I would argue that FGO is more cool guys right now than cute girls...
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"I spent $1000 Buying Waifus in Gacha Games" by Gigguk (An examination of playing Gacha Games)
- Thread starter Chasing
- Start date
I would argue that FGO is more cool guys right now than cute girls...
It's honestly super interesting to me to watch all the ways these games try to bilk money out of a community that is generally quite aware of their bullshit. You've got the boring pea brain version where they release progressively bullshit powercreep units you need to spend for or else you get stomped by whales in PVP, looking at you Fire Emblem. Or more reasonable monetization like Arknights which is mainly about energy refreshes and skins. Or the true galaxy brain, Fate Grand Order where gameplay doesn't matter and it guilt trips you into rolling by having tearful goodbyes at the end of 20+ hour long story chapters.
I really wish Arknights wasn't a gacha game, because the core gameplay is actually one of the best tower defense games I've played, trading traditional min-maxing for units with clearly defined roles and interesting abilities, and maps that require interesting but also sensible solutions to beat.
Sadly, the gacha nature of it does kind of bring it down. Well, not really the gacha itself, but rather the GAAS event focused model and the absurd grind. Just for the most obvious example: the game has a special challenge mode where you get a standard tower defense map, and then you get a bunch of different modifiers that make the game harder, like giving all enemies 100% more damage. And it's honestly pretty fun seeing how many modifiers you can stack without losing. But this mode is tied to a limited time event, meaning that by the end of this week it will be gone from the game (at least until they bring the event back, however long that will take).
The video goes somewhat into this, but this whole event focused nature gets really draining after a while. There were game I've played where in order to maximize event rewards, you'd literally have to play them like 8 hours per day every single day for 2 weeks straight. And since those were one time rewards that will never be available in the game ever again, some people actually felt like they needed to do that.
Plus, it means you can only really play a single game at a time without the genre completely taking over your life, which I guess is sort of the point.
Funnily enough, the actual gacha systems aren't even the worst part. Although of course, all of these elements are hardly limited to just mobile games these days, what with Destiny moving most of its focus to time limited seasons and so on.
Another thing that kind of needs to be said is that not every gacha game is the same. Some, like various rhythm games, you can pretty much just treat as standard games and get a ton of value for free (like hundreds of songs all playable without paying a cent), with gacha being literally just for pictures with almost no effect on gameplay. On the other end of the spectrum, you just have generic grind-fests with no interesting gameplay that exist solely to take all your money. The video highlights FGO's 1% drop rates as being a big deal, but I once played a game where the f2p gacha had a drop rate of 0.1% for the highest rarity units (only by paying real money could you go up to 1%). And I don't even play a lot of these, so presumably there's even worse offenders out there.
Sadly, the gacha nature of it does kind of bring it down. Well, not really the gacha itself, but rather the GAAS event focused model and the absurd grind. Just for the most obvious example: the game has a special challenge mode where you get a standard tower defense map, and then you get a bunch of different modifiers that make the game harder, like giving all enemies 100% more damage. And it's honestly pretty fun seeing how many modifiers you can stack without losing. But this mode is tied to a limited time event, meaning that by the end of this week it will be gone from the game (at least until they bring the event back, however long that will take).
The video goes somewhat into this, but this whole event focused nature gets really draining after a while. There were game I've played where in order to maximize event rewards, you'd literally have to play them like 8 hours per day every single day for 2 weeks straight. And since those were one time rewards that will never be available in the game ever again, some people actually felt like they needed to do that.
Plus, it means you can only really play a single game at a time without the genre completely taking over your life, which I guess is sort of the point.
Funnily enough, the actual gacha systems aren't even the worst part. Although of course, all of these elements are hardly limited to just mobile games these days, what with Destiny moving most of its focus to time limited seasons and so on.
Another thing that kind of needs to be said is that not every gacha game is the same. Some, like various rhythm games, you can pretty much just treat as standard games and get a ton of value for free (like hundreds of songs all playable without paying a cent), with gacha being literally just for pictures with almost no effect on gameplay. On the other end of the spectrum, you just have generic grind-fests with no interesting gameplay that exist solely to take all your money. The video highlights FGO's 1% drop rates as being a big deal, but I once played a game where the f2p gacha had a drop rate of 0.1% for the highest rarity units (only by paying real money could you go up to 1%). And I don't even play a lot of these, so presumably there's even worse offenders out there.
