Gacha Game Hate Thread

[Golfing on the Moon 1971]

Well there are three Mihoyo founders, and the guy went in intending to kill two, Liu Wei and Cai Haoyu. Liu Wei is the public face of the company. Cao owns the most shares, but in 2023 he went to Silicon Valley to found his AI R&D company, which is what he has been focused on since. All three founders are unmarried the last time I checked, so it's not clear what would happen to their shares if they both dropped at the same time, leaving Luo Yuhao as the sole owner left. We know the least about Luo Yuhao. We don't know enough about how much each person is involved in Mihoyo's day to day operations, so it's hard to say how Mihoyo's internal operations would have been impacted. From an outside perspective, Liu dying would definitely impact Mihoyo's PR ability unless one of the other two stepped up.

A Chinese CEO getting killed because his company released an advertisement video showing an anime character in a bunnygirl outfit would probably chill the ACG (anime, comics, games) scene in China. The primary take away would be that these ACG fans are radically unstable and that you should not touch them with a ten foot pole. I'd imagine that the companies would become much more conservative whenever they release anything to the public. Others would be deterred from even attempting to get into that industry in the first place, like the wave of startups after Genshin's release. This incident happened half a year after Genshin's release so maybe some of those projects just never get greenlit.

Bigger issue would probably be the news media lurching on this, like how otaku in Japan were heavily stigmatized after the sarin gas attack. Might be a useful talking point to deflect people's attentions away from the government.

Hard to tell what the government would actually do. Shortly after Genshin's release, the government showcased a powerpoint slide with Venti on it saying "don't make effeminate men" and there was a brief censorship scare, but nothing seems to have really come of it, and now new Genshin characters are just as sexualized as before. Off of the top of my head, the instance I can think of where Chinese nerds got arrested was the wave of yuri/yaoi authors who got arrested, which intimidated others to stop writing/drawing that content.

Does China also have a culture of idolizing killers because they kill the "right" target such as CEOs and bankers, or does the CCP prevent such fanbases from happening?

China has a very powerful internet censorship apparatus. When the recent wave of "revenge against society" attacks happened, such as the guy drove a car through a crowd of people and killed 30, footage of it was very quickly scrubbed from the Chinese websites and social media. They have control over internet forums like NGA and can scrub wrongthink and identify posters very quickly. So stuff doesn't spread that the CCP does not want. Probably not a lot of people jumping through all of the effort to download a VPN and go to hidden forums, though with China having 4.5x the amount people as the US then who knows. There might be a lot.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Hard to tell what the government would actually do. Shortly after Genshin's release, the government showcased a powerpoint slide with Venti on it saying "don't make effeminate men" and there was a brief censorship scare, but nothing seems to have really come of it, and now new Genshin characters are just as sexualized as before. Off of the top of my head, the instance I can think of where Chinese nerds got arrested was the wave of yuri/yaoi authors who got arrested, which intimidated others to stop writing/drawing that content.

Going after the Gacha market would be extremely retarded. It's one of the things that give great publicity to China, lots of cash and actively weakens the Japanese economy.

 

[WULULULULU]

At some point, the gacha market, much like the live-service market, is going to implode due to over-saturation. The recent SensorTower stats shows that spending has considerably weakened because people can't afford shit from both real life and the gacha that they try to commit to. I'm pretty sure even Mihoyo knows this. They already have 3 mainline live-services (God knows when Tears of Themis and HI3 will shut down), they can't possibly have 5, if they think Honkai: Nexus Anima and Varaspula will even succeed in an oversaturated market that they willingly created a hole out of.

 

[Golfing on the Moon 1971]

Mihoyo is still raking in almost a hundred million dollars every month on just mobile. The difference is that instead of all of their customers being concentrated in one game Genshin, some of them have been diverted into two other games that appeal to them more. Genshin revenue halved when HSR launched, but regardless of whether or not someone is spending on Genshin or HSR, Mihoyo gets the money either way. Making more gachas is about trying to better cater to unmet tastes and keep them in the Mihoyo ecosystem.

The SensorTower metrics have also been impacted by 1. the new gachas are best experienced on PC and console. Hypergryph cited that 70% of the Endfield playerbase was on PC and console. The Samsung Galaxy app store stopped offering discounts. And to beat the 3rd party top up websites like Lootbar, the companies have been offering discounts on their own official top up websites, pushing people to move to use that instead of buying on mobile.

As for the other 3D gachas like WuWa, Endfield, NTE, etc, most Western game devs could only wish that they were making $10 per month every month for 2 or 3 years on just mobile alone, not counting console and PC. That adds up over time and is nothing to scoff at.

