After quite a bunch of mobile games I feel like this is just now the norm and its getting a bit ridiculous that players still "don't care" and still pay for this kind of morally gray and or wrong behaviour.
1) Energy system: game that allow you to only play a certain amount of time, like a coin op arcade, but in this case it either you wait a certain amount of time to play again or just pay.
2) Hidden grind: Some are more obvious than other, but a lot of the game hide the near exponantial growth in the grinding you need to do to get in the higher level, either you get to the soft paywall or again wait.
3) "Fake" or skewed randomness: Either it lootboxes or any similar mechanic of having the chance of something, those are just usually highly skewed. Show you 6 items but you obviously only have less than 5% of getting the rarest things.
4) Daily task / login: slight forcing you to grind the daily shores or login everyday to get the somewhat pennies worths everyday, I have seen game where they sell an objet at 10-15$ or you can wait and get that same item in the 90th day login, wtf?
5) Notorious and invasive ads: I have seen this in game with very very basic gameplay and they riddle the game with very invasive ads at ervery seconds possible. Game that ask you to watch ad to get more of something, the worst is when the value they give you is worthless, like in most Idle game, watch this ad to get 1k gold, but eventually later when you are getting 100k/s it just a pointless ad you watched, you just skipped slightly ahead in a near infinite game.
6) Ridiculous pricing all around: I mean come on, game that have that 2-3 paid only object/character with ridiculous price attached to them, or game with montly cost not even worth the game itself, im sorry your brick breaker game is not worth 7$/m. Dont people know that there is like plenty of BETTER choice out there for way less? Game you pay 20-30$, have no ads or restriction and you can play it to completion without those stupid restrictive mechanics. or even worst, all f2p mobile game have the pack at 100$+ for the e-money, NO, no game is worth 100$ no matter how it is, it not worth more than a damn AAA with year of experience and big team behind it, not your base mechanic and 3 persons team that baically just copied someone else.
7) Pay to skip / win: Either it pay money to get stuff faster or even game that offer prenium object/character that are just obviously better than the base one. Very aggravating because they obviously made their game grindier and with randomness.
8) Cloning factory: I dont understand this one, you can see sometimes thousand of the same mechanic copy pasted of near anything other than the visual and then just post your game. Why is this even allowed? Like there this "Archero" game and there is 100 or so different named game with the same exact mechanic and talent not even anything different. wtf?! I understand being inspired by a game but just purely copying it?
9) Shovelware factory: Game that just took no effort at all, with bare minimum asset and mechanic and even sometimes with just pure base asset, usually with the incredible amount of ads/minute, they just hope to make the money from the first 20-30 minutes of game until you just quit the game for good...
10) Fake review or biased review: Some game have the question "do you like the game" or have rating in game and if you say "yes" to the question or rate the game 4-5 star it will be automatically publish it on google/apple store otherwise it doesnt do anything! That why you can somethimes see very very "meh" game with incredible rating and with a lot of them not with any comment.
11) Long tutorial: Ok this may not be so bad but there should be an option to say "im not a stupid gamer" and skip the sometimes 30-40 minutes long tutorial.
12) The game you don't play: Game where you can just press "auto" and the game just play itself or is sometimse even better on average than you just playing the game, what is the point? It is even worst for idle game, I really dont understand where is the fun of idle, just look at number grows and sometimes tap here and there?
In the end what I would like to see is store to have some kind of default system with bare minimum requirement to follow.
A) No ads in the first 30 minutes (or so), prevent game to hope and get there money from being the worst at the quantity they throw ad/min
B) Prevent game to ask for more than 100$ or so total, yep, I dont care what kind of game it is, NO game deserve more than 100$ in general, maybe with very few exception. Doesnt make sense that you could spend 1k$ on a game of any kind and I dont care how rich or crazy you are about the skins or whatnot.
C) Way to have a complete game with no montly price. I'm just tired sometimes to have incomplete game that can't never be really complete even with the montly subs, in the sense that a game that doesnt have endless grinds (not including idles). I would way prefer a fixed price for energy removal or ad removal, also ads removal should not be on a montly basis.
D) Lootbox regulation: any randomness or spinwheel or whatnot should always show the % of each object.
E) Some kind of way to reduce cloning, I dont know how this could be done, but geez, write the 3 color combine game, brick breaker or whatnot, you will see thousand.
F) Similar to E) but preventing game that just blatant steal known IP, how many times have you seen game that are not from nintendo and just called monster catcher with pokemon characters... (or similar other known IP)
Well, just my 2 cents.
