It's bad. Sure, there are a lot of games being made and they let you play for free but the actual model is bad. The only halfway passable monetization is the monthly subscriptions (battle pass or whatever they call it, it's the same).
Getting whole generations hooked on gambling is not good for anyone except the shareholders of the companies that run these.
There are a few decent games that I still play but that's despite the gacha system and not because of it.
Maybe a slightly contrarian viewpoint, but kinda good with a lot of bad.
In terms of design space, there are certain mechanics inherent to gacha gaming that you'd only want to implement if your goal was to frustrate players and take their money, like daily grinds for special resources, each of which only can improve a portion of your characters, and that's aside from the obfuscated and confusing resource economy. At the same time this leads to a gameplay experience that makes one consider not just what they need to do in the game world, but in the real world. Planning out your growth strategy not just in hours, but weeks if not months of real time. And successfully implementing a growth strategy and overcoming a barrier can be immensely satisfying. Or at least it would be if you didn't immediately run into another roadblock.
In terms of content, complexity, and mechanics, in the better gacha games, they can at times have unparalleled growth as developers are forced to think of more varied and interesting ways for players to grow the strength of their characters which can at times lead to much richer and deeper experiences.
A lot of gacha games have really awful stories that I just skip passed, or it's maybe a good story but I just get bored, but there are times when gacha games can have legitimately good stories and particularly being able to indulge in long-term story telling outside of a long-running anime or MMORPG is a treat.
However the predatory business practices cannot be overlooked. Not only does the industry prey on people with gambling addictions but even its focus on fanservice feels predatory to me when I see how many people post in the weekly thread with whether the fanservice is good or not being a large factor in what they want to play. There's nothing wrong with fanservice on its own, but the people who *need* it are perhaps taking bad medicine.
I think the design and dev side of things is being really undertalked about in this thread.
Even just the fact that game devs can have on-going work that doesn’t involve periods of intense crunch is a net positive for the industry. There are definitely structural positives to gacha if we zoom out past talking solely about the monetary strategy.
I don't really agree with the long-term strategy part. For most gacha games, the long-term strategy tends to be really simple. Do dailies, get daily resources, use on meta characters. Any amount of strategy tends to be simple enough that it's solved many times over and put into guides. It's basically a strategy present in other live service games like MMORPGs, though since MMOs (at least in the past) didn't sell you that power, they tend to have better long-term progression systems generally with more fun gameplay in the middle.
I've also almost never come across "varied and interesting ways for players to grow the strength of their characters". It's almost always just another simple system with a number that increases with a daily resource (or, if the game is especially unscrupulous, with the cash shop). Maybe they add RNG or a skill tree, but even that tends to be solved by theorycrafters in a few days at most. It makes sense, as Gacha game developers are not incentivized to make the system interesting; they are incentivized to monetize the system or make the system a daily vehicle.
The only system I would consider legitimately interesting is FEH's skill inheritance system. But that system is not only reliant on even more cash shop (aka heavily monetized), contributed significantly to skill power-creep, but also just straight up got neutralized by character powercreep once the monetary incentives set in for IS.
Awful.
Gacha is a staple of predatory monetization, FOMO, gambling and basically everything wrong with playing games.
Just, uh ignore the three gachas downloaded on my phone
Bad but I still play and enjoy the games. But I also have the self awareness to know that the reason I play and enjoy them is because of their addictive natures. They work like Facebook or TikTok or reels on Instagram.
Read the book Hooked by Nir Eyal and you’ll see the reason why and a breakdown of the loop. It’s powerful stuff that companies, ever since the smart phone became a thing, have utilized to essentially hook and rewire the behaviours of us humans.
100% bad.
Creates way too many addicted spenders.
I still play them f2p, BUT I'd be OK if they were removed from gaming.
We'd be back to how it was \~15 years ago, which were great times.
Bad, the only reason i have great self control is because i got expose to the genre as a fully functioning adult that was taught financial management.
Cant say the same to the people who grew up with the genre or started playing them when they were kids
It's terrible. It's predatory and incentivizes practices that make the games feel awful to play to try and get you to spend money to feel better about making 'progress'. The only ways we get away from it is for it to be less profitable then not doing it that way OR if it gets regulated hard enough that it becomes basically illegal. I.e. it's here to stay.
It's bad.
