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Err... not sure how Sdorica changes any fact already brought up.
It's so far still not completed to judge anything seriously, but so far it's a cringe story for children at best.
Hard to call it a story too - last time I checked(over a year ago) it was still an artificially bloated adventure just like any gacha.
It suffers from the usual lore bloating issue that all gacha have and follows the usual issues and the reason why gacha simply can't have a good story no matter how hard you try - it's simply not in the concept.
Unless you make a gameplay only gacha game with a coherent story done around it.
But the above is only theoretical and so far there have been no successful examples of such.
Only assuming you actually 'care' to play a gacha.
I only care about the lore of the universe to begin with. And seeing a 'gacha' game being part of it is main issue.
I will leave worrying about how p2w and such it is to the usual consumers of the gacha market.
Being a gacha is not a problem story-wise unless they lock story behind certain gacha obtainable characters and I really don't think they will do that. Maybe some profile stuff or little things but not real story. It will be a long and seasonal thing. Totally doable thing.
Part of the appeal for live service narratives is that you can keep adding on and expanding to them, allowing you to cover far more than you would in a package title. It makes it an excellent medium for world building and handling a large cast of characters.
As much as I enjoyed Library of Ruina, there were a lot of characters, and some moments that came off as half-baked and unexplored, due to the time constraints. The Eight Chefs were barely a footnote, the Hanah Association, aside from Olivier, were reduced to 2 Dimensional Mooks who we beat up for drip, the Thumb as a whole should've been developed more, and the main antagonist, Argalia himself, felt weak as a character because of how underexplored he was beyond the facet of being a lunatic. Hell, even the Sephirah felt underutilized and incredibly detached from the story, despite being the main supporting cast to Angela and Roland. Not to mention, the Librarian of Death Ending left so many questions and loose ends, that I'm sure Jihoon keeps tripping over them at the office.
Live Service games don't operate under such tight time constraints for story telling, and as a result, PM has more freedom to branch out and explore other factions, aspects, and characters in the City, while still having time to develop and utilize the main Sinners themselves. Yeah, sure, there's always a chance the story could become bloated with a bunch of useless drivel; however, I'm excited to see what PM can do to develop the world and characters of the City when given plenty of time and a steady supply of income.
Again - you CAN'T call something without an end a story.
A story ALWAYS has a beginning and an end.
In case of gacha the only possible end of story in 99% of the cases is bankruptcy of the company.
I must admit that the story of greedy company going bankrupt is the type of story which lightens my soul, but that's not exactly what I seek when looking for a good story in a game.
Anything without an end is just a bunch of lore thrown together with no real reason.
It just doesn't work. You can create any kind of fun concepts you want but it does NOT make a story.
Also the limited time constraint is nearly always a positive factor. Very few authors can pull a successful story that's bigger than ~15-20 hours worth of text. As long as it's something more complex than typical good v evil cliche story with copy paste heroes.
It's a talent in itself to realize own limits and know what type of info you should minimize not to create needless plot holes - rather leaving enough topics for imagination of the readers.
I won't even mention the fact even IF by some chance a halfdecent gacha WILL eventually get a beginning to end story - the amount of time it would take to experience it will simply be crazy and most of it will be useless fillers, likely riddled with useless timegates or grind gates too.
Not something one would want to experience for sure.
like there are times when it hits and im like this is awsome but other times it just drags on which if you like that awsome.
honestly i want to like arknight i love the gacha (way better odds then fgo) i love the characters and abilities.
I'm not going to disagree with you on stories needing a beginning and an end; however, just because it's a gacha doesn't mean it can't get a proper ending. Girls Frontline, Honkai Gakuen, Honkai Impact 3rd, all got/are getting proper endings to name a couple examples. Still, the mobage market is still relatively young and developing compared to the gaming industry as a whole, so it's gonna be a while before more notable gachas can reach that point of maturity in the story, so I can understand your reservations there.
