“Oh I got so lucky! It only took 20 pulls to get Boobina!”
Yeah man, bet that felt a lot better than just unlocking her by doing her story quests like any normal game. Maybe you need to be a gambling addict or something.
As someone with 2000+ hours in Genshin, I completely agree 😆 I only play for exploration nowadays because the story actively pushed me away, while the gambling never appealed to me. I wish we could just unlock characters via quests. I get no joy from a lucky draw, so I just treat gacha pulls in batches of guaranteed unlocks, like the price of this character is 160 pulls and that’s it. But the whole monetisation is disgustingly predatory for those who are even a little susceptible to it.
When I went on the main Genshin subreddit, I was so baffled that people do little pulling rituals, and even do parties with thematic food and decoration for characters to influence their gacha luck 😵💫 Maybe they didn’t take it that seriously, but it still felt like a very unhealthy attitude towards such a predatory game.
You must use your pickpocket skill on your mother’s Cloak of Shopping, retrieve the Rectangle of Potentia. Carefully enter the Sacred Digits into the Portal of Reclamation to receive your reward.
Go carefully young adventurers, for the penalty for failure is great, and La Chancla is indeed fierce.
I can butt in on this a little bit. The problem with statements like this is that they treat “gacha” (the monetisation and unit recruitment system) as a genre when gacha games are too varied to be locked under this single umbrella (at least for a conversation like this). To name a few, you have games like:
Arknights (tower defence)
Azur Lane (bullet-hell kinda sorta)
Bang Dream (rhythm game)
Genshin Impact (action-adventure)
Girls’ Frontline (tactical autobattler)
Persona 5X (JRPG, just gacha Persona)
All of them play differently, offer different challenges and the impact of their gacha systems can be all over the place. Sometimes there are limited character pulls which have serious effect on gameplay (most of the modern titles), other times characters are super easy to obtain and improve as most of the monetisation comes from character costumes etc (Girls’ Frontline, Azur Lane for example).
Besides that, many of them have engaging stories, which combined with offering lots of content and being able to play them for free makes the whole thing even more appealing.
Not that the aspect of “oh cool, I unlocked new character” doesn’t play any role or that there’s nothing predatory about most of the games using this mechanic, it’s just that “gacha” mechanics aren’t always the sole or main factor keeping people playing.
TL;DR: They are just free games that can, but aren’t always, predatory with a specific gameplay mechanic. Often offer enough value for free players to have fun with them.
Yeah, I put 2000+ hours into Genshin over 4 years and have like 75 characters without ever spending any money. But the game is still so full of psychological dark patterns that would squeeze out the last penny from those whose personality or neurodiversity makes them vulnerable against such manipulation.
And yet again, the core of the issue of capitalism. As Stephanie Sterling put it many a time, the companies’ attitude is “Why be satisfied with a lot of money, when we could have all the money.”
So do I, I’m just saying that many wonder “why people play gacha games” without realising (or caring) that there’s actual “game” part outside of the monetisation itself.
For the ones I play, the actual gameplay is the appeal; and I accept the gacha only if it’s reasonably permissive to free players.
The genre definitely has a recurring issue with power scaling, to get people to roll for the newest gooner bait, and when that becomes too apparent, it kills my interest. That’s the other thing: You have to prepare your sanity for the inevitable day you’ll stop playing that game and sacrifice hours of “character progress” to find something else fun. Heck, could just be another gacha that’s bending over backwards to cater to new players.
Any gacha.
“Oh I got so lucky! It only took 20 pulls to get Boobina!”
Yeah man, bet that felt a lot better than just unlocking her by doing her story quests like any normal game. Maybe you need to be a gambling addict or something.
As someone with 2000+ hours in Genshin, I completely agree 😆 I only play for exploration nowadays because the story actively pushed me away, while the gambling never appealed to me. I wish we could just unlock characters via quests. I get no joy from a lucky draw, so I just treat gacha pulls in batches of guaranteed unlocks, like the price of this character is 160 pulls and that’s it. But the whole monetisation is disgustingly predatory for those who are even a little susceptible to it.
It seems like you DO understand why gachas are popular. They are gambling.
Remember when games rewarded you with more game content by actually playing them? Pepperidge Farms remembers
If you consider spending money to be a game mechanic then this is still true lol
When I went on the main Genshin subreddit, I was so baffled that people do little pulling rituals, and even do parties with thematic food and decoration for characters to influence their gacha luck 😵💫 Maybe they didn’t take it that seriously, but it still felt like a very unhealthy attitude towards such a predatory game.
Yeah that’s not great
You must use your pickpocket skill on your mother’s Cloak of Shopping, retrieve the Rectangle of Potentia. Carefully enter the Sacred Digits into the Portal of Reclamation to receive your reward.
Go carefully young adventurers, for the penalty for failure is great, and La Chancla is indeed fierce.
I can butt in on this a little bit. The problem with statements like this is that they treat “gacha” (the monetisation and unit recruitment system) as a genre when gacha games are too varied to be locked under this single umbrella (at least for a conversation like this). To name a few, you have games like:
All of them play differently, offer different challenges and the impact of their gacha systems can be all over the place. Sometimes there are limited character pulls which have serious effect on gameplay (most of the modern titles), other times characters are super easy to obtain and improve as most of the monetisation comes from character costumes etc (Girls’ Frontline, Azur Lane for example).
Besides that, many of them have engaging stories, which combined with offering lots of content and being able to play them for free makes the whole thing even more appealing.
Not that the aspect of “oh cool, I unlocked new character” doesn’t play any role or that there’s nothing predatory about most of the games using this mechanic, it’s just that “gacha” mechanics aren’t always the sole or main factor keeping people playing.
TL;DR: They are just free games that can, but aren’t always, predatory with a specific gameplay mechanic. Often offer enough value for free players to have fun with them.
Yeah, I put 2000+ hours into Genshin over 4 years and have like 75 characters without ever spending any money. But the game is still so full of psychological dark patterns that would squeeze out the last penny from those whose personality or neurodiversity makes them vulnerable against such manipulation.
And yet again, the core of the issue of capitalism. As Stephanie Sterling put it many a time, the companies’ attitude is “Why be satisfied with a lot of money, when we could have all the money.”
To me Gacha isn’t a genre it’s a business model. And I understand their gripes …
So do I, I’m just saying that many wonder “why people play gacha games” without realising (or caring) that there’s actual “game” part outside of the monetisation itself.
For the ones I play, the actual gameplay is the appeal; and I accept the gacha only if it’s reasonably permissive to free players.
The genre definitely has a recurring issue with power scaling, to get people to roll for the newest gooner bait, and when that becomes too apparent, it kills my interest. That’s the other thing: You have to prepare your sanity for the inevitable day you’ll stop playing that game and sacrifice hours of “character progress” to find something else fun. Heck, could just be another gacha that’s bending over backwards to cater to new players.