> It takes huge amounts of money to get people to try something new, and this invariably leads to amazing conservatism on the part of publishers.
This is purely the fault of enshittifying the mobile gaming experience.
I moved through various genres like Puzzle and Dragons, Clash of Clans, Clash Royale, etc.
Each one of those games was a lot of fun because initially they left a path to play them with skill instead of money. Putting together a set of characters to beat the tough bosses in Puzzle and Dragons required a lot of skill to get the big combos you would need since you were underpowered. Clash of Clans was neat because you couldn't make a castle to protect against everything and someone with some skill could probably get an extra star off you with some work (I was really good at timing the placement of dragons against the algorithms to exploit seams and make higher leveled players cry). I had a Clash Royale deck based on Golems and Lightning that would win about 30% of the time even against players who had super powerful decks (I was casting things before stuff even hit the field in anticipation of what players would do and timing the delay from the system--sure it was high risk but also high reward).
Alas, the siren call of the microtransaction is strong. People who spend money expect to win and complain when they don't. Those games eventually all nerfed any skill-only paths. And then they expanded to make massive purchasing the only real path toward higher levels.
And that led me to stop playing mobile games altogether. There is no point. If a game is money or gacha, it's completely not interesting. If a game has a skill path, it will get nuked post haste as soon as the publisher figures out that it exists.
This is purely the fault of enshittifying the mobile gaming experience.
I moved through various genres like Puzzle and Dragons, Clash of Clans, Clash Royale, etc.
Each one of those games was a lot of fun because initially they left a path to play them with skill instead of money. Putting together a set of characters to beat the tough bosses in Puzzle and Dragons required a lot of skill to get the big combos you would need since you were underpowered. Clash of Clans was neat because you couldn't make a castle to protect against everything and someone with some skill could probably get an extra star off you with some work (I was really good at timing the placement of dragons against the algorithms to exploit seams and make higher leveled players cry). I had a Clash Royale deck based on Golems and Lightning that would win about 30% of the time even against players who had super powerful decks (I was casting things before stuff even hit the field in anticipation of what players would do and timing the delay from the system--sure it was high risk but also high reward).
Alas, the siren call of the microtransaction is strong. People who spend money expect to win and complain when they don't. Those games eventually all nerfed any skill-only paths. And then they expanded to make massive purchasing the only real path toward higher levels.
And that led me to stop playing mobile games altogether. There is no point. If a game is money or gacha, it's completely not interesting. If a game has a skill path, it will get nuked post haste as soon as the publisher figures out that it exists.
The only winning move is not to play.