this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2025
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The difference is in the details, that with other paid DLC, you actually get the thing you paid for, guaranteed. With a gacha, if they're promoting some super-strong character, weapon, etc. that you want and you buy currency to spend in the gacha, you are not guaranteed to get that item or anything of the same quality/rarity in any of those pulls you make. It's all random chance, gambling at its core. Exceptionally good or bad luck can start playing psychological tricks on you, such as FOMO (there will always be something stronger coming soon), sunk cost fallacy (you've already dumped this much into it and got nothing, what's the difference with this much more?), and before you know it, if you're not watching carefully, you've spent far more in in-game and/or real money than you realized. That's far different than a one-time purchase straight-up for a cosmetic or weapon to use with no further need to spend any more, and that's what gets people hooked like gambling. You may not have experienced this much because gachas tend to be very generous to new players in order to get them started out quickly as whales fodder and get them hooked on the adrenaline rush of "winning" in the gacha system before the gacha currency starts to dry up on them.
I have only basic understanding of those systems, but it seems, there are "pity" systems which do give some guarantees that you get something if you fail rolling for it for long enough. I do agree it's all very gamblish at its core though.
Most "pity" systems require hundreds of pulls beforehand, which unless someone saves months worth of free currency for those pulls, can be very expensive in real world money to get the currency to afford. In a way, pity systems are just designed to increase the amount of money players spend.
The only "pity" I dealt with at this point is guaranteed 4star for every 10 pulls. It can be anything though, not necessarily a character. But there are sometimes special offers (like tutorial pull) that indeed guarantee that you get a particular character or item for 10 pulls.
Like I mentioned before, "tutorial pulls" are part of that hyper-generosity that gachas will commonly have for new players to give them enough of a dopamine rush to hang around and be more likely to spend more later. That generosity will not last and can't last or elee the game will not make nearly as much money. Give it another week and you will find that the supposed good luck runs out, as well as the free currency offered for things like logging in, and then it will start requiring a ton of grinding or real world money to acquire the necessary currency to get to the "pity" in order to ensure you get a top-rarity item. That's how gacha systems work.
I don't feel it's "hyper", it's only 8 crystals instead of 10 for guaranteed Noelle. Other (non-tutorial) pull categories have something guaranteed for 10 crystals, what exactly they guarantee changes depending on current events and such. Classic pulls category is 10 crystals for guaranteed 4+ star something, which can be character or weapon.
"Dopamine rush" sounds like a bit of a stretch, because normal gameplay here with tons of randomized minibosses, minigames and puzzles, all of which reward you fancy chests with random loot in open-world, gives way more dopamine every few minutes, and the whole gacha thing feels quite underwhelming compared to that in terms of neurochemistry.
Sure, I will be looking carefully at this dynamics as I progress. I find it quite surprising what you're describing is still not there.
Who knows, maybe it makes enough money even without being that pushy? For me it's too early to say.