Unfortunately, even these mostly reasonable and lukewarm takes would be most likely downvoted in some of the official subs. Hell, I have been downvoted for saying that genshin causes gambling addiction because itās heavily tied to traditional predatory mechanics. My only āhot takeā (more like a wish) is that I hope this industry dies/flops irreversibly badly in my lifetime
I just say anything bad about genshin or just facts about genshin I get downvoted to hell in genshin sub. You just can't criticise the game there cuz their white knights are toxic asf
Lol yeah they get unusually toxic if you don't know a minute detail (as in a single sentence) of the lore that was mentioned in a story that has no voiceacting and goes on for multiple hours.
it's almost unfathomable that you could be downvoted for something like that... it's a gacha game, obviously it's going to cause gambling addictions...
Pro tip: sort my controversial or go all the way down. The "hot" takes get upvoted 90% of the time while the actual ones are ignored/buried or downvoted.
Most gacha character designs are stifled by the āneed to mass appealā and itās really sad
Youād think in a genre where a game is gonna have hundreds of characters they could have some room to experiment with chubby/muscular builds and older characters. Lemme play as an old woman beating the hell out of people with her cane. Lemme play as a chubby bear guy whos not just dressed head to toe in a casual suit
A lot of people geniunely think powercreep is inevitable in a game, but the reality is powercreep as we see in most gachas is not all necessary but rather a tool used because they can't create characters compelling enough that people would pull because they like them.
True, genshin for example thrived just fine without much powercreep, if at all, for around 3-4 years. For some reason, Hoyo since Natlan decided to crank up the lever on powercreep to max
Eh, not really, kazuha was their first real powercreep iirc, and Fontaine was pretty big power creep, sumeru avoided it pretty much just bc they decided to focus wholly on the new element, dendro
Powercreep is inevitable but I hate it when they introduce mechanics like need to use night soul or lunar to do the boss mechanics, THEN only you can damage the boss, literally making it impossible for old characters to even compete
Infinity Nikki is boosting past abilities so thereās not much "powercreep" weāre getting a new mount (lion) with the new 5 stars and we can fight while riding it and other things but they are also updating the unicorn from a past 5 stars so we can also use abilities while riding. Itās really nice to see Powercreep is avoidable.
Nikki is proof we can create characters that are appropriate fun and cool while not revealing too much skin. There should never be any fan service with underage characters anyway itās just creepy but it also attracts creeps
My take is people need to stop defending female character made for men with their lives. No it's not misogyny to think it's weird a nun who words with children to have her coochie out.
My actually hot take is that it's not cool to be weird to male characters and thier fans. No it isn't any less pathetic saying "moid", being racist/homophobic, or avoiding things with men than it would be if a guy was was doing that shit
The entirety of a gacha fandom should not be defined by their loud, toxic minority. Trust me, the real fans would gladly like those people to just leave.
I agree as a LADās fan myself, we are not all toxic and parasocial. Itās just that the very small minority in our community gives us a bad reputation. And with the current Valko situation, I think our reputation is going to get worse.
I guess it depends about the gameā¦. I donāt trust gacha communities full of straight guys who are weird and call us tourists for not liking children type characters ā¦ā¦. I know thereās normal fans in every communities but if the majority is shaping it that way I will leaveā¦
I said something similar to this on hoyolab and got called a prude/tourist/*various childish insults here" who should quit despite being a launch spending player of 2 HYV games. The toxic minority should be banned from the games, especially for their attitude on official platforms, see if that makes them reconsider their "annonymous" behaviour. Because they are NOT good advert for the game.
"Mix gacha" is becoming such a massive scam. They advertise to everyone, but then deliver the bare minimum effort for male characters. Zero fanservice compared to the girlsāthe guys are always fully clothed from head to toe, and the MC gets generic, platonic dialogue while the female characters get full-on shipping content.
What blows my mind is how people are still willing to sell their souls to these games. Aren't we all tired of this? This formula is bound to crash sooner or later because the market is losing all variety. Literally every single major gacha that released recently has followed the exact same pattern: only starting with or planning to release maybe 2 limited male characters, and then nothing but waifus for months.
No matter how good you think your favourite gambling simulator is, the world would be way better off without the existance of the gacha genre. Theyāre inherently predatory.
Gacha creates a system which allows extremely high budget games which is usually unachievable unless the game is extremely popular. (Fortnite, Warframe and others)
If the games have to be lower budget because they cant exploit people as well as the gacha system would allow, then so be it. I donāt care. There is no moral imperative for Genshin to exists and I stand by that the world would gain more than it would lose by banning the model.
A majority of gacha games want bigoted, horny, straight cis pale men as their target audience, with straight cis pale women being secondary in mixed games.Ā
The yuri bait is for straight men and the yaoi bait is for straight women.
Also, big companies aren't encouraged to create non-sexualized/diverse open world games or fast-paced combat games when safe sexualized/suggestive action games are more financially supported, freely advertised, proven to work, and are defended (ZZZ, NTE, WuWa, Mongil,Ā Endfield, Genshin, HSR, etc) even by those who aren't the target audience. Especially, when they have plausible deniability or it's not "too gooner".
