Decline Can someone explain what an idle mmo is

[the mole]

I just got an ad on youtube for an idle MMO

Is that a game that you don't play

What is happening

 

[Nito]

Think like cookie clicker, where you're clicking to gather currency to incrementally upgrade your means of clicking. Eventually in some games, that becomes automated and they play themselves. So yes.

 

[Myobi]

I'm no mobile expert, but I think they are talking about shit like Lineage for phone, where the game pretty much play by itself, it will pick up quests, kill whatever needs killing, fetches the quest rewards and moves to the next….

 

[Norfleet]

It's a bizarre subgenre of MMO where you don't really have much, if any, gameplay. Progression is mainly accomplished through simply staying online.

 

[thesheeep]

I'm no mobile expert, but I think they are talking about shit like Lineage for phone, where the game pretty much play by itself, it will pick up quests, kill whatever needs killing, fetches the quest rewards and moves to the next….

Finally!

I always hated playing games.

 

[Tyranicon]

I still have yet to see a defense of idle games beyond "they're awesome at making money while being low effort to make."

 

[Siveon]

I still have yet to see a defense of idle games beyond "they're awesome at making money while being low effort to make."

I don't know how they're done now but Idle games back in the flash days were essentially compartmentalized RTS turtling. The "challenge" more or less was typically figuring out how you can make the most numbers go up, typically accompanied by a lot of mini-games. Some of them have some kind of enemy to fight or something so usually the end goal is to face that.

I have no idea how an idle MMO works, but I do know there are (mostly mobile) MMOs that have auto-questing. Usually you'd click a button and the game would literally start playing itself and grinding for you. Imagine WoW but it has a bot built-in.

 

[deama]

I have a friend that likes playing these, one time I asked him why he likes playing them and he just said he likes seeing numbers go up in good time (like going up several levels a day, or doing more damage than the previous hour).

I sometimes play these, but not really because I like them per say, I play them to break them by either hacking them, or just screwing around with auto clickers.
Sometimes you can get some nice looking ones with nice visuals, but after the first few hours it wears out.

I think best one I played was some type of village clicker or something where you had a plot of land and you could build buildings and they'd auto generate resources, kinda like those browser based mmo castle builders, but this one was much quicker and single player. It looked quite nice actually, and you could visually see the buildings being built, or getting upgraded etc... the land even changed at one point to a more "elven like" area when I joined an elven faction which I thought was pretty cool.
Unfortunately that was pretty much it, once you join a faction the visuals don't really change after that, so I quit shortly after.

 

[Lyric Suite]

I'm no mobile expert, but I think they are talking about shit like Lineage for phone, where the game pretty much play by itself, it will pick up quests, kill whatever needs killing, fetches the quest rewards and moves to the next….

Finally!

I always hated playing games.

And if you pay you can play even less!

 

[Myobi]

I "play" Ragnarok Poring Merge, its mostly about this feeling of nostalgia n sense of progression, it also great for the downtime at work, as it doesn't require much attention.

 

[J1M]

Progression is a form of fun. Putting it as a primary mechanic in a social setting places more emphasis on doing it efficiently (optimizing is another form of fun) and increases the length of time before the brain tires of being tickled that way (competition and other social interactions are a retention mechanism).

These things are fun for the same reasons people enjoy discussing min/max character builds. But they still exist on the fringes of game design. It's like looking at Pong 2... not everyone can see that some day Mario Tennis will come from that lineage.

 

[Norfleet]

But in an idle MMO, you don't optimize it. You don't build. It's all been done for you already. It's little more than a chat room with a ticker that goes up. And sometimes there isn't even a chat room.

 

[catfood]

It's an MMO that just sits there and does nothing.

 

[Spectacle]

Idle MMOs are the natural evolution of the standard MMO, where the "gameplay" isn't actually any fun, the only enjoyment comes from grinding to progress your character, tricking the brain into believing that you're actually doing something with your life and releasing that sweet dopamine.

In idle games you can do the same thing without having to spend time and effort on grinding, leaving more time for work, school, family etc. That you still have to wait for progression is essential, instant rewards aren't going to fool the brain for long.

 

[Tyranicon]

Idle MMOs are the natural evolution of the standard MMO, where the "gameplay" isn't actually any fun, the only enjoyment comes from grinding to progress your character, tricking the brain into believing that you're actually doing something with your life and releasing that sweet dopamine.