1) Energy system: game that allow you to only play a certain amount of time, like a coin op arcade, but in this case it either you wait a certain amount of time to play again or just pay.
2) Hidden grind: Some are more obvious than other, but a lot of the game hide the near exponantial growth in the grinding you need to do to get in the higher level, either you get to the soft paywall or again wait.
3) "Fake" or skewed randomness: Either it lootboxes or any similar mechanic of having the chance of something, those are just usually highly skewed. Show you 6 items but you obviously only have less than 5% of getting the rarest things.
4) Daily task / login: slight forcing you to grind the daily shores or login everyday to get the somewhat pennies worths everyday, I have seen game where they sell an objet at 10-15$ or you can wait and get that same item in the 90th day login, wtf?
5) Notorious and invasive ads: I have seen this in game with very very basic gameplay and they riddle the game with very invasive ads at ervery seconds possible. Game that ask you to watch ad to get more of something, the worst is when the value they give you is worthless, like in most Idle game, watch this ad to get 1k gold, but eventually later when you are getting 100k/s it just a pointless ad you watched, you just skipped slightly ahead in a near infinite game.
6) Ridiculous pricing all around: I mean come on, game that have that 2-3 paid only object/character with ridiculous price attached to them, or game with montly cost not even worth the game itself, im sorry your brick breaker game is not worth 7$/m. Dont people know that there is like plenty of BETTER choice out there for way less? Game you pay 20-30$, have no ads or restriction and you can play it to completion without those stupid restrictive mechanics. or even worst, all f2p mobile game have the pack at 100$+ for the e-money, NO, no game is worth 100$ no matter how it is, it not worth more than a damn AAA with year of experience and big team behind it, not your base mechanic and 3 persons team that baically just copied someone else.
7) Pay to skip / win: Either it pay money to get stuff faster or even game that offer prenium object/character that are just obviously better than the base one. Very aggravating because they obviously made their game grindier and with randomness.
8) Cloning factory: I dont understand this one, you can see sometimes thousand of the same mechanic copy pasted of near anything other than the visual and then just post your game. Why is this even allowed? Like there this "Archero" game and there is 100 or so different named game with the same exact mechanic and talent not even anything different. wtf?! I understand being inspired by a game but just purely copying it?
9) Shovelware factory: Game that just took no effort at all, with bare minimum asset and mechanic and even sometimes with just pure base asset, usually with the incredible amount of ads/minute, they just hope to make the money from the first 20-30 minutes of game until you just quit the game for good...
10) Fake review or biased review: Some game have the question "do you like the game" or have rating in game and if you say "yes" to the question or rate the game 4-5 star it will be automatically publish it on google/apple store otherwise it doesnt do anything! That why you can somethimes see very very "meh" game with incredible rating and with a lot of them not with any comment.
11) Long tutorial: Ok this may not be so bad but there should be an option to say "im not a stupid gamer" and skip the sometimes 30-40 minutes long tutorial.
12) The game you don't play: Game where you can just press "auto" and the game just play itself or is sometimse even better on average than you just playing the game, what is the point? It is even worst for idle game, I really dont understand where is the fun of idle, just look at number grows and sometimes tap here and there?
In the end what I would like to see is store to have some kind of default system with bare minimum requirement to follow.
A) No ads in the first 30 minutes (or so), prevent game to hope and get there money from being the worst at the quantity they throw ad/min
B) Prevent game to ask for more than 100$ or so total, yep, I dont care what kind of game it is, NO game deserve more than 100$ in general, maybe with very few exception. Doesnt make sense that you could spend 1k$ on a game of any kind and I dont care how rich or crazy you are about the skins or whatnot.
C) Way to have a complete game with no montly price. I'm just tired sometimes to have incomplete game that can't never be really complete even with the montly subs, in the sense that a game that doesnt have endless grinds (not including idles). I would way prefer a fixed price for energy removal or ad removal, also ads removal should not be on a montly basis.
D) Lootbox regulation: any randomness or spinwheel or whatnot should always show the % of each object.
E) Some kind of way to reduce cloning, I dont know how this could be done, but geez, write the 3 color combine game, brick breaker or whatnot, you will see thousand.
F) Similar to E) but preventing game that just blatant steal known IP, how many times have you seen game that are not from nintendo and just called monster catcher with pokemon characters... (or similar other known IP)
Well, just my 2 cents.
