One weird gatcha game

[Paulodigital777]

Well I am in the sea of deep mission, but when I can use the valkiries I have again? just spend enough "puzzles" to make A into a S rank and wanted to use my burn team on the story, i know that have sidecontent but feels weird on the field, guess is a bit like of a wood baseball bat use one and gonna be suprise by the weight of a steel one

[Meowish]

In most of the Honkai series games, they focused more on the Story telling and made lore and such their top priority. So the dev wanted to make sure every player is able to continue and finish the story without the need of level/rank/gear grinding. It's their way to guarantee that the game story isn't locked behind the pay and grind wall. That's why you can always find "Trail" versions of the valk in the game during certain challenge or open world area. And during story mode they provide the valkyrie you should be using (not too strong, not too weak, just right for the story telling). They do let you use your own valkyries in the challenge stages (those marked with EX) in the story mode. But those are stages that isn't directly connected to the main story and can be skipped.

The team building part is more for the pvp challenges. Although we can't directly fight other players, there is pvp in this game, and that's the time ranking where you get better rewards with better rank. That's where the "pay to win" system of this game kicks in. But the dev made it sure it's optional and players may opt to go for Story only or opt to join the challenge in the rankings at their own free will.

[Paulodigital777]

Ok get the most of it but i heard of a review saying star rail is a mix of genshin with third impact the first one give your freedom to use whatever but you need to grind materials thats false?

[Meowish]

Originally posted by Paulodigital777:

Ok get the most of it but i heard of a review saying star rail is a mix of genshin with third impact the first one give your freedom to use whatever but you need to grind materials thats false?

Mix as in both Genshin and HSR shared the "RPG" genre and looks a-like in the graphic engine. And the similarity ends there. The rest of the "basic" rules such like buffs and debuffs and certain skill effects are inherited from HI3rd. In short, HSR is basically just HI3rd with the battle system changed to turn based encounter, the rest of the game operates the same.

If one must use another game to describe HSR, Nier Re[in]carnation is the best one that fits. They are both very similar in gacha/upgrade system, team building and story telling style.

As for the "grind materials". You are playing a Chinese made Gacha game that is "free to play", so "anti-grind" is to be expected. This means you can't really "grind" in these games, they don't allow grinding (by their government law). You need to wait for the "timer" to reset before you can do anything further, the only fast way to get materials is buying them with real cash, so yeah, that's why i said if you are into the challenge/pvp part of these games, it's Pay to Win zone. Plus, they sell to Korea as well so the "Stamina" system (fatigue system) is required by law from the Korean government. That's why you see both in this game.

The difference between a "Grind-fest" game and "Anti-grind" game is actually pretty huge. In a grind-fest game, free players is allowed to win over paid players as long as they spend a tremendous time on grinding, and grinding is not restricted, meaning they can play all day long 24/7 just to gain a hold over paid players using grind alone. In an anti-grind game however, you can't grind all day long, and the materials and items drops you can get per day is limited for free players. This means free players can never over take paid players in the design even if they spend a huge amount of time "grinding", with the daily anti-grind limit, they can never catch up.

A good grind-fest gacha game (normally those MMO made in Japan) doesn't restrict your game play time and allowed addiction to happen. Yes, it's unhealthy if you don't know how to control yourself. A good example on the mobile based game will be Alchemia Story, you are literally allowed to grind the game all day long until your inventory burst of items.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2208530/Alchemia_Story/

[valera-wrx]

Originally posted by Paulodigital777:

Ok get the most of it but i heard of a review saying star rail is a mix of genshin with third impact the first one give your freedom to use whatever but you need to grind materials thats false?

It depends on the part of the story, in some parts you are allowed to use your own characters (mostly parts with mini-open world), and in others you cant.
Dont listen guy above, he is lore-enthusiast, but lore and story while important as they give "soul" to the game, game's "body" is still core gameplay - gacha and intense combat.
Gameplay wise game is very different both from genshin and star rail, those are more like open world RPG, while HI3 is closer to the action game. Most fights in the story are too trivial, and thus easy and boring, while fights in regular "competetive" modes are vice versa pretty hard and demanding if you want to have high score. (and even if you dont want high score, they still will require a lot of effort unless you have multiple fully built meta teams, which is.. expensive)
In terms of grind there will be so many regular activities, that you more likely would complain about abundance of grind then lack of it :D

[Paulodigital777]

Originally posted by valera-wrx:

Originally posted by Paulodigital777:

Ok get the most of it but i heard of a review saying star rail is a mix of genshin with third impact the first one give your freedom to use whatever but you need to grind materials thats false?

It depends on the part of the story, in some parts you are allowed to use your own characters (mostly parts with mini-open world), and in others you cant.
Dont listen guy above, he is lore-enthusiast, but lore and story while important as they give "soul" to the game, game's "body" is still core gameplay - gacha and intense combat.
Gameplay wise game is very different both from genshin and star rail, those are more like open world RPG, while HI3 is closer to the action game. Most fights in the story are too trivial, and thus easy and boring, while fights in regular "competetive" modes are vice versa pretty hard and demanding if you want to have high score. (and even if you dont want high score, they still will require a lot of effort unless you have multiple fully built meta teams, which is.. expensive)
In terms of grind there will be so many regular activities, that you more likely would complain about abundance of grind then lack of it :D

i did skipped the fall honkay girls mostly

[Meowish]

Originally posted by valera-wrx:

In terms of grind there will be so many regular activities, that you more likely would complain about abundance of grind then lack of it :D

Nope you can not "grind" in a Chinese made game. Period. Their Anti-Grind design prevents players from grinding. The "Grind" most people mentioned in these games are "coming back everyday to do a little bit of these and that", not the real grind old school MMO players are experiencing.

