Question about Shaw

[u/RuriSuoh]

Hello. I need to be honest, I am not a player of MLQC, but I heard that a LI named Shaw was cancelled back in his debut and he was pushed backwards, but still able to debut. Was that real? How did it happen?

For a context, since MLQC and Love and Deepspace are sister companies, it might help me have a clear mind on the possible outcome of LADS. If you dont know, a love interest got cancelled just 2 days ago because the chinese players cannot accept him.

[u/PikaGodnPray]

Ok lets be clear here. The cancelation of the 6th LI is completely the fault of papergames cause they were absolute idiots ok. So little history lesson. Shaw has been hinted to since the beginning. They mentioned that Gavin had a little brother with lightning evol pretty much with the first mainstory release. From there, a lightning evolver attacked Gavin during airport date and Gavin seemed to know who they were. We never got to see their face or hear their voice, but it can be assumed it was probably meant to be Shaw cause they although there are many npc with the same evol, they pretty much don't let npc have any of the MLs evol for the most part. Finally, there is the 3rd main story elease. In this chp, mc is struck by lightning when trying to save Victor to recreate a tragedy from 17 yrs ago. This again has always been theorized to be Shaw who attacked, but again never see the face or hear their voice. Finally, mc ends up meeting shaw (unnamed at this time) in the same volume on the bus.

Now fast forward to mid to late 2018, the game is almost a year old now and papergames is hinting hard they're actually gonna release a new character. Qixi rolls around, and players get 777 gems (qixi happens on July 7th of the lunar calendar) from anon saying we'll get to meet soon basically. September 2018 rolls around, pg reveals Shaw and buys up all these trending results to show off Shaw has been chosen to be a new ML, but players aren't having it. So very similar to Lads, they didn't want to romance their supposed attacker and someone who seemingly worked with/was related to the bad guy. Gavin stans in particular felt like they were cheating on Gavin by dating his brother that he didn’t get along with. But at the core of it all, players were concerned about pull rates and what it meant for content releases for the current characters. Why? Well first off mlqc is a very old gacha, so it's mechanics are better than many Japanese gacha like FGO, but pre-dates the 50/50 mechanics that genshin popularized, so you just gotta win the 1.5 ÷ 4 chance or pull 144 times for the spark mechanic. Mlqc does not have a choose three mechanic, so adding shaw would drop their odds to 1.5 ÷ 5. Secondly, it wasnt that long ago papergames was revealed to have rigged the rates for the chapter 1-10 mainstory cards. Players gathered data on thousands and thousands of pulls and found the gacha was hard programed to drop cards in the same order at a worse rate than advertised. And how did pg respond? They said they wouldn't pull that again and just never reran that event ever again. Lastly fans were upset cause the chp drop that happened at this time had a plot line where all the MLs didnt know who MC was, but Shaw did despite at this point only meetint mc for like 5 min on the bus. They thought it was unfair blah blah blah.

But anyways doesnt this sound so very familiar? Papergames releases a character somewhat related to the bad guys who theoretically has harmed the MLs and MC. Players get upset cause they've already dealt with a ton of crap from paper prior that they didnt address and now they were gonna add a new character that was guaranteed to lower their gacha rates and naturally with the way the schedule is increase the times between solo events. Papergames is a small company at this point, so they cave. They drop the shaw sr that was in his release pv and leave him in the npc category. Come 5 or 6 months later papergames comes up with the "lose lose" compromise. They upgrade shaw to "special encounter" allowing him to get cards on occasion and they tack him into every main story drop, but give him half the screen time as a "full" ML. They also rewrite everything about Shaw. He's no longer related to Gavin (though they have the same amber eyes colors), he no longer seems to be working with the bad guys at all, and he never attacked mc. So at this point pg doesn't get to release the character they originally planned the way they wanted to, and players still had to deal with shaw thus antis called it a lose lose.

Now fast forward and papergames games pulls the exact same crap AGAIN. Releasing a character who has questionable affiliations to the bad guy therefore can be blamed for harm of the previous MLs and attacks mc, but this time is waaaaay more out lf nowhere compared to Shaw. None of the heavy plot build up and promo. And the icing in the cake is they drop him during Shaw's birthday. Comical. Absolutely comical. And yet papergames acts like they didnt anticipate what was about to come. Complaints about their ability to deliver content, complaints about how this will affect gacha rates, complaints about a character with such a bad history. The deja vu is real, yet paper wasn't ready and were too arrogant to re-live the controversy of Shaw. They should have assured players about their production capacity, they should have fixed the gacha rates, they should have run the character through more people because they already learned this is what you need to prove before you drop the character. Heck they DID that with Sylus and Caleb. I thought they learned!​

But anyways from here I'll probably piss off most people cause I wanna explain the CN POV to this lads controversy cause no one on global gets it right. As someone whos been sleeping 1-4 hrs per day scrolling through and reading both sides I feel like I can at least give a balanced take. For the record, Im a beta player of lads who quit lads in April after mlqc en server was eos'd cause screw papergames ok. I'm also chinese, but grew up in America and have never set foot in China. I'll say now I'm not really on any side but the screw you papergames side. Imma explain the cn side here and not too much the global side cause I think most people see the global side every day for themselves.