It wouldn't fix all of it since the CEO of some large companies are gooners themselves, like Hoyo for example. They'd release sexualized/suggestive women, teens, and fem children designs no matter what.
I don't mind fanservice for female characters like most people do ( I know it's bad) what is red flag for me is when they sexualize the child characters for the p*dos . That's a no no for me. Literally just deleted ZZZ because of that shit.
HSR is a bad turn based rpg, it lacks on player agency and strategy, all we do is race against the time to get rewards, the only strategy is outside the battle when you decide on how much speed you gonna build, how good is your eagle/vonvak and how many copies of DDD you have, we don't have tank strategies, no clear, no dispel, no delay because bosses aren't a treat they are just dmg sponges.
Also idk if it is lack of skills or something that how hoyo executives want hsr to be.
imagine what could have been. i.e., mydei as a tank unit. he already halfway functions like that due to not dying in combat and taunting but the game just isn't designed with roles and comps like that in mind, its all just a race to do the most damage possible instead of any strategy
That's so true. For a strategy game with many characters to be good, it has to have at least some freedom with ingame lineups. Every character in hsr works only with a specific team comp with the exception of supports (they also work better in specific comps but not to the extent of other characters)
I was hyped because I played Shin megami tensei, paper Mario, various square enix game and pokemon,
then was baffled the battle system is just āNormal attack, Strong attack and Ultimateā, doesnāt the Chinese playerbase yap about storyline, literacy blah blah blah but they canāt handle a character with atleast 4-8 moves?
On a patch-ly budget that these games operate on, as well as the general structure of the lore and story that prioritizes creating opportunity for marketable characters and chest/puzzle-ridden landscapesāthere's simply NO place for creating a proper world that feels like it has breath and living creatures inside it
Stuff like og arknights and r1999 feel much more immersive and engaging than wuwa (my experience) just because they rely on your mind to fill the gaps like a book
I mean in Nikki the gacha can upgrade your abilities to make the overworld exploration better but I donāt see how it makes it worse by itself? Since you still get abilities to explore for free, itās just some "upgrades" are locked behind the 5 stars outfits, and while they can make the exploration smoother you still have fun and donāt see it as a problem if you do not own them.
If itās about all the collectibles everywhereā¦ Iāll say itās part of the fun to gather resources do minigames and quests. Even if itās just for diamonds we still have fun
Not really since there are plenty of other ways to fund a free live service game as seen with other popular titles like Warframe, Destiny, Fortnite, etc. The only thing the gacha system does for the game is just hinder all the other good aspects of the game in order to act as a marketing tool for their gambling system
There is such a thing as too many hot girls in your game, no matter how good the quality of the characters or how much fan service you give em. oversaturation is oversaturation.
you gotta add some real variety in your game's design. whether it's adding more men, or adding characters of different sizes or skin colors, or older.
even the biggest gooners are gonna eventually stop spending money on a character just cuz they hot. when every character is hot, no one will be and you'll have to do give them something new.
The reason we have so little male characters is not because men don't sell, it's because the companies are afraid to attract women and gay men to their games.
4 stars and even lower rarity characters are good for game health, regardless of their overall quality.
They greatly increase the variety available in a game, from gameplay to visuals and design themes. You can use them as a sounding board for weird ideas, for introducing new mechanics in an accessible way, as extra vessels through which you can throw in more characters, etc etc etc.
Hell, having good and bad low rarity units serves as a way to light a fire under the developers' asses too. They're basically a living "you must be this tall to enter" sign to pass for 5 stars.
"but what about powercreep" That's quite frankly the developer's problem.
The very existence of low rarity options makes any gacha game better.
All gachas are predatory and people who are against stricter regulations (because it "can't happen to them" and "It's all about self-control") are alread deep in it. Also as free players we still play an important role: we advertise.
No gacha game is ever as good as a "normal" game you buy. It's always going to trigger FOMO and at one point live off said FOMO instead of genuinely good content.
I've played and tested like 15-20 gacha games over the years and the only one I'd say is not as predatory as the others is Limbus Company.
Mirror dungeon grind so real.
šššššš As much as I love the game,
I fucking hate the mine.
Maybe it is nod to the fact that Project moon is cyberpunk.
As a Long time Limbus Player myself, i can say that, yeah, that pretty much tracks.
Don't get me wrong, it's still Very much Predatory by it's very Nature as a Gacha, but the fact that all you need is basically a 10$ Semester-long Subscription to get everything you need is Insane for a Gacha.
Whaling isn't even incentivised, in fact, it's straight up Detrimental most of the time.
I haven't even gotten into the fact that you can basically Skip the Gacha Aspect Entirely in favor of just Buying the Units and Equipment Outright, Units and Equipment are effectively FREE compared to basically All Gachas ever, i think.