HI3rd do have events and stages that you can play unlimitedly. But the "rewards" are limited. Once you collected all the rewards your time spent on the rest of the "grind" is simply a waste since they give 0 rewards from there.

A real grind fest games let you grind 24/7 without stopping (no restrictions in rewards and drops farming) and those games allows you to Win over the paid players from your time spent on grinding alone. On the contrary, Anti-Grind games simply will not allow a free players to over take a paid player, a newbie paid player can easily over take a veteran free player by paying.

HI3rd, HSR, Genshin... they all share this "pay to win" design when it comes to materials "grinding". The anti-grind prevents free players from getting more than X amount of materials per day. While the paid players can either "buy" the materials from the cash store or get a bunch of them easily from the gacha. So there's no way a free player can be stronger than a paid player, even when they "grind" the game for years with that anti-grind design. New contents and new released characters are designed with power creeps, meaning newbie paid players can always easily catch up by owning the maxed out most recently released characters.

As the good old saying goes, a good online game will try to take care of both the free and paid players.
In miHoYo's case, they let the free players enjoy all the story without the need of team building ("grind") and provide "Trails" characters for use in their games. Paid players on the other hand are given the challenge part of the games where they can compete with each others on the scores (the pvp part of the game) via team building and gear/rank upgrading. Also note that paid players do not need to grind materials due to those comes easily from gacha or cash store, the only thing we need grinding is the achievements in the game and badges. It's also worth noting that even the pvp content's rewards (other than the badges and achievements) are not appealing to paid players because those also comes easily from paying and only acts as a slight "bonus" in compare to the materials we get from the gacha/shop. So in short, both the "free" and "paid" contents doesn't really require "grinding" in these games. But the "grind" is there, as an unfair system for free players who try to get into the paid zone. Both paid and free players share a common trait though, and that's the "waiting" part of the game, anti-grind, anti-addict measurement is there to "prolong" the game life/play time. Paid players can not own everything instantly, we still need to wait for certain "cool down timer" before we can buy more stuffs as well as wait for certain characters/gear/stigmata to show up in the gacha. So while anti-grind design is stopping free players from grinding the game, it forces the paid players to "grind" the game by waiting for the cool down timers to reset. In short, both free and paid players will be "waiting for reset" when they play these games, we don't really "grind" the game, we "wait for reset".

As for players who tried to trick themselves into believing "I am only here for the game play because it's good." Is only trying to fool themselves and try to be blind to the fact that they are playing on an unfair system that doesn't allow them to get "ready" for the fun part of the game until they paid up a bunch of money or waited for months to years for the anti-grind reset to finally give them enough materials to be able to "play" the game "normally". Yes, you start with abnormal getup until you get to the correct milestone of the game, where you get enough materials to finally upgrade enough of your character to be able to play the game normally. How in the world can these be considered a "good game play"? In truth, we can easily get far more fun and fair game play of the same genre from those off-line games. For those who loves "grinding" in games, there are much fairer games that lets you grind and own everything, like those from NISA (Disgaea series) and Idea Factory (Neptunia series), where heavy endless grind is designed into their off-line games. Truth is, the "REAL" reason behind any online "gameplay", is the social part, aka "the bragging part" where you can brag on your prowess and how good you are at the game by showing your name in the pvp ranking. Or showing off a profile that says you own everything in the game. It's the "Show off" part that is the main "game play" in these games, the superior feeling that others go jealous on us when seeing the 1600~1700+ ATK Valkyries show off on our profile, make them envy of those SSS rank valkyries we have. And to show off, you need to be part of the paid community of the game. Being able to "Show Off" is the true "motive" that drives the players to continue "grinding" in these online games may it be materials or cosmetics, it's vanity that drives you to continue to endure those "wait for reset" timer... As for the free players, it's the delusion of "If i wait long enough, one day, i might be able to end up in the ranking...", but that can never happen in an anti-grind game, and old school real grind-fest games are getting fewer and fewer as more online games tried to sell to China, thus they need to comply with their gov law on anti-addiction, and anti-grind design ended up to be the best practical choice for the developers to get green light to be able to release their games in China.

But is Anti-Grind really anti-addiction? My answer is no, it's similar to the drug dealer nowadays imo, "If you want more, come back tomorrow and I'll fix you up nicely.", they don't sell you a sack of the white stuffs that may kill you instantly, they want to make sure you take a "healthy" portion of that white stuff and stay alive to come back for more... In the same perspective, Players are tied and committed into visiting the game daily due to those anti-grind timer reset design to get their "daily fix" of material "grind"... Korean Anti Fatigue design (Stamina) is even more tiresome, because low level players will need to revisit the game a few times a day to efficiently get and use all the available stamina... These are never a healthy design to start with, especially for free players. If you want to play a game in a healthy way without spending too much money, stay away from these and buy yourself a good grind-fest offline game that can last you years of game play time. If social is what you want, go out and have some out-door/out of your house activities with your friends. If you are handicapped and can't enjoy out door lives like a normal person, there are still way more healthier online social games than gacha games imo... just be mentally prepared that there may never be a fair place for "free players" online. Whenever a game labeled itself as "free", players are bound to get "pay to win" situations either via cosmetic show off, stat/gears show off or get compared with people who can buy their way to the top ranking, or worse, ads infested with ads popping up in every single action you take... A truly "free online game" doesn't exist, even in charity it's not a good business model and that ship is bound to flip and sink sooner or later, or forced to take on the pay to win approach to stay afloat... sad, but that's how the real world works. If you ask are there any real fair online games out there? The answer is yes, pay to play, everyone pays, everyone's equal. Even then, there will always be the "pay extra" to show off design, "We promise the stats and gears will always be fair, but we do sell nice looking cosmetics that comes without the stats"... Then again, there are certain pvp based online games out there that let you rob other players of their goods, including those they bought from the cash store... whether or not to call that a "fair game" is debatable...

