What is Reddit's opinion of
Progress Quest?
From 3.5 billion Reddit comments
84 reviews of this app found across Reddit:
I'd argue that achievers / killers are far better served by WoW style games. (I wouldn't call LoL a smaller game though).
Why? Faux achievement. Using LoL as an example only a few percent will make it to plat or above. Its a constant reminder that they didn't really achieve much because they lack the skill required to do so.
In WoW, time spent / preparation / perseverance is often confused with skill. Someone that can dump an absurd amount of time into the game week after week after week will attain gear levels that "regular people" can't.
Ditto PvP. Someone who rerolls to the latest FOTM, gears it out, and finds the perfect people to group with is going to have a huge advantage over others. Outside of structured PvP, it also directly turns time into power. These are the people that you see running around one shotting low level players.
Its like getting to 100 in PoE or P1000+ in D3. I'm not really in awe of that as far as skill is concerned. The minute you say "gg, but I have a job" though people get bitter because you are basically devaluing their achievement, or something they would like to achieve.
This conflation of skill with time is the key here. People wouldn't get so shitty about pointing this out if it wasn't hitting some buttons IMO.
People with this type of mentality are the "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" of the gaming world. They also unfortunately help to maintain the status quo.
TLDR: Progress Quest = achievement
Surprised nobody has mentioned Progress Quest, which isn't really a game (you watch meters fill and don't really interact with it after you generate your character AFAIK), but it certainly inspired the creation of early Idles.
I've always been a fan of Progress Quest, myself. No illusion that there's a game mechanic other than "putting in time." No wearing out a mouse for a while. Just an entertaining screen-saver that you feel kind of sad to shut down.
> I think it's admirable that they're removing micro transactions on a genre that basically was born with them included.
The first clicker games didn't have MTX.
We all know that the ultimate idle game is Progress Quest, though.
It may also be the original.
If you want present the most extreme example of auto-battling/grinding, I would recommend you introducing your friend to Progress quest (http://progressquest.com/).
Personally, I am against grinding in RPGs. Either provide a battle that is different or challenging for the player, make a combat system that is fun enough that it doesn't feel like grinding, or don't waste their time automatically or manually.
That is actually core in any experience development or art or whatever. You don't ask players/testers/consumers how to improve stuff, you ask them what's wrong. It's the first thing you learn as you start designing anything.
If game developers actually did as their community wanted we would only end up with games like this
I'm pretty sure every incremental game rewards active play because we've literally placed an expectation on developers to do this on the principle of good game design. The only examples I can give you that would fit your desires are old Kongregate idle games that don't have much in the way of active play and Progress Quest which doesn't have any active play aside from creating a character.
Not sure if it's quite what you're looking for, but I'll occasionally install "ProgressQuest" and let it run silently in the background for weeks to a couple months..... until the novelty wears off. There's literally nothing to it. It's a vaguely amusing "game". You can find it here: http://progressquest.com/. I've heard that it inspired Cookie Clicker (which I know next to nothing about).
>You know what else? Everybody plays the game the exact same way. They click the bad guys until the are gone. Let's just streamline that system and eliminate clicking. Your hero will now automatically fight the bad guys. It's not dumbing down, it's making it better!
Why click when you can Quest for Progress!
In all seriousness though, while I appreciate the knock at the bullshit cash shops, the "herf derf here's an oversimplification of MMOs" thing is getting old already.
I'd second Progress Quest.
Kongregate's (newer) idle category is also a pretty interesting path through incremental history. Most of the games are typical terrible games from when everyone was doing that, but you can definitely see a slow and gradual trend that takes ideas like Progress Quest and add user input.
For some reason I keep thinking Battle Without End is much older than it actually is. That's what I was going to use as my "Flash Progress Quest" example, but that only came out in 2013.
While not explicitly wrong, it's more than a little dishonest to review a game and not put a disclaimer in that you are on the development team. In fact, that might actually pull people in ("Hey, this developer appears to care! Maybe I should try it...")
That said,
> If you liked UO and EQ1 before all the nonesense, then this is for you.
As a person who played those, not sure what they are talking about. Admittedly, I played very little of UO but I played a ton of EQ1. The game at release was what TVTropes calls "Nintendo Hard". It was punishing. You really had to want it. And that was one reason WoW destroyed it as it literally took the list of gripes people had with the game and addressed each one. And then EQ1, once their market share went from 75%ish to 25% in a year, drastically changed many mechanics to address what people had asked for.
