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He is just against gacha style games, as everyone should be (gambling addiction enforced by gaming addiction) So the whole video sums up his experience in how

He is just against gacha style games, as everyone should be (gambling addiction enforced by gaming addiction) So the whole video sums up his experience in how without having to pay a bunch of money, you couldn't win/have fun properly But this video could be about any new game (online mmorpg) nowdays and be still the same

MomoXenosaga 5y ago
"how without having to pay a bunch of money, you couldn't win/have fun properly" The story of life. Many such cases.
whoknew1122 5y ago
> But this video could be about any new game (online mmorpg) nowdays and be still the same Let's go ahead and address the smaller point here first. Genshin Impact isn't an MMORPG. But that's not the biggest issue here. The biggest issue here is that Genshin's gambling model is not the same as any new game. --- The difference between Genshin Impact (which I played for a week, and spent about $100 on) and other games, is that you must gamble for a chance to progress in a meaningful way. To say this is an issue endemic to all new games simply isn't correct. Most games these days to have some sort of microtransaction model. That's true. However the core gameplay and progression system in Genshin is locked behind loot crates. This isn't the model 'any new game' uses. There are two main ways games use microtransactions: cosmetic, and game-impacting. Cosmetic microtransactions make cosmetic changes in your character or the world around it. No impact on gameplay other than you find something new more aesthetically pleasing. Then we have the game-impacting transactions. Most games that allow game-impacting transactions (i.e. are 'pay 2 win'), allow you to essentially sacrifice time for money. You can spend hours in game grinding for an objective, or you can spend real life currency to automatically unlock the objective. What Genshin does is different from most games. There are certain important ways in which you simply cannot progress without spending money. And everything is locked behind a loot box. That's the problem. The problem is with the loot boxes and gambling; not exchanging time for money. There was a game that I spent over $2,000 on. It was an online 'free-to-play' game with over 70 characters. Each character was around $15-20. Or you could play the game for about 40 (real) hours to grind up enough currency to unlock one. This was fine though, because you picked which character you unlocked and it was unlocked. Genshin makes you buy boxes with a chance to drop what you want it to drop. That's what makes it pernicious.
- FooBarWidget 5y ago
  Which parts are inaccessible without paying? Maybe I haven't progressed far enough (haven't finished the Liyue Archon quest) but all the money I spent so far is just for weapons and additional characters. They make it easier to defeat enemies but defeating enemies without those upgrades is still doable.
  - whoknew1122 5y ago
    I don't mean that the game is unwinnable (to the extent that such games are winnable) without spending money. But the core mechanic is swapping between different characters for combos and synergies. You're severely hampered without paying to get other characters and increase your weapons. I remember getting Hu Tao when she was just released. She was (and I guess still is?) one of the best characters. But I didn't have the roster to really play her to her full potential. So it's back to the loot crates to try and pull other characters that synergize with her and help her reach her potential.
    - FooBarWidget 5y ago
      Hm? I'm super-lazy game mechanic wise. I spend money. But 3 of the chacters on my team are free, and I almost never use combos because I can't be bothered to do complex stuff. I'm sure I don't maximize my damage-per-second but I still enjoy the game and defeating nearly all enemies is completely doable even with casual gaming skills. If the critique is "I can't maximize to the absolute highest stats without paying" -- then sorry, I think that's an attitude full of false entitlement. Heck, look at this frickin video about how they produced the Liyue OST: https://youtu.be/pFrKZxStL_U https://youtu.be/pFrKZxStL_U They commissioned a massive Shanghai orchestra team to produce excellent music. And we get all this amazing stuff for free.
    - level3 5y ago
      Being unable to maximize a specific character's potential is pretty far from where you said "there are certain important ways in which you simply cannot progress without spending money." There's nothing in the main content that requires you to have a 5* character/weapon, even though it's certainly easier with them.
derefr 5y ago
Pay-to-win and pay-to-have-fun are actually pretty distinct game-design philosophies. There are a lot of free-to-play games that are pay-to-win for at least some element of the game; but where the game can still be fun without paying. What usually happens in pay-to-win designs is that the game can be played, if more slowly, in a fun way, for as long as you’re playing against other regular people who also aren’t paying-to-win. This lasts until you get good enough to end up on the competitive-ranked top leaderboard; at which point the only way to advance on that leaderboard is to pay for extra-fancy items/equipment, because everyone else on it already did. (Analogy: doping in sports. Nobody in the minor leagues dopes, because nobody else does, so there’s no need to do it. But everybody at the top does, because everybody else at the top does, and so doping is the only way to even stay viable in the major league. The sport is “fun”, without doping, right up until you hit the majors. Then, suddenly, having any more fun requires doping. That’s traditional pay-to-win.) With traditional pay-to-win game design, you can still extract fun from the game without paying, if you treat “the game” as being just the subset of the game that lasts until you end up in the major league with all the doping players. If you think of that point as the point where you “beat the game”, put it down, and don’t play it any more — and the game up until that point was fun and worth playing — then it wasn’t a waste of time to have played it. Genshin Impact is apparently not this type of game, though. It’s the other kind of free-to-play game: the kind where you’re at no point having fun if you’re not paying. (But, of course, which tries to give the illusion that you can have fun, sort of like a casino tries to give you the illusion that you can have an edge.) It takes a pretty deep dive into a free-to-play game to figure out whether there’s a subset it that is fun to work through without paying. So I don’t fault the author for needing to spend an hour on the topic to properly prove their thesis out.
numpad0 5y ago
Haven’t clicked the link or even played Genshin but I believe the novelty is it’s: 1) a proper singleplayer JRPG style game, 2) in “App” format with gacha mechanic. Previously 1) and 2) didn’t occur in a same title. If it’s an App, it would have extremely simplistic gameplay with gacha, or if it’s a JRPG, there were at most DLCs and certainly not gacha. But they just made it no longer the case.

