this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2023
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That's not what fomo means. I have a bad case of FOMO right now with Genshin Impact. I genuinely like the game, but it forces me to login twice a day with the resin system (basically energy that accumulates over time), otherwise it caps and I lose progress. Also a lot of their content is in the form of limited time events. They do this for the obvious reason of it being extremely profitable. This is why you should be very cautious about getting into live service games.
Welp, I was interested in trying GI until reading this.
Yeah it's a legitimately a really good game and still has a huge amount of permanent content, but that's the nature of live service games. They need that constant engagement to survive. A game like Baulders gate, you buy it and the devs are paid regardless of how much or how little you play, not really the case with live service.
Oh and GI is gacha which isn't good either. But then they do cool stuff like make a really good card game in game that's completely free with zero paid stuff, and even hold irl tourneys with big prize pools.
The only live service game I have and likely will ever allow myself to play is Another Eden, ostensibly a mobile gacha but unlike any others in that genre (and yet... not entirely if you know what I mean:-D - it is less predatory than any modern game that allows in-app purchases that I've ever even heard of but that aspect is not entirely absent from it). It hits the JRPG nostalgia feel for being a spiritual successor to Chrono Trigger and Cross, made by some of the same developers actually, and the artwork and music especially are just gorgeous.:-D
And ironically, many people complain bitterly that they want it to be more like GI, with a pity system. Never mind that the gacha can be irrelevant here as you can do everything purely with the free characters (and more effort, especially JP-style i.e. heavy grinding), the FOMO salt is real, and I see now that games are just giving the people what they want, regardless of whether that's good for them or not. On the one hand it keeps further game development going, and people are free to spend how they please, while on the other there are horror stories of people dropping hundreds or even thousands of dollars (I think even USD $ currency), while having little to show for it in the end.
Predatory is predatory, and while on the one hand I'd love to check out GI someday, on the other I just don't think I could stand the gacha elements in it. It warps and twists EVERYTHING it touches, e.g. increasing pressure to make waifu/husbando portraits that objectify both women and men in it, and leads to content that looks visually appealing but in Another Eden at least, has not been tested and is not "fun" to play.
The funny part is that originally I had to choose between GI and AE, and I am so glad that I went the way that I did. Although probably better to avoid any such gacha at all in the future.:-|
To be fair, a pity system should definitely be a thing if there's any sort of gamba. That way there's at least a hard limit on what you can waste your money on until it's guaranteed. I at least find GI characters not to be too predatory, you mostly pull them for fun. In fact some of the best characters are the starting 4 stars lol, and you pull cuz you like the character a lot. They really develop the characters a lot, and if you've seen any comic cons or anime conventions, you'll see an insane amount of Genshin cosplays cuz they suck you in by really loving the characters. The gameplay is honestly so easy you absolutely don't need a good character, and it's actually incredibly balanced. The earliest characters released are actually still S tier because they fucked up the balance a bit with them so the new characters are still good but more niche focused, so everything is still relevant.
The only hard content is what's called the spiral abyss, which is a completely optional dungeon that rotates every 2 weeks and 100% clearing it gives you like 5 free gacha rolls, so people really just use it to bench mark characters since nothing else in the game is remotely challenging, nor is there any pvp aspect or anything.
But yeah, also Gacha and live service games tend to be a drug, once they have you hooked it's hard to quit. Sunk cost fallacy is real hard to overcome in gacha games.
I mean... you are not wrong, but to put on my debate hat (for the funsies:-D) I suppose the counter-argument is that since they made it so that the ga(t)cha system is itself irrelevant (at least, in the earlier days of the game, before Power Creep became rampant), they seemed to feel like that was the way to keep the game "balanced". It might also go over better in Japan than the more Western world where people might less like this idea of something that is unattainable. Oh, and one REALLY crucial detail is that you can straight-up exchange irl cash for any particular character that you want (well, any OLDER one, while the absolute newest ones are only available by the gambling approach that offers no such guarantees). Those sales only come every so often each year, but with them you can have your guarantee - and e.g. if you pull your desired character in the meantime, then you can select someone else, whoever you want in the list. Also iirc (some of?) the paid banners offer a "guaranteed 5-star", though it lacks GI's system where (eventually) it is the particular 5-star that you pulled for. There is also a second, subscription system where you pay to support the game each month and get increased basically stamina-style rewards, and you select 7 characters where you are guaranteed to get one of those.
So there is a "pity", technically, just not available at all for F2P, and instead comes in the form of a P2W purchase opportunity.
I heard that GI was really bad, but also that was like several years ago, and it has been cleaned up significantly since then. And some banners much worse than others - particularly weapons ones iirc? - where like you get this 5-star weapon and then nobody who can use it. Ofc this is biased, listening to the stories of people who decided to leave it, rather than stay and git gud:-).
It does look gorgeous though, which is kinda weird for a mobile game imho but so long as processing power can keep up...
You really don't "need" to login twice a day. A single extra domain/boss drop isn't going to completely make or break any content in the game. Even spiral abyss is only 2ish extra gacha pulls if you are really pushing it. Which again, won't make or break any content in the game.
A huge amount of the event stuff is totally skippable, some minor lore here and there can be watched on YouTube, there are sometimes event weapons, but the majority of those aren't even that much better than other permanently avaible ones, and certainly not over weapon banners.
I've been playing GI for almost a year, and it has been an absolute blast. I do the content I care about, skip stuff I dont. Its a fantastically fun game, that I can pop in go hunting for chests for an hour or two, maybe do some event minigames for pulls. If you have low self control and cannot bare to be 5% less effective in combat where you one shot everything with a single burst then it might not be a game you want to play, but for casual playing around and exploring the world fighting random monsters for happy treasure chest sounds, it has been an absolute delight.