People don't have time for EQ1 type mechanics these days and the average player won't have the desire to spend so much time on it. There's a reason Progressquest was created and it wasn't because grinding was fun and easy.
Well, I wish you the best but if this means the end of the line for Diamond Hunt I think I'm out. I had a good time playing for a couple of weeks and thought it was pretty fun.
So thanks for the entertainment. It was a fun game. I mean that.
But I am probably gonna respectfully bow out if it turns into an MMO. Hackers are gonna ruin it. The only other example I can think of that is close to this is Progress Quest which is an idle game that is also an MMO.
When you have just a javascript type game like this or Cookie Clicker, where it's just single player, cheating really only affects you personally. Some people choose to cheat, some don't. But when it's an MMO, you get a lot of bad actors that want to fuck it up for everyone, and I'm just not interested in dealing with that.
I wish you the best.
> But spending the time to get the loot is the entire point.
/u/rikeus , I'd argue that playing the game with cool items and builds is the point.
/u/almack9 , dude I wouldn't judge you. I'd do it if I could. Something kinda funny and similar is Progress Quest. Have you ever heard of it? Wish D3 had a similar option.
This is why I prefer term "incremental" to "idle". Idle is expected to run itself into infinity with little to no input from the player. Incremental on the other hand is about working for each little increment. At least for me.
Now if queueing was added there would be nothing for me to do here. I don't bother with EDR, hell, I don't even have Vaagur. Buying heroes and sometimes ancients is the only thing I do in this game and if it was taken away what would be the point in playing this?
And I disagree that queue could be compared to progression mode. Yes lack of it halted progress but it happened each zone now your progress is stopped only when you're not able to advance, that's a huge difference.
Finally I think you take this game waaay too seriously if you consider not looking at this game for few minutes, hours or even days such waste of of time. I mean you do absolutely nothing and still gain some gold to level heroes and progress.
I said it once and I will repeat if I have to. If you expect the game to do everything for you try Progress Quest. I personally quit after 15 min.
EDIT: OK, so you want "rewarding" active play instead of "required" constant attention and you add queue. What do we have now? Greatly buffed idle. But what about active play? Now you can leave it running for a week, hit level cap, when monsters have infinite health, ascend. Next run takes 3 days, next 1 day and now you have all ancients maxed out, even those without cap. This isn't balance this is broken.
You say the walls happen too often. I don't know how far are you but I don't experience this. So maybe difficulty curve should be adjusted? Giving powerful tools for players is rarely good idea to fix problems with balancing.
Also it's hard to answer to edits :P
And people of Clickerland don't downvote OP into oblivion. This is problem we have to discus and solve not forget :)
Now this is what constructive criticism looks like.
I'm playing my own heavily modified version, but one thing that RT does is that I'm still playing the game at all, and not suggesting people don't buy it.
It didn't take me a day to realize "oh this is it" with the base game, didn't even bother finishing the story line as I could see the writing on the wall and it was boring.
Without mods the base game would be Progress Quest that eats your video card.
Now if I don't like something mostly thanks to RT I have an easy way to add or alter things so I'm still playing the game.
As a modders tool, just by existing as an example, massively flattened the learning curve, by making alterations much more accessible. The .json files might be accessible but they are a mess, a ton of work went into figuring out what did what, and what was deprecated or buggy. It's the best living "best practices" document there is, then Discord, then the Wiki.
Plus I love Lady Alekto, reminds me of a young Linus from the LKML. Abrasiveness is a good thing. Yes I'm a grognard.
Progress Quest is the best example of a "game" playing itself I can think of.
Unlike other suggestions so far, your only interaction is making a character and starting the game. I think it even lets you autostart it with your computer to keep your quest as smoothly automated as possible.
I've been playing CRPGs since Ultima, and the vast majority of them are pretty easy. It's the downside of a genre that is 80% about watching numbers go up, and 20% about learning the limited mechanics that make use of those numbers.
The only way to create challenging content in a CRPG is to create something that is balanced around someone being at the very top bracket of numbers, thus eliminating the variability of the 80%, leaving the remaining 20% the differentiating factor. In an MMO, this is called the "end-game".
Leveling in WoW is ridiculously easy because that's what Blizzard has learned gives players the most enjoyment while leveling. It's a brainless mixture of grinding and storytelling, and whenever the designers have put something difficult into the mix, they've discovered that players just avoid it, or maybe if they're completionists just come back later when they're powerful enough to cheese it.