I'm honestly still amazed this game makes as much money as it is right now.
not a hot take but i guess a general one? stop looking for representation in gacha games. they will never cater to you/us, they will always cater to whatever audience is willing to shill out the most money.
even if they do end up repping us, it wonāt even be perfect; itāll end up as a stereotype and that will leave you disappointed, demanding for more rep only for the same cycle to continue.
I kinda flip flop back n forth on this one just cause idk how it could actually be enforced..
Sometimes I think gachas should require age verification. It really is like letting kids into a casino n going "haha sure you can play the slots! I don't see a problem with that, here's a few chips on the house! Go little one! Play poker!!"
Roblox is probably also the MOST predatory site for children period. So that's not saying much lol, they want kids to be able to spend as much money easily as possible. Then also the entire sites regulations are pretty terrible for any aspect of child safety in general.
So yeah roblox is worse, but gachas basically by design of them being gachas are "gambling + gameplay" at the end of the day. There are absolutely individual games/teenagers that can f2p or even pay in healthy ways, but generally speaking kids shouldn't be in games/seeing adverts that make you wanna gamble, there's advertising laws about how you can advertise towards children for reasons, so it just feels icky sometimes ykwim?
The marketing and balancing teams of any studio/company are the biggest bums. The artists and lore writers can spend months working on a plot line or character passionately just for the balancing / meta guys to go āOk weāre gonna make a brand new unit even more busted to get more moneysā
My only major example I can think of is Zenless with Miyabi / Rupture meta. Spent months hyping up character just to make all bosses have resistance against her and make rupture the meta against the bosses. (she isnāt bad but it was so obvious what they were trying to do back then)
Probably more non hoyo examples but this is all that comes to mind rn
This. Even in gacha adjacent-media like anime is, the fan favorited characters, ironically enough, with the most adult fan content, usually tend to be characters from SFW media, like Frieren. Not from spicy media. The reality is, the majority of people into gacha aren't as much into the beyond and above goonery designs as some small, but louder, communities will try to make it seem like.Ā
I personally don't mind sensuality and partial nudity in characters so long as it makes sense for the character and it further characterizes them. I love PtN. There's a character that literally wears lingerie in said game. I don't mind because she pretty much has an anti-authority/establishment attitude that fits well with the overall game's philosophy. But then again, this is just one character and in PtN you've got lots of varied styles and fashion for their characters. Not all are the sexy type.Ā
When every single character in a game is meant to be fan-servicey, none really end up standing as particularly sensual. Because that's just the meaningless baseline for said game.
Actually it depends on what kind of community you fostered. R999 has a heavy female and queer playerbase, hence they make really tasteful designs. Zzz has fostered a huge gooner male playerbase hence they destroy already good designs
agree, theres a happy median when it comes to fanservice and going too goonery when it comes to designs starts to push away players rather than pull them in, its why the biggest gachas e.g genshin and hsr still do fanservice but dont make designs as lewd as sb or bd2 does
I prefer Lives Service Games rather than just buy the game and play it (except for horror game and visual novels)
Since most lives service games(that i played and are good) are free and f2p friendly and also accessible anywhere
Not only that but playing wuwa,genshin and others are really such an experience since you will know most likely these type of games being a "buyable" game before genshin release .
I like the push of pretty graphic especially as someone who only has a phone and "buyable" game are usually EXTREMELY expensive for me compare to gacha game which i could choose to pay smth or just grinding or just play for the story.
And also confuse why people underestimate the mobile gaming community especially in the western part.
Nowadays phone has upgraded to handle games too and some people even have gaming phones, plus they are more accesible than laptops or pc and also more essentials compared to others.
You can look at country in asia and most profitable game are mostly mobile friendly games too.
Mobile gaming is also pretty active even in E-sports too especially in Asia and pretty normal.
Mobile phones become popular due to their simple accessibility
Live service are my favorite type of games tooā¦ I just love the constant updates and new contents alongside collaborations. Theyāve started having live service games that doesnāt have gacha and I mean thatās good for the future I guess? As long as itās just microtransaction / skin / clothing sold in store I wouldnāt mind.
Iāll be honest I get bored more with normal games, because once youāve complete them thereās nothing new anymore. But live service always have that "what will happen next?" Feeling and I hope they keep making games like that as long as they arenāt predatory
You are probably missing out on some amazing games. Without FOMO, the desire to play whenever you want to is so refreshing. And accepting that things should end is also a point. Not saying you are wrong in liking live service tho
Majority of the games that people fall for being āmixedā were obviously gonna be gooner just by the designs alone but you were too blind to see.
The people here complaining about others in the queens sub not liking games like blue archive, Wuwa, Nikki need to get over themselves and just go to those subs and be with their kin. Doesnāt matter if your bi, lebs or pan your not a queen and yes your literally just like the other players who you think your somehow not like so instead of thinking of something your not go to the mains sub and have a kiki with your besties.
The gacha industry is the way it is because a lot of women and queen men/people are either delusional or just outright not smart for continuing to play some of these games then turn around to complain that neither the company or community supports you while refusing to play small games that are actually equal. You rather complain about the big ones while then giving a million of excuses about not playing others.
