Genshin Impact

[Video Games]

Which town is that? Is that the second town in the game I haven't gone to yet? Or is that a new town being added in the next story update? Looks like the East Street of Crossbell from the Trails games.

liuye harbor

[Katchii]

My thoughts as I played through Genshin Impact. Mainly commenting on the story. Contains theroycrafting and lore naizism. Spoilers up to the end of prologue act II.

[SNIP]

I'm not sure if you and I are playing the same game, because a LOT of what you're describing here actually is covered in the game and explains a lot of what you say you're missing, or completely misinterpreting. Maybe you were getting bogged down in the details and missed some things?

There are some "gaps," sure but to me it just comes across as you, the character, not needing to know those details, you only need to know enough to do your "job" and therefore those gaps in what you know feel somewhat natural. There's no reason for the player character to be deeply embroiled in every aspect of every country and character's inner workings, desires, motivations, secrets and political intrigues. You literally just showed up on the planet a few days ago and no one knows who the heck you are so they have very little, if any, reason to get you involved in those things or inform you of those details.

This also sounds like you're expecting a fully fleshed out series of lore, back story, world building and history for what's expected to just be a fun fantasy world. Also, the fact that it is a completely made up fantasy world means that it's very difficult for anything to be "anachronistic," since it has no basis on the real world and it's history.

While I can't necessarily disagree with some of what you're saying, IMO it sounds like you need to curb your expectations a bit. But you do you, not meaning to sound like I'm telling you that you need to change, just giving my interpretation of what you're saying.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Barbatos was the one who gave you the infinite glide and gun.

Oh. Huh.

If Paimon didn't cast a spell on me... then, wait. What has Paimon actually done? Besides speak on behalf of the MC.

Barbatos was the one who gave you the infinite glide and gun.

I'm kinda confused by the start of the story. You and your sibling are from another world and yet know of this worlds Gods? Or Did the traveler just assume the god came from this world? Also if they did know of them wouldn't they know which god it is from the power she used?

I don't think the MC knows anything about this world. IIRC the big bad goddess at the beginning hit the MC, and the MC awoke on Teyvat. The MC doesn't know anything, and needs info. The Knights of Favonius will help the MC track down the big bad goddess, but the Knights have more pressing matters right now, so the MC helping out with that will hopefully lead to the Knights helping out the MC finding his/her sister/brother.

And didn't they say the gods give people visions and yet anyone with a vision can eventually become a god if they get gnosis? Is there a real god that gave the first people visions who then digivolved into gnosis using gods and they in turn gave vision to other people or what?

I think Piamon is the original body of the unknown god or something like that and that they then possessed your sister/brother.

Interesting observation and theory. Paimon doesn't seem to be confused or curious about her past, though.

liuye harbor

Ah. The adventurer's guild attendant gave me a quest to go down a deli ever a letter to her counterpart (or herself? It's not clear if this is a Sierokarte thing where she exists in multiple places at once) in Liuye. I tried going there, but ran into a blue forcefield wall. I think I need to clear a Domain or something to progress? Not sure.

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While I can't necessarily disagree with some of what you're saying, IMO it sounds like you need to curb your expectations a bit. But you do you, not meaning to sound like I'm telling you that you need to change, just giving my interpretation of what you're saying.

Maybe I am expecting too much JRPG out of this game, but when the game is sorta trying to pass itself off as one, I can't help but judge it by JRPG standards. The Trails series and FFXIV have trained me to dissect every single little thing and try to formulate a picture with which to try to analyze what's going on and to predict what's going to happen next, by formulating theories and using process of elimination to figure out what's the most likely. Those games set the bar too high for me. Once you have had a taste of the gold, you can't go back, and now they're standard by which I judge other JRPGs.