Is there really no free online games that try to be fair to the free players? Well, there actually is, but super rare. And even then, it's still under a "conditional" based situation. Example, watch 5 ads to get 1 crystal token. This is particularly fair to both the dev and the free players, the dev still gets paid and the free players gets paid with in-game currency, a win-win situation as long as the ad-paid token is about the same price of the cash paid token. Some apps even go as generous as watch 50 ads to unlock the ad-free option, meaning you can "buy the game" by watching ads. But these are rare and few, most ads-fest games are built on greed, you don't get any compensation from watching too many ads, and the dev earns more than they deserves from the ads alone... And because the dev get paid whenever you watch an ads, even when they give you the "free" token in game as a
"reward", it can never be considered "free". Yes, it can be "fair", but not "free". And since there's no law to prevent them from abusing it, they do not need to be fair in the design at all, they can spam you with ads without giving you anything other than "letting you play the game for free" and still restrict you to anti-grind/stamina design just to bait you to spend real cash... the worst design ever.

[valera-wrx]

Meowish, I am not protecting Honkai's "grind" or "anti-grind system", it is pretty tiresome and hardly a good design. But thing is that if you want to level up new characters and gear (and of course pull in gacha) you must play HI3rd at least 1-2 hours per day every day. Sure in specific days, monday, tuesday, thursay, saturday you may spend 15 minutes in it, and most events can be delayed for weeks. But then you'll be forced to play more on wednesday, friday and sunday and end of the chapter will be pure hell where you will spent all your free time if you want to get all rewards and forced to play 2-3 events + story in parallel.

List of regular activities:
- daily activities - materials, expeditions, dorm farm, claims - mostly automated, but still will take 5 minutes to click over all of it, while closing various pop-up screens etc
- co-op - 1 or 2 times per week, roughly 1 hour combined (can be reset and grinded btw)
- adventure tasks - combined - roughly 1 hour per week - after you cleared them and 2+ hours if you are new, and if we take APHO/APHO2 it will be even more
- abyss - 2 times per week, roughly 1 hour per run if you want high score. If you want high score against new boss or with new team time spent easily goes for many hours per run due to learning and restarting
- elysian realm - 1 hour for all coins - when you are fully built. For newbies times harder and times more consuming
- universal mirage - roughly 30 minutes per week - maybe much longer for newbs
- sim battles+weekly quiz - roughly 30 minutes per week
- memorial arena - roughly 1 hour per week if you want good score - but much longer for newbs who didnt cleared SSS

As you can see you need to play AT LEAST 1 hour per day just for regular tasks.
Now add there story and events and you'll end up playing HI3rd at average 2 hours per day every f*cking day of your life which isnt far from MMORPG experience. If this isnt grind, I dont what it is. Especially for newbies, who also get that newbie schedule of various tasts with good rewards

[valera-wrx]

And I dont agree with you about show off. First of all nobody gives AF about your account unless you get involved into some "meta" discussion in chat plus your buddies from abyss roster may slilently check on you, but that's all.
Whale shaming exists, and you can "show off" your results only with off-weather or not 4/4/4 team, otherwise it is considered default to be in top3 RL or retain Nirvana when you have meta team for the boss and weather. And any SS on character for whom SS isnt farmable instantly disqualifies player's opinion, unless he is some youtuber.
The only real show off is something like "got new S-tier and all her gear in 50 pulls" - thats the only thing which will make people envy you and not your ATK, SS, elfs etc

Truth is that that amount of people with SS non farmable valks is pretty low, and SSS non farmable valks are owned by few dozens of hardcore whales. Just to have all meta teams with their gear you already need to be dolphin in case of experienced players, and newbs need to spend in whale proportions to get their teams up to snuff in reasonable time.

[Meowish]

Originally posted by valera-wrx:

As you can see you need to play AT LEAST 1 hour per day just for regular tasks.
Now add there story and events and you'll end up playing HI3rd at average 2 hours per day every f*cking day of your life which isnt far from MMORPG experience. If this isnt grind, I dont what it is. Especially for newbies, who also get that newbie schedule of various tasts with good rewards

Nope, I have nearly 20 SSS characters here but i only spend like less than 30mins on the game (unless i left it idle and busy with other stuffs) a day. You can do all the dailies (+weeklies) pretty fast imo.. the only one that takes a little more time will be ER (about 3 runs on the hardest setting and you should max the farm limit -- Also note that you can do it in multiple stages, you don't have to do it in one go). Most of the other dailies can be done as soon as you log in, provided that you are qualified for the Sweep/Lite options that finish those tasks in 1 click (including Open World Tasks). The Story tasks daily you can do it in the expedition a day before and simply turn in the moment you login, so basically all 600BP points for those free crystals can be done in just a few minutes.

Plus, with BP paladin I am getting quite a lot of extra ingredients without worrying about "farming" the game's "tiresome" event at all, and the other ingredients can be bought from the shop and the gacha, so hardcore farming isn't really required for paid players. The "cool down" period we get (yes, even paid players need to wait for reset/cycle) is far longer than those the free players are getting, so we can go absolute casual on things.

Remember that, we play games for enjoyment, not torture. If the game forces you to farm every single event/dailies and still doesn't give you enough materials for what you want, you're in the unfair zone of the game.

Originally posted by valera-wrx:

Truth is that that amount of people with SS non farmable valks is pretty low, and SSS non farmable valks are owned by few dozens of hardcore whales. Just to have all meta teams with their gear you already need to be dolphin in case of experienced players, and newbs need to spend in whale proportions to get their teams up to snuff in reasonable time.

