So, I just recently did the 'Waiting for Halftime' run and I thought it was GREAT because I didn't have to go through ~200 levels for things to get interesting. It made me think, why isn't there a 'hardmode' that basically does the exact same thing? That is, ramp up the speed at which the game becomes difficult? I feel like this really ought to be a thing, especially now with the recent expansion of talents. Who's with me?

I agree completely with Irrimn. Hardmode should be like Waiting for halftime or even harder.

Idea is that you can't reach Nate and reset, unless you have lot of idols, like at least 15k.

Well according to some of Erika/Alyniana's posts, BOTH of those are in the plans: faster idol gain methods and harder objectives.

my own belief is that if you want to max out the talents (something that nobody is holding a gun to your head to do) then you have to work for it. If that work entails letting the game idle for 2 hours to get to your wall every reset then so be it. I love being able to go away and watch TV or something.
Making it easy for the highest players to advance even faster is not fair t everyone else.

You can't expect to max all talents. They are not designed for that. You can max some, maybe, but not all. And this is a GOOD thing, otherwise having nothing to look forward to means that people will just stop playing. You want to max all talents in 6 months? Then what?

I think a lot of people are ultimately forgetting this is a SINGLE-PLAYER GAME. How does it impact your ability to play and enjoy the game if other people want to be able to play the game more actively? It shouldn't. If it does, you probably have some personal problems to work through because you're one of those people that has to 'be the best' at a SINGLE-PLAYER GAME.

It's not even as though I'm talking about a mode that wont benefit 95% of the playbase. Who cares if people that have 30k idols will be able to farm faster? So will people that only have 1000 idols. And ultimately it is just doing the same over-and-over again for little to no reward (which is a mechanic featured in 99% of idle games), so if it makes the game MORE enjoyable then why is it even a problem?

That is a point Teschio, except that, according to the devs, they are already thinking about ways to let us farm idols faster. So they obviously don't share your concern.

All I am saying is that, regardless of how you feel about it, there will soon be a way to farm idols faster. In that regard, replying to a thread about ways to do so with "they shouldn't" is a waste of electrons.

I don't see a huge problem with farming idols 5 times faster. It would still take months or years for serious players to max out the talents.

I am not worried about what's next after that because this is an incremental type game, the devs could always come up with more challenging objectives, which is as simple as changing a few numbers in the code.