Having new games coming out is also good in the longterm. Genshin is getting old. It looks outdated compared to all of these other new games coming out. It is mechanically outdated in terms of combat design, QOLs, etc. Every other gacha has more generous pull rates, hard pity limits, currency given out, etc. Genshin has also used up a lot of its fan's emotional investment. People were sold on the idea that they would get a 7 chapter story with a beginning, a middle, and an end with the Teyvat trailer. And people got hyped with the Fatui trailer. Natlan and Nod Krai burned a lot of people's interest in the story, and people just want to see how the 7 chapter story ends and what happened to the rest of the Fatui. Once that is over, a lot of interest will evaporate. Mihoyo needs new products coming out for people to switch to, and to attract new young consumers when Genshin isn't the hot thing to join anymore.

These Genshin clones have also revealed that they have limited shelflifes for players. Up through Fontaine, people could join Genshin and still get a good experience using any of the characters ever added to the game. A humongous roster. Starting with Natlan, there has been significant powercreep that has shrunk the useable roster of characters, and the game has gotten increasingly expensive to play as you now need specific teams of characters that work together. The imitator gachas are speedrunning this lifecycle even faster. HSR and WuWa in just two years have utterly powercrept the first year characters like Seele and Jiyan and do not rerun them anymore. The baseline for endgame is having E1S1 characters, and new endgames have come out requiring three teams. Etc. People are complaining that their investments have been ruined and they are struggling to keep up. Etc.

Whereas Granblue, FGO, and Arknights players are still able to use their favorites that they purchased many years ago, either because there has been no powercreep or because the devs frequently go back and update old characters so that they are still useable (unlike HSR Novaflares, most of which are a joke). As more and more disgruntled fans speak up about this, the less and less they encourage new people to join these games a couple years after launch.

 

[Fcret]

Whereas Granblue, FGO, and Arknights players are still able to use their favorites that they purchased many years ago, either because there has been no powercreep or because the devs frequently go back and update old characters so that they are still useable (unlike HSR Novaflares, most of which are a joke). As more and more disgruntled fans speak up about this, the less and less they encourage new people to join these games a couple years after launch.

FGO always seems to be running events where you can pick up an OP welfare character to bruteforce the story with and I think it works out well for them

Genshin's problem is that so much of the power is built on synergy - if you want to play character X then you better be prepared to also whale for character Y and weapon Z to go with them (or hope the potential brokie substitutions are decent enough to get by with).

 

[Level99Manchild]

For anyone who played Illusion Connect back in 2020-2023, don't play RE. It's really bad, and they worsened the rates to get mandatory characters like Miyuki. It's also pretty soulless and iffy with bugs and shit the original never had.

At some point, the gacha market, much like the live-service market, is going to implode due to over-saturation. The recent SensorTower stats shows that spending has considerably weakened because people can't afford shit from both real life and the gacha that they try to commit to. I'm pretty sure even Mihoyo knows this. They already have 3 mainline live-services (God knows when Tears of Themis and HI3 will shut down), they can't possibly have 5, if they think Honkai: Nexus Anima and Varaspula will even succeed in an oversaturated market that they willingly created a hole out of.

Mihoyo is still raking in almost a hundred million dollars every month on just mobile. The difference is that instead of all of their customers being concentrated in one game Genshin, some of them have been diverted into two other games that appeal to them more. Genshin revenue halved when HSR launched, but regardless of whether or not someone is spending on Genshin or HSR, Mihoyo gets the money either way. Making more gachas is about trying to better cater to unmet tastes and keep them in the Mihoyo ecosystem.

The SensorTower metrics have also been impacted by 1. the new gachas are best experienced on PC and console. Hypergryph cited that 70% of the Endfield playerbase was on PC and console. The Samsung Galaxy app store stopped offering discounts. And to beat the 3rd party top up websites like Lootbar, the companies have been offering discounts on their own official top up websites, pushing people to move to use that instead of buying on mobile.

As for the other 3D gachas like WuWa, Endfield, NTE, etc, most Western game devs could only wish that they were making $10 per month every month for 2 or 3 years on just mobile alone, not counting console and PC. That adds up over time and is nothing to scoff at.