Yup, thus the % achievement. And just about how low that % has given those with the achievement the rights to brag. You are playing a gacha game that comes with ranking competition, like it or not, even when you pretended it doesn't exist. PvP pay to win is there. And for a Chinese gacha game, normally it's not only pay to win, but "pay a lot to win". The competition isn't for the free players at all but happens among the paid players where free players are not even being considered. Ironically as it may sound, if a free player happened to ended up in the % ranking, that alone will trigger a series of "security checks" because the dev themselves do not believe that any fair play can put a free player in that list. And if it's true, a huge "nerf" will be coming on the next update...

And no, "Dolphin" is not among the top list, even with BP Paladin active for a few years, the best you can get is completing the sets and getting the valkyries unlocked, not getting them to SSS without doing the Whale. They are pretty stingy on the BP shop even for Paladin, the good part is extra materials and able to collect all the avatar frames, but that just it. The crystallite tokens are still very limited for Paladins, we can't buy everything that showed up in the season.

Dolphin is a "good choice" only if you compare it internally with the Whale's spending. Dolphin can get a valk and her set without the risk of gambling thru the BP at a cost of 10% or less compared to Whales on the gacha. Provided that he/she bought paladin for the whole season (4 times of version update).

And if we compare the money the Dolphin spent on the game, it's pretty easy to figure out even the Dolphin are getting the unfair treatment. They can get far far more fun with LESS money on games like FF14. Simply convert the price needed for Paladin vs the Subscription fee of FF14. And if one do it right and smart, 1 Paladin version in HI3rd can equal to 3 months of FF14 subscription. And if you put that money on any of the Steam Summer/Winter Sale... you will ended up with games that may last you a few years... or a back log of games list that's so long you can't even remember what games are there in your library... (That's one big reason Chinese Gacha Games do not have the same high population they do in China on their Global versions, there are far more better ways to spend our money than on a "pay a lot to win" game.)

[valera-wrx]

Meowish, idk, I listed activities and estimated times, with roughly 1 hour per day summarized over the week for experienced players. Sure if you will skip all of them which arent "lite" and which didnt bring you crystals plus wont aim for high scores you can reduce time required for repetetive tasks to 30 minutes or even less. But you still need to participate in events and play story, so time per day will be considerable.
And for newbs it will be times more if they will be clearing everything in parallel. I.e. your average newb can play game for many hours every day if he wont be wasting energy on expeditions.
Main story
Current story
ER story
Adventure tasks story
plus most of the things which I mentioned above + current events

If newb wants to grind the game, there will be always something to do. If your point is that unlike MMORPG you cant "farm" anything you want - true - you cant, but farm and grind while not mutually exclusive, are different things.

And it's not like MMORPG nowadays dont have paid shop with cosmetics and minor p2w items, which you cant farm and can only buy with real money or in best case by exchanging your in-game resources on black market with some lazy dude who will pay for you.

In terms of gacha worth over other games, obviously it is not worth when it comes to money. But if you use "time spent per entertainment" as factor instead of "money for enjoyment", you'll see why mobile games - gachas, mmorpgs, strategies, puzzles are so successful financially. Many people dont have much free time, but they can afford to trade some money for entertainment, and it's actual link to the real spending which makes all the crystals, resources more... satisfying.

I am not saying it is good thing, but irl world isnt good thing either as of late. People are under big stress, and if throwing 100$ in the screen for bunch of pixels helps them relieve this stress.. then there will be developers to provide such opportunity.

[Meowish]

Originally posted by valera-wrx:

Sure if you will skip all of them which arent "lite" and which didnt bring you crystals plus wont aim for high scores you can reduce time required for repetetive tasks to 30 minutes or even less. But you still need to participate in events and play story, so time per day will be considerable.

Yeah for Newbie that haven't done everything they will require a ton of time on the story. Especially the story since that's where the dev put the most work on. And each Arc has its own new rules to learn. While the rest of the dailies are simply repetitive tasks that runs on RNG rules, which can be super boring over time. While the story is basically built for 1 time play, only the 1st time clear gives a good amount of reward, so there's no need to "repeat" them. Which makes the story part far more interesting most of the time. But these are not "grind", they are simply "game play" due to they are not forcing the players to repeat these.

But for veterans, even the story and events are something that feels repetitive. They may change the rules of each arc but the similarities are there, they never jump out of that "collect" this, "unlock" that frame work... So normally we can easily finish the "new" story part the very same day it was released. The event too can be done on the day it released, especially when they limited the play time into multiple parts and only release parts of it in between a few days of "cool down time". We won't be able to do those events all day long anyway. And most Events, like the story, only give 1 time rewards, so they are not worth repeating. While those that do repeat are normally a 3 minutes max stages of x 2 daily clear limit. And when you have strong valkyries as support or basically know how to work on the rules, it won't even take 3 minutes to clear. It's also worth noting that these also comes with max reward limits, so as long as you gather enough rewards, there's no need to come back.

And due to these Anti-Grind design, they don't really cared much about "end game contents" because the daily stall is enough to slow down most players to a halt and prolong their game's life. Even when they kept adding new stuffs to keep things "fresh", they don't really care much about maintaining end game contents. Dorm is a good example, even when most part of the Dorm is pay to win (gacha relied unlock maximum stats thingy) that they did update at snail pace, the actual Dorm itself hasn't be updated for a long time other than them adding in new chibi along with new gacha, no furnitue update, no new dorm events for ages... heck, even Ai Chan's Home has been in "Christmas" theme for years.

