Lava's tactics explained

[sharp igloo]

Disclosure: I am not bashing on Lava. I don't hate anything that Lava is doing. I am merely shining some insight on the tendencies of Lava's development tactics.

Ignoring p2w for a moment, hallelujah, hooray, whatever, let's talk about the research mechanic.

So far, the cap to research afk rate is below 100%. Why does that matter? Well because it keeps people online.

Haven't you noticed how Lava is super focused on player counts on steam? This system ensures that the number of active users stays up. That metric benefits him.

So, with Lava playing in favor of the algorithms of marketing and image, one can infer that these active-oriented mechanics will not cease any time soon. His original selling point that 'idleon keeps farming even while you're away' isn't going to work.

So what's Lava's selling point? That is the thing Lava is going to have to figure out and probably soon. Let's talk about that next. (Yes, another multi post thread.)

As it stands, Idleon is an Idle MMORPG. He's slowly leaning away from the idle aspect and definitely trying to add more MMO to this.

However, here's the issue I'm noticing. It's at the expense of the other genres. The RPG feel of Idleon has been severely diminished. Quests? Nowhere near as rich as they used to be. (That's a big selling point in my book.)

MMO features are also likely to find themselves in hot water. Imagine a new player seeing the tournament mechanic for the first time and realizing "oh, I gotta get tons of pets to do this. And they're all paid items. Ugh, so p2w..."

Sure, there's no benefit to winning this tournament, but in a game where gains is the end all be all, there's no point for a NEW player to touch tournaments. There's no bragging rights and no reward. In short: what's fun about this?...

The tournament mechanic is veered towards whales. On paper, it's for everyone. But play it as a new player and it's functionally different. (The pet market, on the other hand was a very good call! That's a thumbs up from me for that!)

[sharp igloo]

Now, back to the selling point of Idleon.

The 'idle' is becoming less and less... It's second to the active mechanics. Masterclasses were a prime example three times over.

MMO is a thing, and there have been some improvements, but it's all still catered to the elite. Friend bonuses have been largely forgotten. Guilds have long been forgotten. Party dungeons have been buffed to literal heaven so that it can be solo'd. Not exactly good service when a product is sold to us as an MMO. (And no, having something sold to us doesn't automatically imply a monetary transaction is required.)

And RPG. Role playing game. This is one that I think Lava can't screw up even if he wanted to. Classes, talents, skills, etc. This is the big marketing chip Lava has and has been using more lately. He's put more focus on the classes in his latest trailer.

But what makes an RPG an RPG? Well, a lot of things, so Lava doesn't have a shortage of selling points here. It gets people in the door, and that's huge leverage for him. The issue is that Lava's golden goose isn't the entire Idleon playerbase. It's the new whales.

Lava's tactics work as they are designed. I can't exactly say he's screwing up the game, because these tactics are working. The bucket is really good at holding water. But the problem is that Idleon is booming... For the whales.

Ultimately, like how a company is beholden to its shareholders, Lava is likely in the situation where he is beholden to his highest spenders. Tournament is pretty much exactly that. A bunch of super spenders going against each other for a bragging rights pet. They don't gain anything from it, but it's a fun time mostly for them.

Tome gives more goodies to the very very best, who just happen to also involve mostly whales. (Yellow candle is a great example. The odds are better for the 0.1%.)

So yeah, Lava's done a darn good job with developing with certain properties in mind, which may contrast with the overall playerbase.

But let me say this for everyone else.

If you want to play Idleon and not feel the pinch of p2w, the division of the playerbase, and other hard-to-swallow factors, do this:

Understand that idle games are a massive time investment. New content is basically a new tutorial phase for a certain part of the game.

Next, embrace the hardship. Games that are designed to be easy are games that get put down or get remixed with community based challenges. (Like the rush to W6 in a week challenge. That was fresh! That was new and nice!)

Coinciding with that, stick to your corner of your playerbase. If you're F2P, chances are that you will not have fun with the p2w community. If a p2w feature is released, shrug and ignore it. It's not for you. If a F2P oriented feature is released, sweet. Lava didn't forget about you entirely. You're just... Not his top priority...

And as my personal tip: Focus on the stuff you like instead of the stuff you don't like. You'll have a much better time playing. May not mean it's easy, but it does mean you focus on the thing you value.

[hazy dove]

I read it all

Finally a take not crying abt monetisation

[sharp igloo]

It can be a tough pill to swallow, and I won't deny they feel upset. Not only that, but it could eventually spiral into a problem in which you yourself wouldn't support.