A game's monetization will *always* influence the design of the game. A game that sells for a flat dollar value is incentivized to be as good of a game experience as possible so more people buy the game. A live service game is incentivized to keep players for as long as possible, hence the reason why MMOs have adopted the dailies model so that players log on every day and keep interest in them. A gacha game is incentivized to make players spend as much as possible on microtransactions, and the design of the game will always reflect that as well.
I'm going to put Nikke on blast for a second because the 160 wall is a perfect example of this. In Nikke, you can't progress until you get 5 SSR characters to MLB, which is 4 copies of each. Why does this wall exist? Does it serve an actual gameplay purpose or make the game more interesting? It does neither; the system exists just to create frustration that might tempt a newer player to spend money. You can even see this with the free SSRs that are supposed to help you with this - they give you one on half anni and one on anni, and that's it. They could have given you Rei in addition to Kilo on the half anni and it wouldn't change the meta of the game (since Rei sucks anyway), but they did not do this; because it is not in their financial interest to make players progress past this wall any faster.
You see this littered about in many, many gacha games out there. Stamina systems, dailies, drip-feed on resources; those are not made to promote long-term strategy or whatever. They exist to build frustration in players and push them closer toward the cash shop. Gacha games in the past have even done much worse than this; it took a lot of high quality market leaders to ensure the horrendous stuff like time-limited slots get stamped out of the gacha mainstream altogether.
The point is incentives. If people are incentivized to be corrupt and prey on people, they will do exactly that. Gacha games are incentivized to push microtransactions and prey on addictive behaviors, so that's exactly what they will do. Every single time; even the supposed "f2p friendly" leaders of the space does it in spades. They just manage to hide it much better behind a veil of PR or quality or, most commonly, by bribing people with free stuff.
they're talking about 50/50 mechanics for pulling SSRs, which to me has been a lot better than the previous industry standard as with it came an overall reduction in pulls needed to get things (both hard pity and expected rate).
still predatory for being gacha as a whole, but cost going down might lead to a reasonable pricing eventually (it won't but there will be cheaper options out due to competition)
As opposed with zero-pity banners? At the very least, players will only have to save two pities worth of gacha currency to get the featured character. Now the problem here starts with poor currency gain which is worsened by poor player planning.
No, guaranteed pity banner, that's what the Snowbreak developer is looking into implementing in the upcoming patch alongside the 50/50 banners.
So instead of the 50/50 with 80 pity, it's guaranteed limited character at let's say 110 pulls.
I dunno why this is downvoted to oblivion. This is a very important topic, all things considered, especially on this sub.
But back on course with the topic, it's actually bad. Now major game companies are doubling down on games as a service (GAAS) to compensate for production costs of their single player outings. The earnings of mobile games now truly dwarfs the earnings of even the highest grossing videogames of all time (Mario Kart 8 lol) even on a monthly basis. Of course major game companies would want a piece of that pie. But since not all their mobile attempts are successful they resort to the GAAS model and that pretty much caused the current awful trend in the videogame market right now. It's pretty awful overall. Single player games are in danger of becoming rarer and rarer as times go by.
The topic itself has value I agree. But post deserves to be downvoted by being a low effort one-liner question as its content.
A better quality post would provide some background intro, the OP's thoughts as well and why he thought so, and also give some counter perspectives that he might know of, before asking people to 'discuss'.
Gacha is the monetization methods. As long as it is a fully functional game with a lot of content, I don't really mind.
You could have worse. You could have WoW with:
Monthly subs, continual XPAC (expansion) price box, mounts, buying gold, rampant bots spamming shit, different tiers of preorder, etc.
"Gacha" is just a type of monetization, if its "good" or "bad" really depends on the developer, you could have a game that is full on predatory cash grab or another game that uses the funding from the gacha to constantly pump out high quality gameplay/story. The cool thing about this monetization method, is that it allows people whom may not be able to afford buying games, to play the game for free, while those whom have the means to spend money can support the game, and the other thing is this monetization method turns the game into a "live service" type of game where developers will constantly create new content aslong as the game is running.
Personally, as someone whom plays them for the story, it has allowed me to enjoy gaming in a different way, traditionally I would buy lets say a JRPG, I would play nothing but that JRPG on my free time for a month or however long it took. With gacha instead I enjoy the story 'bite-size" where I get a little bit at a time and im following several different "stories' from multiple gacha.. kinda reminds me how TV used to be before streaming was a thing, you had to wait a whole week just to watch a new episode of your favorite show, it was like a nice treat you got once a week (except when the show turned to shit in later episodes lol) or an "event". Now with streaming I instead just binged the entire season in a few hours and then never think about that show again XD
I don't think gacha games contribute anything positive to the gaming culture.