And just as you said, we are not forced to play the event either and most are skip-able due to unattractive rewards. The free players might be thrown into a bliss of happiness for those events that reward free fragments... but... those A rank SP valk always comes with a cheap gacha during their release, with extra fragments rewards, so it's super easy to get them to SSS for paid players. Which makes these events not as attractive for the paid player compared to the free players who really needs those fragments for unlocking ranks. But it's not that we don't like free stuffs, extra fragments can still be used in the corridor shop for exchange for other fragments we don't have. But once you have completed most of the "useful" valk for your dream team, even that interest starts to dimmed out... When you've reached the end of the end game, the only reward in an event that interest us probably lies on the E-Token requires for Pri-Arm upgrades. The rest aren't that attractive at all tbh.

Especially for veterans that played the game for long enough, and the "special/unique" rewards like outfits start repeating in the event. The motivation to clear them really drops.

Originally posted by valera-wrx:

In terms of gacha worth over other games, obviously it is not worth when it comes to money. But if you use "time spent per entertainment" as factor instead of "money for enjoyment", you'll see why mobile games - gachas, mmorpgs, strategies, puzzles are so successful financially. Many people dont have much free time, but they can afford to trade some money for entertainment, and it's actual link to the real spending which makes all the crystals, resources more... satisfying.

That's why FF14 have a far far higher global population of all time compared to any of the miHoYo games. In fact, miHoYo games are ranked among the top played due to their Chinese population alone, their global population is... let's face it... petty. In the case of HI3rd, combining all servers of every Hoyoverse versions they have, they still don't reach the numbers of a single server in FF14... For Genshin Impact on the other hand, they win in the total world population by 65m compared to FF14's 42m. But then again, it's due to the Chinese population alone, and the fact that Chinese gamer has a hard time playing online games outside of their country makes a huge different in the count. But if you minus out the Chinese population... FF14 wins with an overwhelming numbers for global alone. -- And the biggest difference between these games is... FF14 is full of paid players, it's a pay to play game. While the rest of Hoyoverse games are free. 65m of free loaders with only 5% whale is their economy, while FF14 let players try the game out free (with level restriction), they need to buy the game, and then subscribe in order to play more (So i won't say there's no free players numbers in that 42m because I've seen free players with thousand of hours on record...). But in overall the player's "commitment" is way different imo.

As for spend satisfaction... the more you can buy with the same amount of money often wins, more over, that "more" part even comes with "better quality"... Why spend 100USD a month on a B rank game that may waste all that 100USD and gives you only junks, while you can spend 25USD a month on a AAA rank game for more play time and better (mature) community while using the rest of the 75USD for extra micro transactions on vanity stuffs? Surely the satisfaction level is far different.

Same amount of money you can buy a bunch of off-line games on the genre you like and sink your time in those games with pure satisfaction, as well as longer playtime in total, with no unfair rules. Yeah, not all games are great, and a large quantity of them may drives you sick of that genre. But the freedom is there as you can easily buy other genre's games with that money. From AAA titles to Indies, there's a bunch of gems to be discovered. Including those with way better story, way better game play, so good that HI3rd/HSR tries to copycat them.

Even when putting the same "Gacha Game" genre onto comparison, Chinese built simply has too many restriction compared to Japanese built. Eg. PSO2 where they try to be fair to free players by letting paid players sell them items they get from paying cash. Paid players can use those extra in game gold for stuffs like upgrading and such, while free players can "grind" their way to get the items they dream of. Open Trading is not always a bad thing, it promotes fairness in game. And in PSO2 case, Whale who gacha have tons of dups they need to get rid of, and selling them to players who needs them is a fair trade imo... free players who can't afford the gacha can simply play the game to buy those items, while dolphin on the other hand can aim for the items they want from these trades while spending their money on something else that promotes their game play experience. It's fair for everyone.

Well, if it's so good, why isn't this being used in other MMO? Why do other MMO forbids the trade of cash items? Why is RMT not allowed? Easy, inflation of the game currency do happens. And when the items are saturated in the market, players starts relying upon themselves and veterans only tries to buy from another player, which means less people (only newbie paid players) are left to buy and sell those shop/gacha items. And in a business eye, that's bad practice. When you have full control over a world, dictatorship can't be avoided when greed is counted into the decision making, why allow free trade when we can force all players to buy ONLY from the dev? No matter how pretty they decorated their reason to stop/prevent open trade in their game, the final reason always boils down to "Greed". And some openly sang the song "We need to squash RMT in our game! It's ruining the 'economy' of our game!"... And that leads to gamers think that something is wrong with the RMT other than their annoying in-game chat spam of their websites. And most players may have heard about RMT is forbidden "by law" and is illegal, but no one actually tells you why it's forbidden. Other than stories that kids who spend too much time on gaming are earning too much money that their parents lost control of them. Then again, everyone has heard of those pro-gamers who earn a living from gaming. So what's the law about? Well, the law forbids cash trading without a license, that simple. There are games and "exchange sites" that do possess a legitimate license for cash trading out there. Example "Second Life" has a currency called "Linden Dollar" that can be exchanged to real life cash, it has its own market value just like a real country's cash. Yeah, it's old, way before bitcoins and such showed up in later date. You can work and get paid inside that game, real work, there's even real schools (universities[wiki.secondlife.com]) from all over the world who have branches there. Real business with offices in there as well... you can open a shop of your own and sell your own creations, or sell your talent as a programmer, artist or musician... etc etc[marketplace.secondlife.com]... free trade. Well, let's not stray too far off, the example is just there to say RMT can be legal as long as those doing it possess the required license. Sites that don't are considered illegal by law, so they (the govs) are not actually against cash trade in games, but rather on the license thingy. The license itself ain't easy to obtain, because it can be turned into a "legal" online gambling business if not careful, and govs don't want that to pops up everywhere. SL before 2007 is a good example before they starts banning gambling within the virtual world.

