Install Steam
login
|
language
简体中文 (Simplified Chinese)
繁體中文 (Traditional Chinese)
日本語 (Japanese)
한국어 (Korean)
ไทย (Thai)
Български (Bulgarian)
Čeština (Czech)
Dansk (Danish)
Deutsch (German)
Español - España (Spanish - Spain)
Español - Latinoamérica (Spanish - Latin America)
Ελληνικά (Greek)
Français (French)
Italiano (Italian)
Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian)
Magyar (Hungarian)
Nederlands (Dutch)
Norsk (Norwegian)
Polski (Polish)
Português (Portuguese - Portugal)
Português - Brasil (Portuguese - Brazil)
Română (Romanian)
Русский (Russian)
Suomi (Finnish)
Svenska (Swedish)
Türkçe (Turkish)
Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese)
Українська (Ukrainian)
Report a translation problem
Discussions Rules and Guidelines
5 
Report this post
Personally i think if you like/love a game enough then you invest more into it. Supporting the developer who, in slikey's case makes very very little from this game in general. Not to mention this income is what is supporting his family.
There is no TLDR, because there's no way to summarize the situation. It's a complicated matter, to which there is no simple explanation for.
And really, it isn't that long to read.
If you would read my post, you'd know why I won't and can't invest anymore into this game.
DLC has been released at 1 every 2 months roughly as the game started with Supporter pack in early access and was well recieved. It wasn't needed and was well recieved. Most people begged for a better Token pet and at the time it wasn't needed as only 2 tokens would spawn, but with the changes in the last 2 months i agree the Token pet is on the must have side and is the only one i would throw into microtransaction catagory. Halloween was a skin pack, as for the Gold Room nothing in this DLC is super amazing that is gonna make you amazing. Its helping you do the mundane tasks so you can be lazy. Your not gonna get booted for not having it and the idea for gold rooms is so you can share the benefit of 5 extra min with those in your group. It's just a way to help others. As for the price point on it it's meant to support me and the work I do for everyone. If you enjoy the game and play for 1k hours think of the games you have played less and payed 2x as much on(least thats how i justify money on games). Was never meant to prevent someone from eating and im sorry for that. Lastly I really do like to help those on a tight budget by doing good steam sales not the crappy 10% stuff and being as you have to register for them beforehand the Gold DLC wasnt included in the latest sale, by all means wait for them until you pick them up.
As for plans on next DLC it's supposed to be a collection of cursors and pets but i have no ETA yet...
Would also like to add the reason the game had a $5 buy in to begin with was to help keep a healthy community. If i ever make the move to F2P I will need to be even more active + get some more mods to help keep chat from going toxic. I really dont think $21 dollars over the course of 8 months was bad even if you wanna call them Microtransactions. I have tried to be as fair and create things that are convenience for you guys not trying to nickel and dime. Thanks for the feedback.
Thanks for responding.
I made a post, and then Steam ate it and swallowed it whole. So I guess I'll have to write it again. Ugh.
Well, here I go again;
As far as game costs go, I am perfectly aware. I've QA'd for many games myself, and even finding a single bug at times and why it's happening can be a full time job. I've also done some sprite artwork myself (personal hobby of mine), and even doing good sprite work can be a full time job (and my spriting is not of a professional level yet). When someone complains about a game's development being slow or whatever, I'm usually the first one to jump in instinctively, even if it's for a game I may not even like (Rust is a good example).
But remember, that money for many people is a very finite resource. People will pick and choose games base on price alone. In a genre that is already filled with many free to play incremental games that are wonderful despite being so minimalistic, having a price point is already a huge barrier to entry, even if it's a small one. On top of all the DLCs, both the price and them literally has people on Reddit shunning the game and saying it's bad (among other colorful statements, anyways).
And that's the main problem with the DLCs. Yes, I will agree with you that the boosts are small. But they're still microtransactions that give you advantages over other players who don't purchase them.
Gamers know what microtransactions are; and they absolutelty hate them. They don't care how small they are -- they just hate them. They see an incremental game that you have to pay for, and it has microtransactions. It sounds bad on paper or at face value, and unfortunately, the Steam Store is basically just that. An on paper or face value proposition.
And remember, this IS a community of people where the simple act of registering an account name and password EVEN WITHOUT email registration can cause a large number of hate on a game where a mass number of people won't even TRY a game out just because of that.
And because of that, when people saw the game's Store page on Reddit, the hate for the game's monetization practices was quite high. People saying the game sucks and is awful just because of it's both paid-for-entry fee and DLCs which offer advantages. Some which hide a whole gameplay style behind a paywall (idling).
There's also the issue that, while one DLC with a couple of boosts is small. Many DLCs, with a couple of boosts, still adds up to being a huge advantage:
Pets that automatically gather tokens without you needing to do anything,
Longer auto prestige time,
Automatic equipment being... uh, equipped.