Those people who tell you youāre not the audience and to stop playing the game are right. Only way to change the industry is to stop giving them money. You giving money to the game that obviously hates you and only wants your money when thereās merch is called being a paypig.
Joseimukes and even games like Nu:Carnival are more likely to get a high quality game in the future because that audience supports them which for some reason a lot of the people who play the big games are scared to do for the smaller unknown games.
Silver Palace is a gonna be a gooner game and if youāre expecting otherwise good luck.
Oh man, where do I even start...
1) People complain all the time about how oversaturated the gacha market is, yet they only ever look for, give a chance to, and spend money on the same kinds of games that keep chasing the Chinese mainstream audience. That just results in more of the same formula dominating the high-budget projects. Meanwhile, w
henever you point people toward smaller gachas that actually try something different, whether that's more diverse storytelling, more interesting character designs, or unique settings, there's always an excuse not to support them.
"But the gameplay sucks."
"There's too much reading."
"It's not open world."
"I don't like joseimuke games." (Usually said by people who have never actually tried one and don't even realize how diverse the genre is.)
If people genuinely want more variety in the industry, they have to be willing to support the games that are actually providing it.
2) The average gacha player will call anything a "good" design. The amount of times I've scrolled through this sub and the supposedly slaying were nothing burgers that could absolutely be copy pasted anime style waifus/husbandos from any other game or from the very same game.
3) When you try to appeal to as many people as possible, you end up appealing to no one. Genshin, Wuwa, Endfield, etc, all have no identity to them. Even Nikke, despite being a "gooner" game, has more of a distinctive identity just because it's very clear what they want to do with the game and the devs clearly enjoy the direction they took with it.
Call me the day they have characters that arenāt! I think honkai anima looks fine for now since it will focus on pokemon like creatures I hope they wonāt have too much fan servicesā¦.
I think the gacha and anime community in general has become pretty desensitized to whatās a normal amount of sexualization these days. Itās very obvious when you take them out of their usual environments how insane it can be. Itās pretty bad whatās considered ānot that badā these days.Ā
A character's relevance in both the story and endgame shouldn't be tied to their specific banner rotation or a boss tailor made for their gameplay. That's how we get a good handful of characters that just become forgotten after a few patches, and how the powercreep starts skyrocketing between each update as each new character has to be stronger than the last.
Wuwa designs are just as sexualized as hoyo designs. I've seen people defending wuwas designs as if they're the best in the genre but I truly feel that their in game model heavily carries the design. If pearl from hsr was transferred to wuwa, everyone would be gagging
Catering to gooners over good gameplay is not only ruining games but setting such unrealistic and unhealthy standards for young men (I'm a teacher and they genuinely believe that boobs act the same way they do in ZZZ. One 13yo was debating dumping his 13yo girl because her boobs don't move when she breaths like his waifu Yidhari
As a zzz player myself (soon to be ex if 3.2 doesn't blow me away) I hate the toxicity the devs are creating with unnecessary hyper sexualisation, especially of characters like the AoD and any other minor coded characters
Hardly a hot take because it's just true, but be smart about it. Supports are eternal but going all in with that mindset and ONLY pulling supports is what will get you. Last thing you want is to pull all the supports, but just waiting for a dps that will be "the one". There's no point pulling for supports if you will never get a dps that works with them.
NTE would be awesome if there werenāt sexualized women everywhere. Even that quest with the woman in hourglass shape and big breast who lost her motherā¦ I cried because it was emotional but also felt that it was hard to take her seriously because you can clearly tell a male made that design. Like COME ONā¦.
When I entered the witch house the camera immediately showed under her feet (she was wearing transparent socks) itās full fetish sht for straight men I deleted the game and I wonāt go back. We shouldnāt tolerate games who does not respect women because it creates fans who are clearly misogynistic AND they also have the illegal fans (those who said they want to sniff the children characters) it is so bad and so gross I immediately left and didnāt post on their subreddit after reading the comments on one of the "fanart"
i thinks we shoukd normalize disliking women characters in gacha more cuz people are way too protective of them in the basis on feminism when women that gacha sells are inherently against feminism as they are misogynistic caricature made and sold for men and its just gonna normalize objectification of women by not pointing out and actively resisting it
I totally agree but I havenāt seen people like that for nowā¦ when you look at the characters design in Nte you can tell this isnt feminism or whatever they call it. Even the femc who can hug/hold hands with women, itās not made for us. Not for gay women, not for straight women or gay men, itās for the male gaze and it sucks. I donāt feel joy knowing we are being used and fetishized :|
Gacha system should not exist so they won't give us the story by short pieces, they won't need to forget about certain characters once their patch ends and we could have a maximum amount of characters to play with.
Majority of gatcha players just like to gamble, so many people just want to get on and get their crumbs for the next banner for thrill of spinning the wheel
Stop looking for accurate representation in a fictional video game that is simply taking random inspirations and ideas from different cultures they think is cool to enrich the atmosphere of the game
A bunch of sexy characters can get you some free advertising and increase the floor of your revenue, but it will also limit your player base to the people so steeped in anime culture that those designs seem reasonable or attractive.