And for players who don't have time to play, though i wanted to say it can never be a happy ending when you don't want to spend time on something. There actually are games out there that fine tuned for these types of players. This game[play.google.com] for example, can be fun to watch while we go busy with our RL stuffs, especially for gamer at heart who loves the sound of RPGs, letting the game play in the background alone is a pretty "soothing" experience.

[valera-wrx]

Meowish, I think you are overestimating amount of people interested in story. I didnt played FF14, but I played Elder Scrolls Online for several years and most of my guild buddies barely touched story content past what they played in the beginning plus quests required to open all maps. 90% of free time was spent in PVP or PVE raids. Most of the story content in MMO games is too stretched out and boring, and advantage of gacha here is that you are incentivized with "crystals" for playing story while in classic MMORPG story rewards are only worth it for newbies, for others it is easier to spend that time in another raid and get both more entertainment and more rewards.

In terms of popularity, idk why you should put CN population apart. There are more Chinese in the world then Europeans combined, thus gaming market will be adjusting to their preferences. Games like FF14, ESO or WoW are dinosaurs of old times, I doubt any global classic MMORPG will be created any time soon. There were some attempts, but they failed.

And if we take Genshin, ton of people there, they are "refugees" from MMORPGs who are simply tired of endless obligations MMORPG puts on you plus various devs shenagians with nerfs and other stuff. I left ESO just because I became tired of rebuilding my characters once in half year since devs were turning the tables of rules non-stop. Also they banned me on official forum despite all the contribution I made over the years, for some stupid anti-SJW comment I made back in the 2020.

And then finding game which has pseudo-MMO experience but with much less time and effort requirements exactly fit my needs, even if it is more expensive money wise if you want to have all the characters you like.

Again, you shouldnt compare game cost only in money, time also matters. Mobile games consume more money, but bring better entertainment/time spent ratio. Like what will bring me joy in MMORPG? some great social interaction be it PVP or PVE raid, or even showing our houses to each other (housing is truly great in ESO) or occasional meeting in overland? yes, but such occurences arent happening on daily basis, most of the time it is either tryharding or grind. Rare item drop is joy too - yes, but you may spend week of evenings grinding something and it still wont drop.
While in gacha simply being lucky gives you joy you need and waiting for new banners and acculumating currency is sort of enjoyment as well. And Mihoyo provides great platforms for socializing outside of game. And no SJW or political agenda. Generally better writing and more fleshed out characters instead of endless stream of mostly bleak NPCs, which MMORPGs throw at you.

TL;DR - I agree that MMORPG provide experience of better quality then gachas, but it requires way more time to get it and as time flows that experience becomes repetitive and loses most if it's value becoming a chore. While gacha acts on more primitive level, but requires less time to get your entertainment. Plus connection to real world money keeps gacha rewards from losing value. For example, latest Genshin event required to explore new area which I didnt wanted to explore since I thought it will be boring. But primogem rewards gave me motivation and it ended up as pretty fun experience, and I got 15-20 pulls in process as well. While new chapter in MMORPG, is just go from point to point for 20 hours, fighting pointlessly easy mobs, listening another "dark fantasy story" sprinkled with SJW agenda as well with useless rewards for all of it and with only real motivation of unlocking new dungeon and raid. And too add to insult devs wiil also nerf your current builds regularly, so instead of doing what you like you need to grind again, again and again or you wont be able to play competitive PVP or PVE adequatly.

[Slayer2k]

One ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ gatcha game with broken aim and not responding button pushes. Completly ♥♥♥♥.

[Meowish]

Originally posted by valera-wrx:

Meowish, I think you are overestimating amount of people interested in story.

You're getting me wrong on that, What i said is, miHoYo developes their games based heavily on story and prioritize the story. Up to the point that they made sure players will be able to play all story without grinding the game. It has nothing to do with player's (nor yours, not even mine) preference on this, it's the preference of the developer here. They spent more time making story contents than grind contents, most of the grind contents you get in game are repetitive and mostly renew under a "Random Generator", a wild card selection and not really something carefully planned in advance. The only none story stages that are "planned" are often those that are designed to show off the newly released valkyries (One reason the challenges are pay to win, these stages are fine tuned to buff up the valkyries in the gacha banners). While the rest of the stages are simply out from a random generator.

The reason that they've cut their gacha and pay wall stuffs off from their main game is the only reason I approve and recommend this game. Players are not forced to pay nor forced to join the challenges, and story mode is made free user friendly. Paid users who got tired of paying and reverted to free players can still continue to enjoy the story without worrying about paying more cash to "catch up", they simply just need to "let go" of the challenges and life returns to simple and fun. If you are not into the challenge, there really is no reason to "grind".

Originally posted by valera-wrx:

TL;DR - I agree that MMORPG provide experience of better quality then gachas, but it requires way more time to get it and as time flows that experience becomes repetitive and loses most if it's value becoming a chore. While gacha acts on more primitive level, but requires less time to get your entertainment. Plus connection to real world money keeps gacha rewards from losing value.

If you like gambling your money away in gacha and see it as "Joy"... there really is no stopping you. Casino do exist for this purpose. And remember that, if you spend those on a local casino you win back some money, in an online game, you do not get your spending back, those doesn't belong to you and will go poof as soon as the server shuts down. Also, efficiency talking... Spend 100USD in Casino.. win 500USD back.. use 500USD on game and get 5 Valkyries "if you are lucky"... OR Spend 100USD directly on game, win 1 valkyrie "if you are lucky"... Just remember that there's always a 0 in the RNG... And as the 1% drop chance math goes, it's 99 sad vs 1 happy. Also note that it's only "Lucky" if you do it a few times and won, if you've been doing all the time, it's simply "Probability And Statistics Math". You don't win, the dealer of this gambling table does. In the case of online game, they 100% win. They are more concerned on how to make more than 1000% income, never less. Ironically, it's "cheaper" to enjoy a "win" in your local Casino than the Chinese built Gacha games.