Being a fish out of water shouldn't justify gaps in worldbuilding. If anything, it should make it even easier for the writers to communicate to the player stuff that should be common knowledge about the world, since they don't have to try to figure out ways to avoid writing "as you know" exposition. They don't even need to have an NPC tell the player everything; just do the Trails or FFXIV thing where the player can go to the library and read the lore, or an illustrated children's book that simplifies things. Genshin has a few books in the Knight's library, but they're mostly in universe fiction, with only a couple of actual history books, and those history books only cover the period after Mondstadt was founded, apparently annexed by some unknown faction, and then liberated by Venessa. Or, they could do the FFX thing where there is an old senile historian investigating ancient ruins and statues and sites of ancient battlefields, and if you walk up to him he will tell you about the lore about that place, giving you a picture into what the country looked like at different points in time. Etc.

[Katchii]

Maybe I am expecting too much JRPG out of this game, but when the game is sorta trying to pass itself off as one, I can't help but judge it by JRPG standards. The Trails series and FFXIV have trained me to dissect every single little thing and try to formulate a picture with which to try to analyze what's going on and to predict what's going to happen next, by formulating theories and using process of elimination to figure out what's the most likely. Those games set the bar too high for me. Once you have had a taste of the gold, you can't go back, and now they're standard by which I judge other JRPGs.

I guess you and I just function differently in this case. I don't read much into what I'm told outside of what it actually says, so I don't spend time speculating, analyzing or using process of elimination except in cases where it's clearly obvious what it is you are interpreting.

I take the stories and game at pretty much face value and just experience what they put in front of me.

Being a fish out of water shouldn't justify gaps in worldbuilding. If anything, it should make it even easier for the writers to communicate to the player stuff that should be common knowledge about the world, since they don't have to try to figure out ways to avoid writing "as you know" exposition. They don't even need to have an NPC tell the player everything; just do the Trails or FFXIV thing where the player can go to the library and read the lore, or an illustrated children's book that simplifies things. Genshin has a few books in the Knight's library, but they're mostly in universe fiction, with only a couple of actual history books, and those history books only cover the period after Mondstadt was founded, apparently annexed by some unknown faction, and then liberated by Venessa. Or, they could do the FFX thing where there is an old senile historian investigating ancient ruins and statues and sites of ancient battlefields, and if you walk up to him he will tell you about the lore about that place, giving you a picture into what the country looked like at different points in time. Etc.

But does the game NEED that? You know enough about the in-game world to do what you need to do. Having all that history and exposition would be nice, and would certainly enhance it, but it doesn't feel like it's missing, exactly. Also, why do you need to know everything there is to know about the world and it's history RIGHT NOW? Some of the intrigue in certain stories and games is that sense of mystery, where some history is lost or not well characterized and part of what you do as you continue through the story or game is discover that and reveal the hidden truths.

You used FFXIV as a golden example of that, but even in FFXIV they didn't (and still really haven't, completely) provide all the details for who you are, the history of the world, who Hydaelyn is, etc... you didn't even start to get slivers of that information until YEARS after it's launch.

The game literally just came out and it's a brand new IP, give it some time to mature.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

You used FFXIV as a golden example of that, but even in FFXIV they didn't (and still really haven't, completely) provide all the details for who you are, the history of the world, who Hydaelyn is, etc... you didn't even start to get slivers of that information until YEARS after it's launch.

When I was playing through ARR 2.0 (that's about a 20 hour long story), I had a pretty broad view of the history of the world and what was up with each nation.

When I was playing through Trails of Cold Steel for the first time (ToCS blew my mind so much, that I decided to begin writing down my thoughts on every JRPG I played after, starting with Cold Steel 2), the amount of the lore packed into the first ten hours was crazy. Before I had even entered the first dungeon, I knew that the world was around a few thousand years old, the current epoch began about 1,200 years ago when society collapsed and we entered the dark ages, medieval period ended around the year 1,000, and the world was in a renaissance era until 1,150 when magitek was invented. I knew that the Empire was based off of Prussia, with an Emperor who appointed a Chancellor and there were nobles ruling over provinces (we didn't learn that there was an elected diet until way later) and we knew that the Empire was in a cold war with the Republic of Calvard, which was also imperialist. The Empire was also at war with a kingdom called Liberl 10 years ago. We knew that the most important Emperor was Driechels, who rebuilt the Empire in 950 during the War of the Lions, but that the Empire had existed for a lot longer... and this is all just scratching the surface of what you learned in the first ten hours of the game. And it did it without turning into a boring doorstopper that is 80% exposition about irrelevant fluff lore and 20% actual story like a GRRM or a Brandon Sanderson novel. That context made me more invested in the story.