But I also believe gacha system is the only way to do live service and provide stable income to game developers.
Like I can't imagine working for a traditional game company where they might go under if a game they developed for a few years ends up being a dud.
Live service games with monetization models other than gacha existed for a long time and still exist today.
It’s just in the mobile space they can’t compete against gacha without regulations. How can you compete with legalized gambling for children?
"Necessary" evil, bc money. Considering the increasing cost and *risk* of producing single player offline games.
Just one successful live service games could fund quite a few traditional AAA games development, and that's with the latter shoving more MTX on top of DLC.
The problems are shareholders who only know about $$$ and not passionate about/ understanding gaming allowed to take the rein and yearly bonus while laying off employees left and right; and (hot takes) your traditional gamers circle struggling to understand the business side of making games.
I think they’re too expensive for very little. Idk how we reached a point where a a multi in some games costs 20$. It’s a waste of money.
The monthly cards and battle passes I think are fine however
Most gachas offer short gameplay loops to players with not much time to play. And that is great because there are gamers that just want to read a bit of story, do a little fight when they're on a break and be done with it.
But the FOMO, the monetization, the manipulation (like selling low priced stuff to incentive spending), fuck that. Especially when the game is designed with problems that you can solve by spending (VIP PASS...)
They are games.
Overall they let a large number of people play them, often for no cost to them.
That's good. Everyone should be able to game.
The monetization is scummy but that's just kind of capitalism.
It's just bad. Gambling in general is bad. Gacha games being played by (mostly) young people is a horrible thing as well. It makes some of them addicted to straight up luck games, and that's just sad.
The practice of Gacha is gambling, and gambling is bad. However, there are loads of fun things Gacha games have, and for the most part, they've done some great things. Memorable characters, memorable story segments, some real fun gaming moments, I believe we all have that one good thing we experienced playing Gacha.
The gacha aspect is bad, and for the people with lack of impulse control, doubly so, no doubt. But the rest is good, there is soul behind some of these games that managed to last long. It certainly isn't as bad as current AAA gaming industry, oh that's for sure.
Regarding the Gacha aspect, the way current games handle it, you can equate it to micro transactions. 180 pulls to buy a character, for example. So it really can't be called gambling in it's truest sense, because in gambling, you stand to lose. Gachas guarantee you the character at some point, there is no guarantee in gambling. It's glorified micro transaction with a coat of RNG. I don't think any upcoming Gacha game can find a success without pity and carry-overs.
Anyway, yeah. It's good and bad. Gacha games seems to be getting more and more into the territory of AAA, with very high production values, so I'm kind of looking forward to what people are gonna be cooking.
Certain IPs and stories that have come out of gacha games, very good. The model of regular updated stories and introducing new characters is just appealing for a lot of people. That's why I love gacha games. So many awesome stories, lore, music, characters, etc.
But the actual mechanic of gacha? Overall bad. It's designed to get you to spend as much as possible, and preys on psychological vulnerabilities. You really have to just learn to navigate the bad when you play gacha games.
I don't know. Have you seen how many gaming companies, especially those under the Embracer Group, literally got wiped off the face of the earth? I don't think whatever is bad with gacha games is comparable to that one.
Also remember: EA has released literally the same game for years, way before gacha became hot in the West.
And before people start asking me for how this is relevant to the topic, I'm seeing this thread as yet another way to say "gacha bad" so I hope people have their arguments ready instead of rehashing the same stuff as with every thread that touches this issue.
It's just r/gachaghaming hivemind. Majority is just parrot that regurgitating the same opinion. I 100% agree with you that gaming industry have many evil practice that gacha gaming is still in overall good side.
Good bc a lot of people can play them since they're free and some gacha feel like full-on RPGs, not just character collectors.
Bad because it can prey on the addicts.
if you don't have any money - they can't get you.
real.
i mean, anything can become an addiction. if you're being smart about your money in gacha (or anything generally) or don't spend at all - you're fine and can enjoy free game with constant content
There are good and bad aspects of it. If you're looking for
* A game that never ends
* Costs $0 to play
then it's good. If you're
* Into sampling lots of different games
* Without spending any money
then it's also good.
But if you want to experience everything a game has to offer completely in 10 to 100 hours, or you loathe having your progress tethered to the date on the calender, then it's bad.
Honestly there's only two objectively negative issues with the current market.
