Offline Progress Maxed at 18 Hours

[Det. Crashmore]

Idle games are normally a pleasant oasis from the world of applications and devices that are constantly becoming more efficient at stealing your attention.

Perhaps it was my doe-eyed negligence that caused this to slip past the filters, but I just noticed that this game has an offline progress cap at 18 hours.

This means that you are REQUIRED to interact with this game EVERY SINGLE DAY in order to maintain character progression.
I've had my character mining blank runes for a few days while I went out of town only to realize that the game doesn't allow me to take vacations.

This is the point where an idle game loses its appeal.

To the development team:

I'd like to suggest removing this barrier.
I can't imagine that I'm the only one that sees this as a problem.

At this point I'm uninstalling the game on all of my devices - however, I may check back at some point.

[Segan]

A game that encourages you not to play it is a game that you'll quickly have no reason to play.

Imagine you run into a situation where you think "If I just stop playing for 3 days, I won't have to worry about [x] anymore." And then you come across a [y] that you can exploit that way too, then a [z].

There are two obvious dangers to this playstyle: 1) you spend so much time not playing the game that you eventually forget about it, or 2) you think to yourself "Can this even be counted as playing a game?" Both lead to the same outcome.

[TonyCrossbow]

Publicado originalmente por Det. Crashmore:

I paid MONEY for the game.
I should be able to play it how I want.

there's scripts to remove it, stooge

[Hurricane]

This answers my question.
Idle games are supposed to be time-based and progress forever, at the same speed, while the program is closed. I guess this is not what I'm looking for.

[Snake - ヘビ]

Publicado originalmente por Det. Crashmore:

I paid MONEY for the game.
I should be able to play it how I want.

Games have rules for progression, even idle games.

It's not a real problem. In fact I think a cap on non-interaction progress is necessary for it to even be counted as a game tbh.

You're complaining because you didn't progress as much as you wanted in a game by.... doing nothing? Like really? You want something that is purely a counter of how long it has been since u bought the game and not require ANY interaction at all? Because this is what it sounds like to me and it sounds dumb as hell.

Don't get me wrong I enjoy idle games but they're very very very casual and easy already, losing a couple days of progress means literally nothing when all you have to do is more "nothing" on a future day to make that progress up later.

It's not like an active game where you lose actual time out of your day, you have lost nothing except your false expectations and garbage assumptions that you really shouldn't have made in the first place.

[Snake - ヘビ]

Publicado originalmente por Hurricane:

This answers my question.
Idle games are supposed to be time-based and progress forever, at the same speed, while the program is closed. I guess this is not what I'm looking for.

That's completely a subjective opinion on what idle games are supposed to be. I disagree. I feel like asking for a once, or even twice, per day interaction is not unreasonable. Simply check it on your phone once when u wake up, and once before u go to bed, takes literally 5 minutes total when you're already probably doing other stuff like drinking a coffee or whatever.

I don't want a "game" that's nothing but a "I bought the game x amount of time ago" simulator. Games are fundamentally a form of media that require interaction and decision making.

Maybe it's not for you but it's so extremely casual to me that I don't understand the complaint at all.

[Snake - ヘビ]

Publicado originalmente por Segan:

A game that encourages you not to play it is a game that you'll quickly have no reason to play.

Imagine you run into a situation where you think "If I just stop playing for 3 days, I won't have to worry about [x] anymore." And then you come across a [y] that you can exploit that way too, then a [z].

There are two obvious dangers to this playstyle: 1) you spend so much time not playing the game that you eventually forget about it, or 2) you think to yourself "Can this even be counted as playing a game?" Both lead to the same outcome.

Exactly. A game by definition requires player interaction. Plus idle games are already a super super casual genre that's meant to extend over a LONG period of time. It doesn't actually matter if it takes an extra week of IRL time to accomplish something in the game... because you're not spending a huge amount of time actively playing it anyway. Losing a week, or even a month, of progress in an idle game is barely a loss.