I'm 10-15 hours into Genshin right now (can't tell how much exactly because there doesn't seem to be a counter). It's not like I don't know anything about the world of Teyvat. I know that there are 7 Gods, they walked the earth and founded 7 kingdoms, 5 of them left but 2 are still hanging around. The place where Mondstadt was used to be a frozen wasteland up north, but Barbatos used his wind power to create a wind shield around the area that shielded it from the cold and the snow, making it habitable. Mondstadt was founded. At some point Barbatos befriended Dvalin (btw, where are the other dragons?). There was some sort of chaos war (where monsters or darkness overran the world?). Venessa liberated Mondstadt, but Barbatos had apparently disappeared. A canon of four demigods/saints below Barbatos was erected, called the Four Winds. The Wolf Knight died and the Liontooth knight is either dead or in hiding. Dvalin is now hostile and the Knights of Favonius haven't been successful at combatting him. (btw, Shouldn't the people of Mondstadt be having a crisis of faith, with their god and 3/4 of their demigods gone, with their last demigod/saint figure, the Knights, not being very strong?). Also, the 7 nations appear to be in a struggle against each other, with Snezhnaya appearing to be the most aggressive (is this like a Japan situation where they don't have many resources back home, so they need to acquire those resources from foreign places, and they have chosen to do so through conquest?). Etc.

But I feel like there are a lot of gaps, compared to say what I knew 10-15 hours into FFXIV or I knew in Trails. I still don't know how Mondstadt is actually run. Is it a theocracy? If so, who and where is the bishop or the pope? I have neither seen nor heard of any leader figure of the Church of Barbatos ingame. Is it a military dictatorship led by the Grand Master? Is it a democracy with town hall meetings and possibly a mayor? What force was Mondstadt liberated from by Venessa 100 years ago? How old is the setting? How long ago did the 7 gods arrive in the mortal world? What is the exact nature of the Fatui? Are they Snezhnaya's intelligence division? Or are they an extremist group based out of Snezhnaya? Or are they are neutral, big bad organization like Ouroboros that is just manipulating Snezhnaya ATM? Who are the Abyss Mages? They seem to be responsible for everything bad that happened over the past 100 years but we know jack all about them. Etc. I feel like these are basic questions that would have been answered within the first 10 hours of FFXIV or Trails.

[Katchii]

[SNIP]

As you've already stated, I think you're just honestly expecting far more detail than is necessary. None of those details would do anything but enrich the history of the world, which would be great, but not at all necessary for you as the character to know and understand to any great depth especially at this point in time. Also, this is not a story focused game, unlike FFXIV and ToCS and the other JRPGs you're referencing.

This isn't a JRPG, it's a gacha action game with RPG elements.

Many players would quit playing the game if they had to sit through cutscenes or rush through that many lines of dialogue for a history lesson like that. As long as it's optional, that would be great, but the hours or cutscenes and lines of dialogue is actually one of the reason people cite that they don't play FFXIv or at least stopped playing after they discovered how story heavy it is.

[Zantos]

Ran into the thing about characters being on a different quest. So, I went to do the commission quest the guy was on. As I left to go defeat the monsters, he then went into the story quest. So now I have to do that to complete the commission that I was doing to complete the main quest. Thats a huge pain in the butt.