Having new games coming out is also good in the longterm. Genshin is getting old. It looks outdated compared to all of these other new games coming out. It is mechanically outdated in terms of combat design, QOLs, etc. Every other gacha has more generous pull rates, hard pity limits, currency given out, etc. Genshin has also used up a lot of its fan's emotional investment. People were sold on the idea that they would get a 7 chapter story with a beginning, a middle, and an end with the Teyvat trailer. And people got hyped with the Fatui trailer. Natlan and Nod Krai burned a lot of people's interest in the story, and people just want to see how the 7 chapter story ends and what happened to the rest of the Fatui. Once that is over, a lot of interest will evaporate. Mihoyo needs new products coming out for people to switch to, and to attract new young consumers when Genshin isn't the hot thing to join anymore.

These Genshin clones have also revealed that they have limited shelflifes for players. Up through Fontaine, people could join Genshin and still get a good experience using any of the characters ever added to the game. A humongous roster. Starting with Natlan, there has been significant powercreep that has shrunk the useable roster of characters, and the game has gotten increasingly expensive to play as you now need specific teams of characters that work together. The imitator gachas are speedrunning this lifecycle even faster. HSR and WuWa in just two years have utterly powercrept the first year characters like Seele and Jiyan and do not rerun them anymore. The baseline for endgame is having E1S1 characters, and new endgames have come out requiring three teams. Etc. People are complaining that their investments have been ruined and they are struggling to keep up. Etc.

Whereas Granblue, FGO, and Arknights players are still able to use their favorites that they purchased many years ago, either because there has been no powercreep or because the devs frequently go back and update old characters so that they are still useable (unlike HSR Novaflares, most of which are a joke). As more and more disgruntled fans speak up about this, the less and less they encourage new people to join these games a couple years after launch.

The live-service market got out of hand, as developers began to charge you for shit you had access to years ago, and the quality of video games declined throughout the years. You got old gachas like Battlecats and Puzzles and Dragon still printing decent profits. Valkyrie Connect required you to spend $2k+ to be viable in PvE and PvP due to Star Banners and Collabs of the Moth, but at least most Star Banner characters come back if you missed out on them (Collab characters lose their momentum when they make a new character every month). Raid Shadow Legends has been going full retard on collabs, and I don't know if you can get them if you missed out on their respective events (I refuse to go back to that game to find out).

 

[Fcret]

I can say as a person who's played gacha games on and off and even spent a decent amount of money for a banner... there's a very limited lifespan for the gameplay loop. Logging in to do dailies just to stay ahead starts to feel like a chore and I imagine it's like 20x worse if you're from a poor country and can't toss an hour of American wages at removing a week of effort.

Eventually neuroreceptors become fried and the reward loop doesn't function anymore. The amount of people w/o fried brains who are still able to get hooked shrinks massively (hence the huge amount of money spent on attracting new players who aren't burned out yet). And then the entire model just dies.

 

[Celebrate Nite]

Logging in to do dailies just to stay ahead starts to feel like a chore

For me it depends on the game.

For example, Goddess of Victory Nikke has an amazing story, and a bunch of other shit to do outside of dailies (permanent mini-games, side stories to read, focusing on one specific character upgrade, etc...). I really don't give a shit about rankings in gachas (i.e. the pvp aspect) because whales are always going to completely dominate that aspect and since I refuse to become one, I don't even give it the time of day. I'll put up with doing dailies for a little stat growth, get through a chapter, and then wait for more events for more rewards and mini-games until the next main chapter story is released.

Horizon Walker also has a good story that they did a big overhaul on. Playing the start of the story now from what it used to be when it first released is like night and day. They've added more character-specific chapters, and allow you to play through past-event stories within the chapters themselves. The thing is, the updates are SLOOOOOOOOW... most of them are just "here's a new character, go pull for it" and that's it, so when you eventually do get all the characters there isn't much else to do. I think it's been a few months now since they released their last big update with a new Chapter 4 that plays out more like a board game (which IMO is boring as fuck). They have a summer event going on now but it's like 2 stories and 2 hard mode chapters. It got to the point where I just deleted my account and started over again from the very beginning because I like the game, but I was barely touching it because I already did everything the game had to offer and it felt more like it was taking space on my phone but I didn't want to let it go.

Lost Sword is starting to get on my nerves. It pulls the same crap Nikke pulls where lower ranks have a level cap, but unlike Nikke where you can get them all to the same level via the Synchronize feature, this game's "Round Table" feature doesn't do that. Once you get 5 gold ranks to lv200, the lower ranks stay at their base level but only go up a point (e.g. Gold Ranks = 201, Purple Ranks = 121, Copper Ranks = 81). They added a feature called "Training" where you get global bonuses for your entire team and the copper ranks have beneficial stat ups (+2 HP/Att/Def and a small percentage on resistances/crits/healing), so you HAVE to invest in them, especially since they only use a small portion of elemental rocks, they are easier to max train. But even with all that, you still wind up being walled greatly because even at +10 levels ahead of the enemy team, bosses can still one shot you, even if you have "the best" gear equipped.

