Sleep pattern ? What's one of those ?

I suspect a new discovery over the past few days is responsible for vastly disrupting my sleep pattern ...

Actually. Not suspect. Know. What is it ?

It's called Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms.

It's still playing through as I tap out this post. They're up to 693 trillion gold now with the next upgrade coming at 952 trillion gold. It isn't much of a game to be honest, which is a mystery as to why it's so addictive ! All you do is watch them bash the monsters, with Minsc the Ranger doing sterling service bashing at many monsters at a time and you tell them which upgrades to go for when and which heroes to have in the group to make sure you have all of the skills working together.

I don't know how long I'll stay with it but it has me hooked so far and I haven't resorted to the microtransactions yet. I had a dabble in Star Trek Timelines but that looks heavily dependent on microtransactions.

Games with microtransactions that I'm ok with :
The ones where it is not vital to progress that you give them money. You can shortcut the time needed in Idle Champions but the alternative is just to wait and let it play in the background while you do other things. Elite has microtransactions for paint packs and other addons ... these have zero bearing on progress, although they did open up one particular system to people who backed the game pre-release.

Games where I'm not ok with microtransactions :
Where the money unbalances progress in the game or gives people an unfair advantage. I felt ST Timelines was requiring the money just to play the basic game, to get around the issue of needing Chronitons to do anything with the game and those Chronitons needing time to build up. That's very wrong, although it does fit for occasional play Facebook or mobile type games where you have a little binge of play and then running out of credit means it's time to go away for a while.

I've never really got on with that type of game, I like my time management to be down to me instead of arbitrarily enforced by a game. Perhaps with my potential for addiction, the time management is a good thing. But I don't like it.

Besides, being stuck in a game for many hours on end is a bad thing, even if it's a background thing to things like watching the cricket, reading a book, watching videos or other activities.

Other games have the problem of you potentially being able to buy power within the game and get an unfair advantage that way. One reason I avoid Player vs Player type activities is because they are infested with sociopaths who can invest immense amounts of time (or money) into making their avatar as powerful as possible ... and these people will prey on those who just want a little fun in the games on their own terms.

I need to hit the sales as well at some point before going back to work on Thursday. Possibly Tuesday as I suspect the shops will be shut for New Years. I better check that before I repeat something from quite a few years ago !

I did wonder why I was the only person at the Mall that day ....