math puzzle than a game, but there is definitely an evolution of mechanics, as you put it. Also despite the name, I'm pretty sure you pretty much never click in it past the first 10 minutes.
  - ticviking 9y ago
    This is the best explanation of why I'm still hooked on these things I've ever seen.
- mattmanser 9y ago
  A huge chunk of gaming revolves around the mechanics of progression and getting new things. There will be an audience for the game, because they like this type of game. MMOs have been wildly popular in the general community, precisely because there are no significantly complex mechanics. Yes, there can be, but a very small portion of the player-base are engaged at that level. You don't need amazing aim. You just press a sequence of buttons. The plot is often totally incoherent and a lot of people skip it. And plot can be supplied by the player's imagination, fitting in with existing fantasies they hold (writing fantasy dialogues for your virtual pet, or I'm the king of the realm, building it by clicking things). Even FPSes are changing, in Blizzard's Overwatch, the most loved/despised hero Mercy[1] is "skill-less". You're not trying to get head shots or twitch aim or anything, you're keeping 5 bars full while moving around with very simple mechanics. And love it or hate it, you can't deny it's brought in a lot more diverse set of players to the game, I've never heard so many female voices in an FPS. It make me think that games can be thought of as combinations of several elements, plot, progression, mechanics, difficulty, etc.. Some people like parts part of that. They hate other bits of it. The progression thing seems to be one that's very easy to "exploit" through gambling mechanisms, it seems to be some sort of built in congitive mechanism that probably benefited us when you needed to plan ahead to build a shelter, or go on a hunt, or go out and get X berries, or anything that required a multi-step process for future planning. [1]Overwatch is a 6 v 6 first person shooter team game where there are lots of different characters to choose from that have very different weapons, skills, and roles, including healers. Mercy is a healer who can heal using a beam that requires extremely basic aim and can fly from player to player. This has allowed players without highly developed aim or positioning skills to enter the game and enjoy it, and then gradually develop those other skills to move to different heroes. The general consensus in the community is that this has allowed it to be much more accessible and fun for people who haven't been playing Halo/CoD/Battlefield from the age of 12.
  - Noos 9y ago
    Mercy is as skilless as Reinhardt or Winston though. Winston's gameplay is absurdly simple; find a healer or squishy, jump in, chase them around, and then jump out before you die. Reinhardt is just keeping a shield up, and knowing when it's safe to do your easily telegraphed rush. The reason why they are easier is because you need effective tanks and healers in the game, and hard healers or tanks as the only option will make players just be DPS instead. This is why Ana always sucks and never solved the problem of adding more healers; if you like sniping, widowmaker or hanzo is better, and if you like healing, Ana is really hard to heal effectively with due to lack of defense and the need for precision much more than any other healer.
- welly 9y ago
  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.
  - CydeWeys 9y ago
    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_outsiders_rule_of_thumb/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ClickerHeroes/comments/4rrbpi/math_...
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - noncoml 9y ago
      > 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.
      - CydeWeys 9y ago
        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.)
- andyhmltn 9y ago
  With due respect that's completely wrong. Clicker games have been a thing long before microtransactions were around and popular. I remember sinking an hour or two into cookie clicker: http://orteil.dashnet.org/cookieclicker/ http://orteil.dashnet.org/cookieclicker/
- pavel_lishin 9y ago
  > 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." That's demonstrably not true. Universal Paperclips[1] had a progression, with new game elements becoming unlocked. Spaceplan[2] had a plot, and quite a bit of humor, and was absolutely worth paying for. [1] http://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/index2.html http://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/index2.html [2] http://jhollands.co.uk/spaceplan/ http://jhollands.co.uk/spaceplan/
  - lfowles 9y ago
    Spaceplan is pretty great. Glad to see these mechanics maturing into something that can support an engaging story. (Kind of like the progression from Super Mario Bros to recent Mario titles, I suppose!)
criddell 9y ago
I have no problem paying for additional levels. I don't like paying to alter the game experience, but I do like paying for more game.
jandrese 9y ago
But if you pay up front the whole concept of paying to make your clickies refresh faster (IE, the entire business model of clicker games) goes away. What's left after that?
- pavel_lishin 9y ago
  TF2 seems to have done decently with cosmetics.
  - jandrese 9y ago
    TF2 has actual gameplay though. It's not just a skinner box with a coin slot.
    - chii 9y ago
      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).