Personally in an rts style game, if I was going to do pay or wait, I would probably make the units become less efficient over time the longer you played without rest. If you played and played without stopping eventually they'd become useless and vulnerable.

They could start saying "I'm tired sire, I need to sleep".

Coming away from the game for a few hours, or buying stimulants like coffee or something could wake them back up for another few hours.

Of course there would be diminishing returns for using stimulants, to keep whales from just completely dominating gameplay. There comes a point where even drugged up super soldiers have to rest

A good idea, this could work well.

I have run some tests on the ideas, there have been some very good results.

To ease the player out of the game I created a fun but tiring game using advance math, well when I asked thy said it was fun but thy could have been lying.

The fact is that thy where all allowed to leave when thy wanted, some left after there first loss others left after thy proved to all that they where the kings of math. After each game I would ask if anyone wanted to go again, after the fourth game there where to few players to play again.

I waited six hours and asked again, this time I asked everyone directly; causing a small social obligation. Most players agreed to play again with a few saying no, the later where among the first who lost during the first games, I expect that they where frustrated with the game or just bored with it.

What I learned is that I could tire players and have them return if the player enjoyed it as long as I don't frustrate them or bore them.

Now if I wanted to uses this in a game I could use Braindigitalis suggested, let the units tire out.

Now if the player keeps attacking with his army the units are less effective, if the army rests for two minutes thy can attack at full power. If it's a active session the player can instead attack a weak target with half his army and when he returns to the base, the players other half is recovered and can attack next. If the player just arrived at work, the whole army can be used to attack and get a lot of resources, to upgrade and build while the player is busy with work.

When the player is playing a long session they should tire from having to play carefully and will either stop or buy some thing with premium to speed things along.

In conclusion for the wait or pay to work it needs: Long term and short term goals, some thing to invest into, a clear exit point that doesn't need long waiting times, a way to progress when the player plays, a clear way to progress when the player can't play and a developer that isn't greedy.

I am still concerned with the obligation part, it is responsible for keeping players playing long after the game stopped being fun.

For this platform, I'd say that the waiting is essential, to control the pace at which the player can digest the content. Otherwise, the only thing limiting playing time is getting bored, which we don't want! It's best to leave the player wanting more. But of course, that's where the abuse can come in, and where it's important to strike a good balance when it comes to the pay part.

With most games getting the players invested is the key to keeping them, the Free to wait games investment is easily gained by allowing the players to advance quickly then to slow down there progress the more the players advance. The down side is the player is invested and will still play even when bored with the game, the advantage is a lot less players dump your game after the first day.

I agree, keeping the players entertained while playing is important, the temptation to do nothing and get money for it will always be great, you have to be invested in your own game as much as the players to keep at it.

If you do want to make Wait or pay game I advice you checkup on it's history, also look into Grind or pay and Incremental mechanics.

Slowing down progress after the player is invested isn't something I'd considered in fact, and I don't feel that it's particularly ethical. There are definitely other great ways to get the player invested, however, so I don't think that's a big issue.

A mechanic is neither ethical or unethical, the alignment depends on how it's used.

If we compared Clash of clans with a normal RTS at the speed of Age of empires, Clash of clans would suddenly be a very poor game. Clash of clans has a very limited amount of troops, buildings and only one faction; it would never be as popular as StarCraft if it ran on the same time.

Yet there is no denying that Clash of clans is one of the most successful MMO RTS games, most of this success is because it withholds content; increasing the worth of the content.

Why is this a successful tactic?

It's because it simulates life. In the real world the closer we are to achieving a goal, the harder it gets to finish it; even as developers we see this. If you asked any developer what was the hardest part of making their game, most of them will tell you it's that last ten to fifteen percent.

We have been using this mechanic in games for a long time, it helps to give value to actions and with game balance.

It's simple if killing a slime monster is 5xp and 20xp for killing a boar then the boar is more valuable than slime. Because we know that advancing in a level means the player has to keep grinding more we can safely say that the player will spend most time between level 40 - 80 and place most important skills there.

Edit: What I mean to say is that you shouldn't completely disregard this mechanic just because it looks a bit sketchy, even if you are using much better mechanics it's good to keep all options in mind.

The way the platform I'm using works, there is also an element of playing to skip grind, and I have a lot of control over that. I definitely think that they've overdone it in Fallen London, but I'm taking a softer approach. I'd rather people just paid for actual content, but we'll see if that's enough to drive significant revenue (probably not, which is why there are these other elements in there). Most of the content is free to play, of course.

It looks like you are attempting to create a very fast paced game, it explains why you wouldn't want to slow down the player. Remember that the less filler mechanics you use the more content you will have to provide.

I more meant that what I wanted to avoid was giving the player a glut of early content and then deliberately withholding stuff once they'd got involved.

It's amazing how thin this line is, could it be the reason so many shovelware games miss the mark completely?

This raises a good point, if the content of a game is stretched with mechanics like these, it can and probably will, lead to players being excluded from content.

It's easy to see why this worked for single player games.

As developers we could predict where most players would be excluded and find ways to include them, after all they payed for the ride and should get there money's worth.

However in MMO's we are asking players to play together, excluding them from any content is the opposite of what we as developers want; if you are looking for players to actually play your game. It only gets more complicated if we include players who don't pay for the game.

At the moment the best way to deal with this is to exclude things the player doesn't need, sometimes players still want things they don't need and still end up feeling excluded.