I remember how you had played a game that got taken down because of it being hit hard by uber greedy F2P players. And how you buy packs because you value the game and the developer (as a lot of whales do.) But at some point, there's a limit, and I think it's a lot higher than people make it out to be.

Now, I am not a whale, so I don't think like a whale. I don't know where the line is drawn when a whale stops buying everything. I know that there are players who weigh the cost/reward of a certain microtransaction and see if they can justify the purchase. But a whale, from what I see, doesn't look at that either. (Correct me if I'm wrong.)

[hazy dove]

If he pulls put a 60$ pack im rethinking my spending choices for idleon for sure

[merry horizon]

what about three 20$ pack?

[shell lichen]

Good thing in the data mine it shows 65 and not 60 👍

[marble canyon]

This is a very good hot take and way to talk about this.

[sharp igloo]

Thanks guys. Personally, my biggest saving grace with this game is really just having patience. Lava's been pretty consistent when it comes to getting the little guys involved after the hype dies down.

Because if you think about it, every new release follows the same general principal.

Meta for MC on release: Stay online and farm.

Meta for MC now: Farm afk items for the next meritocracy.

Meta for Spelunking on release: Stay online in the page cavern. (Who did this though? Legitimately?...)

Meta for Spelunking now: Afk.

And with W7 pt2, we have a new skill. The meta? Stay online. It'll eventually fade back into the afk meta.

[sharp igloo]

And in other places, Lava has introduced ways to entice players to stay online during peak seasons, like major releases and events. The biggest one is the free event play timer. (Ultimately benefits everyone, but runs the possibility that the guaranteed jackpot is raised.)

All in all, Lava's got his own version of 'number go up.' It's steam player counts.

Because of that, the best QoL window is after the hype ends following a big release. And true to that timeline, I recall Lava teasing a QoL update on stream. Something about a reddit post too.

[hazy dove]

It never was afk meta. Zenith says hi

Lvling says hi

Golems say hi

Sb plunderous says hi

Wand farming on AC says hi

[sharp igloo]

Most Effective Tools Available. Frankly the aspect of sheer convenience is its own tool. That being said...

• Candy statues in sewers for Zenith.
• Afk leveling at the strongest monster.
• Drop off golems sooner than usual. One can technically reach Sanctum 100 just by putting in the hours... Some people don't want to spend over an hour clicking. Heck, not even I can last 10 minutes...
• SB plunderous is an active only mechanic, but it also falls under the same issue as golems. Who's going to actually go full min-max for it and get over 1M?
• ... You actually farm wands on AC on a routine basis?

And if we really want to dive into the semantics, CC is active only. Dungeons is active only. Summoning is pretty much active only (And by extension, gambit. Speaking of, holding down left click for 30 minutes SUUUUUUUUUUUUUCKSSSSSS!!!!!! My poor index finger was getting numb!!)

[hazy dove]

Candying in sewers is not even remotely close to dk at rams. 1 upgrade costs me 3 million.

[sharp igloo]

Cost of convenience. Also, you mean 3m clusters?

[hazy dove]

yea

[sharp igloo]

Yikes. I'm nowhere near that point, mostly because I neglected zenith... I'm definitely an AFK person...

[hazy dove]

Yeah. Thats why this game never was afk. An afk person gets at best 1/100 out of an active person

[snow kayak]

There will be a 65$ pack not a 60$ pack..mark my words.

"Haven't you noticed how Lava is super focused on player counts on steam? This system ensures that the number of active users stays up. That metric benefits him." And why is that? To milk more money till the closure. 6 Month content is done in couple of days for whales and endgamers. But packs getting added over and over. ATM it feels like its more packs then content and thats clearly not what idleon was about.

[hazy dove]

i mean endgamers clear everything imediatly. lava caters to the more casual player base

theres a difference between sky and ground comparing w7 chat to endgame chat

90% of this dc has content for months going forward

even unlocking the maps takes a ton for em

[snow kayak]

Yes ofc, but the casual playerbase is not the typical whales who buy things.

[hazy dove]

correct aswell

[sharp igloo]

Can you elaborate on what you mean by 'a ton'?

I'm by no means an endgamer that can light a candle to the endgame chat. I'm already about halfway through the 11 lock map, with no Multikill and focusing on AFK leveling rather than full pushing (since we're not unlocking that portal until character 11 anyway.)

But considering other players above me, they've been done with all the maps. I couldn't even Multikill jellyfish and it only took me a day of afk to open the portal. (Also wasn't really paying attention to the push process anyway, so...)

Still, what exactly do you mean here?