You didn't bring up the biggest and best of all.
RAID: SHADOW LEGENDS
All that needs to be said really. Sad stuff, think of the hours it takes to earn the money spent on these things... Woof.
The fact that this works hurts. I actually almost cried at the end of the latest guda guda when Okita Alter was crying. That fucking ost they use EVERY SINGLE TIME still gives me the feels.
I bet you that I spent maybe...$400 on PAD? When you're young and dumb and don't know any better you just fling cash at the wall to see what sticks.
I have the same issue with F2P games as well. How are people going to feel about the money they spent on skins in Fortnite once the game servers close? Or any game with battle passes really? The immediate gratification is fine, but just wait till you're trying to save for a home or have a huge bill to pay and you could have saved that money or put it toward something else.
Who are you to decide how people spend their money? I'd never spend it myself but if people are getting enjoyment out of it its no different than spending it on any other hobby or computer game. "Think of the hours it takes to earn the money spent on these things" applies to literally every game discussed on this site. Videogames are a luxury passtime its embarrassing seeing people try to shame others because they spent money on a genre they dont rate.
I mean come on "Wait till you're trying to buy a house, WHERE WILL YOUR WAIFUS BE THEN?!" The same place your Steam backlog is, or all those trips to the movies, or books, or your iTunes library - filed under luxury expenditures.
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You mention it yourself with Destiny but time-limited and daily stuff definitely isn't restricted to F2P or mobile games. It's in everything now...games all want you to ONLY be playing that game. Forever. That's why I appreciate Arknights, because it has that daily engagement but respects your time.
Contingency Contract taken in the context of a gacha game event is brilliant. If you're good enough you can bang out the daily challenge in a single efficient run instead of grinding for god knows how many hours to clear out the event shop. Limited-time events are part of the genre's DNA but I agree it'd be cool if they had a persistent mode that uses the contract concept. At any rate I take my time with Arknights and when I feel like tackling challenging content there's always a stage ready for me to mess with, or an old recorded run to optimize with new units.
Was interesting to see how prominent it was in the video, and got a good laugh at his results at trying to whale on it. It's basically the only gacha I'd earnestly recommend to someone, though I guess you'd burn through all the content fast if it was your only game.
Arknights is probably one of the more satisfying mobile gaming experiences out there, and while you do need to be active when events are running because they shower you with resources, you don't really have to be a spender in order to progress if you are planning to be invested for a long while.
Gachas that don't have any fun gameplay elements and are pure jpeg collectors are trash though.
Gachas that don't have any fun gameplay elements and are pure jpeg collectors are trash though.
I watched this last night. fun video.
Are Fate's drop rates really that bad? Or was he unlucky?
It's crazy that he spent $400 for one character. And that character wasn't even max rarity.
Are Fate's drop rates really that bad? Or was he unlucky?
It's crazy that he spent $400 for one character. And that character wasn't even max rarity.
One thing I really love about DFFOO is just how much permenant content there is.
Nearly every event in the game is directly tied to a new character, and is temporary for the time that character is able to be gained. However, months later, the event's contents (minus the co-op) are brought back permenantly as a "Lost Chapter," allowing you to peruse it's toughest fights at your leasure. That's 50+ Lost Chapters playable, with more every month! And that's not counting the Story Chapters either!
A big part of DFFOO is taking on tough bosses with unique mechanics, that require different characters working together to defeat, though many of even the toughest fights only need proper composition of your Favorite characters.
There is even a community run video submission challenge called the TCC Challenge (the crystal chronicles, a dffoo podcast), where the most broken and relevant characters are banned, requiring players to play creatively with their other characters. It's a total blast, and really highlights how flexable and fully viable the cast of the game is!
If you want a gatcha that respects your time, is very generous, has nearly every character be viable for any content at a high level, and has plenty of fun and difficult permenant content, DIssidia Final Fantasy: Opera Omnia is the best game you can hope for!