Double pet CE from trashed items,
Double raid boss chance,
Automatic Class Evo,
Automatic class leveling while Auto prestiging/Clicky
+15 minutes on Captcha time
All of these by themselves are very little indeed. All of them together, not so little anymore. Large? Debatable, but I wouldn't call the benefits they all prove small. Right now, it's moderate, with in my opinion, pets gathering tokens being the biggest boost there is and is probably larger than almost all of these combined. And of course, as more DLCs with boosts are added, this problem is only going to become worse.
To the main point though; a person who hasn't played the game before and does not know what these are, can look much more impactful than they really are. "Wow, double this, and double that?" or to an idle player "Automatic this, and automatic that?". And then they see the full price point with all of the DLCs -- They don't fully comprehend what these boosts mean without doing some extensive research on the game. I can guarantee that a lot of people don't tend to go that far. Especially when it has to do with microtransactions, or anything that looks even like an off-spring of them. They will immediately be turned-off by that prospect and abandon the ship before even buying the entry ticket. This prospect is what scares me the most about the future of the game. The game not just getting any new players, but scaring potential ones away in disgust is clearly not a good thing.
Again, it's a good idea to try and meet people half way. An entry fee, or microtransactions, but both rarely ever make a good combination unless you are already a super established IP or the entry fee is next to nothing for the genre. I'm not a financial expert obviously, but the entry price with the DLCs may have cost you more revenue than you may think, not to mention a lot of bad PR on Reddit. Although it's still possible to turn that bad PR into good PR.
That's why I'm suggesting a Free to Play model. Because it's already essentially what you're doing so it requires the least amount of changes, it's already also the standard for incremental games, so it would get the most people in, and the more people this type of game has (MMO), the better it is for literally everyone. Newbies would have newbies to play with, vets would still have vets, lots of people in the middle ground. People can invest how little, or how much they want, but even if they invest nothing but still play, it would still help the quality of the game. It could mean more DLC sales, or more patreon supports.
I don't have all the data of course. Maybe the game is getting a lot more sales and DLC purchases than I thought, or maybe you're making as much money as you need. So obviously, use your own descretion. I just know from an observer, it feels like a giant lost opportunity that could benefit quite literally everyone. You, everyone who plays the game, and people who would be interested in playing the game.
As far as chat moderation goes, there's lots of ways to snuff out a majority of the trolls. The most basic one being that new users can't chat until they reach a certain threshold, or having very limited amount of chat usages they can do (so newer players can still ask questions, but they have to wait for a cooldown before being able to chat again). You can make this threshold as easy or hard as you see fit. A lot of trolls want a quick easy target that doesn't require any commitment.
Of course in the end, it's your choice to do what you want. It is your game and I would never want to take that away from a game dev in trying to make it the game I want it to be. I just want it to be a game I and other people can enjoy.
All I can do right now is question if this game is really meant for me, because it's now surpassed my budget range and at a pace faster than I or my family can keep up with. There's only so much a young teenager can do for money, and there's only so much my mom can reasonably afford.
And I'm not saying stuff like that for a pity-party by the way (and please don't pity me. I'm generally quite happy). I say it because obviously my opinion is going to be biased. And it may be biased because of the above financial problem. So because of that, I want my bias' to be as public as possible, so anyone who is reading can make informed thoughts about my opinion and know exactly where a part of it is coming from. But it's also a contributing factor on my personal position on the game as well. To some, $25 may not be a lot of money. To me, it can be my Steam wallet for half a year. So I'm just trying to give perspective on a part of where I am coming from.
Either way, you still have my support Silkey (even if it can no longer be financially). I do hope best for you and the game. If I had the money to spare, I'd still give you more just because I know how active you and I do understand how much work game design is.
Edit: This was a lot, lot longer than I intended. I will make a TLDR this time:
TLDR; I am aware about the costs of game design both financially and time wise.
Money is a finite resource for everyone. Especially in a minimalistic genre such as incremental games where most games are just free outright.
Each DLC individually may be small, but alltogether they add up to something more. And potential new players don't know the difference or signigances of these boosts in a community that doesn't even bother registering a Username and password on online incremental games.
People hate pay-to-play entries with microtransactions. It leaves a bad first impression. One or the other tend to to good. Both together = bad reception.
That's why a F2P model would be good, because it meets people halfway, brings more people in to buy the DLCs, more people in the game = healthy game
Majority of trolls can be stopped by making a barrier to entry in order to chat through in-game progress. A couple of extra mods wouldn't hurt, though.
In the end, it's your game. I hope you and the game the best. Good luck!
Another thing I would like to add that i hope the game is unique enough in peoples minds to warrent the price. I made this because i wanted a multiplayer clicker I could play with my friends and i was hoping the it would start a trend to where other studios might go hey lets make something like this... Who knows maybe someday...
There's no exploitive mechanics in this game yet and hope that this remains the case until I've at least dumped 1000+ hours into.