Similarly, low-level dungeons are woefully undertuned because (a) they're not worth the effort to tune, and (b) if they were properly tuned, nobody would do them. Low-level instances really just exist as a way to learn basic grouping skills and get away from quests for a while.
There's nothing stopping you making the levelling experience a challenge. Take only red quests. Solo group quests that are too high level for you. Level with a friend as a tank/healer combo and two-man the instances. Roll on a PvP server and take on people your own level. Roll on an RP server and see how long you can stand in the Goldshire Inn before losing all faith in humanity.
Most people, though, just want to waltz casually towards the end-game.
Vertical power progression fucks difficulty curve in half. News at 11.
It would be nice if all the people who need "progression" to function could just be satisfied by keeping a copy of Progress Quest open in the background.
>Then there's the complaints about Power level being maxed at 305... it's as though they all think Power or Light had an impact before? It never did. Is that number the sole reason you're playing the game? Do you guys not enjoy shooting things? Shooting other players? Do you not have fun in any of the game's activities?
Yeah, you hit the nail on the head. You see this in "hardcore" post after "hardcore" post. People want to chase shit that doesn't matter instead of playing the game to have fun.
Rolls that don't matter for PvE (you can kill stupid AI with any weapon you want) and are a crapshoot for PvP? We want to chase them.
Perks that sorta-kinda, but don't really help in the raid? (Bungie will never design an encounter that requires set perks) We want to chase them anyway.
All I hear is: "We love dismantling trash and filling our Vaults up with crap"
What Bungie did with D2 was strip out a lot of filler that was actually pointless anyways.
But for some reason people have been conditioned to chase phantoms rather than actually enjoying playing the game.
I feel sorta sorry for these folks because it's like they forgot why they started playing games in the first place.
They can always let Progress Quest run in a background tab, though.
If you like automated grinding then you'll love progressquest!
Seriously though, if you don't care about graphics you could try either Dominions 4 or Conquest of Elysium 4 which semi-automate your battles. The amount of different clases and units available makes it very replayable. Both games are made from the same developer but Conquest of Elysium 4 is more automated than Dominions 4.
No, actually, you've come off as entirely butthurt. About a game that has been out less than a week.
I don't think that, at any point, a person can "force" an opinion on you. Especially on the internet. If you take someone's post that much to heart then I can only assume that you are the sadmads.
I have a game for you that you'll prefer: http://progressquest.com/
Well yes, that's kind of my point. It doesn't take a mathematician to figure out that Don't Move reveals things progressively further and further apart - at some point during play the real question becomes whether I'm playing Progress Quest (which never ends) or the aforementioned baby game (which is finite).
Pff. Baldur's Gate is a computerized D&D. D&D is more than rolling dice; it's about teamwork and decision-making. Diablo is more like a slightly-more-interactive version of Progress Quest.
OP told us that people who frequent this sub suggested they post it here, and for their trouble they've had a barrage of complaint.
> If you made a CoD clone and posted it to /r/boardgames you get a similar response.
That's a bit of an appeal to extremes, don't you think?
> We come to this sub for incremental games
Actually, it's ONE facet of what this sub's about. It's also discussion on what makes a game, how to make the game, game design, coding, art, music, pacing, mechanics, technologies, platforms, hosting, publishing, and just about everything else to do with games. At its inception, games were one of the things it did; now people expect it to be the only thing it does.
If we, as a sub in general, continue to make this a place developers can only come to post games that fit whoever's arbitrary rule of what an incremental is, and only with top-tier, polished games, where do you think the next generation of devs will come from if they have no community to learn from? Why should they even bother posting their games here if they can expect an antagonistic response?
In an earlier comment on this thread, you call the game... "a point and click, if not a visual novel." Did you ever play Progress Quest?
I don't want to argue the toss with you over this.
As a person who automates most of the games he is playing (either with javascript or AHK) I should warn you that it's a slippery slope.
Yeah, progressquest is awesome... as a concept, but if all idle games were like that it would not be that fun after all.
The first incremental game I ever played was Progress Quest, played being used loosely.
I've always liked the idea of true idle games. Games where all you do is sit back and watch numbers go up.
I mention this because recently I've been looking for a idle game live wallpaper for my phone and I've found nothing.
I'm not sure how it's not a thing.
I'm looking into making one now, but I'm at the fumbling stage of learning js, so it will probably be janky.