[hazy dove]

a ton of time. kph of most ppl is very low in w7

[sharp igloo]

Well, if you're below top 10%, I guess I can see it. Top 10% nametag gives a total of 25% mob respawn before gallery multi.

I still get a consistent 15m+ kph without Multikill and without fully optimizing.

[stray berry]

In my opinion the p2w drama is not because lava adds new packs ,its because he adds too many packs at the same time , for example w7 part 2 had around 100$ in packs if we add the pet mart packs.
As for w7 part 2 skills being softlocked by time being online and 24hr cd for observation and not being gwatch-able , is just bad for all kind of players because no one wants to stays weeks just to see a 10% upgrade (observation rolls are just stupidly high , and minehead bosses have too much hp).
And as for my final thing is Tome , tome top 0.1% its just too powerful and i understand that he added the candle for non top 0.1% , but it works only 1 time , and the diference of the nametag 1 star and 5 start its just too masive 20% dr/afk multi to 50% and in time it will just widen the diference between an endgamer and a earlygame/midgame player.

Atm in endgame are just the same faces that we saw 1 year ago , and if lava goes on with 5 packs per update or 5 pets at 20-30$ each , i dont see any new player staying much in this game or see a player getting close to endgamer players that are already in endgame now.

[snow kayak]

Thats what i meant with this.

Lava wants players, but in the other hands forces drama for these players which will eventuelly leave anyway. Packs are for whales, F2P content cant keep up, the gap widens and F2P players leaving. If whales stops whaling in the future he will be sitting on an empty canvas.

The content he pushed out in 6 Month of time is by far less then the amount of packs he added. And that should never be the case. For me it looks like it was 1 maybe 2 weeks of active content creation rather then the whole 6 month he did nothing.

Im not an endgamer and im already finished with the content waiting for new content to realease, cuz everything else i can do is timegated.

[bleak parrot]

I don't have a problem with the fact there are packs or that Lava is making money off his game. But I do struggle with him being like "Oh hey look at this pet tournament, it doesn't give bonuses so it's fair for everyone and you don't need to spend money to participate, can I get W in chat?"
And I'm like "You do realize that this entire tournament is only going to encourage people to buy more pet packs? There's nothing F2P about this." Sure, it's not needed to get an in-game buff, but there's also little to no fun in it if you don't have pets in the first place.

I'd appreciate it more if the message was "Hey the game needs to make money for server upkeep and to make a living and such, so here's a new tournament so you can let those beautiful pets you bought fight it out with one another!"
(My guess is that some F2P accounts that have been going for years might also be doing ok in the pet battles? But I'm not 100% sure about that.)

Anyways, I'm not mad about the game offering packs, but I'd like honesty about it instead of like "here's a free feature I added" when it's just a tournament that's designed to encourage folks to spend money on pets.

(Also OP, I read your entire post, well written and fair feedback!)

[sharp igloo]

I, for one, wholeheartedly agree with the alternative message Lava could've made. Being upfront and saying what he needs and what he plans to do would come out way better than saying something is designed to be one way and ends up functioning in a completely different way...

In fact, if I was in a position to swipe, I'd be more inclined to pay if he released the tournament under that notion.

To put an analogy on the whole reception of Lava's tactics, it's like he's trying to act on a stage and is trying to mean well, but here we are throwing tomatoes because we were told one thing and the performance doesn't match. And when he 'shouts at the audience' (metaphorically, just to explain himself.) we can't exactly trust his word because it's failed us already, so we throw more tomatoes.

[bleak parrot]

welp... my post was auto-deleted the second I pressed enter? Must have said something that the automod didn't like.

I'll try to summarize and hope it doesn't get deleted.

I basically said that the marketing doesn't land with folks who are no longer young and naive.

[sharp igloo]

Auto-deleted? Usually, discord holds it in red.

[bleak parrot]

No it's completely gone. No idea what happened.

[sharp igloo]

Probably a hiccup.

[bleak parrot]

I made a comparison to Mister Beast

Those who know how the viewers are manipulated into feeling excited have a harder time believing what they see or enjoying it.

Now once again, I do think Lava should have packs, as many as he likes, but I also know I'd be more inclined to buy (once my finances allow it) if there was more honesty about all of it.

Maybe it's a generational thing?

[sharp igloo]

https://giphy.com/gifs/mfw-volume-webm-1JyWrrkCIUQyQ

if I could meme-ify the development experience of Idleon, it'd be this

[bleak parrot]

that's how a friend described it haha - he's been playing for years.

I'm just new since Christmas.