However, I will disagree with you on that very few authors can pull off stories that are bigger than 15 to 20 hours worth of text, because that just dimisses the entire existence of several, critically acclaimed and/or popular book series and some beloved JRPGs. A good story, is a good story, regardless of it's length. By crunching authors to conform to some arbitrary 15-20 hour text length limit, you stifle their own writing creativity and cause them to potentially rush crucial plot threads.
The issue of filler is entirely subjective, imo. Especially in a mobage story. What one person can deem as useless filler, another can deem as a thoughtful, and well-written event that explores a different part of the world, and fleshes out a character/member of the cast.
As for the issue of time needed to enjoy the story, that's where you're getting into an issue that's completely seperate from the actual narrative quality, and more about the fact you don't like the gacha format necessitating a whole bunch of grinding over an extended period of time, which is completely fair. However, it's important to separate issues from the gameplay format, from issues of the actual narrative.
Well OP has clearly never played a good gatcha game and is just parroting what they have heard from Youtube.
There were days when I spent ~20 hours a day on them, literally LIVING the gachas.
I have NOTHING against gachas.
But it's simply NOT something you play for story.
It's a good time waster you can launch any time. It sometimes has some competitive side too but usually top places are cheating/bots/whaling, sometimes all 3 combined. With whaling being almost a mandatory step too.
For most people it's just a fun time waster, for some it's a min max spreadsheet hell, for others it's all about community/discord channels.
There are ♥♥♥♥ tonn of gachas out there for any ♥♥♥♥ taste and ♥♥♥♥ fetish one may have. The world can live without another just fine.
On the other hand a solid unique project with good story like lobotomy is once a decade miracle.
Having such project wasted on gacha is just a kick in the balls.
First of all, considering you call the novels and comics 'trash', I must ask what the 'good' novels and comics are in your opinion. Just because you didn't enjoy it does not mean it's garbage by any means. Granted, I never read the translated versions(I'm native Korean), so maybe they're translated horribly wrong, but unless that's the case I can't really understand why you would call them overly cringe and low quality. You have clearly never watched a cringe/low quality series of anime if you think Leviathan or Wonderlab is borderline garbage.
Second, while I do agree to some extent that gacha games are unsuited to portray a story effectively, it still doesn't mean that it can't work. To be honest, the format of Lobotomy and Ruina is not really an optimal choice to convey lore and stories in the first place. If you told me 10 years ago that a pseudo SCP management game and a deckbuiliding card game could have decent storytelling, I would have thought you were mad. Likewise, a gacha game does not default mean bad storytelling. I would accept your criticism if you had actually played Limbus, but everything you've said is completely based on speculation.
Third, your argument that 'every story NEEDS an ending' is completely ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Do you actually realize how many novels/anime/movies/dramas etc are unfinished, without an ending? Would you call Berserk a 'trash' story because it doesn't have an ending even after 30 years of painstaking work by the author? There are countless examples of unfinished works that are more than worth our time; to be completely frank, it seems to me that you're only used to short stories in games or whatnot.
Finally, Project Moon made Limbus to earn money in the first place. They explicitly stated that they wanted 'money and fame' because, surprise surprise, it ain't exactly easy to be an indie company with only two (albeit successful) games under their belt. They need money. They're a company. Calling a company "greedy" in a capitalist society is literally the most childish and stupid thing that I've heard in a while. What do you want them to do? Dish out quality games and content for next to nothing? Of course they want money. They would be mad not to. You would do the same thing in their position; I would too. It's the most logical and rational thing to do.
Like, I understand that you may be annoyed that Limbus is not the package game that we expected. But that doesn't mean that this is the end of Project Moon lore. Get over it.
Yea you clearly have no idea what you are talking about, and are just being angry for the sake of being angry.
Depends on genre. There are TONNS depending on preference of person.
The best stories are not limited to novels either, loads of actual games have quite top tier multi end experiences... Manga, manhua, manhwa each have at least a few top tier ones in most genres with manga having the most by far.