It's a social version of progress quest.
Game play isn't super deep, but it's kind of fun helping each other out with friend units, reminding each other about energy/orbs and maintenance, watching each other's progress, and watching TMRs complete.
I also enjoy the character / team planning aspect, RNGesus's wrath notwithstanding.
There's always Progress Quest...
A rpg with literally zero interaction other than turning it on.
Kind of funny to watch the stream sometimes, I'll start it and go do some wiring or something and come back and read what my char had been doing while I was gone.
I suspect it's probably controlled by finger touches.
But part of me really wants to believe that it's a weird experimental non-game where eggs just fall and your points go up and you just watch it, as a strange, egg-centric version of progress quest.
It cost us a bit more than $10, but my friends and I bought the domain "BuckADownload.com", made a storefront, and just started uploading random programs we had written and writing very enthusiastic blurbs about how great they were.
Downloading was free, but we asked that you make a $1 donation if you enjoyed your download.
Our biggest hit was when we made a hack for the game Progress Quest, called PQ1337 which allowed your character to level faster than everyone else. A lot of people downloaded it, and we got a few emails asking how it worked.
The guy who made Progress Quest banned our hack and patched his game so that it would no longer work, but we worked around his patch easily and came out with another version of PQ1337 called PQ2674.
Anyway, we had the website up for about a year. Our total sales in that time: $1.
Maybe not quite the revenue you were looking for, but I think it was a hilarious amount of money.
Have you heard of http://progressquest.com/? Might be right up your alley!
But really, if you earn ranks while afking does it really mean you accomplished anything other than sitting on your ass longer than someone else? On WoW the raids took skill, coordination, etc and beating them showed you could overcome those challenges. And it didn't take 2 years to reach max level first.
> allowing me to focus more things like Cow Runs, Baal Runs, Anni/Torch farming
To what end are you farming gear when you already have all the gear you need?
That's what I don't get about D2 botters, especially those that don't focus on dueling or selling items for real money: other than dueling or racing to level 99 for the season, the whole game is the item hunt. If you automate that part out out, you are left with Progress Quest.
This depends on what "beginner" means.
If you're talking absolute beginner, start with console apps for a while. One of the best ideas is to pick a simple board game you like and make a version of it. You don't necessarily have to make art for the board, and you can choose games with simple representations. For example:
- Tic-tac-toe
- Battleship (this game is easy to draw!)
- Snakes and Ladders (You don't need a board, the squares are numbered 1-100!)
- Guess The Number
- Hangman
- Wheel of Fortune (advanced hangman!)
- Jeopardy (a good chance to load questions/answers from files!)
- Blackjack
- Video Poker
- Dice games like Yahtzee or Farkle
A good "final project" for console applications is a text-based adventure game that involves multiple rooms, objects you can pick up and interact with, etc.
From there, try implementing most of those again in the GUI framework of your choice. All of these could be done in WinForms, WPF, or even ASP .NET Core with nicer presentation. The neat part about doing it in the console first is you'll already get the logic, so you can focus on learning the new framework instead of having so much to solve at one time! Other good GUI projects include things like:
- A calculator
- Minesweeper
- Practically any card game.
- A tile-based side-scrolling map.
- A text editor.
- With multiple tabs.
- A to-do list.
- That saves and loads files.
- That saves and loads from a database.
- Something that presents the data from an API (a good freely-available one is the Star Wars API.)
- A less ambitious nod to Progress Quest
All of these projects involve a ton of little problems you'll have to solve!
It’s funny because there was a windows game decades ago called Progress Quest that lampooned this whole idea and it was kind of popular. There was literally no way to interact with the game but to create a character and let it run. I doubt the creator of that “game” would have guessed how merely providing the tiniest bit of interaction and some graphics would make it a viable gaming genre.
Games like that have existed for years, it's pretty comical. I enjoy making bots for games so they play themselves, it gives me an edge, frees up time to do other things and I can check up on it now and then to see any juicy loots I may have found. I'd never pay money for a game that plays itself like what you're describing.
Have a giggle at this http://progressquest.com/play/
I deliberately stayed away from automation mods. Primarily because we play on a dedicated server so we have more hands to do the work. For now we just use the Helpers to assist on the fields if/when needed. Otherwise we do everything ourselves.
If I was playing solo then automation mods might be more interesting since it's hard to get everything done solo after you reach a certain point.
