Let's Talk Gacha Games (X% IS A LIE)

[Tatsuya Kaname]

Gacha games are video games that implement the gacha (capsule-toy vending machine) mechanic. It is similar to loot box, in that it induces players to spend in-game currency to receive a random virtual item. Most of these games are free-to-play mobile games, where the gacha serves as an incentive to spend real-world money.

The gacha game model began to be widely used in the early 2010s, faring particularly well in Japan. Almost all of the highest-grossing mobile games in Japan use it, and it has become an integral part of Japanese mobile game culture. Outside Japan, the game mechanism is also gaining popularity and is included in various Chinese and Korean games.

Source: Wikipedia

What Gacha Games do you play? How much money have you spent on these money-grabbing games? Also let's discuss the games and probability and interesting stuffs, and feel free to share your best and worst Gacha results.

[vonflare]

I used to play F:GO until I realized it sucks and I'd rather play a PC game

Probably the only reason I played so long was my S-tier luck, I have tons of good SR and SSRs

[popsofctown]

I think the gameplay of a game matters more than whether it is gacha/lootbox monetized.
I play Puzzles and Dragons and end up quitting every other gacha to return to Puzzles and Dragons due to gameplay just not being there (except for Alchemist Code which I quit because it's goals/pacesetting expected you to play ~3.5 hours per day which is too much, its gameplay was pretty good).

[Tatsuya Kaname]

I play Magia Record (obviously) and a few more Idol Rhythm games like Tokyo 7th Sisters and BanG Dream! Girls Band Party. I'm starting to burn out in Magia Record though after I used up all the currency I saved for 7 months on a single week of limited gacha. I'll still keep playing.

I think I never spend loads of money other than subscribing to monthly $4 membership in some games and save up for a good card. And since free currency is easy to gather in those games, I feel like with good luck, I can build up a good set of cards to get through the rankings.

[popsofctown]

Most games are reasonable as f2p

[Bitmap]

I used to play Azur Lane and Arknights.

[Natirasha]

I play FGO-JP, Another Eden, and Arknights.

I've spent more money than I probably should have on all three of them.

[Natirasha]

Also I've tried more or less every english-language gacha that exists on android, so ama. I dunno why but I gel pretty well with the whole gacha genre thing and its kind of my main way of playing games nowadays.

[Isis]

Do you truly stay active in several at a time? I can't stay active at two longer than a month

any interesting collab/product placement observations?
it was super weird when I found out Shinrabansho collab's 5th outing was definitely the last one, and I was really upset about it because it had some key cards I hadn't gotten yet
and when I asked why "how can we be sure it's not coming back"
and the answer was "shinrabansho isn't actually an anime it's characters included in the packaging for a type of cookie you buy like in convenience stores in Japan and they're going to stop making the cookies cause they don't sell well anymore so there's no longer a point"
Very sad

[Natirasha]

"Active" is a bit of a misnomer. I've reached nirvana in FGO and Arknights for lack of a better word where I have an abundance of resources, almost all my units maxed out, and just go on to do my dailies and bounce. Hell, in FGO I literally don't play unless there's an event or new chapter release going on because I have no reason to besides login rewards. Before I reached that point though, I was consistently playing two games at once--the two games always changed, although FGO has always been one. The second game has been at times Girls Frontline, Epic 7, Dragalia Lost, Aurora Legends, Destiny Child, Granblue Fantasy, Another Eden, Last Cloudia, Magia Record, Symphogear XDU and probably more I'm forgetting. Once Arknights came out though it sort of supplanted everything else and is in my stable roster.

Another Eden I gave another shot at the beginning of last month because they had a big new account campaign with 30 free rolls to start and a selector ticket so I decided to dive back in because I'm on furlough until movie theaters open up and had nothing better to do. It ended up being a good decision and it's definitely staying in my long-term pile once this ends. I'll cross time management once I have a job again, my work was pretty chill in the sense that I played mobile games on the job anyways but we'll see.

