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A few more notes: - You'll easily get 30+ hours unique of content with the main story without any need to pay money, which is good value for a free game. - As

A few more notes: - You'll easily get 30+ hours unique of content with the main story without any need to pay money, which is good value for a free game. - As with all gacha games, you get a ton of free currency playing through the story naturally; more than enough to get a couple 5* naturally through pity or otherwise. - As noted, the 4* units aren't bad; in fact some of the higher tier ones are given for free with no strings attached. - Unlike other gacha, this isn't a difficult game for just playing casually (which is normally a meta-incentive for you to gamble with the gacha) unless you are doing super-endgame things. - Unlike other gacha, there is no competitive element with a leaderboard/other players (which is normally a meta-incentive for you to gamble with the gacha) The biggest problem I have with Genshin Impact is Artifact RNG, which is heavily layered with no determinism.

1023bytes 5y ago
I second this, I've played this game casually for a couple weeks and never needed to spend any money. It just means slower progress, not no progress.
- berdario 5y ago
  I played another gacha for about 2 years (stopped about 1 month ago). I tricked myself into playing it exactly like that: > Ok, I'll try it out... but I'll drop it as soon as I'll hit the paywall The problem is that the companies like Gameloft, Mihoyo, etc. got extremely refined in giving you a *semblance* of progress, while never completely grinding the progress to a halt. It's pretty obvious after you invested some time: you can do some actions, but only up to X times a day. You can refresh the X with premium currency. You can convert premium currency into normal currency. In the meanwhile, the tool/weapon/vehicle/character, won't be unlocked right away, but it needs a certain sets of components to be accumulated. After you finally unlock it, you can improve it/tune it/level it up... but you'll soon hit a wall. To improve it any further you need to boost it/star it up/whatever. And you thus need to accumulate more components. Eventually, you might find time-limited events, which will you give you a special currency, which you can use to unlock more time-limited goodies... and eventually convert it into one of the other kinds of currencies. A lot of these concepts don't seem to be heinous: it's perfectly fine to provide a gradual way to unlock something in a videogame. The problem is that usually there's some different mechanism/puzzle/part of the story that leads you there. In a gacha instead the only thing that grants you the majority of those incremental milestones is the pull/loot/boxes/crates/packs. The reasons you put up with it are pretty obvious: - sunken cost: you already invested some amount of time - feeling of progress. Every inch closer to a goal keep you engaged - the rest of the game is genuinely well made Again: what would be a good amount of content for 10 hours of game, gets stretched and dripped very slowly across hundreds of hours. For longer games (like, RPGs) what would be dozens/a hundred of hours gets stretched in thousands. Even when I play a videogame, I don't want to just "kill time", I want an interesting experience, which ideally makes the most out of the hours that I put into it. Traditional/non-bullshit/paid in advance games make sure that I get that either with skill, or without having to sweat for it (lowering the difficulty). In a gacha, it'll be a neverending stream of pulls (also, they'll obviously keep adding derivative content, to give you more and more things to unlock)
shusaku 5y ago
> Unlike other gacha, this isn't a difficult game for just playing casually (which is normally a meta-incentive for you to gamble with the gacha) unless you are doing super-endgame things. Is this really the case? I’ve noticed a lot of games that try to get you to make in game purchases are actually painfully easy. My assumption was that if you’re losing, you’re not spinning the wheel, which is their primary means of getting you hooked.
- minimaxir 5y ago
  Most gacha games get you hooked, then get you with a soft gate. It's an interesting balance from a game design and monetization standpoint. If a game has a random numeric "suggested power" metric for levels, watch out.

1023bytes 5y ago

I second this, I've played this game casually for a couple weeks and never needed to spend any money. It just means slower progress, not no progress.

berdario 5y ago
I played another gacha for about 2 years (stopped about 1 month ago). I tricked myself into playing it exactly like that: > Ok, I'll try it out... but I'll drop it as soon as I'll hit the paywall The problem is that the companies like Gameloft, Mihoyo, etc. got extremely refined in giving you a *semblance* of progress, while never completely grinding the progress to a halt. It's pretty obvious after you invested some time: you can do some actions, but only up to X times a day. You can refresh the X with premium currency. You can convert premium currency into normal currency. In the meanwhile, the tool/weapon/vehicle/character, won't be unlocked right away, but it needs a certain sets of components to be accumulated. After you finally unlock it, you can improve it/tune it/level it up... but you'll soon hit a wall. To improve it any further you need to boost it/star it up/whatever. And you thus need to accumulate more components. Eventually, you might find time-limited events, which will you give you a special currency, which you can use to unlock more time-limited goodies... and eventually convert it into one of the other kinds of currencies. A lot of these concepts don't seem to be heinous: it's perfectly fine to provide a gradual way to unlock something in a videogame. The problem is that usually there's some different mechanism/puzzle/part of the story that leads you there. In a gacha instead the only thing that grants you the majority of those incremental milestones is the pull/loot/boxes/crates/packs. The reasons you put up with it are pretty obvious: - sunken cost: you already invested some amount of time - feeling of progress. Every inch closer to a goal keep you engaged - the rest of the game is genuinely well made Again: what would be a good amount of content for 10 hours of game, gets stretched and dripped very slowly across hundreds of hours. For longer games (like, RPGs) what would be dozens/a hundred of hours gets stretched in thousands. Even when I play a videogame, I don't want to just "kill time", I want an interesting experience, which ideally makes the most out of the hours that I put into it. Traditional/non-bullshit/paid in advance games make sure that I get that either with skill, or without having to sweat for it (lowering the difficulty). In a gacha, it'll be a neverending stream of pulls (also, they'll obviously keep adding derivative content, to give you more and more things to unlock)

shusaku 5y ago

> Unlike other gacha, this isn't a difficult game for just playing casually (which is normally a meta-incentive for you to gamble with the gacha) unless you are doing super-endgame things. Is this really the case? I’ve noticed a lot of games that try to get you to make in game purchases are actually painfully easy. My assumption was that if you’re losing, you’re not spinning the wheel, which is their primary means of getting you hooked.

minimaxir 5y ago
Most gacha games get you hooked, then get you with a soft gate. It's an interesting balance from a game design and monetization standpoint. If a game has a random numeric "suggested power" metric for levels, watch out.