[Ardenaso]

-snip-

Moonstadt has Springvale and Dawn Winery as small hamlets, that's it I guess; they also have a small harbor on the north though it's more like a fishing port

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-snip-

friendly reminder

[Forteofgray]

I'm trying to enjoy it and I am sort of, but there are a lot of things making that difficult. I play games with a controller if possible and this game only lets you switch invert if you use one. On top of that, if you jump from a ledge straight down and the ledge hits the camera, the camera will pivot all the way up and it takes a full 3 seconds to swing it back to normal at sensitivity 4. There are WAY too many notifications constantly popping up, alerts and such. When you use a controller and adjust the height of the camera, it resets itself as you move. This is annoying to me and you can't turn it off. I find myself constantly fighting the camera.

The game holds your hand like you've never played a video game before and as far as hour 2 into my save, it hasn't let up. It's not as bad as some Asian games but the number of times it felt it had to teach me basic functions is ridiculous. There are also way too many times where the camera is taken away from you to do a flyby of some art assets or locale which is one of my pet peeves with games. If I wanted to look at it I would.

You cannot skip cutscenes.

You can only have one save per account and as far as I can tell, you can't reset it. The game spams you with level up items too, so you really get handed levels if you choose to use them. You can neglect to, but it's part of the repeated core loot. I personally don't understand the point of playing a game if you're going to skip ahead of the game itself. Why have a leveling system if you just give people a FREE way to skip it?

It's insane how much this game is copying Breath of the Wild. As soon as you start, you walk up to a cliff and the game shows you the world. The battle music is extremely similar to the battle music in BOTW. You have a small stamina meter that only displays when you use it and it appears next to you. You can climb any non-dungeon wall. You can cook at cooking pots by throwing ingredients into the pot. There are NPCs with very little to say wandering around the game map. The first generic enemies you fight are slimes that bounce around then lunge at you and brown furry goblins wielding wooden clubs standing around camps with some scattered wooden scaffolding. You get a glider. I wouldn't be surprised to find out the big bad in this game is an amorphous red cloud. One or two of these wouldn't mean anything but all together, it's clear they were copying BOTW.

Getting past all that, there is actually a decent game here. The anime aesthetic is unappealing to some and they layer it on THICK here. Especially with the female grunts... Are they supposed to sound so sexual? It's utter cringe. The dialogue isn't very good but that's not a deal breaker for me. There are dungeons to explore, the animations are fluid and the combat is passable (no light/heavy chains, only light light light, magic attack, special) so don't expect a lot of depth there. The special magic attacks are fun to use especially the tornado one the main character has.

You can upgrade weapons and get artifacts to equip for bonuses, even set bonuses.

Your party doesn't hang out with you. You get up to 4 people at one time but you switch between them, which I find odd and not a positive but that's just me. Each character is an anime stereotype that lays it on hard so you're gonna have to either like that or accept it. The supporting character that follows you around Navi style is really fucking annoying. She says her own name constantly, has a high pitched voice and looks like a 7 year old.

This game could be great but they need to deal with some of the mechanical failures like the mouse/kb controls not having invert, the camera rotating entirely upward if it hits a ledge as you jump off it, the nonstop alerts in the UI, the framerate stutter as you move around the world, not having multiple saves and the spamming of level up bonus items.

And despite all that whining, I still keep going back to it. Maybe it's the progression or the discovery of new characters that function differently than the others. Hopefully they can fine tune this game in the near future.

[Skizzit]

You can only have one save per account and as far as I can tell, you can't reset it. The game spams you with level up items too, so you really get handed levels if you choose to use them. You can neglect to, but it's part of the repeated core loot. I personally don't understand the point of playing a game if you're going to skip ahead of the game itself. Why have a leveling system if you just give people a FREE way to skip it?

It's insane how much this game is copying Breath of the Wild. As soon as you start, you walk up to a cliff and the game shows you the world. The battle music is extremely similar to the battle music in BOTW. You have a small stamina meter that only displays when you use it and it appears next to you. You can climb any non-dungeon wall. You can cook at cooking pots by throwing ingredients into the pot. There are NPCs with very little to say wandering around the game map. The first generic enemies you fight are slimes that bounce around then lunge at you and brown furry goblins wielding wooden clubs standing around camps with some scattered wooden scaffolding. You get a glider. I wouldn't be surprised to find out the big bad in this game is an amorphous red cloud. One or two of these wouldn't mean anything but all together, it's clear they were copying BOTW.