As a consequence with the games I've played, I've missed out on all the funny collab stuff. FGO doesn't do collabs with non-type-moon properties, Arknights is still too new, and Another Eden has done a Persona 5 collab and that's in. By and large I'm skeptical of games that lean too hard on collabs though, it speaks to me of a lack of confidence in the source material or a lack of ideas. One of the things that makes FGO cool is that the collabs are all canon in-universe because they are just other type-moon properties, which obviously can't happen with the bulk of collab events in these games(the only one I can think of is the FFXIV x Nier Automata one?). I heard the Final Fantasy gachas have fun collabs though, I think there was a like Taylor Swift one in DFFOO?

Oh yeah I also have bandori installed but I rarely play it and I don't roll the gacha(I think I have something like 30k stars?), I just treat the game as anime guitar hero when I want to do something mindless.

[Isis]

I prefer original characters to collabs also. I just get interested by what makes the cut and what doesn't.

Gungho in-house collabs also, they have their own hearthstone rip-off and some other thing they pull from a lot.

Arknights look like it probably doesn't suck from an ad I saw, but I'm scared of time sinks and already feel bad about how my PAD collection suffered from trying to play dragalia, which in hindsight was never ever going to actually be good

[Isis]

Sometimes I miss The Alchemist Code being a turn based gacha.

It seems a tricky balancing act for something turn based to be fun. FE heroes is always a little dry, a little bit almost there.
Turn based is kinda tricky because it can devolve to "you levelled up unit X /it's rare and you rolled it, therefore the attack does enough damage to beat unit Y. Congrats here are your drops". As opposed to a console jrpg or strategy game that can be designed to kill you if you make dumb choice and let you win of you do Smart choice

[vonflare]

It seems a tricky balancing act for something turn based to be fun.

Not sure about that. turn based games are done extremely well in some instances; see Darkest Dungeon, for an example of amazing turn-based combat.

It's just that gacha games aren't about the gameplay, they're about the loot/rolls/collectable jpegs, so they sacrifice depth

[Natirasha]

tbh I think people shit on classic jrpg gameplay far too much. It's timeless even if it isn't as flashy or super complicated. In fact I'd say its ubiquity is one of its strengths at this point. I'm a big fan of elegance in game design and one of the reasons I think I trended towards mobile rpgs over big budget ones nowadays is because they are largely more simple and elegant in design. Depth isn't always a good thing, especially in the phone format where you're going to be playing the games while at work or on your commute or whatever where you can't give it 100% attention all the time.

[Isis]

I specifically meant a turn based gachas. Darkest Dungeon would be an example of a "console jrpg game that can be designed to kill you if you make the wrong choice" and if you could in-app purchase even just a little more HP for your crusader the tension would be lost. I'm not quite sure how you seem to misunderstand my post then violently agree.

[Natirasha]

Is that something gachas broadly do though? I mean, buying new characters obviously gives you more options but broadly speaking most games don't go for the pure "buy power" style because its really chintzy. You could say its similar to like buying new champions in League of Legends or something and I'd agree that having more options leads to more powerful plays and whatnot but its a different type of power than straight stat boosts.

[Isis]

Yeah when I said I liked Alchemist Code I was hinting at least one game seems to do it more or less right. I stopped playing that game for different reasons.

Maybe most games figure it out, maybe I have bad luck and picked the games from people who didn't design so well.

I do not think FE Heroes felt like "have more options", FE Heroes felt like "oh this campaign quest is real hard, maybe I should arrange my dudes like this?" then "oh i rolled Hector he attacks twice per round instead of once per round it doesn't really matter what goes where this campaign quest is easy now".

[Natirasha]

FEH is well-known to be powercreep central.

[Isis]

Ok I think everyone agrees on everything here if I quit pad my next gacha is going to be something turn-based and I'm hiring consultant natirasha to dodge the landmines

[Natirasha]

I mean it all depends on what you're looking for. I tend to prefer games with worse gacha rates, less customizability, less horny, and more streamlined systems. I also dislike pvp as a concept and trend towards the more story-based games.