And like i said, even when it comes to Gacha games there's the Chinese and Japanese built difference (read up, not about to repeat). What you see here is the Chinese built, if you haven't experienced the Japanese built, or the Western built (banned in certain country), you should and it will open your eyes to the differences. Note, as far as gambling goes, none is good for a start, but there will be differences in fairness.

You talked as if MMORPG and Gacha is of different genre of games... they are not... Gacha is not the main gameplay but rather the economy structure of a game. If a game's main gameplay is gacha, it's no different than those online casino games that doesn't pay back real cash. A game can be both MMORPG AND Gacha at the same time. What you experience here is Online SINGLE Player Gacha game with a little bit of co-op, while there are MMORPG Gacha games out there like "Master of Epic"(Old School MMO), "Alchemia Story"(New School MMO) and "Phantasy Online 2"(Party Co-op Dungeon). Where you get both gacha and mmo and rpg at the same time... Western Online games with "Loot Boxes" are also considered Gacha mechanisms... And no matter how much money you spent on these games, you do not own any of the "rewards", it's more or less "rented" to you and only last as long as the server is active. When the server is shut down, you lost everything other than the snapshots and bitter sweet memory you get from the game. With the exception of games with legit RMT license, eg, Valve and some games here on Steam that drops items to your Steam Library that "can be traded" for "real money". For these, there's a chance you can get your money back from your investments on the games. Yes, RMT happens right here on Steam, legitimately. Some games even let you earn back the money you spent on buying the game, by dropping items you can sell in Steam's market. And probably even more than enough to buy other games.

That's why i said off-line games beats them all, you can easily accumulate a bunch of them that last years of gaming time and picked only the genre you love while have absolutely no worry about unfairness in game design, play whenever you like, however you like. There are also semi-offline games that allow online interaction/trade such as WoFF with no commitments forced onto the players. FYI, there's off-line games with gacha in them as well... but much fairer and... well since you only paid for the game 1 time, the gacha in these game cost no real money. So you can still enjoy "gacha" with far less money spent. But not all off-line games are fair to be honest, Korean made KRPG for example, are normally filled to the core with RNG stuffs, everything goes down to luck. Veteran players nowadays actually hate them, most of these games doesn't feel like games anymore and some are even harder than our real life's job due to those rng rates. Note that i am not saying all Korean games are bad, there are classics KRPGs out there that can still be super fun in our current era... The 20 years old classic "Xenoage" is a good example of how KRPG were still "pure" back in the old days. Most "bad ones" are designed by younger generations of devs that have their mind polluted by online MMOKRPG imho... Just like how Japanese games like Neptunia series or Disgaea series are made for grinders, these younger generations devs see "grind" as a necessary design to put in games due to their earlier experience with online games... Most online games are free, so most kids are stuck with online games more than paid games, and they grew up accustomed to those unfair system in those games. And after 15 years cycles, they've grown up enough to design their own games, and these started to pop up in offline games industries... polluted (Karma do exist).

Just be aware that not all games are there to bully the players. And most of the time, it's the players themselves that have chosen the path to be bullied, because they don't know there are good kind souled games out there, and they tied themselves to those bad design games thinking it's their only choice. Some intentionally choose to be bullied even when they know there are better games out there... Masochist do exist.

And most of the time, games with simple, straight to the core design often win in the ranking of favor among players. We are here to enjoy some entertainment, not here to work in hell, real life's already hard enough we don't need hardship in our entertainment. Games as simple as "Helltaker" can easily get Overwhelming ratings due to there's "nothing to hate" about it...

Online Games without Anti-Grind design (No limit on play per day) are often considered old school grind-fest game (Grind Infested. Note that it's not a good word by the meaning of it. There are both love and hate going on with that design), what old-time MMO players called "Grind" is simply the grind of exp and level, not about drops or even materials for crafting, those came way later (infused by the dev's desire/greed to prolong game's life)... ONLINE games try to force a "commitment" to the players no matter it's daily bonus, or subscription, timely event, timely boss raid. super low rare item drop rate, limited item drop per day, to be continued story, etc etc... they want you to be in the game by the time they've decided. You don't decide your play time, the online games do.

Oh yeah, i almost forgot about the Visual Novel that have "Online" properties as well.. Just like how HI3rd tell its story, by updating and making the readers wait but without the battle. There are online games out there with Story only, and great(?) for story enthusiast. eg. Beyond the Bounds[btb.visualshower.com] series. If you think that reading a book and have to wait for it to update to continue reading more, online visual novel is your choice. If not, stick to the finished ones.

A Short History Lesson

Online Multiplayer Games goes as far back to the 1980s where MUD is a thing, where players connect to a chat room (BBS) and play RPG in the old P&P style but with a chat record. Then the MUD improves further to more game-like system with graphics and such automated functions based on user login to a webpage.

At the same time, in the western part of the world, LAN multiplayer games starting to bloom, with games like first person shooter and the later rpg dungeon crawlers. Then it further evolves into a long distance connection via telephone dial up system, Racing games like Need For Speed is a good example back then where end-user starts to host their own server for gaming. Then come the MMO games, with Ultima and Ever Quest being the lead dating back to the early 1990s, but there are plenty restrictions back then, other than the subscription fee, internet fee is pretty costly as well, where both dial-up connection is being charged along with the internet fee, so only a handful of players can really enjoy these games back then (FYI people still rely on books and magazines for info during this age). While on the same time, the slower games with less budget and margin for online servers, are still doing LAN or the peer to peer design, where they let the user host their own servers for their games (much like the "Minecraft" in later days), "Neverwinter Nights" comes to mind for example... and "Diablo" is a great example of the LAN age back then.