Like I said, always know your limit, though it's very easy to get what you want in Opera Omnia for free with Some restraint and planning.
Nearly every event in the game is directly tied to a new character, and is temporary for the time that character is able to be gained. However, months later, the event's contents (minus the co-op) are brought back permenantly as a "Lost Chapter," allowing you to peruse it's toughest fights at your leasure. That's 50+ Lost Chapters playable, with more every month! And that's not counting the Story Chapters either!
A big part of DFFOO is taking on tough bosses with unique mechanics, that require different characters working together to defeat, though many of even the toughest fights only need proper composition of your Favorite characters.
There is even a community run video submission challenge called the TCC Challenge (the crystal chronicles, a dffoo podcast), where the most broken and relevant characters are banned, requiring players to play creatively with their other characters. It's a total blast, and really highlights how flexable and fully viable the cast of the game is!
If you want a gatcha that respects your time, is very generous, has nearly every character be viable for any content at a high level, and has plenty of fun and difficult permenant content, DIssidia Final Fantasy: Opera Omnia is the best game you can hope for!
Like I said, always know your limit, though it's very easy to get what you want in Opera Omnia for free with Some restraint and planning.
I can't say I mind spending $$$ on gacha games.
FGO has been my most played game since 2017, by far. The amount of time I put into it and will continue to do so makes it worth it.
Like, the content in that game is great and there's always new stuff coming out every month~
The money I saved by not purchasing other games and electronics hardware (~$3.5k) since then was instead funneled into the game, lol
FGO has been my most played game since 2017, by far. The amount of time I put into it and will continue to do so makes it worth it.
Like, the content in that game is great and there's always new stuff coming out every month~
The money I saved by not purchasing other games and electronics hardware (~$3.5k) since then was instead funneled into the game, lol
The thing about FGO is it has no 'pity' system that later games in the genre adopted. For example in Epic Seven you can be pure F2P and get every single new gacha character if you play smart, since at most you'll only need 120 rolls to get them and it hands out rolls liberally (moonlight variants notwithstanding). Arknights has an invisible pity counter in the background and you'll get a 6* after...I forget how many rolls but it's not too bad.
FGO is nothing but you against the RNG. And he says it's 1% in the video, but that's 1% for a 5 star. For the rate-up character, it's actually something like 0.70%. This makes it both a pit of despair and the most exciting gacha to roll on out of all the games of this type I've played. As an example, I originally started the game at its launch in summer 2017 and saved every single possible roll, playing only with my starter Servants, all the way until Halloween. I forget how many rolls total it was but it was probably around 150-200 between tickets and quartz? And I blew it. Completely. No Tamamo. So I started a new account with her, immediately rolled a SECOND one, and it's been EX luck since then. But possibly failing and rerolling was always part of the plan. Still hurt though.
I'm kind of glad I had a bad whale/dolphin experience with Fire Emblem Heroes which gave me the mental fortitude to know when to fold 'em. Else who knows what kind of poor decisions I'd have made on FGO.
As a player, yes, they're that bad.
But for the banner he rolled on in particular you have to understand that three 4* characters share the rate-up status: Astolfo, Siegfried, and Fran.
The odds of rolling ANY 4* Servant is 3% and 2.1% if it's on a banner. So considering that it's shared between THREE characters that is a 0.7% to pull Asotolfo.
That is about the same as pulling the rate-up 5* character.
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It's worth noting though that there is barely any powercreep in FGO, and most if not all SR and SSR have no need for more than one copy.
Also there's literally zero cost or downsides in gameplay for the friend support system that let's you borrow servants from other players. In fact you can't NOT borrow support servants except for very rare story missions. The despair comes almost exclusively by the attachment players have to the characters instead of gameplay reasons.
This video was very informative...and scary to me, lol. I've been looking forward to, obsessed would actually come closer to it, the upcoming Genshin Impact. Its world, characters, visuals and music are just so beautiful.
It'll be my first gacha game. Lord, please give me the strength to not become addicted and not to get into debt. D:
Genshin Impact that I mentioned above. Even though lovingly mocked by many as "Breath of the Waifu" it actually features cute waifus and husbandos in equal measure.
