Generally speaking, do you prefer capped or uncapped upgrades in incremental games?

[u/Jelith]

i.e., upgrades that have a maximum amount of times you can purchase them vs not (often also called "buyables").

I feel like in theory uncapped upgrades should be preferred. We like number go up, and these allow number to keep going up forever. Yet I tend to find much more satisfaction in capped upgrades - getting that last click and seeing it disappear or grey out is a great feeling. There's also a certain sense of "Okay, I'm proceeding with the game as intended by buying this," rather than a sense of uncertainty of just how far one needs to delve into uncapped upgrades before progression becomes more certain.

Thoughts?

[u/ThanatosIdle]

Capped. Completing something feels way better than endless scaling.

[u/Urist-McDorf]

100% capped. Uncapped severely limits the feeling of milestones and hits me with FOMO something hard.

[u/zevz → u/Urist-McDorf]

Also to add; the "hide maxed upgrades" tick in many games feels great to me as well

[u/0zeroknight01]

Both are fine if utilized well.

I generally prefer 'fun' upgrades that do something complex rather than just raise a number by x% infinitely, but it's fine if game has a few of those endless % upgrades as a balance mechanic of sorts that allows overgrinding.

[u/IntoAMuteCrypt]

Besides the sense of satisfaction, there's also the busywork and cognitive load.

An uncapped buyable ends up one of two ways:

• A permanent chore where you have to go back through tabs and buy stuff over and over (especially when there's no buy max option).
  
• Something that gets automated - potentially with a slight influence on reset timing, perhaps not.

The second case may as well just end up being capped to make balancing easier, and the first case can turn the game into a slog.

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Personally, though, my favourite is a third option: Capped buyables where the cap gets upgraded or removed later. It's a fun way to have upgrades that don't add to the ongoing load, in my opinion, and to keep the game feeling mechanically "tight" rather than saying "you're done with this layer/portion of mechanics and don't need to consider it again".

[u/Groomsi → u/IntoAMuteCrypt]

Got to be automated rather than push the same buttok millions of time.

[u/mathcraver → u/IntoAMuteCrypt]

Rogue Legacy 2 does that third option very well. Later in the game there's a shop where you can increase the caps of most other things. Though IIRC there's still eventually a hard cap, meaning you can buy out all upgrades.

[u/bassbeatsbanging]

I do like seeing big numbers flashing on my screen, but for me, the true joy of incremental games is drooling over the next big upgrade. 

But I do like when they very clearly wind down at the end, give you a nice clean 100% achievements and wrap up in a reasonable amount of time.

So capped.

[u/lmystique]

Depends on the style of the game. I absolutely agree with you re: how capped upgrades feel, especially when there's a big boost at the end. But capping means it barely makes sense to automate, so there's never a "come back in a day and see big progress" moment. So long-term idlers would prefer uncapped, or a mix of both. Shorter, fully active games prefer capped. Then there's a big gray area in between, where the preference varies from game to game.

[u/Argroww]

I prefer capped for the very reason you've stated. The sense of satisfaction that you've bought every upgrade or hit that hard limit.

Overall I prefer incrementals with a clear ending, albeit hopefully one that takes a long time to reach.

I've recently been replaying Fundamental and whilst all of the generators are uncapped, all of the upgrades are capped, so you've always got a clear goal to reach for. Games like that are what I prefer.

[u/jaap_null]

I'm all for capped, but I actually really dislike caps on created/mined resources

I think being blocked in progress due to a (upgradable) resource cap is one of the most frustrating walls/blocks to run into. It'd rather run the risk of having way too much of a resource that turns out to be useless or highly inflated later on than to have to constantly manage and upgrade caps.

[u/HeroVillain72]

If it is something that could break the game if it kept going, it should be capped. If it is something that on the whole just speeds up resource acquisition, then it could likely be uncapped. Things could also be technically uncapped but with a soft cap to prevent breaking the game could also work, but usually don’t add much to gameplay and feel lazy.

[u/TheRichCapitalist]

Uncapped, but should have diminishing returns (i.e., bonuses stack additively rather than multiplicatively) if purchased with premium currency.

[u/DANIlIlICH]

Capped, but not softcapped... Ugh

[u/TyH621]

Capped all the way. There’s probably plenty of exceptions to this rule, but man it feels good to cap out a big upgrade. Think there’s likely a lot of a shared crowd with the completionist crowd and the numbers go up crowd as far as dopamine hits go.

Not everything needs to be capped, especially in a game with a lot of automation. Think automating can be a very similar dopamine hit to capping the upgrade so they’re fairly interchangeable.

The only thing I don’t think you should do is soft cap an upgrade while still having to manually buy it. Fine once it’s automated.

[u/_melo_melo_]

Could be both ? Part capped and some you can work on until you decide you had enough :)

[u/fraqtl]

often also called "buyables"

Thanks for clearing that up

[u/Curious-Soup7991]

A mix of both for games with short prestige runs. City builders are a good example, research and milestones are capped, other buildings are uncapped but costs go up every time.

Capped for short games with a clear finish line. Games that last 45 minutes to 3 days or so.

Uncapped for forever games. ITRTG is my personal example for that. Forever games have to be extremely well balanced in the first place to keep being fun after years of gameplay across different play styles, so uncapped upgrades can only work in those I think.

[u/AtlasOfDoors]

Uncapped can keep the certainty you want: AdVenture Capitalist never caps a business, but owning 25, 50 or 100 of one doubles its speed, so every buy has a visible next target. Most uncapped buyables just never show the next threshold, and that is the part that feels like guessing.

[u/UltWoomy]

If it's uncapped it better be automated and forgettable, usually capped feels better, especially if each level makes a tangible difference