However, I enjoy playing the game and don't want to set everything up until it becomes ProgressQuest
There's a fine line between convenience and Progress Quest. Modern AI (weak though it is) can drive you to your destination, aim your missiles, etc.
What exactly is there to do in Elite: Dangerous if everything becomes vending machine simple?
This is the end-all-be-all in RPG perfection that genuinely requires ZERO attention and will allow you to waste endless amounts of time while you sit in a persistently vegetative state. You have LITERALLY nothing to do. I realize that this wasn't on a handheld or console, but it will on literally any modern pc.
http://progressquest.com
Ok, not that. When my old desktop broke down terminally two years back, I played a bit of Diablo2. Not an MMORPG, only barely manages to be a multiplayer...
I can't think of any mmo game that was even remotely fun on my small laptop back then, sorry. I hear about browser games and such but not sure how well they function and been reluctant to test.
Keeping an eye on this post too!
I always kind of felt that these kinds of things were more "toy" than "game." More than anything, I think they are a kind of unintential satire on a lot of modern RPGs, where you simply are getting stronger for the sake of making numbers bigger, and there's no real end goal.
See: Progress Quest (http://progressquest.com/)
Fallout and Fallout 2. The games are around 500 MB, and the graphics look like this. Considering the gigantic amount of content in both games, you can't go wrong. They're incredibly fun, and not just for the intended content. Sometimes, a bullet may hit an unintended target.. and people in the same faction will turn on each other if this happens. Ive seen entire towns wipe themselves out because an orphan threw a rock at me and missed, hitting the guard instead.
Oh, and if you want to see something really silly, here's a link to progress quest XD
>dont tell me there is nothing to do in wow cause unless you have all achievements, mounts, pets, toys, currently raid bosses on mythic downed, all classes to 100, a season 2 pvp gladiator and gold cap then you have something to do in wow
Explain to me how achievement points and gold are content, though. Following that logic, I could program a game in 10 minutes that you can pay me sub fees for indefinitely. I think you might enjoy this: http://progressquest.com/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_Quest
This game might be the right think for you:
It is the non plus ultra in the genre of 'idle' games and features full automation.
It is older and the graphics are minimal but the automated progression is top.
I don't get it. Why remove it? Nerf the damage like they did to DK's army, but let us keep it.
Why keep it? At some level a few of us hold onto the RPG aspect of the game. Not every skill has to make sense in a rotation. Summoning a spirit of a long dead paladin to help smite a foe is a great RP element.
At what point does the game just become Progress Quest? If all the RP elements are stripped out and it just becomes a gear grind, if it hasn't already, that will be a sad day. IMHO.
It provides a sense of accomplishment which is probably the most-addictive element of RPGs. Remember Progress Quest? Look at how many people used to run that fanatically, despite it being a parody of MMORPG grinds everywhere.
During one run of FireRed I used the Progress Quest name generator for all my pokemon. It made names like Froutrud for my Bulbasaur, Iedwin for my Pikachu, etc.
Basically a parody of RPGs. You create a character (none of your choices actually matter) and then send him/her out on quests which are literally just watching a progress bar fill. Pretty sure it's meant as a Take That against the genre.
You can download it or "play" the browser version here to see what I mean.
You're defiantly going to want to get your hands on Progress Quest so you can get impressed by it's stunning game world. With controls 2nd to none and a dedicated and loyal following it's the best game you've never played.
Interesting graphics. But the gameplay is so boring and uneventful that it reminds me of the Progress Quest.
And to make it worse, while the game is awfully slow and almost completely idle, it does not have a functional offline mode, so you have to keep it open at all times to progress. Not my cup of tea, and looking at the ratings I am not alone in my preferences.
A suggestion to the developers: as it clearly not working out for you (2.7 Kong rating and 20k gameplays after a month is below even simplistic clickers with zero graphics), why not convert it into a proper incremental?
All you need to do is to rebalance it from RPG to incremental:
- Lock the features by default
- Let upgrades improve performance by 10%(up from 0.05%), but make levels harder
- Let numbers grow to quadrillions and further, this is fine
- Unlock features gradually, each significantly boosting performance, allowing players to progress further
- And as it does not have much content - introduce a prestige system, let players start over, more powerful
- Make sure the game runs 100% offline, save the environment.
I was specifically referencing the "game" Progress Quest, which is an RPG that plays itself so all you have to do is check back in periodically and see the numbers are going up. When everything is a proc and all you have to do is sit there, you're basically playing Progress Quest.