[sharp igloo]

The shift between seeing the teasers and getting the content, all across the span of months instead.

It looks awesome, it sounds awesome, it even seems awesome! Then we get it and it doesn't feel awesome. And as time goes on and we fiddle around with the content some more, it feels worse and worse as we understand how it works in practice rather than on paper.

Now, once again, what Lava's doing is selling us something, and he's really good at selling it. For what it's worth, that's awesome! The 'thing' of this equation is what needs looking into.

[bleak parrot]

One of my fav games, 2HOL, is also free 2 play, but actually free 2 play. The game is run on donations. And those donations don't give in-game uncraftables either. There are uncraftables, but those have to be won with competitions. (Or given by devs on special occassions like Christmas). The only benefit donators get is that they can request in-game last and first names that are not in the current list yet. But that's not game-breaking in any way.

It's also a modded version of another open-source game, and to charge for that particular game would be iffy because the majority is the hard work of the original creator. (Though nowadays I wouldn't be surprised if the modding has taken equally as long as the original creation of the game.)

[sharp igloo]

If I'm being honest, if Lava can nail the AAA marketing tactics and marry it with the devotion of an indie game title (which Idleon is an indie game title.) he'd go super far. But Lava has leaned towards the AAA marketing and it's affecting his development. The worst thing he can do is run a game like a business.

Marketers are not manufacturers.

[bleak parrot]

Thing is, it's probably working for him cause I don't feel like he's shown signs of slowing down the pack-machine.

[sharp igloo]

Right now, Lava's got the marketing thing down. He's got tons of packs, tons of ways to transactionalize the game. But the issue is that it's a vicious cycle. People beg for packs, beg for more things to buy, so Lava has to make more, which brings more people in, who beg for packs, more things to buy, so Lava has to make even more.

Delays pile up. Players get restless and unhappy, but Lava must make more packs. How does he stay on time? Cut quality. More players get to buy, more players beg, more packs, more packs, more STUFF! Lava has to make it, he must, or he loses the people who pay and beg and demand.

How long until it kills him? How many more weeks of awake time can he handle? What else can he sacrifice to satisfy the ever-growing population of whales that beg for more? Cut quality? Cut health?

When you supply the demand, the demand grows.

And suddenly, you don't have a game anymore. You have a pack marketplace on a piece of software that continuously cranks under the pressure. All for the almighty goal of "Number go up."

And unfortunately, it's nothing personal. It's just business...

If Lava reads this, I want him to know this. I've heard how he says he spends an unhealthy amount of time making this game. Staying up late, spending hours upon hours upon hours upon hours, just to meet the demand and schedules. He can't even keep to his own early estimations. He never says development is going slower than originally intended, which means he's not opening up to the struggle involved with development.

So LavaFlame2... you're working too hard to satisfy a neverending cycle. You want to spend months of late night grinds? More teasers that point out how late it is? Sooner or later, it's going to be too much. And when it does, you'll hit a point where even the Whales won't buy from you. Don't believe me? One of your devoted whales right here in this channel has already shown concern of the content they're buying. That's your warning sign.

You want Idleon to keep going? Put some devotion into your work. Draw the line of what you won't supply. If you don't, the buyers will draw the line and walk away. The free-to-play community is already leaving in greater numbers. That's another warning sign for you. You can take pride in saying you don't care what the naysayers are saying. Will you take pride in knowing the very people you supply say bad things about you? They put their money where their mouth is. Money talks, and when money stops talking to you, you're too far gone to say "wait."

By that point, the free players are gone, the money players are gone, and there will not be enough value in your creation for you to keep making it. If you want Idleon to stay strong, don't ever get even close to this point. You're already walking down this path, and it's hurting your game, your reputation, and you yourself as a human being. Call me a naysayer, but I'm a naysayer who's actually worried about you as a human being.

In the end, you're crazy, and I say that as a compliment. This uphill battle is only going to go more uphill. Sooner or later, I'm gonna call you crazy and it won't be a compliment.

[marble canyon]

I don't even think he will read these, but yeah you pointed out a lot of valid stuff. Dunno if there is a point of pointing things out to a brick wall though, but I respect the devotion

[snow kayak]

@bleak parrot no. since half of the pets are exclusives bound to packs. xD

[snow kayak]

He never meet any schedules, his "weekly updates" are once till its "monthly" or even "once in a half year", Yet his new content is by far not that "heavy" and 90% is just some addons to existing systems. If he realy feels burnout from that, then get help. But making more and more packs wont change the fact that he's burnout. Evidence of that? Look every major update. Its always the same since W3.