The one save and level up items are intentional. This is a gatcha driven game. They want you to spend money to unlock all the characters, not just keep making new saves to try out all the characters and options. The level items are the way to level up, not a way to skip levels. If you were to try and just level up characters without them, you would find yourself vastly under leveled really quickly. It also allows you to level the characters you want to, not just the ones you use in fights so if down the line you snag a new character from the gatcha system, you don't have to spend time running around to get them caught up in levels.

The BOTW similarities are also 100% intentional. They have said as much and are very happy people compare their little game to that one.

[Zig Zug]

Disclaimer: it's a gacha game,

Google wasn't clear enough and I ate crayons in my college years.

Is this like a Loot Box that you buy with in game currency?

What's the drawback or negative perception associated with?

[Endus]

The BOTW similarities are also 100% intentional. They have said as much and are very happy people compare their little game to that one.

Also really overstated.

The graphics have some of the same painterly look, but that's hardly something BotW came up with.
There's similar flying and gliding, with a stamina bar, but BotW didn't innovate those.
Combat's pretty wildly different between the two; BotW is a lot more tactical and focused on shield parries, counters, and weak spots, where GI is very spammy and relies on layered elemental effects.
BotW chests don't respawn. Enemies only respawn on a Blood Moon cycle, every 3ish hours. GI chests often do respawn (the lesser ones, anyway), and the enemies respawn pretty darned fast and constantly.
Gear system in GI is way more similar to standard MMO stuff than BotW's.
Appearance is entirely gear-driven in BotW, not so in GI.
Obviously, zero gacha in BotW.
Puzzle elements are vastly less in GI, to the point that they're barely there. BotW uses puzzling as a major game pillar.

There's some loose inspiration, particularly in traversal and aesthetics, but that's about it. I see people call this a "BoTW clone", and that's a ridiculous claim.

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Google wasn't clear enough and I ate crayons in my college years.

Is this like a Loot Box that you buy with in game currency?

What's the drawback or negative perception associated with?

Gacha are the vending machines that dispense toys in capsules, more popular in Japan than here though they were more common in the '80s/'90s. It basically is a loot box type thing, though gacha systems often only deliver a single item/character per "pull", where lootboxes usually contain multiple items.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Google wasn't clear enough and I ate crayons in my college years.

Is this like a Loot Box that you buy with in game currency?

What's the drawback or negative perception associated with?

Gacha game usually means that it is a somewhat predatory F2P mobile game that revolves around collecting anime characters with good artwork and voice acting and a tidbit of story that people fall in love with. There are hundreds of characters commissioned by artists for these games, so chances are you will have a few favorites you want. So you play the game and you get "draws", which allow you to get random characters. But you use up all of your draws and you don't get the one you wanted, so you either have to 1. login every day and do your daily grind, and save up your freemium crystals to buy draws and hopefully get what you want, or 2. you lay down money to buy draws in bulk. Over the last few years, it has become common for gacha games to introduce a "pity mechanic" that varies from game to game; in some games it can only be activated if you draw like 10 times in a row and don't get a character, your next draw is guaranteed to be a character. In other games, you just have to draw 300 times in a row and they will just let you pick whichever character you want. Gacha games are among the highest grossing games ever (including traditional console games, world of warcraft, etc). The vast majority of gacha game players don't spend a dime, but the games make their money off of the whales - people who are emotionally invested and REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY want their favorite character, and are willing to drop hundreds to thousands of dollars drawing over and over again in the hope that probability will be on their side, or that they will trigger the pity mechanic and be able to just pick the character they want.

[Yunru]

Google wasn't clear enough and I ate crayons in my college years.