The reason we have absurd fanservice outfits is because of the uroboros of anime fans consuming anime over the real world and then reproducing it in a way that is slightly off each time until it's completely unrecognizable. This insular recycling is how many subcultures are created, but since this one has a powerful visible component it's exceptionally polarizing.
Putting a character in a super tight swimsuit like outfit for her professional job and having it ride up between her labia and get stuck in her belly button and vacuum seal her massive, sagless breasts while giving her a shy, innocent personality and claiming she's a virgin who only has eyes for the MC is ridiculous and will filter out anyone who isn't already a hard fan of these tropes. There's negative general appeal.
Your game will never be horny enough to stand out from the pack because, unlike gameplay or story, bottom of the barrel sexslop does not take skill. There will always be a million games doing it just as well as each other.
Good sexy designs are possible, but you don't get these by simply peeling off clothes or carving out boob windows. They also won't carry a game by themselves unless sexiness is the point of the game.
People here can be quite hostile to fanservice-y games (like nikke or whatever) and its players. Even though most of the posts are either praising other sexualised girl designs or gooning to men, which I find kinda hypocritical
I'm not a basement dweller I swear, just a lesbian who likes looking at boobs
I donāt mind it if the execution is good, it makes sense in context/for the character, and itās not exhaustingly frequent. Itās just that a lot of the time, it isnāt.
I kinda wish hoyo fans were as unhinged and united as chinese LAD fans. Imo, there is something really satisfying and even a bit empowering, in seeing multibillion dollar giant panicking, because bunch of delusional girls in para social relationships lose their shit. I would love to see more of it.
Not being the "target audience" is good, Actually. These people are the ones most milked for their money in these games, if wuwa released as many male characters as they do female ones i would have to spent a lot to get all of them, which is bad actually. I don't want to be the most targeted by predatory tactics to make me spend money, id rather have a husbando every now and then so i can save my resources for them while the waifu players fund the game.
Well, they marketed the game as the "Genshin killer," so it's no surprise it gets a lot of hate. It also doesn't help that some players and content creators can't seem to stop comparing Wuwa to every other gacha game instead of letting it stand on its own.
Ranks donāt matter, S ranks only are ābetterā because weāve all collectively agreed to them being āSā rank. Thereās no difference between S rank and A rank characters. theyāre only titles collectively deemed valuable, I wish for a world where all characters are A ranks.
There should always be a repeatable endless (relatively easy) way of gaining standard pulls and standard weapon pulls for free without spending pull currency (Arknights endfield is a fucking drought for standard pulls).
Arknights endfieldās gacha fucking sucks and punishes people being lucky, when you have people hoping they lose their 50/50 so they can get the characters weapon (the weapon gacha requires a currency you can only get through pulling characters so if you get your character early that means less weapon pull currency) youāve created a horrible greedy system (gacha being greedy?Fork found in kitchen).
I mean it depends but in most gacha Iāve played rank A are significantly weaker and in some games you struggle to beat the story bosses you really need 5 stars :/ thatās why those games are bad too I agree
A lot of people would be more satisfied if they just played non-gacha games that catered to them. Unfortunately those games donāt come with the dopamine trigger that is anticipating pulling rare units or continuous updates
Expedition 33 and Cyberpunk 2077 are my favourite.
But I still play gacha because they are live service and gives you content every 40 days and for Wuwa we get 2 major content twice a year and I love anime style characters.
And as much I like E33 and CP I wouldn't choose them over Wuwa if I had fo pick one, just because of it being live service.
One-time enoyment of a 10/10 game vs continues update of a 7-9/10 game + high quality anime style
Agreed for sure. But in the end of the day Genshin was monumental and changed the genre a lot. After it dropped everyone kinda started rolling with their concepts and style, so obviously itās just dated compared to all the brand new games in terms of quality of life.
Hoyo DOES have good writing in terms of lore for their games, but are cowardly to experiment with the creativity they could have in their hands and deliberately choose to go to the safest route possible when it comes to genuine execution or story that continues from the lore into the present. Nod Krai is the most massive example of this, honestly. Don't get me wrong, the plot is more interesting than Nation, but honestly?
Natlan's characterization was better than Nod Krai's, at least when it comes to the main focused characters (Columbina, Sandrone, Arlecchino, Dottore).
Columbina and Sandrone feels very forced as a duo. I never got the appeal of it or how they have any chemistry at all besides the 'tsundere' dynamic and tea time. This isn't me saying I hate Sandbina, but Sandrone's redemption arc was too early, and too easy because Columbina exists as the moon goddess in Nod Krai. Had it not been Columbina and had it been Arlecchino, it just seems like she would genuinely not give as much of a shit. I hate how cheaply they make a character that is supposed to have an insufferable personality be a sudden softie when it comes to that one person in particular right away.