One is that most of these games are made to be disposable, and that's what's given them their reputation for being "trash" in popular consciousness. Think about how few games even meet the minimum standard of old NES jRPG's. Why the hell aren't there *hundreds* of games with a overworld to walk around in?
Secondly is how centralizing the gacha is to the game. If all your real rewards are received through the gacha, what's the reward for actually playing the game? (I really do loathe the Genshin model of putting weapons in the gacha. Despite that I think its lower power creep and lower pressure to push players into getting new units is healthy overall.)
One thing that really absolutely sucks though is how married the market is to *phones*. Good luck making a successful Mario or Megaman clone with *touch* controls...
Anyone not saying bad is deluding themselves. There is no plus side to gacha mechanics for the player. Its a product designed to exploit you, no matter how fun you may think it is or appreciate other aspects of the game. These are products that ruin peoples entire lives.
Free + having an active community + a big roster of playable characters is a big plus to me
As long as you can control your spending, be it your time or your money, it's fine
>There is no plus side to gacha mechanics for the player
People enjoy gacha payouts. Bingo, lotteries, prize drawings - these are all RL games that use chance to pick winners. There's a dopamine rush to getting a lucky roll, which is enjoyable.
Even a basic boardgame like monopoly uses dice rolling to generate positive/negative outcomes. People like the feeling of winning, and simple games of chance create that feeling.
Agreed that gacha monetization is bad.
Chance-based rewards are a gacha mechanic and show up in more than just gacha games. Ex: Xenoblade 2. Also shows up in many rogue-lite game modes within gacha games.
YMMV, but some players enjoy it and that makes it a plus when it's not tied to monetary exploitation.
Out of curiosity, what is the plus side to violence in video games for the player? Is killing enemies just there for players to feel good or is there some actual benefit to the player?
What OP asking is gacha gaming, and not only gacha mechanic. I agree with you if you're only talking that gacha mechanic. But if you're talking about gacha gaming as a whole, I disagree. Gacha gaming is still overall in the good side of game industry.
Bad. Sure their monetary method allows for them to be easily accessible (99% being free to download), but they are in the simplest sense, gambling that’s available to kids.
They employ the same strategies casino’s employ to hook gambling addicts. I really believe they should have stricter regulation.
Oh, it’s awful. I won’t be surprised when we see more gacha being implemented in full price AAA games.
With how much money Genshin and star rail bring in you know every gaming company wants a piece of that now
They are. Big players dictates the market and mihoyo created a trend for making you spend a lot of money on hazard to get something or (in other games) pay a lot (like 60£ or more) to just get it while also treating playerbase as trash and never giving anything because it's better to drain money instead.
Yeah but that doesn't determine gacha games as a whole. I'll never say gacha gaming is a good thing for the gaming industry but I don't think it's inherently destructive because none of the points you mention specifically come with every gacha game. Some are more predatory than others, and some aren't predatory at all. Still wouldn't recommend the average person play a gacha game though lol.
But that doesn't translate into it being inherently destructive. It'd be a different story if EVERY gacha game was specifically made to get people addicted to gambling so companies could siphon up all the money, but that's just not the case all of the time, and even with games that are like this, they usually die off very fast due to everything you mentioned earlier on top of other issues.
Overall bad, but weirdly more honest in general? Might be due to the countries of origin of most gacha.
I feel like gacha companies in general are more up front and less shitty about their gambling. The games are entirely about it and they aren't busy trying to convince people it isn't. Might help that gacha games seem more targeted at adults and less at selling gambling to children.
Something about the way western devs putting multiple layers of loot boxes, subscriptions, and their public marketing around them feels worse. It's the same monetisation as a gacha game, but it feels like they're trying to pretend they aren't just selling gambling to kids.
Gacha/mobile gaming changed the industry, for better or worse you decide, but there's a reason if today we see games as services, multiple expansions, boosters and item shops in those which used to be "one time buy only" products.
The reason is prices remaining stagnant while production costs have increased a hundred fold and production time has tripled.
You used to play the modern equivalent of $100+ per game that took a year or two to make at the cost of a could hundred thousand.
Now it's $70ish for a game that took 4 years and cost 20 million or so.
Because we're addicted /hj
I assume its because its
1. Technically free
2. Easy to play since its available on phones
3. Long term progression
4. Consistent updates
Theres some really good gacha games if only it didnt have monetization in the form of gacha.
Gacha isnt really a game genre imo, its just a form of monetization which is what we hate and is bad for gaming
I dont see anything wrong with gacha gaming, if people cant control their gambling addiction then that is 100% their problem. Im not in any shape or form responsible for others people choices and if it leads them to get fucked.