I don't bot but from what I hear its mostly key and bounty bots.
The gameplay for keys and bountys when you get a bit experienced is super super easy and for some feels like a waste of time so they bot this part.
I enjoy instead making farming specs that makes key/bounty farming bearable.
I've played other online games and botting probably feels great early on but very quickly you'll just ... why am I even playing this game at all?
There are even some that made a game based on not playing (not related to diablo), http://progressquest.com/ the rpg that plays itself, full auto everything :D
I'm glad I stopped playing 6 months ago. Haven't missed it.
I realized I wasn't enjoying the time between unlocks so I realized that it had become a job. I literally started up Progress Quest and enjoyed it more.
That's when I knew I was done.
Most RPG systems are diet coke versions of incremental games.
I know this is a bit of an abstract thought, but incremental games were actually born out of RPG systems, with Progress Quest. Cow Clicker was then released, which doesn't really have anything to do with Progress Quest, but was a parody of social games. These culminated in Cookie Clicker, which exploded the genre.
But these systems are way more intricate than RPG systems. And one reason for that is because they hold up by themselves. RPGs need a lot more than their systems to be successful. Imagine playing Diablo without movement and combat. It probably won't hold up. But so many people play incremental games because they have better systems.
I know that this is probably a bit reverse of your thinking, since RPGs came out first, but I still think it applies. Furthermore, you could also say that it all comes from pen and paper systems, which I don't really have a good argument against. It's probably a bit of both.
Sounds like what you need in your life is Progress Quest. Roll up a character from an admirable selection of races and classes. Then you're finished. Check back every now and then to see your current progress. Watch your XP bars fill up and your gold stacks get larger.
> I need to invent the self-playing video game. It sounds like there’s some vast untapped market of gamers out there who find it awfully inconvenient to actually play their games.
Say hello to Progress Quest!
Oh man you're going to have so much fun with this game: http://progressquest.com/play/
No challenging weight balance hassles, no containers that get bigger if you stack them, no remembering not to stick mined fuel into the smelting furnace, no tricky spending of unlock points, no worrying about which weapons to use when, no struggling to build an advanced constructor, no worrying that the BP option won't read your mind..
Depends how you view the game, way back in early d3 every yellow could be an upgrade especially for us not playing the AH.
The game now in particular on tx+ drops huge amounts, you can choose what you spend your time on, pick up stuff or zip faster through the rifts.
We have part of a playerbase that enjoys heavy automation, autopickups who would want an auto salvage on pickup feature.
Probably a big fan base from http://progressquest.com.
> I understand you may not have that impression, but it is one of the things talked about during the tutorial text.
It's an excuse for bad design, and a poor excuse at that.
Bad intelligence would be cute if there was any intel at all, but there isn't, it's just fluff to cover up throwing a RNG at everything instead of properly balancing the game.
If it's going to be swingy there needs to be tools to deal with it (and I've seen no evidence that Darius' dialog is in any way related to what actually ends up on the map), if there aren't going to be tools there needs to be game balance.
You can't have no game balance and no tools to deal with it, and say "we meant to do that". I mean you can, but it's going to piss people off and limit sales.
You can't even preview the map you are dropping onto, that's not design, that's lack of design. Might as well not even have descriptions, or any choices at all, just a "randomly generate next mission" button.
Even though it seemed like it would never be possible, you can actually play Progress Quest in your browser without downloading a single file.
I know it sounds unbelievable, but its true! http://progressquest.com/play/
They're two different types of entertainment. Games are active entertainment, requiring the participation of the player in order to progress through the program. Whether a 4X game, a mobile app, an open-world RPG, a puzzle game, or anything else you can think of (Well, almost anything else.), they have to provide enough material for a player to maintain their interest level.
Anime, like any other popular media format, is a passive form of entertainment. It happens automatically, pre-filmed and entirely set in stone beforehand. The viewer isn't required to actually do anything with the media but consume it. Any interaction with the media, whether by review, analysis, or discussion about the media has zero effect on the media.
