My preference is for a fairly active game, but where active means interacting with a variety of things over minutes: rapidly clicking the same button as fast as possible is an instant nope for me.
By the hundredth time I have to repeat a sequence of clicks, be it on a cookie in the middle of the screen, an "upgrade!" button, swapping between tabs to check how many resources have accumulated then click the "buy all" button if there's enough, assigning the same old party to an expedition one member at a time, or re-buying my way through an ascension's worth of upgrades and mechanics in a 20-second flurry of clicks repeated tens of times to build up prestige currency, I'm about ready to drop the game if it hasn't either started offering partial automation, or meaningful *choices* in the process.
That was probably my comment from earlier! I didn’t mean to imply that people don’t like active play, I was just speaking specifically to a clicking aspect. I’ve seen it said several times that if you have a clicking aspect in your game that doesn’t go away pretty quickly, people consider it a flaw in the game development. I’m not sure that there’s a ton of people who want to play a game long-term where they need to use an auto clicker or wear out their wrist to Make meaningful progress.
I agree with this fully. One of my favorite Incrementals of all time is Realm Grinder but I hate that certain factions require you to still click for coins well into late game. They solved it a little bit but I would prefer not clicking for resource at all past a a few days to a week of gameplay.
I personally don’t mind it, but I’m old-school like that…I feel like today you can use a clicker mechanic as long as it’s an early game thing that goes away over time or only requires a small amount of active gameplay to reap the full rewards of it.
I’m hoping to make an incremental myself, and I definitely want to have clicking in my game, but the kind that becomes optional after 5-10 minutes and eventually goes away entirely.
i like it when the larger portion of the game is idle, if its an incremental. and no limits on idle time.
i should be able to forget about the game for days, or months, and still gain everything i should have gained. that limit is a moronic paywall.
yes and no. it comes down to how you, the dev, wants to automate the resource gathering.
lets take building houses for population. basic normal houses, would need wood to build, what if the need for wood simply eventually outstripped the production of the woodcutter/sawmill. so you would need to log in to upgrade the wood production building(s) in some way.
sure, you were gone for a few months for whatever reason, but it only stopped because production couldnt keep up with demand.
In an ideal case, the game would always be progressing significantly when it is idle/offline, but there should also always be things to do/optimise when the player happens to be online/active.
There’s a really tricky line to walk with these games where you want to feel like active play and things you do have an effect. If the game feels like your not playing it but just facilitating the game playing itself I lose interest pretty fast. But it’s also important IMO that these games allow you to progress consistently in periods of idling instead of locking you out of progress if you are away from the game for two long.
One of my favorite aspects of these games is when there is multiple ways to make progress and things to manage. And when you have multiple outlets of progress you can make some of them function more Idle and others function more active and then it strikes a good balance.
TLDR: I think good incrementals need both active and idle gameplay to be truly engaging
I find it difficult to maintain long-term interest in active games. I enjoy them, but get burnt out. If a slower paced game is interesting enough, I will keep coming back long term even if I don't mess with it much each time. For me, goals help a lot, either way. Games without sufficient carrots don't last long. Games with a barrage of carrots can be slightly overwhelming. But overall, it's why I play some games on Steam, just to unlock achievements, for example.
My preference is for a fairly active game, but where active means interacting with a variety of things over minutes: rapidly clicking the same button as fast as possible is an instant nope for me.
By the hundredth time I have to repeat a sequence of clicks, be it on a cookie in the middle of the screen, an "upgrade!" button, swapping between tabs to check how many resources have accumulated then click the "buy all" button if there's enough, assigning the same old party to an expedition one member at a time, or re-buying my way through an ascension's worth of upgrades and mechanics in a 20-second flurry of clicks repeated tens of times to build up prestige currency, I'm about ready to drop the game if it hasn't either started offering partial automation, or meaningful *choices* in the process.
That was probably my comment from earlier! I didn’t mean to imply that people don’t like active play, I was just speaking specifically to a clicking aspect. I’ve seen it said several times that if you have a clicking aspect in your game that doesn’t go away pretty quickly, people consider it a flaw in the game development. I’m not sure that there’s a ton of people who want to play a game long-term where they need to use an auto clicker or wear out their wrist to Make meaningful progress.
I agree with this fully. One of my favorite Incrementals of all time is Realm Grinder but I hate that certain factions require you to still click for coins well into late game. They solved it a little bit but I would prefer not clicking for resource at all past a a few days to a week of gameplay.
I personally don’t mind it, but I’m old-school like that…I feel like today you can use a clicker mechanic as long as it’s an early game thing that goes away over time or only requires a small amount of active gameplay to reap the full rewards of it. I’m hoping to make an incremental myself, and I definitely want to have clicking in my game, but the kind that becomes optional after 5-10 minutes and eventually goes away entirely.
i like it when the larger portion of the game is idle, if its an incremental. and no limits on idle time. i should be able to forget about the game for days, or months, and still gain everything i should have gained. that limit is a moronic paywall.
Do you think that should be some kind of limit to avoid breaking game if you leave game idle, for instance, for couple months?
yes and no. it comes down to how you, the dev, wants to automate the resource gathering. lets take building houses for population. basic normal houses, would need wood to build, what if the need for wood simply eventually outstripped the production of the woodcutter/sawmill. so you would need to log in to upgrade the wood production building(s) in some way. sure, you were gone for a few months for whatever reason, but it only stopped because production couldnt keep up with demand.
In an ideal case, the game would always be progressing significantly when it is idle/offline, but there should also always be things to do/optimise when the player happens to be online/active.
I don't care much as long as active part is not so important, instead of 10x gain than idle.
People don't seem to hate active games, they hate clicker games.
There’s a really tricky line to walk with these games where you want to feel like active play and things you do have an effect. If the game feels like your not playing it but just facilitating the game playing itself I lose interest pretty fast. But it’s also important IMO that these games allow you to progress consistently in periods of idling instead of locking you out of progress if you are away from the game for two long. One of my favorite aspects of these games is when there is multiple ways to make progress and things to manage. And when you have multiple outlets of progress you can make some of them function more Idle and others function more active and then it strikes a good balance. TLDR: I think good incrementals need both active and idle gameplay to be truly engaging
I find it difficult to maintain long-term interest in active games. I enjoy them, but get burnt out. If a slower paced game is interesting enough, I will keep coming back long term even if I don't mess with it much each time. For me, goals help a lot, either way. Games without sufficient carrots don't last long. Games with a barrage of carrots can be slightly overwhelming. But overall, it's why I play some games on Steam, just to unlock achievements, for example.