It'll be my first gacha game. Lord, please give me the strength to not become addicted and not to get into debt. D:
Genshin Impact that I mentioned above. Even though lovingly mocked by many as "Breath of the Waifu" it actually features cute waifus and husbandos in equal measure.
I watched this yesterday. It's pretty relevant to me since I'm interested in trying Granblue Fantasy. I've played Brave Frontier before so I'm not entirely new to Gacha, but BF was pretty adamant about farming for SSR units and I was pleasantly surprised to see that modern Gacha has...somewhat...alleviated that pressure.
I'm always fed up of people saying games like Dragalia are "friendly" because they give away a lot of free currency. Even saying it in a relative kind of way, you're still hand waving the realities of the gacha game experience for addicts.
Gacha games are INSANELY predatory, period. It doesn't matter if they give away funny money all day long. The point of the free shit is to keep you playing and eventually suss money out of you. People legitimately get addicted to these games and they feature zero spending limits. Straight up; unless a gacha game has hard spending limits, the game is completely unethical and it's infuriating to see people cape for casinos with friendly anime faces attached to them. I once got to read a game design document for a F2P title at a AAA company I worked at, and the doc legitimately contained one and a half pages on strategy for getting and keeping whales. It should be telling that gacha game forums and subreddits are filled with accounts of people overspending, getting unlucky and feeling miserable. It's fucking disgusting. Stop playing gacha games.
Gacha games are INSANELY predatory, period. It doesn't matter if they give away funny money all day long. The point of the free shit is to keep you playing and eventually suss money out of you. People legitimately get addicted to these games and they feature zero spending limits. Straight up; unless a gacha game has hard spending limits, the game is completely unethical and it's infuriating to see people cape for casinos with friendly anime faces attached to them. I once got to read a game design document for a F2P title at a AAA company I worked at, and the doc legitimately contained one and a half pages on strategy for getting and keeping whales. It should be telling that gacha game forums and subreddits are filled with accounts of people overspending, getting unlucky and feeling miserable. It's fucking disgusting. Stop playing gacha games.
Finally finished watching the video and I agree with everything he says, and I don't have much to add. I do
Really the best piece of advice for any player is to NEVER spend money on a gacha title regardless of size/rewards given. Those "starter bundles/$5 monthly packs" are nothing more flood gate openers for mental justification to start spending when the character you want comes around.
Really the best piece of advice for any player is to NEVER spend money on a gacha title regardless of size/rewards given. Those "starter bundles/$5 monthly packs" are nothing more flood gate openers for mental justification to start spending when the character you want comes around.
HAHAHA so fucking true, the FGO writers really do know how to tug on dem heart strings... It worked on me with Melt for sure. (I planned on pulling for Okita Alter before going through her story anyways.)
This guy's gonna single handedly fund the next fire emblem game if it means he gets his sword wielding husbandos
After over 3 years and more than $15k, I'm essentially done with Fire Emblem Heroes
I say "essentially", because I will probably still log in here and there (like I do in Epic Seven, Fate/Grand Order, and Brave Frontier), and maybe even spend a bit if like I get a guaranteed character I want, but like I haven't even logged in for over a week. But yeah, Fire Emblem Heroes is...www.resetera.com
Damn, im so glad that i built a strong imunity against this kind of monetization. The only games i play on mobile are actually all of them gacha games, but if i notice the game is not balaced to be fair to F2P players, then i move to another game. I havent spent a cent in years of playing gacha games.
I love gacha games. Also, gacha games are incredibly predatory. I don't mind spending money on them because I have the money to spend on my hobbies. I feel for those folks who spend money they don't have and get into trouble financially because of it.
I never understood the argument that gameplay doesn't matters in FGO and you can clear the content anyway. That pretty much applies to most modern gacha games, maybe mostly that happens on the really old and the bad gacha games that end up closing anyway. For some setups you absolutely do need the SSR. Double Skadi and double Nero Bride with their respective sweeper (Achilles, Dantes, Berskerlot for quick and Jeanne Summer, Musashi Zerker, etc) are some of the most nasty setups on the game.