With Diablo, NWN, Dungeon Siege, Baldur's Gate and other multiplayer dungeon crawlers becoming the main stream of gaming industries at the end of the 1990s... Then in the early 2000s, internet has finally evolved and drops the dial-up thingy with a way better and stable connection, WoW came as a huge impact (at the right timing) where wrpg meets the mmo environment while inside the trending bloom. An poof, it sets a great foundation and is able to dominate the MMORPG for years to come.

Now we take the camera away from the west and into the east, Japan has always been trying to follow the trend in the west, and has been copying the western culture on the "Fantasy" genre (with Record of Lodoss War being the 1st released in Japan heavily influenced by the Trilogy of Lord of the Rings -- a certain translation miss had also made the Elves in the East different from the Elves in the West, they have "long pointy ears", not just "pointy ears" ). With that "Fantasy genre bloom", Proto-RPG age has started in the Eastern gaming industry starting from Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong. RPG Games with original ideas different from the WRPG are being introduced... Falcom and other old game making pioneers has been introducing more and more genres into the rpg world, including action rpg and tactics... Then came Square with Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, which sets a staple image and ends the era of Proto-RPG and started the JRPG age... Games like Wizardry and such who followed the old WRPG rules are slowly being converted into the new JRPG style. The dust settled and the gaming industry as taken its staple shape in the East.

Now, this is where the MMO comes in, Korea, being bankrupted and trying to find a way to earn money and sell to the world, the government raise large projects sponsoring and encouraging the making of Online RPGs, and out pops Nexon and other Korean Gaming company "specialize" in making JRPG styled MMO... They split the world into half, with WRPG and JRPG blooms on each side of the world.

But online games back then are fully finished MMO worlds, they are "small" and "limited" compared to our real world, it only takes 2~4 years into the bloom that the "fatigue" started to show, players "ran out of stuffs to do in the game". "Been there, done that." has become a common excuse for veteran players to drop and stop playing. And online games lost their subscribers (back then it's still pay to play age). So unlike Western games that goes for DLC and Expansion Packs... Korean and Eastern games goes for low drop rate end game gear from fighting the "last boss(es)" in game. When the Western MMO introduced the craft system, the Eastern MMO joined them but placed it on top of their existing rare drop design... it became "rare material drop", a 100 time boss raid for end game gears suddenly become 1500 times to get enough ingredients to "craft" end game gears... and the number grows bigger as time goes by as the games turned Free to Play... because it's free, no one (can) complains when the threshold went past fairness into the unfair zone... The age of Grind-fest begins...

Some time before that comes Square again (before Sony bought them), who introduced FF7 into the western world, and made a break through in the thick wall of culture difference and finally set a foundation that later turns into a bloom of JRPG in the west. At the same time with Anime and Manga, Japan is throwing everything they have to start a culture shock in the west. Which, benefits the Korean MMORPG maker more, and they started to throw in more resources into making more and more Eastern MMOGs... At the very same time, "Free to Play" concept has been introduced in the West, and Nexon Korea sees it as a perfect economy model they can use to march into the West, starting with the f2p "Maple Story", this also starts the era of online game selling "unfinished" games to the players, and a lot of these games "died" before the game's story reached an ending. With the Flash Player age and Facebook starting to become a bloom in the East, things starting to get out of hand... Youngsters addicted to games and being "wasted away" started to show up... and Korean Government has been hit hard by the impact, especially since they are the one responsible to start the bloom in the 1st place... so Anti-Addiction measurements are placed by law and all games that sell to Korean are required to apply. Way before that happen, the "Stamina System" has already been introduced among the browser based games in Facebook and such, and it shows a promise of forcing the game players to "pay to play more" in a free to play environment. That's how the "Stamina" thingy gets the government green light, it then proudly holds the name of "Anti Fatigue System". It's not a perfect system as we all know, but it effectively filtered out the kids with no income to be able to play all day long, and adults with income "should" know how to control themselves. Nexon on the other hand, moved out of Korea into Japan...

Back around the time the MMO started to show up on internet during the "gold rush" age of MMO in the late 90s... in China, seeing the addiction impact these games brought, the government has decided to put a "Gaming Ban" that lasted 15 years (2000~2015). By the time it came out of the Ban, China has miss the whole Golden Era of the PC/Console game, and dived right in the middle of the Mobile Game Era. miHoYo is among the very 1st few companies that put all their efforts into making online games while at the same time comply to whatever the gov have in mind about "anti-addiction"... and the "Anti-Grind" design, play X time a day, play X hours a day, have parent supervise child's account etc etc comes into play. Especially during that period "Kantai Collection (Kankore) 艦隊これくしょん -艦これ-" has become a major trend and deemed the most successful gacha games at that time, they tended to copy a lot of the major economy system and game gacha structure from it. It's also the same time that gacha games started to show up in mobile platform at a alarming pace. They simply implemented the Anti-Grind over the already existing Anti Fatigue system into the design. But just like how Anti Fatigue system favor dev more than players, these Anti-Grind system are being designed by the dev side, so with greed infused desires, the final blueprint that came out 100% favor the devs who has always wanted to prolong their online game's life. With the perfect excuse, "We do this due to law requirement". And with the seer numbers of Chinese developers alone, they filled the world's market with these designs in a short 2 years time... Unlike the Fatigue system that only filtered out the no-income group, these anti-grind design filtered out everyone, no one is allowed to play the game for too long no matter if they are playing it free or paid. Some games like those in miHoYo risked the "grey zone" where they allow certain stages to be played repeatedly all day long but restricted the reward output. But true Anti-Grind games do exist in China, eg. Tencent... some goes into the ridiculous measurement to stop addiction. Companies that can't keep up with the law, tried to find a way to survive outside China... ahem.. miHoYo... Cognosphere...