Comparing games to anime is like comparing apples to oranges: they're the same general category, but are very different when it comes down to the details.
i guess yah they left the door open what with the whole lost in space thing, and leaving the forerunners rather mysterious. but that could just as easily have been it. all the major threats to humanity had been dealt with, and the chief disappears into legend like the borderline mythical character that he was.
it was a satisfying ending in it's own way. (at least, i wasn't slack jawed like when the credits rolled at the end of halo 2.)
i just don't want it to turn into tomb raider or something, where they just milk it til it's dead and ruin the legacy. not a lot of series go 6+ games without starting to suck.
i think that's the only real problem i have with the new trilogy. i can think of nothing wrong with it... but it didn't need to exist, so they better nail it.
great stories have endings, you know?
so really i reserve full judgement until they resolve this current plot arc, i will say though it's still just fun to play. halo and the doom reboot have almost been like... refreshing changes of pace compared to call of duty/battlefield "realism" shooters and destinies half shooter half progress quest grind.
The only examples of true incrementals w/o upgrades (that I've seen) are the ones that play themselves, such as Progress Quest, which in turn makes them idle incrementals (and arguably not actually games).
The game you mentioned is an adventure/exploration game, not an incremental; merely having an incremental difficulty curve does not qualify it to be labeled as such. If that were the case, the majority of games could be considered incremental.
The title of "Incremental game" is dedicated to a very specific genre in which the mechanics are simplified to a point wherein the focus is on fine-tuning the details of a system, whereas it takes many of these systems all working in unison (and typically not presented for the player to interact with on a base level) to qualify a game as "other than" incremental.
> "did i just waste my time now that i have nothing to show for it".
If you play only for leveling up or for farming gold - yes, you did. Progress Quest is a game for you.
If I may...
I can recommend Progress Quest for some immersive AFKing (sad to say I can't find my old character, I think my current level 52 will need about five years to catch up with the top levels...). Oldish but still great.
Has anyone reccomended Fallout Shelter to you yet? I feel like that is the closest to an "idle" base builder as you can get. It even borrows from adventure quest which is one of the first "Idle Games"
Links Fallout Shelter(http://bethsoft.com/en-us/games/fallout_shelter) Progress Quest(http://progressquest.com/)
It's kind of like progress quest but instead of double clicking and never doing anything... at least one person had to think about the best way to do things... and then other people looked into it and did it too.
Ultimately we don't really get anything out of this game anyway. It's just a time waster.
> Are you saying that you practice while you are bad and you grind while you are good?
No, I'm saying when you grind it doesn't matter if you are good or bad. Grind is, by it's nature repetition of a meaningless task for merge reward (hence the need for repetition). when grinding you are doing the EXACT same thing over and over again. Thats why it's often represented by the skinner box "press button to level up" imagery i.e. progression quest.
If you treat practice like you treat grinding you will NEVER get any better. You will just stay at the exact same place you always were.
> I don't want to change my method, because it's solid, I just want to eliminate the human error, but there will always be human error over long periods of time.
If your problem is you aren't very good at pressing a button at the right time, then I guess you could argue that it's sufficiently simple that it's kind of a grind, but at the same time your not just "pressing a button" over and over again. You are changing your timing, experimenting, looking for cues to act off etc., it's all things you are changing every attempt till you work out the perfect combo to get it right reliably. With your speedrun example, you aren't just saying "roll now", "jump here" etc. each time (or at least your not doing it very well if you are), you are looking at timing; "I need to roll when I'm half a foot further forward or I'm too vulnerable to the second adds potential attack" or "I need to jump just after the crack in that rock, not before, to make it reliably" etc.
A lot of this stuff is quite trivial and does feel like a bit of a grind, but it's not a pure grind, just practicing a boring task. Also, any Dark Sousl speed runner will tell you that gravity is the toughest boss in the game :p
I remember ages ago I had downloaded this little app called Progress Quest. It's an Idle RPG. I'd kind of like someone to make one of those using the art assets. Just pick your party and then have them auto-battle endless waves of creeps. I know it's a pretty frivolous use, but it'd make a nice screensaver.
I like the concept, it reminds me of Progress Quest but with actual gameplay.
It seems easy to become invincible though, I'm not even paying attention to it anymore and it's doing fine on it's own without me. This makes the game become dull quickly, but I'm sure with more balancing changes and content it will be fun. Even if I was invincible, it'd be interesting seeing different rooms and levels keeping me motivated to play. I know you already have different levels, but keep adding more and make them more interesting to look at.
The intuitiveness seems alright, I was able to figure everything out quickly. I think the part that messed me up the most was having to click the equipped item in order to add a card to it.
You're lookin' at the entire game and interface right there. Free to play/download at: http://progressquest.com/.
Let's just say it's the right game for someone who literally has no time to play games.