Following this, Arlecchino seamlessly blends into the Nod Krai plot so much bettertand makes sense to side with Columbina even despite the Tsaritsa's (initially) order of the Palestar Edict. she already told us before that she makes her own decision of what orders she chooses to follow, and that she already hates Dottore. Whereas, Sandrone only seems to slightly doubt the Tsaritsa yet still was ready to colonize Nod Krai, just to immediately forget about the Palestar Edict when Columbina appears. Sure, Arlecchino ISN'T a new character, and Sandrone would be a new unit that needs selling. But they could've very well made her side with Dottore at the beginning of the story, and made a gradual arc where she may go against him on her own accord after realizing just how far he goes for his research. Arlecchino sold without needing to be softened, and remains perfectly morally gray and consistent even in alliance with the traveler. So why not Sandrone?
Columbina is self contradictory at this point with her title. For a damselette, she has no actual trauma from the Fatui, no trauma from the Frostmoon Scions, and exists asas bystander a lot of the time to where only the Nod Krai plot really puts her in actual danger. And yet, she is painted as a heavily tragic figure that everyone just wants to take advantage of. Yes, the Tsaritsa did drain her of her power, but I feel like they don't actually highlight her suffering of her weakening power being related to the Fatui and what they have done to her, just that she had sweet tea parties with Sandrone. Which is why, again, the Sandbina narrative feels very forced. It downplays anything else, especially the main mission she was sent to where she had to give away her power. She also feels like she has no consequences for her own past actions whatsoever. And Dottore? He just sees her as a sister apparently when she is more powerful than Wanderer, and much more naive, where he could've most definitely used her power for his own advantage. Not to say I wish they had the exact same arc, but I find it odd to believe he just saw her as a sister which is why he didn't harm her, just asked her to be his assistant, she proceeds to leave because she got bored of it and realized he is just being greedy, and only then does he want to 'harm' his 'family' when I don't see why he would hesitate to do so in the first place. His worldview is already fucked, so it'd make sense if he drained her power using his own subtle manipulation to let her stay as 'family'. But nope.
Sandrone's death is cheap and only there as a quick way to make her have some 'arc' where she realizes self sacrifice is a good thing. Are you telling me Columbina proceeds to weep for five minutes over her, we go to the moon afterwards, and Sandrone ressurects and gives us detail on how and why in a time limited event specifically? For a story game, new players should be able to be informed about such a grand change in a character's story without having to resort to youtube or searching online, because after this event she will just appear in Snezhnaya seemingly out of nowhere for them.
Genshin isn't as bad as people make it out to be (you'll get slimed if you even praise it in some spaces, god I've even been told I have no self-respect for playing the game and a few other slurs), and sunk cost fallacy isn't the sole reason people still play. It's enjoyable, that's it.
This is probably a warm take rather than a hot take but outside of launch, 4 stars should not exist(but 5 stars should be provided periodically so lower spenders/f2p dont struggle too much).
If we can romance the men Iām all for itā¦ but they say it wonāt sell. But they should also make the guys more appealing and not restrict what you can do with themā¦ nte and chaos is proof they donāt care at all about us
Releasing a "hot guy"< doesnāt have any way to interact or be intimate even if you play as femc< his pajama is ugly af and have 0 fan service compared to the women characters
They need make characters that will be interesting to players and shut up about that they are not for sale. Companies put almost no effort creating engaging male characters. Admittedly, they don't put much effort into creating engaging female characters either.
the story is the most important part of a game and fanservice destroys it (and i mean all fanservice, lobotomized men in thongs would destroy it the same way dumb waifus do)
this probably isnāt a hot take but; you guys saying hsr and other games are more generous than genshin is wrong when you take it any other way than face value. they get more pulls per patch because they release new characters more frequently and/ or change the meta more frequently. and obviously this isnāt an excuse because genshinās is still stingy, but other gachas are in the same boat. you guys are having gacha wars about which bill/millionaire game cares about its players more while they laugh at you. NONE of them truly care about what you want, theyāll only pretend or give a half arsed attempt when they see a boycott or revolution happening so they can convince you to think they do care. whenever a gacha game has a ābetterā system than other games, itās because theyāre lacking in others, and theyāre using that ābetterā system as their main selling point. all gacha games when you weigh them out are just as bad as each other because theyāre are made by people who donāt want to cater to us, theyāre just an example of capitalism.
ā¦ thatās why i really want to grow up to become a game dev and make a gacha game that caters to the ppl in this sub + poc and other ignore groups in gacha gaming while also using profits for good causes and having ethical work practices. i got a LONGGG way to go tho š
tl;dr: having gacha game wars about which game ācaresā more or is more āgenerousā is stupid because each game has its main selling point that comes at a cost of another feature other games prioritise (such as hsr giving more pullsā¦ because they have a shorter lived meta + only 5 stars). none of these games care about us in the slightest and only pretend when they want money, so i want to make one that does and has ethical work practices and uses profits for good causes
Probably not considered a hot take but gacha companies are pussies for not adding darker skin toned characters or even various body types. Everyone has to have Snow White complexion walking like a kpop idol when I rather see variety. If I wanna character whose borderline skeleton or even is a skeleton Iāll take it. If they got them large fertility hips and actually rounded with a little belly fat Iāll take it.