With this said, I also dont think gacha gaming itself is a huge boon.
the reason I play gacha games and what I do think is a huge positive is the fact many become big games that come the east. In a day and age where big games in the west are mostly woke garbage likely to cause normal people to vomit, eastern games are a breath of fresh air. Only issue we have is all the censorship applied over said games.
Bad however make player addict and company profit
Its like drug that make game industry stop/slow/stuck to develop innovation game (why risk to create new game when you can get more with less effort from gacha)
Looking back to around 199x-200x many greate game appear and we dont have mobile gacha game yet (and here now in present in hope of get better game than before since technology develop so much and we got remake of that classic game to be hype for)
You're basically just asking if gambling is bad. Yes, it's bad for the people who have no self control and are struggling financially, otherwise you have fun.
It’s bad. Imagine an alternative model where you could just buy a character for $9.99 and pay part of the cost with your premium gems. Or, if you paid a $15-20 subscription and got all the characters with the sub.
The only reason you’re seeing more and more games do this is because certain companies can make absolute bank.
Nothing about the actual gacha is a player friendly model.
Overall? Probably no due to the amount of cashgrab involved in proportion of the content / effort pushed.
I personally like it, because this allows me to enjoy the game's story for long time with constant update.
But also I am pretty selective on what games I play, and would spend proportionally on what update they pushed.
Good story and fully voiced (including chara and event stories) is a minimum requirement for me.
So far I had good laugh almost every month in HBR.
The monthly 3500 yen Is worth it for me. Plus monthly 500 yen to purchase new music release.
The monetization system is bad in that it encourages and relies on whales who spend far too much on gambling. It's bad for the spenders.
But I would have loved getting to play games like this when I was a penniless student, for free. I have shifted a lot of my gaming time to gacha games. The ones I enjoy the most deliver good art, likable characters, and interesting stories. That's a lot of entertainment, for free. I make it a point to buy a monthly once in a while for my favorite gachas, because the devs have delivered value worth a few bucks.
It being a live service game means they regularly deliver content and events. A good aspect about the monetization is that gacha games are very responsive to player feedback, and they have to continuously deliver player value to stay profitable. The anti-player DEI nonsense in AAA games is not going to work in the gacha gaming market. They can't afford to do that. Many gachas have EOS'd for less.
So overall, I think gacha games are good for gaming because it's a high risk space where devs work hard to cater to players interests. The successes and failures of gacha games give gamedevs many lessons on how to make better games, and gives players more ways to enjoy gaming.
Horrible. There's no way anyone thinks gacha gaming is good. People got all annoyed at ea for basically having gacha in their games. I seriously doubt any mentally stable person would think gacha is good for gaming
I think GAAS, compared to the traditional model, is better because developers don't need to gamble a lot of money just to create a single game. I would rather play a slightly worse version that improves over time than pay in full while still experiencing bugs here and there.
Now, if we are talking about the monetization model, out of all the choices, gacha is the worst one. Honestly, I miss the old way where you could get new characters as event rewards without pulling a single time. But right now, you need to do gacha to make progress for your account.
Then, your question of whether it's good or bad for gaming? I don't think it matters that much. A good game will be good regardless of its monetization model, and vice versa. It's just that gacha games are cheaper to make, so there will always be more low-quality gacha games in the market.
Its bad for gaming, but honestly considering how greedy companies are recently with full price triple A's having paid content like battlepasses and microtransactions i don't see gacha being as bad as like a decade ago, at the very least i can download them for free
Gacha is a business model. I'd rather play Gacha than any other shit with consumer unfriendly features or pricy titles for 70€+ etc
Time is limited, and I just want to have some fun. Gacha serves well
Companies have found a way to make games—even huge budget ones—that 80-95% of players get to enjoy for free. Sure, they're exploitative and I'd prefer an economy structured differently to fund this kind of thing but games like Genshin spend one BOTW per year on a game that millions of people enjoy without spending a penny. That's gotta be worth something.
It can help push for quality and more playable game on mobile than those ads filled non-gacha game.
For PC and consoles, if I can choose to buy Helldivers 2, or download a free to play Helldivers 2-like game and I have to gacha for the guns, or heck, the helldivers emote and skins, I'll much prefer the former than the latter
Gacha is inherently a bad thing to the core. It promotes bad business decisions for the customers and let's be real is very unhealthy just like regulated gambling. Furthermore I have seen some games, single player and multiplayer try to push gacha elements into their games that aren't the standard gachas we know of.