Is this like a Loot Box that you buy with in game currency?

What's the drawback or negative perception associated with?

Its lootboxes, but they come with mercy rolls. Every 10 rolls you will get a 4 star min (character or weapon).

If you realy want some character and are not lucky with rolling right, just make a new account and try again. (for free gems time - you get araund 4000 and this is enogh for 25)

However you should not spend money on it. But you should unlock as many chars as possible at start of the game as the ones you get for free are total garbage and not worth upgrading (they are tier 3 lol).

For a good party you need wind (main, so no need for others), earth (you can get a earth tank from 10 rolls at 100% rate), water (you need to hit rank 20, unknown how long it will last), electric (gatcha) and fire (gatcha - but you can get one from completing rank 3 in some dungeon thing).


Anyway, people who have a bad habbit buying lootboxes should stay the fuck away from this game for their own good.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

It basically is a loot box type thing, though gacha systems often only deliver a single item/character per "pull", where lootboxes usually contain multiple items.

I'd say that the line is blurred. In gacha games, usually your draws do not guarantee a character. The draws usually include items like weapons and equipment, which exist to pad out the chances and minimize the chance of getting a character. Same thing in Overwatch and HotS, where they try to lower the chances of players getting the skins and heroes they wanted by including junk such as sprays and voicelines.

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I must reiterate that gacha systems are predatory. They revolve around 1. getting the player emotionally invested in a character - be it through art, storylines, voice actor, or their sheer stat superiority, and 2. frustrating the player by denying what they want to them, that the player decides to just go ahead and drop money in the hopes of getting that player. The first buck a player spends on a game is the hardest. Once you have gotten a player to spend a buck on a game; you've got them. They're in. They've already acclimated to the idea of spending on the game, and the more they spend, the more the sunk cost fallacy will keep them spending.

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To players who don't spend money, gacha systems are aggravating, because the player feels like they have to do chores, and it is incredibly time efficient. The game has to be designed around penalizing you for not paying. They have to log in every day and do their chores to save up their allowance so that hopefully in several months time, they will be able to draw enough times in a row to get the character they want. It's incredibly time inefficient; if you were making a minimum wage of $15 in California, and you casually worked for 20 hours a week, you could easily afford the character you wanted in a week. Whereas if you try to not spend money, you will have to spend dozens and dozens of hours over the course of months doing chores you hate. So time wise, paying is almost always the better option in terms of man hours doing work/chores.

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Another way they try to get you is with the "gacha wall". The game starts out casual enough, where you are able to progress through the game with your starter draws and the handful of draws you got from your limited allowance of free draws. You play the game for a while, get emotionally invested... and then you run into "the wall", where there is a difficulty spike and your measly starter draws are not powerful enough to complete the content. You really want to know what happens next, so you either 1. lay down money to draw powerful enough characters to progress, or 2. you give up and quit. Right now, it's too early to tell whether or not Genshin Impact has a gacha wall.

[Endus]

I'd say that the line is blurred. In gacha games, usually your draws do not guarantee a character. The draws usually include items like weapons and equipment, which exist to pad out the chances and minimize the chance of getting a character. Same thing in Overwatch and HotS, where they try to lower the chances of players getting the skins and heroes they wanted by including junk such as sprays and voicelines.

Well, yeah. That's why I said "item/character". I was just making the point that the gacha systems I've seen tend to reward one "thing" per "pull", whereas lootboxes are usually 3-5 "things" per "box". But they're also weighted differently; lootboxes are usually priced much higher, and digital gacha systems often have pity mechanics to guarantee a high-end reward every X pulls, and often have a 10x pull which may have an additional guarantee (Genshin Impact does all this).

I must reiterate that gacha systems are predatory. They revolve around 1. getting the player emotionally invested in a character - be it through art, storylines, voice actor, or their sheer stat superiority, and 2. frustrating the player by denying what they want to them, that the player decides to just go ahead and drop money in the hopes of getting that player. The first buck a player spends on a game is the hardest. Once you have gotten a player to spend a buck on a game; you've got them. They're in. They've already acclimated to the idea of spending on the game, and the more they spend, the more the sunk cost fallacy will keep them spending.