If you want pure novels/LNs - list would be too long since each genre has MASSIVE amount of quality work.
Starting an LN list of each genre would make this post ten times as long. It's pretty easy to find best ones for your fav genres though if you take time.
If you want VN:
This one has quite a fair amount less solid works as it's a combined work of multiple people, so in each genre you will only find a dozen remotely worthy ones(not even good).
IMO the 'universally good' I would recommend regardless of genre one prefers are:
Clannad, Muv Luv Alt, Katawa Shoujo, Steins Gate, Utawarerumono series, Baldr Sky(has a bit H but mostly skippable)
I would always only recommend based on genre as priority however. As story being good doesn't mean you will enjoy it. Enjoyment factor is a totally separate thing.
Overall you can easily spend a few years worth of life(aka pure time, not free time) if you use a combination of different media with only top tier stories on your preferred genres alone.
2) It's nice to have wet dreams, but it never worked before, it's simply not something you can change. The core concept of gacha goes against the core of good storytelling.
I already stated the few possibilities where it's possible. It still remains a bad genre for story purposes for a variety of reasons even IF it works out remotely well.
There are just too many issues with 'experiencing' the story in gacha. It's simply the most terrible format possible for remotely serious storytelling.
The way it has to be fragmented and inserting artificial walls between actual story content is pretty much the way the genre works.
By no means can a story experience be any good with such concept.
And let us be real - gachas are all 'on the spot' stories that are designed to be milked infinitely and sole goal being NOT finishing the story unless game is planned to close their service or goes bankrupt.
Such type of storytelling is ultimately a failure from the get go. A remotely decent story can't be made without a concrete beginning to end plan in advance.
3) Yes, berserk as a story IF iit remained unfinished(it won't) would be a ♥♥♥♥ story in my books despite me highly enjoying and following it for many years. It doesn't take much work to start an entertaining world. A story is always a full experience however, beginning to end. The amount of time one spent on something is also a non factor. Real life is not a kindergarten where kids gets praised for 'spending time/trying'.
You can ENJOY random bits of lore which result in nothing. But a story is ALWAYS something with an end, period.
Finishing a story is the only way for people to judge it fairly. You can't really say anything about an unfinished work beyond 'I enjoyed this' and 'the parts that were done were good'.
Finished story can be analyzed on a far grander scale - accounting for any potential mistakes that were made along the run and remained unresolved.
How grand of a scope it touched in the end and how well author managed a story of such scope.
What's 'worth your time' is subjective. A good story is not a subjective thing. It's a compialtion of factors. You might enjoy or not enjoy a good story. But it will remain good regardless of that and vice versa.
4) Content for next to nothing? It's ~20k fking steam reviews on 2 separate games with literally close to no marketing/close to 0 budget?
That's over a million freaking copies if we go by average review to copies sold ratio.
That's a fking wet dream for some AAA titles with AT LEAST tenfold higher budgets.
I don't mind companies making money. You make quality game you get the cash, that's exactly what lobotomy got and it was well deserved.
The problem is a lot seek 'easy money' instead by simply using a popular franchise name to make a cashgrab. This is NOT fine at all.
You can see it happen everywhere - nearly all good old franchises are in ruins...
Lord of the rings, Star Wars, you name any classic and it's high chance that it's been milked or WILL be milked for it's name alone, regardless of quality output.
It's exactly because people are just accepting such ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and saying 'well, everyone wants to make money' moronic logic that we are in such a rut with current technological advancements.
Too many old projects with hardly any budget, sometimes even entirely f2p are pretty much still recommended as staple in a lot of genres.
Too few modern projects remotely worth naming for amount of cash being invested into those.
Nowadays finding something different than a copy paste project is nigh impossible.
Lobotomy did that 'different' and it worked out. But now they are moving on the usual route of milking money now that they got a name for themselves.
Which is exactly what makes it so sad. There are very few projects one could really care about and seeing such fate on something with potential is dreadful for the industry.