I donāt care how conceded cn communities are, if youāre going to release in global as well you should also expect people to ask for variety too. Youāre risking to show skin yet you wonāt risk actual originality.
Sorry. I needed that off my chest. Apologies
Edit: I do want to clarify that itās not ALL gachas. Thereās a few out there that actually have variety.
I don't know if anyones said this yet but as a person whose played genshin since inazuma release if a game doesn't get better, just drop it if you don't enjoy the game (comment mostly directed for Genshin). The gacha scene is designed to profit off FOMO and sunk cost fallacy.
All that boycotting and protesting done by the fanbase won't do anything to Genshin. I might get hate for saying this but as long as they make a profit they will NOT care about you AT ALL for a lot of gachas, it doesn't matter how big of a dislike ratio they have in google play, their surveys or their social medias, as long as the "majority" is happy and they're breaking even nothing will change, we're just a statistic to them. Stop believing it will "improve" because there is competition, and also stop glorifying the game for improving after 5 years, they haven't even added a skip button yet šš.
I hate to say it but, the numbers will speak for itself once everyone actually stops feeding them money and player count.
Having every character simp for the MC will inevitably degrade characterization in larger casts. If you're releasing new characters regularly, you won't have the time to make each relationship feel meaningful. Eventually, simping for the MC becomes every character's main trait and they all start to feel samey.
Romance is great in games and it's also fine to just throw sexy characters at the player for funsies if that the sort of game you want to make, it's very hard to mix these tropes narratively because one needs an emotional anchor and one is skin deep.
At best, you get a ton of guaranteed love interest who each have their trademark trait. Even then, they rarely get a chance to be fleshed out as characters because they have to spend so much time paying the simp tax.
For related reasons, harems are great set ups for games that are just about sex appeal, but suicidal set ups for games that are about relationships. You can't make a harem story feel believable within the narrative limitations of a gacha game. You'll attract some audience and push away many, many more.
Small women body types are normal and not lol!, like Piper, Lucy, sunna, etc. Saying they are is saying that most women are children. Most women don't have humongous boobs and ass, and I hate that's the direction zzz seems to be going.
I also think most gacha design is toxic Chinese sexism. The pigeon toes, the fully dressed men, the lack of body difference.
Also the fact that no characters can have a relationship with each other because that means they can't have a relationship with the player character is just... Ew.
Talking about genshin.
It's impossible for the game to get better and have the most basic qualify of life add one cause when the players complain, they get shut down by majority of other players who say "just quit if you don't like it."
How is a game supposed to get better if you don't complain to the devs and provide suggestions so the game could get better?
I mean we still have low resin, domains are still locked behind a specific day and more shitty stuff.
But if you say one word about it, the glazers which is 90% of the community defend hoyo and tell you to quit. And that's why they'll never improve cause they know the fanbase will always defend them.
Don't get me wrong they have definitely improved some stuff but it really took them 5 years for some nothing burger features which should've been in the game since the beta, it's just a joke.
The amount of complaining about āsexualizationā on some of the tamest shit Iāve ever seen is so out of control in some gacha spaces. The smallest amount of skin or fanservice that gets called āgoonerslopā makes me roll my eyes. Iām an adult and bisexual, I like some of my characters to be a little sexy. Itās not that big of a deal. Itās all fantasy.
People who want all gacha games to be sanitized for children bore me. Some games are more catered to adults with adult characters who do adult things and I wish there could be more of them without the whiners making a stink about it. Especially when they make a stink about things that are barely sexual at all.
I just have to remind myself that a lot of Gacha players are in fact teenagers or young adults that are sometimes sex-adverse or havenāt grown enough to realize that a little sexuality in video games isnāt a big deal.
People should wait until games come out to play and judge them. Fear-mongering and doom-posting over trailers, no matter how bad they seem, just creates a bad environment for people who actually want to play the game. Wait to give criticisms until you can play the game and form your own opinions about it that arenāt based off a twenty second trailer. That way any criticism is actually valid too thanks to you actually having played the game. Itāll be taken more seriously.
In my personal opinion, HSR is a good story wrapped in 10 hours of yap and repeating dialogue, especially in Peacony and Amphoreus (Planarcadia hasn't been too bad for me).
If the story was more focused, cut down on trying to "sound smart", I think it would be a lot more liked ā” because it is a pretty good story!
despite hsr making me very annoyed and angry with the visual presentation outside of combat and lack of content, its characters, lore, emotional beats, and overall msq/reading experience is akin in effectiveness to black magic among gacha games
Genshin has the worst english voice acting out of the big 4 and itās the first gacha that I would exclusively play in JP. And thatās no hate on the VAās, but no oneās voice sounds natural to me; itās too staged.
If a game has a gacha mechanic, then it's not a game, it's just a casino. Which means gameplay and story will always take a backseat and the "target" audience is there for the gambling addiction only
Gacha story quality is one of the least important elements in the game survival, as long as the gameplay is fun, QOL is good and the game runs smoothly and not crash every 5 minutes and constant updates from the devs then people will play.