They're capitalist. Capitalist economics, pretty much by definition, is predatory. Any value attached to any thing can and likely will be monetized for profit. The same kind of reasons exist for why fast food joints offer "meal deals", to get you to buy more, why MMORPGs are built like skinner boxes to keep you subscribing, etc. Hell, the entire field of advertising exists to exploit people.

Do I like that, particularly? Nah. But it's pretty much standard business practice. This is just a successful model at finding a method that encourages customers to spend money on their products. I got into Magic: The Gathering as a kid in the '90s, and card packs were just as much "loot boxes" as anything sold digitally. I still have my cards, and it's only in the last few years that some of my top-end cards might be worth selling, but they definitely won't make back the allowance money I spent buying boosters back in the day.

[Video Games]

heh

[Val the Moofia Boss]

The best gacha game, in my experience, is Granblue Fantasy. There is no gacha wall and you can complete all story content with pretty much any team. There is optional hardcore challenging content that requires specific teams and characters, but 99% of people aren't playing GBF for the hardcore stuff. They're playing for characters and story. Speaking of, GBF is really good with its gacha mechanics. You get a ton of crystals by logging in and doing the story (and the story is continually expanded regularly, so there is an ever increasing number of crystals you can get by just enjoying the content you wanted to experience in the first place, no doing chores required). The pity system is pretty good; just save up so you can draw 300 times in a row and you'll get anything you want. Also, the devs regularly host events where they throw characters at you for free. From December through January, February through March, and June through August, every day you login you get anywhere from 10 to 100 free draws, and those draws count towards the pity mechanic. So if you're lucky and login one day and get a 100 free draw, and you have 200 draws saved up, well there you go. You can buy any character you want that day. And they also regularly add in new questlines that award characters too (I think there are like two or three dozen side stories, and some award multiple characters!).

I have 200 characters from just doing side stories and logging in during the events for my free draws. I can steamroll through the story content with any characters I want. Never dropped a dime on GBF. If you want a gacha game that you can play on your phone with good characters and good art, GBF is my recommendation. It's the only good gacha game I've experienced IMO.

Genshin is fun, but right now it seems to suffer from the problem of mandatory chores. Plus we don't know how it looks later on.

[arandomuser]

so do eastern developers have an aversion to having adults as main characters,
and having them dressed appropriately for combat situations

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Do I like that, particularly? Nah. But it's pretty much standard business practice. This is just a successful model at finding a method that encourages customers to spend money on their products. I got into Magic: The Gathering as a kid in the '90s, and card packs were just as much "loot boxes" as anything sold digitally. I still have my cards, and it's only in the last few years that some of my top-end cards might be worth selling, but they definitely won't make back the allowance money I spent buying boosters back in the day.

I never really played those card games (unless you count Hearthstone, which I played during the beta and the first few months... until the game went bad and you had to pretty much buy with real money in order to play PvP at all). I remember when Battletech tries the system out. It was weird. You'd go into Todd's Miniatures wanting to buy some mechs for your next tabletop wargame... but then you found out that the mechs were being sold in booster packs, and you had no idea which pack contained what. And then there were rare metal mech minis mixed in with the plastic minis. So imagine trying to get a metal Timberwolf/Madcat. I pretty much stopped playing battletech once they pulled that stunt. Fortunately Wizkids went defunct IIRC and the IP is in better hands now.




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so do eastern developers have an aversion to having adults as main characters,
and having them dressed appropriately for combat situations

Not really. I know people like to cherry pick games like Tales, but really many JRPGs and Chinese RPGs have adults too.

I think it has to do with the target audience. Series like Tales of are marketed towards whoever is 14 at the time, whereas most other RPG series Trails or Final Fantasy are more generally marketed towards whoever is interested in RPGs, from teenagers to adults in their 40s.