> Some people want to feel more powerful after x amount of time invested.
They're free to run Progress Quest in the background while they play. It's very light on CPU resources.
Progress quest was a windows based incremental launched over a decade ago and it was quite successful at the time. But so much has changed since then -- I doubt it would succeed today.
IdleRPG on IRC is perhaps another example of an incremental in a novel medium
The greatest auto-grind MMO to exist: ProgressQuest. Yes, gone are the days of having to arduously grind in order to progress, and it's got everything you need. It's Fantasy, it's free to play, it not exactly anime but if you can get around the art style it is going to suit you perfectly.
There is THIS game: http://progressquest.com/ (now browser based!)
Except for making a character, everything, including character death, plot threads and all advancements has been totally abstracted out.
http://progressquest.com/ that is progress quest everyone keeps comparing your game to.
i think the biggest difference here actually, is your game seems to be a few chat room bots that make it look like a game and progress quest is a downloadable program. but whatever, i won't complain if other people want to try it out, 0 interaction just isn't my kind of thing is all (well, that and its not a game imo, more like a simulator that looks and behaves like a game with 0 input beyond character creation).
and, no, i don't who tetradigm is actually
I suggest looking into Progress Quest when considering these types of questions.
You don't do anything at all in it, it just runs, and it is interesting to watch... for a while.
Like ff12 (at least how i found it) you wont maintain interest if people do not actually interact with your game.
As for your specific question, id suggest trying it out with a focus group. See how different people find it.
I would expect, depending on how varied the 'stuff' in your game is, it could be interesting for a bit. But i would expect if all the user is doing is switching between like Attack and Heal 'modes' or something, it may or may not be enough.
As i said, try it out, then more importantly have the same person come back to the game an hour later and see if it is still interesting. As this will give them a minute to get over any initial wow factors, so they can give you an idea of if they will play it for more than twenty minutes the second time.
While I think we all appreciate innovations within the genre, I think you also have to be careful about marching headlong towards a ProgressQuest end (a satire I hope we're all familiar with).
I do still want to have a game to play. I do want some tedium and some time sinks. I don't mind development blunting some of these MMO facets, but I'd rather have a tedious game than one that essentially plays itself.
Good aspects of gaming really find themselves circumvented or sacrificed altogether on the altar of convenience. Fast travel discounts the eye candy of the game world. Storytelling instances have an tangible impact on a non-linear, open-world, sandbox game. Global LFG tools and global auction houses do something to the social economy of a game.
You're right about things being on a case by case basis, but on all counts I think moderation is the key, and currently I believe almost the entire genre weighs in far too heavily on the convenience side of moderation. A little too ProgressQuest-y for me.
I would be so grateful for this being a native Linux game so I could play it on my second terminal while taking a break from coding at 3 AM. The Ubuntu version is just a Wine port that requires a graphical user interface.
They need to be fun games. My first MMO was Everquest, and I realized that I wasn't actually having too much fun with it when I started thinking about moving a TV over by the computer so I could watch things while I "played". I'm concerned at this point that future MMOs are going to be taking their cues from Farmville and Zynga, and incorporating more psychological tricks to keep people playing rather than creating a compelling play environment.
After sinking so much time in EQ, it's hard for me to see any MMO as anything more than Progress Quest with a chat component.
>But in the end, there's always some rats to be killed and ghouls to be dispatched, in all cRPGs.
For that I have http://progressquest.com/ :-D
>Maybe try adventure games instead?
I'm confused by this distinction. In adventure games aren't you still Role Playing? It seems like these "Adventure Games" have more role-playing than supposedly "Role-Playing Games" do! What gives? I'm sorry if I sound out of the loop, the last computer game I played start-to-finish was Final Fantasy 7 and further, most of my gaming experience is with Dungeons and Dragons.
I don't get it... Why would you do this. It's just a stupid internet number.
OP, if you're really that interested in seeing worthless internet numbers increase I suggest you check out progressquest. You don't even have to spam!
> I make more money than most of them do there anyway.
If you like to see numbers move upwards you may like this.
> Half of them already lost expensive ships, implants, etc and they've only been there for like 2 weeks.
And now they are free from their immaterial possessions they can actually start playing EvE instead of whatever it is you think you are doing in hisec.
Actually I think this little game sums this whole thing up pretty neatly: http://progressquest.com/
Teh amazingz Progress Quest!
I wonder if Zero Punctuation might consider reviewing it...