I recently got into StellaSora, and the story is really fucking good, but half of it is about stocks and banking and finance and business-related things that just go over my head. What's worse is that the main story (as of now) ends on a cliffhanger, so you'\re forced to do the actual battle segments but not only is it poorly optimized (shit stutters and heats up your phone like crazy) but they don't give you a lot of energy to use. Most of that energy will be used to grind for resources to level up your character and their skills. That, and they put a limit on how many affection gifts you can give to a character. That's fucking retarded.

 

[WULULULULU]

I can say as a person who's played gacha games on and off and even spent a decent amount of money for a banner... there's a very limited lifespan for the gameplay loop. Logging in to do dailies just to stay ahead starts to feel like a chore and I imagine it's like 20x worse if you're from a poor country and can't toss an hour of American wages at removing a week of effort.

Eventually neuroreceptors become fried and the reward loop doesn't function anymore. The amount of people w/o fried brains who are still able to get hooked shrinks massively (hence the huge amount of money spent on attracting new players who aren't burned out yet). And then the entire model just dies.

For me it depends on the game.

For example, Goddess of Victory Nikke has an amazing story, and a bunch of other shit to do outside of dailies (permanent mini-games, side stories to read, focusing on one specific character upgrade, etc...). I really don't give a shit about rankings in gachas (i.e. the pvp aspect) because whales are always going to completely dominate that aspect and since I refuse to become one, I don't even give it the time of day. I'll put up with doing dailies for a little stat growth, get through a chapter, and then wait for more events for more rewards and mini-games until the next main chapter story is released.

Horizon Walker also has a good story that they did a big overhaul on. Playing the start of the story now from what it used to be when it first released is like night and day. They've added more character-specific chapters, and allow you to play through past-event stories within the chapters themselves. The thing is, the updates are SLOOOOOOOOW... most of them are just "here's a new character, go pull for it" and that's it, so when you eventually do get all the characters there isn't much else to do. I think it's been a few months now since they released their last big update with a new Chapter 4 that plays out more like a board game (which IMO is boring as fuck). They have a summer event going on now but it's like 2 stories and 2 hard mode chapters. It got to the point where I just deleted my account and started over again from the very beginning because I like the game, but I was barely touching it because I already did everything the game had to offer and it felt more like it was taking space on my phone but I didn't want to let it go.

Lost Sword is starting to get on my nerves. It pulls the same crap Nikke pulls where lower ranks have a level cap, but unlike Nikke where you can get them all to the same level via the Synchronize feature, this game's "Round Table" feature doesn't do that. Once you get 5 gold ranks to lv200, the lower ranks stay at their base level but only go up a point (e.g. Gold Ranks = 201, Purple Ranks = 121, Copper Ranks = 81). They added a feature called "Training" where you get global bonuses for your entire team and the copper ranks have beneficial stat ups (+2 HP/Att/Def and a small percentage on resistances/crits/healing), so you HAVE to invest in them, especially since they only use a small portion of elemental rocks, they are easier to max train. But even with all that, you still wind up being walled greatly because even at +10 levels ahead of the enemy team, bosses can still one shot you, even if you have "the best" gear equipped.

I recently got into StellaSora, and the story is really fucking good, but half of it is about stocks and banking and finance and business-related things that just go over my head. What's worse is that the main story (as of now) ends on a cliffhanger, so you'\re forced to do the actual battle segments but not only is it poorly optimized (shit stutters and heats up your phone like crazy) but they don't give you a lot of energy to use. Most of that energy will be used to grind for resources to level up your character and their skills. That, and they put a limit on how many affection gifts you can give to a character. That's fucking retarded.

For me, not only is the gameplay repetitive, some gachas take game genres that were intended to be singleplayer and drag it into a live-service product. Arknights: Endfield and Girls Frontline 2: Exilium are absolutely notorious for this. Endfield's Alpha was more akin to Dragon Age where your NPC teammates mattered and synergy counts, in which we get in the final product is a Genshin clone with pathetically easy puzzles, on top of taking shit from Factorio but with none of the mechanical autism enjoyment (i.e interesting designs, limits in terrain/specific designs in which you can create workarounds with, etc.). Meanwhile GFL2 tries to take the gameplay of XCOM 2 and skinwalk it into a live-service product, taking the class-based system of XCOM 2 and replacing it with hero shooter-esque characters who will never die and are strictly into one skillset, with no variations/experimentation for your characters, on top of """difficulty""" that is more between the lines of piss-easy and number-crunching bullshit.