You could be the player that takes 7-9 turns and lots of skill activations to finish the quest or you could be the player that takes 3 turns and still brings 5 event/bond CEs. For the equivalent it applies for like in Granblue Fantasy you could finish a raid potentially in 20 turns or it could take you 10 turns depending of the setup which can be dependant on gacha characters and weapons. Getting the characters that give you the functions, at the end of the day rolling the gacha is mostly about QoL not just clearing content.
You could be the player that takes 7-9 turns and lots of skill activations to finish the quest or you could be the player that takes 3 turns and still brings 5 event/bond CEs. For the equivalent it applies for like in Granblue Fantasy you could finish a raid potentially in 20 turns or it could take you 10 turns depending of the setup which can be dependant on gacha characters and weapons. Getting the characters that give you the functions, at the end of the day rolling the gacha is mostly about QoL not just clearing content.
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Thanks for the explanations.
I have only played FE:Heroes, Dragalia Lost, and Epic Seven, so I had no idea. The pity systems really do help a ton.
I have only spent ~$11 between FE and Epic 7. I didn't get Christmas Tharja, but at least I got Dizzy lol.
It's a bit hard for me to believe someone telling me the games are actually fun and good when they elsewhere describe it as a part time job and timesink. That's not how I would ever describe games I really enjoy playing, even ones that require an insane amount of time to complete. It sounds like what he's saying is the first time you run missions is fun, but it's very not-fun when you mindlessly run the mission back dozens of times with OP waifus for the 1% drop rate. I dunno, I still wouldn't call that game fun.
When I say it doesn't matter in regards to 'clearing the content' I mean clearing the story, which is FGO's main draw. I myself have an NP5 level 100 Rider Mordred along with Tamamo/Nero Bride which is great since I have no time to actually pay attention to FGO nowadays. But creating easy farming setups is nowhere near the kind of pressure you get from PVP-focused gacha games. I don't even clear rerun events anymore because it's too much work for a game that hasn't had an actual challenge other than Nerofest Hassan.
I'll roll for Skadi, and I'd love to use her with my NP4 berserkalot, but I'm about as stressed about that as I was for Merlin. Which is to say not at all. Arash/Spartacus 4ever
This conversation is like reading another language I never learned.
I won't go into details, but believe me when I say it that it's just the tip of the iceberg. A ton of working hours are spent designing, testing, tweaking/adjusting, and reviewing strategies and their game implementation for that sole purpose. Even stuff like "pity systems" are made/implemented for the sole reason to open the floodgates for spending.
I mean...shouldn't need to be said that people find different things fun. I personally find the Assassin's Creed series or most modern AAA open world games exactly as interesting as watching paint dry. The gacha games I play are heavily systems-based. Managing your resources over long periods of time, engaging with the community, and building up your roster is quite satisfying. It's a similar feeling to playing an MMO but I don't have to sit around in a raid for 20 hours a week.
FGO is an odd man out because the gameplay kinda sucks outside of the rare challenge quest. But the story is incredibly elaborate. They just dropped a new chapter and I'm far more hyped to play through that than any 'real' games right now.
hold on I have to 10/10/10 all my SSRs and finish grailing the Tamamos
but yeah as much as I can get into jargon with the mmos/gacha games I play I still think it's funny when my roommate goes into Path of Exile-speak and I have no idea wtf he's saying. Or the Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes guy at work who is unintelligible sometimes.
I've never felt the pressure on the gacha games that have PvP elements because the rewards are generally meager. "Oh no I lost some feathers and some orbs worth one roll in FEH", "Oh no I lost some crystals in Granblue when they are about to give a hundred rolls in a roulette and with a spark system in place", "Oh no I lost some extra copies that don't even have a gameplay function these days in an idol in Starlight Stage". Personally having the setups has actually affected me more in games like FGO where there are absolute grindfests like Summer Servantfest, Lotteries, Valentine ladders and now having the teams to maximize the bond/event CEs has been far more consequential.