In idle games you can do the same thing without having to spend time and effort on grinding, leaving more time for work, school, family etc. That you still have to wait for progression is essential, instant rewards aren't going to fool the brain for long.

So we finally gamified games to the point where we don't actually have to play games anymore!

 

[Ismaul]

A Skinner box without any lever for food, but instead a looping gif of a lever being pressed with food being dispensed at regular intervals.

Imagine what becomes of the rat.

 

[flabbyjack]

I call them Idler RPGs instead of Idle RPGs. Overall, they appeal to mostly to autists.

Noun. autist (plural autists) An autistic person, a person with autism. (Internet slang, offensive, derogatory, often self-deprecating) A person characterized by abnormal and unhealthy focus or persistence, low self-awareness and unhealthy hatred of opposition or criticism.

Yeah dude I play a text-only single player idle RPG called Your Chronicle (The Chronicle)

It's fucking insane. You get better gains by being semi-idle as opposed to fully idle, but there are long periods of time where you just log out or leave it running in the background.

tldr; Idler RPGs are deeply embedded into the meta-game, even right from the start

I could write a whole thesis on this genre and some surprising game mechanics that really lend themselves to the unique genre of 'idler cRPG'. Imma do a very poor job outlining the features, but they absolutely blew my mind when I saw how things worked... and I have been playing cRPGs for decades. Idler RPGs can be characterized by the following features --

• Logarithmic gains to exp and other stats
• Multi-tiered or phased crafting or progression, which you can't idle your way through (must plan things a little)
• Resetting character level back to 1 to progression along a second axis (e.g. earn more attribute points by resetting level to 1)
• Disparate aspects to grind (Will, Gluttony/food, exp gain modifiers, character levels, character stats)
  
• Repeating and time-bounded resource gathering/crafting (progress bars)
  
• Offline and/or idle progression

 

[Absinthe]

I only recall idle RPGs run by IRC chatbots, and those things felt like one of those pointless "just for fun" ideas people cook up.

You just sign up for it and it randomly generates an entire character, build, progression, adventures, activities, etc. under your name, basically.

 

[Sykar]

I still have yet to see a defense of idle games beyond "they're awesome at making money while being low effort to make."

I don't know how they're done now but Idle games back in the flash days were essentially compartmentalized RTS turtling. The "challenge" more or less was typically figuring out how you can make the most numbers go up, typically accompanied by a lot of mini-games. Some of them have some kind of enemy to fight or something so usually the end goal is to face that.

I have no idea how an idle MMO works, but I do know there are (mostly mobile) MMOs that have auto-questing. Usually you'd click a button and the game would literally start playing itself and grinding for you. Imagine WoW but it has a bot built-in.

For me this was a strategy in Dune 2 game, finding out the AIs route to my base, find a good choke point and just let the enemy defeat itself on some major defense.

 

[Glop_dweller]

A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.

 

[Zlaja]

These things are fun for the same reasons people enjoy discussing min/max character builds

Oh yeah, those annoying monkeys that ruin every thread of every RPG ever.

 

[Jadeite]

Yeah ProgressQuest was the first pioneer in this. Since then many imitations have been made, but none have approached the level of the original. If only we could go back to those days. -sighs wistfully- Wait--we can! For some reason they never shut down the servers, never made any expansion packs! Even after all these years it's still around, still has a loyal following! I should go back and play my Centaur Grenadier some day. He's probably level 9000 by now.

 

[Norfleet]

A Skinner box without any lever for food, but instead a looping gif of a lever being pressed with food being dispensed at regular intervals.

Well, the other evolution of the MMO is not having any lever OR food, but instead, you can pay tons of money to get pictures of the food that would be dispensed if there was a lever to pull. Which there isn't.

 

[Ranselknulf]

What the fuck did I just read.

Kali Yuga.

 

[Ismaul]

A Skinner box without any lever for food, but instead a looping gif of a lever being pressed with food being dispensed at regular intervals.

Well, the other evolution of the MMO is not having any lever OR food, but instead, you can pay tons of money to get pictures of the food that would be dispensed if there was a lever to pull. Which there isn't.

Maybe the final evolution is there not even being an MMO, but instead, we can pay tons of money to get pictures of a hypothetical MMO and think about all the food we'd get if we were to play it and pull the levers in it.

Oh wait that already exists. Star *cough* Citizen