Now if it was an MMO that is more competitive and requires active play the entire time to make progress.... THAT would be a tragedy. But for an idle game? Nah it's just a "OP screwed up and is crying over nothing" moment.

[level94836]

It boggles me they don't just add something to make this an upgradeable thing. Cookie clicker has and this is supposed to be one of the most ultimate idle games.

Although, so far, my gains from leaving it overnight are usually fine but i'll have to see how things progress as i move forward.

Don't hate the devs, players should have a choice at least. it sucks people are shaming people over saying this.

[Snake - ヘビ]

Publicado originalmente por level94836:

It boggles me they don't just add something to make this an upgradeable thing. Cookie clicker has and this is supposed to be one of the most ultimate idle games.

Although, so far, my gains from leaving it overnight are usually fine but i'll have to see how things progress as i move forward.

Don't hate the devs, players should have a choice at least. it sucks people are shaming people over saying this.

Because it's asinine. It's like complaining a game is designed for you to die and have to restart a fight or lose some items if your HP hits zero.

Without having an incentive to play at all, then why play the game? Why not just spend the money on it then never actually play it ever again in your entire life until you are on your deathbed?

It's a bad game design to NOT require player interaction to at least a tiny degree. Because, why ever play it? Why spend money on it or buy it if you aren't going to participate?

Player choice is not always good. Why can't I choose to take zero damage ever in all games and be completely invincible and one shot everything? Because it ruins the point of the game. So restricting the choice is necessary.

[.//slayer]

@Snake - ヘビ, I don't think your comparison is correct, though. You argue that if a player does not interact with the game, there is not point to playing at all. But we are not talking about stopping all interaction entirely - I just want the game to let me decide when and how to interact with it, i.e., instead of every 18 hours, let it be every 36 hours, or 100, or 300 hours, and so on. It's still meaningful gameplay, except spread out over longer time, and it does not limit other players' agency in how often they want to play.

[Snake - ヘビ]

Publicado originalmente por .//slayer:

@Snake - ヘビ, I don't think your comparison is correct, though. You argue that if a player does not interact with the game, there is not point to playing at all. But we are not talking about stopping all interaction entirely - I just want the game to let me decide when and how to interact with it, i.e., instead of every 18 hours, let it be every 36 hours, or 100, or 300 hours, and so on. It's still meaningful gameplay, except spread out over longer time, and it does not limit other players' agency in how often they want to play.

Infinite progress with no interaction is the problem. We can argue about where that line should be but there should 100% be a cap on how much progress is possible without interacting. There are "games" that you can literally leave for like 5 years and come back and it progressed the whole the whole time. I find that ridiculous and foolish design.

There has to be a balance I think 18 hours is fair, but maybe you could convince me 1 week is fair, or that you could save up AFK time by playing more and earning afk time to go idle for longer or something. But even then there should still be a cap on how much you can save up IMO.

[FluffyGuy]

Publicado originalmente por Det. Crashmore:

I paid MONEY for the game.
I should be able to play it how I want.

yeah exactly, this isnt a free to play idler thats wants you to pay microtranasctions for a comfy pillow or stuff like that to idle longer, its a 10$ msrp game

[Tutterrocks1]

Publicado originalmente por Det. Crashmore:

Idle games are normally a pleasant oasis from the world of applications and devices that are constantly becoming more efficient at stealing your attention.

Perhaps it was my doe-eyed negligence that caused this to slip past the filters, but I just noticed that this game has an offline progress cap at 18 hours.

This means that you are REQUIRED to interact with this game EVERY SINGLE DAY in order to maintain character progression.
I've had my character mining blank runes for a few days while I went out of town only to realize that the game doesn't allow me to take vacations.

This is the point where an idle game loses its appeal.

To the development team:

I'd like to suggest removing this barrier.
I can't imagine that I'm the only one that sees this as a problem.

At this point I'm uninstalling the game on all of my devices - however, I may check back at some point.

Does this work while your computer is off, or just when the app is closed?

[BoneGrundle]

Well this thread got necro..there is modding support now - you can have offline unlimited across all devices