Games

gacha have element of chance, but usually speaking, gacha especially in asian games tend to also be tied to some form of power and is not purely cosmetic.

ao its not just purely, i want this character/costume/weapon because it looks cool, but theyres stats attached to it.

western game loot boxes generally sit more often as coametic, so the desire to pay isnt as bad (but can still be bad) but of course this doesnt apply to all western games either. an example of gacha based power is ultimate teams for sports games, which its gacha has players stats tied to them for team building.

gacha and loot boxes are fundamentally the same, but connotatively, gacha usually implies power and lootbox implies cosmetics, but technically not incorrect to use it either way.

if you want a dumb comparison, gacha is seen like trading card games, where power of the card also has value.

lootbox is sorta like sports cards where its collective in nature and really is about rarity/how the card looks

Gacha and lootboxes (similar in concept) tend to be the worst of predatory microtransactions because they exploit gambling addictions.

"Classic" microtansactions, like freaking Oblivion horse armor, skins, etc, are bad, but you buy them once and you know exactly what you're getting.

With gacha and lootboxes you buy a lottery ticket hoping to get something good. They use rush-inducing casino-style tricks to get you hooked. They obfuscate your real odds and how much you're spending as much as they can.

I believe the difference is that gacha introduces an element of chance, so you spend an in game currency to buy a spin of a wheel where you may get different rewards. Microtransactions could be something like "spend $5 and get this new skin", it's a guarantee. Gacha will be like "spend $1 for a 10% chance at this legendary skin, spend $5 for a 70% chance, etc etc"

I do believe people should have the right to spent their money however the f they want, but this becomes extremely problematic if you don't at least regulate their spending behavior, either directly or indirectly.

So okay, now you have a society full of hopeless addicts, but at least nobody has to starve. Sound kinda... dystopian if you ask me

I play a gacha game and have spent $0 on it. But I can imagine that sort of psychological insulation is not quite so common.

This entire comment feels like brain rot to me

In my experience, the urge only begins once you've completed the entire openworld and run out of content other than the endgame dungeons (spiral abyss, imaginarium theater). You have a long way to go before that point.

I did play a lot a couple years ago completely f2p and in the late game the artifact farming gets really bad, to the point that you farm for weeks for one character. It's not necessary to clear the story (at least in the past) but in the late abyss is mandatory and it kills any will to try off-meta/more fun builds. Still a lot of fun if you play casually.

I haven't played Genshin in a couple of years but it's definitely one of the better ones from what I've seen. I played through f2p until I had a sense of the game and was confident in the content and monetization model. After that I did spend whatever it was, five bucks(?), for the "battle pass" but honestly as long as you have the time to grind then Genshin is fairly non-invasive. That grind is why I quit though, the end game was a slog.

I‘m just spending 5 bucks for Welkins, swiping is for when you really want a character and have nothing left. But even then you drop one Mario Kart World and that should get you what you want. I have no idea what the point in whaling is, there‘s nothing hard in the game that needs it, there‘s nothing that even needs constellations. Maxing out a character just makes their numbers bigger (which isn‘t needed, see above) and doesn‘t change anything about their gameplay. I really don‘t get it.

But since you‘ve just started, you‘ll notice that eventually you won‘t be swimming in resources anymore. Still, you should be able to get a character every other patch even if you‘re unlucky. I guess the biggest opening people give for swiping is banking on „winning“ the 50-50, and then they don‘t win (duh) and then they’re frustrated and force it. As for why they’re swiping a grand and upwards into C6, I have no idea.

I can only speak for ZZZ, WuWa, and Genshin though. I‘m not in the picture with any of the others.

I only really ever got the urge to spend when I lost a 50/50 for a favorite limited banner character. I stopped playing and hopped to another game instead though, eheh

Honestly it was pretty good

Yeah, I have never seen anyone talking about benefits of gacha model online. People only ever talk about it like it's pure evil in its most refined form. Yet to hear anyone say how this model allows developers to fund basically F2P "Breath of the Wild" tier games with 100x more content.

I played a gatcha game with a friend when we didn't know what gacha was and we where trying to build our teams by just playing the game and there where always massive difficulty walls that couldn't be passed. So we both ended up spending around $500 CAD on that game and farming with our phones open on the game 24/7. We stopped after we understood how predatory the model was.

I felt I was taking crazypills. In what world does this headline and article not scream "These games are ruining lives because of extremely manipulative marketing tactics.

I assume the people who took this article as a personal attack are part of the 19%, but doesn't want to realise they have a very serious problem.