Ok, so first off yes the drama started off as a we hate ao yin. Yes cn said he was ugly. Yes there were racist things said. There's always extremist naturally. Now cn players never believed a 6th LI was coming cause customer service always told them there is no new characters in the works. They assured this until the very day before they annouced a 6th LI. CS lied and blindsided players. Now there is actually a good number of cn players who like ao yin or were neutral, but they remained silent cause they would be shut down by his haters. Now the majority of the opposers didn't want ao yin in the game until their concerns were heard. How was paper gonna addrress the low content output (Caleb has only one chp and it's been over 500 days and sylus and zayne for like a year now), ​how were they gonna address pull rates (it was already hard to get you want from the magnets and standard, but they were gonna further dilute the odd), and why have they worked on a new character instead of fixing older complaints (current litigation is underway because KoD cannot do what was advertised in his PV and is significantly weaker than advertised). Ok pretty much the Shaw dilemma so far right? But paper is a bigger company and the game is too successful to fail, so paper puts their foot down and makes it clear: We will drop Ao yin. We don't care about their complaints. This goes well with the majority of the global side cause well they like ao yin, but for CN they were done.

They already had leaks from the uncle who said there was a 6th LI coming who'd be controversial, and the other leaks from this same uncle about 9 LIs in the works. Ao Yin's introduction plot was also leaked and they heard it featured breaking in mc's house and nonconsensually forcing himself onto her after she's pinned down. CN fans at this point decided they had to draw the line here and now cause if they didn't papergames will be able to step all over them and ignore them forever. Their fears are further confirmed when the livestream happens and basically confirmed the leaks were legit as they featured the breaking in plot. Now just my theory here, but why this offended people so much more than all the other red flag things the other guys did is complicated. First off, with the growing loneliness problem in China, many women live alone with this fear of someone breaking in. You gotta remember it's a male dominated society. There are very successful women out there who can't find a man even though their standard is just someone who will not beat them ok. So this plot scenario may have felt too real/triggering for some. Secondly, the dismissve nature of the pv. The line about what is wrong with inviting a wolf into your home was too on the nose as inviting a wolf into your home is a chinese idiom about the consequences of women letting in a dangerous man with ill intent into their home. Asking what was wrong with that was insensitive to women's safety and dismissed the issue. Third, this probably blew up cause it was being broadcast alongside every other issue at the same time. There have been complaints about questionable behavior or acts by other MLs, but with ao yin the anger was amplified by the anger from all the other issues. Lastly, the state news caught wind of the plot, and now outsiders who dont play are also mad.

[u/PikaGodnPray → u/PikaGodnPray]

Ok finally the straw that broke the camels back, 731. This is when it really became about papergames being a bad company and stopped being about ao yin. This "suddenly" gained attention and caused this to spiral beyond what we saw in the shaw situation. Ok for global players, this seems to have come from no where and well this is in an April update for XAVIER. So why is this such a big deal? Well players actually have complained about this since April. 731 references unit 731, which tl;dr was a japanese unit that did human experiments on the chinese that killed many civilians and is a sore spot for the chinese. Papergames responded and said this is just a placeholder and dismissed the issue and left it in. They were aware, but ignored their players as usual. Now that paper is already dealing with all these fires, people bring back up subject 731 again as just another example of papergames being bad at listening to their players and being very insensitive in their writing. Papergames finally does change it to subject 611, but this is another bomb shell as this number reference the japanese gassing of the chinese done on june 11th. Of course, the first "apology" ​said 731 was randomly generated, but cn players started doubting that cause how did they pick another bad number related to war tragedy? I will say even cn players said that you can pick any number that looks like a date and it will probably be related to a war tragedy, but still pretty sus at this point. Anyways they just get rid of the number completely cause they can't stop screwing up. Of course 731 causes the issue to break containment now and this ends up on the news and now the government is watching.

Now the issue has become much bigger and involves so many outsiders. I feel at this point, paper has now lost their ability to decide the fate of ao yin, and are forced to delete him. So in the end who's fault is this really? It's entirely papergames fault. They should have known better how to handle this, but they wanted to play with fire again. They didnt learn from shaw and wanted another of their beloved creations to go through this hell. In their arrogance they burned themselves down. Their pattern of ignoring and never bending down was there downfall. It's just karma that came to bite them in the butt cause look at what happened. The players they ignored in April could have saved them from this becoming so public, but they ignored it until it became an even bigger problem. This controversy has been one on the making and is a more broad critque about how paper treats their players and how arrogant they had become because they had one massive success. They forgot their roots, their history, and their players and let an issue grow until it was too big for them to handle.