MomoXenosaga 5y ago

"how without having to pay a bunch of money, you couldn't win/have fun properly" The story of life. Many such cases.

whoknew1122 5y ago

> But this video could be about any new game (online mmorpg) nowdays and be still the same Let's go ahead and address the smaller point here first. Genshin Impact isn't an MMORPG. But that's not the biggest issue here. The biggest issue here is that Genshin's gambling model is not the same as any new game. --- The difference between Genshin Impact (which I played for a week, and spent about $100 on) and other games, is that you must gamble for a chance to progress in a meaningful way. To say this is an issue endemic to all new games simply isn't correct. Most games these days to have some sort of microtransaction model. That's true. However the core gameplay and progression system in Genshin is locked behind loot crates. This isn't the model 'any new game' uses. There are two main ways games use microtransactions: cosmetic, and game-impacting. Cosmetic microtransactions make cosmetic changes in your character or the world around it. No impact on gameplay other than you find something new more aesthetically pleasing. Then we have the game-impacting transactions. Most games that allow game-impacting transactions (i.e. are 'pay 2 win'), allow you to essentially sacrifice time for money. You can spend hours in game grinding for an objective, or you can spend real life currency to automatically unlock the objective. What Genshin does is different from most games. There are certain important ways in which you simply cannot progress without spending money. And everything is locked behind a loot box. That's the problem. The problem is with the loot boxes and gambling; not exchanging time for money. There was a game that I spent over $2,000 on. It was an online 'free-to-play' game with over 70 characters. Each character was around $15-20. Or you could play the game for about 40 (real) hours to grind up enough currency to unlock one. This was fine though, because you picked which character you unlocked and it was unlocked. Genshin makes you buy boxes with a chance to drop what you want it to drop. That's what makes it pernicious.

FooBarWidget 5y ago
Which parts are inaccessible without paying? Maybe I haven't progressed far enough (haven't finished the Liyue Archon quest) but all the money I spent so far is just for weapons and additional characters. They make it easier to defeat enemies but defeating enemies without those upgrades is still doable.
- whoknew1122 5y ago
  I don't mean that the game is unwinnable (to the extent that such games are winnable) without spending money. But the core mechanic is swapping between different characters for combos and synergies. You're severely hampered without paying to get other characters and increase your weapons. I remember getting Hu Tao when she was just released. She was (and I guess still is?) one of the best characters. But I didn't have the roster to really play her to her full potential. So it's back to the loot crates to try and pull other characters that synergize with her and help her reach her potential.
  - FooBarWidget 5y ago
    Hm? I'm super-lazy game mechanic wise. I spend money. But 3 of the chacters on my team are free, and I almost never use combos because I can't be bothered to do complex stuff. I'm sure I don't maximize my damage-per-second but I still enjoy the game and defeating nearly all enemies is completely doable even with casual gaming skills. If the critique is "I can't maximize to the absolute highest stats without paying" -- then sorry, I think that's an attitude full of false entitlement. Heck, look at this frickin video about how they produced the Liyue OST: https://youtu.be/pFrKZxStL_U https://youtu.be/pFrKZxStL_U They commissioned a massive Shanghai orchestra team to produce excellent music. And we get all this amazing stuff for free.
  - level3 5y ago
    Being unable to maximize a specific character's potential is pretty far from where you said "there are certain important ways in which you simply cannot progress without spending money." There's nothing in the main content that requires you to have a 5* character/weapon, even though it's certainly easier with them.

derefr 5y ago

Pay-to-win and pay-to-have-fun are actually pretty distinct game-design philosophies. There are a lot of free-to-play games that are pay-to-win for at least some element of the game; but where the game can still be fun without paying. What usually happens in pay-to-win designs is that the game can be played, if more slowly, in a fun way, for as long as you’re playing against other regular people who also aren’t paying-to-win. This lasts until you get good enough to end up on the competitive-ranked top leaderboard; at which point the only way to advance on that leaderboard is to pay for extra-fancy items/equipment, because everyone else on it already did. (Analogy: doping in sports. Nobody in the minor leagues dopes, because nobody else does, so there’s no need to do it. But everybody at the top does, because everybody else at the top does, and so doping is the only way to even stay viable in the major league. The sport is “fun”, without doping, right up until you hit the majors. Then, suddenly, having any more fun requires doping. That’s traditional pay-to-win.) With traditional pay-to-win game design, you can still extract fun from the game without paying, if you treat “the game” as being just the subset of the game that lasts until you end up in the major league with all the doping players. If you think of that point as the point where you “beat the game”, put it down, and don’t play it any more — and the game up until that point was fun and worth playing — then it wasn’t a waste of time to have played it. Genshin Impact is apparently not this type of game, though. It’s the other kind of free-to-play game: the kind where you’re at no point having fun if you’re not paying. (But, of course, which tries to give the illusion that you can have fun, sort of like a casino tries to give you the illusion that you can have an edge.) It takes a pretty deep dive into a free-to-play game to figure out whether there’s a subset it that is fun to work through without paying. So I don’t fault the author for needing to spend an hour on the topic to properly prove their thesis out.

numpad0 5y ago

Haven’t clicked the link or even played Genshin but I believe the novelty is it’s: 1) a proper singleplayer JRPG style game, 2) in “App” format with gacha mechanic. Previously 1) and 2) didn’t occur in a same title. If it’s an App, it would have extremely simplistic gameplay with gacha, or if it’s a JRPG, there were at most DLCs and certainly not gacha. But they just made it no longer the case.