It would probably matter if they actually locked exclusive characters behind a certain ranking of the PvP element that wouldn't be solved with more grind and given only to a certain amount of players in the top. Kind of like tha Riyo comic that joked about an horrible sceneario with the exclusive SSR in a competition. One of the last funny and gameplay related Riyo comics along with Liz getting locked underground since she had no more bond points to extract.
I've played several gachas since Fire Emblem Heroes and I've since dropped all of them (except for FEH) because the timesink is just too much. That part of the video where he wakes at 9AM and finishes daily content at 1AM is just way too true and I agree with him that it's something that people don't talk about much when talking about gachas. The amount of time they ask of the player to keep "updated" is insane. Luckily, FEH is very light on time it requires which is why I've kept playing for years.
There's one aspect that the video that didn't mention and it's how gachas also prey with competitive modes (which I assume the ones he tried didn't have?). For example, Fire Emblem Heroes has 2 big PvP modes and a few modes that are PvE but feature score rankings to make players compete (also, higher rankings usually give rare stuff as rewards). Then, they attempt to make players pull by releasing heroes that perform better in these modes or even releasing heroes that directly raise your score, which is essentially "pay 2 score higher".
There's one aspect that the video that didn't mention and it's how gachas also prey with competitive modes (which I assume the ones he tried didn't have?). For example, Fire Emblem Heroes has 2 big PvP modes and a few modes that are PvE but feature score rankings to make players compete (also, higher rankings usually give rare stuff as rewards). Then, they attempt to make players pull by releasing heroes that perform better in these modes or even releasing heroes that directly raise your score, which is essentially "pay 2 score higher".
Hell no. Dragalia Lost might not incentivize spending very much (which is part of why it's kind of dying a slow, slow death) but it sure as hell demands FUCKTONS of your time. So much so that it was the main reason I quit, besides the fact that the rate-ups are ACTUAL LIES. 0.5% for the rate-up unit, are you serious? It's even lower than FGO. Sure, you get like ten times as much pull currency as you do on FGO, but you still have to lucksack like crazy to get the units you want. For newer players this is all fine because you'll still get a bunch of 5*s anyway, but for long-term players it just turns into a pile of utterly worthless eldwater and at that point it's just completely failed as a gacha.
That's not even getting into Gala units. Tiered gacha nonsense should never be entertained.
I mean WoW players have had this attitude for over a decade. It's not a gacha by any means, but it's a huge time sink that is also fun to play.
Personally, I don't mind spending $$$ in gacha. It sucks when you don't get the character you want, but when you do? Maaaaaaan the pop offs...
That makes a lot of sense to me but doesn't change much. People were spending huge money playing games like FarmVille on Facebook years ago and many of these people hadn't really played any traditional video games. Some of the most popular mobile games of the last decade I look at it as something I would never do when I could just play God of War, Halo, Zelda, etc.
A lot of people eat at McDonald's despite many people thinking plenty of far superior restaurants exist.
Only time I ever spent money on a Gacha was when it was literally just porn.
Still, I remember how much I grinded and optimized summoning currency on Epic Seven just to get Luna when she popped the first time. So worth the headache and slacking off in the office so I could get 100-120 pulls just to get that 100% chance.
Still, I remember how much I grinded and optimized summoning currency on Epic Seven just to get Luna when she popped the first time. So worth the headache and slacking off in the office so I could get 100-120 pulls just to get that 100% chance.
He wasn't sugarcoating. He set for himself a budget which means he is less predisposed to feeling the full effects of the tactics.
More importantly he unluckily ended up choosing 2 games that simply aren't as exploitative as others so when it came time to spend less time on this research because he had to move one to make new videos he couldn't even spend all of the money in his budget.
So, basically, by the time you consider spend money on that, you will already be playing all the time anyway and having fun, and there is not really content you will be missing from not paying. And there is enough information on your odds even before you set to get what you want.
And even here multiple people saying they played, payed, and moved on.
Sounds like most people playing those games is just have fun and just a small minority is dangerous addicted to it. Just like gaming in general, if you ask me.
And even here multiple people saying they played, payed, and moved on.
Sounds like most people playing those games is just have fun and just a small minority is dangerous addicted to it. Just like gaming in general, if you ask me.