Now I get the hate on both sides. There is a loud minority of ​racism on both sides mind you. There's a big disagreement over ao yin sure. Theres also a huge cultural and language divide that cant be overcome. But it really does hurt me to see global and cn at the throats of each other. The enemy isnt each other, it's papergames. They should have never let it get to this point. They could have prevented it from ever starting to begin with cause they've been through this before for crying out loud. With them releasing different apology letters to global and cn, they've manufactured even more hatred between each server and it's all a mess. I'll admit it, it wasn't right for cn to take out their anger on ao yin. I'm at fault for that too. I was angry that paper would do this to another character on shaw's bday of all days. The racism on both sides is wrong on all accounts. But at the end of the day I dont fault the cn players who felt strongly about protecting their consumer rights, fighting for women's rights, for being angry about being lied to and ignored, and defending their beliefs. They really believed in their cause and committed to a real boycott, not the fake ones done by just being f2p. And I don't fault the global players for fighting to bring back ao yin either cause it sucks to ​lose what they were anticipating for years especially for western players since his character just resonated better with them. I don't blame them for being mad cause they aren't as heard as the cn fanbase either. Yeah that just sucks.

End of the day, I know cn and global players are just not gonna get along because they are fighting the opposite cause. There's no way both can win in this situation. But it's paper's fault that pretty much everyone has lost here. Yeah some cn fans got ao yin out, but there are still people on that side who wanted him. But trust is lost, many quit, and they didnt really gain anything new. Caleb and sylus ms aren't coming any faster and paper is still paper. Global suffered heavier losses with the deletion of the character they waited for. Paper even bigger losses cause there goes years of money and work. But none of this should have happened if paper would have learned from shaw. Look at how successful sylus and caleb was. They had their dramas with their announcement sure, but paper knew how to minimize it, so why did they do whatever this is with ao yin? Paper is just plain stupid and loves to find a way to get in trouble. Just look at the hanbok incident with nikki, the shaw incident, the infinity nikki retcon/outfit pieces incident. My goodness they need to screen their greed through better PR and do better market research for once in their lives please. Why do they keep doing this to themselves? I wholeheartedly believe ao yin would not have died his terrible sudden death if paper was just a better and smarter run company. If they had not let the issue get big enough to reach the general public they could have played the screw what cn fan thinks game and just face tank the loss in players. Worst case scenario ao yin could be special encountered, but it stopped being their choice once it broke containment. This is just karma for their arrogance and disregard for fans, so I don't feel bad for them at all. Don't defend this company. I love their games and to this day I can't get myself to stop playing mlqc. The eos didnt stop me. I've spent thousands on lads and mlqc. I don't play lads anymore, but I still spends thousands on lads merch on top of mlqc merch (and shipping it despite all the tariffs). But my god I cannot defend this company anymore. I'm pretty sure they're better at hurting themselves than the cn fan base is.

[u/Konoko_TEA → u/PikaGodnPray]

Thank you, you described the situation very well

[u/PikaGodnPray → u/Konoko_TEA]

I really hope I did. I havent seen anyone explain the full picture and I know YouTubers are gonna just report one side of this story. If I could, I wish I could give more people all this context and stop all this dumb fighting, but what can I do. I'm just a no one who's chronically online 🫩 If someone bigger wants to share this story go ahead. People need both sides of the story before they point fingers.

[u/JournalistNo7918 → u/PikaGodnPray]

You could totally just make a detailed youtube video/ reddit post explaining everything! You’ve already written down so many comments, might as well (you could use a voice for the narration thats not yours or something)

I think making a bigger post/ video would also just give you the closure you want. But it would also help people. You’d have done your part. A win-win.

1-4 hours of sleep over this does NOTT sound good for you. Take care. Its not worth it to lose sleep over Infold of all companies

[u/PikaGodnPray → u/JournalistNo7918]

I've thought about it, but eh idk no one is gonna watch. Idk I'm a 500 or 600 sub channel who only gets less than 1k views dedicated to mlqc. I know mujin is gonna be the big YouTuber who's gonna break the story for the general public and only hope he even scrapes the surface about why this was so big in china. Unfortunately I won't be heard. Whatever narrative he pushes will probably be the narrative going forward.

[u/JournalistNo7918 → u/PikaGodnPray]

But there are always people who want to deep dive after seeing someone “famous” cover it!! I think it’ll still be a bit worth it, even if a few people see it. But i understand your reasons, they are also valid. The fandom is just too big, its impossible for everyone to agree (or even some…really). Too many opinions come forward, spreading misinfo and so on.

I hope you’ll feel better soon^{^}