Speaking of stories: another problem is that how am I supposed to care about these live-service stories when a.) they constantly change on a whim and refuse to commit to the theme they presented themselves with on day 1, b.) add more shit into the mix all while trying to juggle between characters/concepts/story arcs from the past to their newly created OCs and c.) actually end the goddamn story. Everytime I hear from someone how a gacha story is supposed to be good and I see that it is STILL unfinished, my immediate thought is:

If you can't end the story on a high note, let alone GIVE IT A CONCLUSION, then that story should have been rewritten from day fucking one.

 

[Level99Manchild]

Lost Sword is starting to get on my nerves. It pulls the same crap Nikke pulls where lower ranks have a level cap, but unlike Nikke where you can get them all to the same level via the Synchronize feature, this game's "Round Table" feature doesn't do that. Once you get 5 gold ranks to lv200, the lower ranks stay at their base level but only go up a point (e.g. Gold Ranks = 201, Purple Ranks = 121, Copper Ranks = 81). They added a feature called "Training" where you get global bonuses for your entire team and the copper ranks have beneficial stat ups (+2 HP/Att/Def and a small percentage on resistances/crits/healing), so you HAVE to invest in them, especially since they only use a small portion of elemental rocks, they are easier to max train. But even with all that, you still wind up being walled greatly because even at +10 levels ahead of the enemy team, bosses can still one shot you, even if you have "the best" gear equipped.

Buddy, that's a tenth of all the power creep content you will have to deal with in Lost Sword. They added lots of bullshit power creeps, and the meta is all kinds of fucked up (I didn't even finish the first-tier cubes and constellation stars before I quit). Getting resources are a bitch in that game even when you clear the content to get them because the devs offer little to nothing. Word is they tried to "tone down the difficulty" on global's first year anniversary, but it's still full of horrible boss fights. I don't know how far you are into Lost Sword, but if you're starting to hit 200+ wait until you fight Lisa and friends (Lisa deserved better costume-wise), Flame Emperor, Xp Chicken of Doom, or Vortigern (I dropped the game after the first Vortigern fight). It's a shitty idle game trying to be a skill-based game like FGO. I think half of the shills still pushing that slop of a game are using some kind of cheat hack to beat the content.

Speaking of stories: another problem is that how am I supposed to care about these live-service stories when a.) they constantly change on a whim and refuse to commit to the theme they presented themselves with on day 1, b.) add more shit into the mix all while trying to juggle between characters/concepts/story arcs from the past to their newly created OCs and c.) actually end the goddamn story. Everytime I hear from someone how a gacha story is supposed to be good and I see that it is STILL unfinished, my immediate thought is:

If you can't end the story on a high note, let alone GIVE IT A CONCLUSION, then that story should have been rewritten from day fucking one.

One thing I loved about Illusion Connect was the story expanded beyond the main plot. After the MC stops Belial from sacrificing everybody and you beat Seiger and Oburous, you had events that show what happened during or after the final battle with Seiger. In some of the events, you had characters grow from bottom-feeder Rares/Super Rares to Ultra Rares (Sadly, you had to pull for the URs because they were separate charcters).

 

[WULULULULU]

skill-based game like FGO

>skill-based
>FGO
Pick one.

 

[Level99Manchild]

>skill-based
>FGO
Pick one.

I remember FGO required you to time some of your attacks and spells back when I played it. Raid required you to think about your formations if you wanted to beat some of the mid-endgame content.

 

[Celebrate Nite]

wait until you fight Lisa

I did, she was my biggest annoyance of them all. I think I had to be like 20+ levels before I could even reach the end of her gigantic health bar without instant-dying. Baylin was also a "WTF" moment because she's only a purple rank but her CPU version just completely wipes you out.

The timer in this game is fucking annoying too. It continues to count down during long attack animations after wiping out a batch of enemies before moving to the next one. Shit should stay paused until the next batch of enemies show up.

They should also have an archive system like Nikke has where you can go back to past event stories because Lost Sword has a fuckton of them and unless you've been with the game from the beginning, you're going to be completely lost regarding what happens and who these characters are in the first place.

 

[Level99Manchild]

I did, she was my biggest annoyance of them all. I think I had to be like 20+ levels before I could even reach the end of her gigantic health bar without instant-dying. Baylin was also a "WTF" moment because she's only a purple rank but her CPU version just completely wipes you out.

Lisa by herself is nothing when you have to fight her, Anissa, and Rowena at the same time. Vortigen is even worse.