[Isis]

Oh no don't touch my customizability

I will die

[vonflare]

I think the main problem with gacha games is their predatory business model, preying on those who have gambling problems/dont understand statistics/etc

it's an industry I don't feel comfortable supporting

[Natirasha]

I think the main problem with gacha games is their predatory business model, preying on those who have gambling problems/dont understand statistics/etc

it's an industry I don't feel comfortable supporting

Oh yeah I agree with this, it's incredibly scummy and terrible consumer-wise. The sad thing is that most AAA games do gacha stuff too nowadays, outside of the very specific indie and AA spaces the entire gaming industry is just glorified gambling. And like yeah, that sucks and is indicative of late-stage capitalism. But at the same time, I do enjoy them even outside of the gacha component although I will admit that the nice little dopamine hit you get when you get an SSR is great. So in the end I just shrug and say "no ethical consumption..." and move on. I've never said I'm a saint.

[Isis]

I respect the viewpoint but don't share it; don't want to debate it

[Fumuki]

I'm resurrecting a thread a bit but I kinda wanted to talk about gacha games

First I think I'm kinda on Isis's camp on the fact I respect the opinion of it being a "predatory model" but don't really share it, personally (and it may be different for Isis), I think the system can be predatory but it's not predatory by itself. As in, the cases where it's predatory happens when someone that already has an issue with over-investing or getting too attached to things comes around. It's not even something from gacha specifically but any game that doesn't have a "hard cap" of spending (you can't possibly spend more than a set amount of money on buy-once games for example).

If the problem of those "predatory" cases were really gacha itself, you wouldn't see similar or even worse cases in some F2P games that don't have lootboxes but only "energy refills" or direct purchase of units by topping up in the game currency, skins, etc. In my opinion the game are enabling some people bad behaviors/unhealthy mentality, not causing them. Also, there's just people have much more wealth than the average, so even though what they spend on those games may look like a lot to us, it's not a big deal for them.

I think my biggest issues with gacha games are:

Spoiler:

1) Some games used to not have very clear disclosed rates or pity system, there was even a infamous incident on GBF (fraud accusation) I think, although nowadays it's more standard to have those systems

2) The budget for some of those games, the price they sell it for, and the return the company gives the game can be a bit troublesome. I think many gachas try to make a quick buck by making a really cheap game, and set the prices much higher than they theoretically should be, but worse of it all the revenue some of those make is barely invested back in the franchise which is kinda sad.

However I also think there's positive things on the gacha model:

Spoiler:

1) For example people like to talk that game companies job situation should change but it'll hardly ever change without game companies having more predictability, if the game does well there's gonna be a small bonus on those companies, and if the game does bad they'll do mass layoffs. I do believe that F2P games/gacha can make that aspect at least more healthy, because there's a more stable source of revenue/predictability, also I imagine it's not exactly that simple to completely change the writing team, programmers and art team in those companies because it's a live-service game, it's not a one-time deal and you can make something else from scratch as a "sequel" (which devalues the workers positions).

2) Production budget can be much higher and the game much more polished if a company wants. The F2P monetization system works, and some of the highest revenue games nowadays are mobile/F2P, and they are live-service. On buy-once games the company doesn't want to over invest in a single game, polish it too much or etc. They want to rush it out which also creates the bad crunching habits on these places. However since gacha games are live-service, the company can take their time polishing their product and even have an incentive to do so since the amount they can profit with the game is much more high-stakes, for smaller companies a single game of this model can keep they going for at least 5 years.

I do believe that the reason we haven't seen that is because the gacha model is so, so lucrative that not many companies feel the need to put a lot of effort into it, it's just cheaper for them to make the cheapest game possible and sell for as much as they can rather than taking their time to do a good, solid product, even if the model/system itself may tell them the contrary, that in the long-term it's better to do it properly.

There's a reason there's many novels/shows about big, super immersive mmorpgs with very high budget values but in real life the mmorpg genre is "dying" (even though it's kinda of such a classic). It's because the MMO model isn't very lucrative compared to the other options, so not many companies invest on it, but they could kinda gacha-fy it and maybe it would be lucrative, and able to make really high production games that people would enjoy.

I don't think the gacha model itself is necessarily bad although it does have potential to enable bad behavior from both companies and players. It's just not inherently bad in my opinion and it could even be a good alternative to the current models of some games/genres if done properly.