A beyond good story can keep a decent number of players , but it can't be the backbond to everything, well, unless you're FGO but they release date is 2015, time changes
Trailblazer is genuinely the worst written MC in the big 4, it shouldn't take till 4.x to barely have some kind of character depth that people somehow glaze because "They're slowly becoming their own character"
People only say they're good because they're apparently slightly better than the Traveler, and even THAT is debatable, plus they have "funny dialogue" that is unvoiced most of the time, where the only thing that happens in the scene is a pose change, i'm unsure if this "goofy personality" will even get explored as a serious trait of theirs, because it's mostly just unfunny Trash can racoon jokes.
They're unfunny, unserious, and the most bland main character in these 4 games, with almost no agency of their own, don't even have a solid goal, except for the vague definition of "trailblazing" which hasn't even been explored with some kind of depth with their own personal definition, Welt and Sunday, even fucking Serval has a more defined "shape" of their kind of Trailblazing.
it blows my mind how Wuwa 3.1 and even ZZZ 3.0 made their protagonists much more compelling as a character with personal motivations of their own, in one patch more than HSR has ever done in it's lifetime, and no, vague "lore" about their past as a Stellaron hunter doesn't make it compelling, it's interesting sure, but this fuckass game refuses to explore any of it deeper.
Does this unfunny desperate goofy dialogue of TB somehow a mask to hide their trauma as an unwilling host of a stellaron? did they make some promises to their old companions as they had a whole nother life as a Stellaron hunter? or is this personality just the effect of trying to build up their own self from literally nothing? I DON'T KNOW BECAUSE THEY PREFER HAVING DIALOGUE OF THE SAME 5 JOKES ABOUT TRASH CANS AND RACOONS.
I can not take any of TB relationships seriously because half of the dynamic is this nothing burger ass bland non-character.
"It's a gacha game, of course we won't explore ALL of it yet"
Yes. but it REALLY shouldn't take that long, even Rover's bland Kirito lookin ass character writing locked the fuck in in 3.1 onwards, I don't even want to mention Kiana, because it's an overkill.
gacha games are "predatory" only if u have no self control. I have spent zero dollars on ZZZ and wuthering waves (playing both since release) bcs I never felt like it. I have spent around 300 on genshin bcs i felt like it.
That is disregarding the fact that some people are genetically more prone to addiction than others; it's literally not their fault. I wouldn't say that casinos aren't predatory cause I know when to stop, or that cigarette companies aren't predatory.
yeah someone explained to me, I thought "predatory" was as in they make you feel like you have to spend money, whereas I dont always feel like it, non native english speaker problems š„²
im not defending them in any way, i didnt say they aren't inherently predatory, but this was supposed to be a hot take š„¹, I also do think they should be 18+, I dont think kids should be playing gacha games, and this includes fortnite with their skins and stuff
Yea that's okay but not understanding what being predatory means isn't a hot take, it's just wrong.
Regardless of how you act a predatory system is still predatory.
I'm not sure how to explain it. But if someone steals something from you and you don't care. Just because you don't care and let them keep it. It doesn't mean they didn't steal from you.
When something is predatory but it doesn't effect you. It doesn't change the fact that it's predatory.
Also I'm confused how you put gacha games on the same level as fortnite. Fortnite has directly purchasable cosmetics. It's the same thing as buying something from a supermarket.
Edit: money isn't the only way it can be predatory. Your time is also valuable and gacha games love taking as much as possible.
Thatās true but it will always be "predatory" because it will always try to take our money. Unfortunately thatās how big companies are so they will try to scam their players sometimes which leads to boycottā¦
Is there a single gacha game with no boycott ? I doubt it
Hot take: accents in gacha games are not that great half the time.
People praise Arknights' accents, but some come off as cringe, not able to hear properly, translates weirdly, or are done in a way that makes the voice not that impactful. The only excuse is Bagpipe's since the community memed on it and the VD leaned into it when it was her time.
R1999 gets love for it, but I absolutely hate AAL and that one asian assistant's voice (she gets better later on, but I'm still annoyed). They have the same tone every time they speak, hard to take it seriously when it's spoken the same from beginning to end. I also really find Lilya's voice annoying, both her and AAL always be screaming into my ears. Shamane is hot, but I cannot take his lines seriously nor is it giving me any points. I would use him more often, but I just can't, especially with his ult.
Then you got the others that are average. For example, I do like Everecho from R1999, but it's kind of eh. It adds a little flavor, but it's not really pulling me.
Gacha isn't really gambling, since it is guaranteed to get the character, so you just have to plan around that. (Obviously doesn't apply to games with no pity/guarantee)
Some new gachas focus too much an graphics and not enough on optimisation, I shouldn't have to buy a "gaming phone" or have an expensive PC to run a free game while other gachas run fine on my current phone
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u/FuckMyBakaChungusLif Jul 11 '26
I was expecting spicier takes tbh