It's literally destroying the gaming industry, gacha and DLC's, battle passes, ingame shops in general, skins etc.
Everything should be ingame, like they used to do, they used to release full games with hundreds of hours and secrets you discover to get skins, unlock characters etc, now you just pay for it, it just sucks.
I've been waiting for years for a high quality turn based RPG that isn't gacha with hundreds of hours of gameplay like the old Final Fantasy series for example, but they just don't want to make them anymore because they can make a HSR and make you pay for every single character, or they make a ''remake'' like FF7 and instead of making an unbelievably awesome FF7 with current graphics wich is what people were asking for, they just divide the game in 200 parts and sell each one of them for a full price, and the worst part is people get easily gaslighted and even defend it... gaming companies don't really care about gaming anymore they only care about money.
It's really sad seeing people supporting these games and even defending these predatory systems...
So you're saying you're willing to spend $140~$170 on every game? That's the price adjusted for inflation those old games would cost, and they only took a year or two to make vs 4+.
You wouldn't, and thus the system we have.
You're the perfect example of what i'm talking about, you believe everything they want you to believe.
And yes, i'd much rather waiting even 10 years for full masterpiece, than playing (and paying) for DLC's every single year, same with a movie, with a painting, with music and with any form of art, i much rather them taking their time and make a masterpiece, like they used to do.
It's a lost battle at this point, there's so many people like you, sadly, i'm just venting out my frustration.
I like JRPG and anime oriented games but yeah BG3 is really good, that's a good example of how it is still possible to make really good profitable full games. Sadly there's not many games like it.
Gacha game is live service model where the pressure for money shifts on the player. It's like crownfunding with gambling. And one way to counter piracy by design
The cons is the game longavity is tied to a centralized server, which have cost to maintain.
It depends on the game, honestly. Some gachas have fairly generous models for low and no spenders where if they stick with the game for a long time while spending "MMO subscription" levels of money, they can see a lot of content. I haven't played too many gachas but Genshin and HSR stick out to me as being accessible to low or no spenders, although the predatory side of these games still exists and nobody should deny that. I enjoyed Genshin and HSR in spite of their monetisation models (as comparatively generous as they are), not because of them.
However, many others are blatant money farms with far more predatory monetisation where you will not be able to get to the end of the content or story without paying, sometimes a lot of money.
I would say that overall the gacha market leans towards being bad for gaming but I would struggle to call the leading gachas like GI and HSR worse than, say, Call of Duty, FIFA, or any of the other yearly sports games.
I would support regulation that limits the amount of money both monthly and in a year that under-18s can pay in gachas, and there should also be a self-exclusion scheme for gacha/loot-box type games like GAMSTOP is for problem gamblers the UK.
for me if u can't control your spending that your problem tbh , the way gacha games create FOMO is the same with brand product, ppl wants limited shoe, clothes u name it
the only problem that i hate about gacha is kid/teen can play it and they are too young for those predatory system can lead to bad habit when they are older and i can say the same for Activision/EA
So alcohol and drugs are good? You not being able to control yourself is the problem? That's basically what you're saying cause gambling is an addiction just like the others
Its overall good because most of them came from free despite pulling characters sometimes need RL money because you're exhausted all of free limited resources
Imho, it should be regulated, like minors can't use money in gachas.
Ofc, there is always 'mother account', but some parents buy alcohol and tobacco for their kids.
If you're an adult, then you can do with your life whatever you want.
It's neutral. Gaming at large went to shit when it went mainstream 20ish years ago. Going from a mid-sized industry to rivaling movies as one of the greatest sectors of the entertainment industry has a lot of good aspects, but also significant downsides. By the time gacha entered the scene a while later, all those things were already in motion.
As an AVID HSR player and spender... no, it's overall bad. At least with things that are specifically Gacha Games, you know ahead of time exactly what you are getting into. For many other games with "loot boxes", which is just gacha, it's faaaaaar worse.
For gaming ? Bad
For casuals like me ? Good. I dont care "70$ full offline games" as I dont have patience and motivation to play those anyway --- and Im mostly low spender in gachas
Overall good. Gacha gaming is a good form of MMO. Anything that gacha gaming does bad, MMO does it worse. And the fact that customers have a say to the development of the game is a good thing.
Of course there are a bad thing too, like story won't be completed. But overall it's good.
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is the best Xenoblade and it's the only one with gacha in it. Even better, it's actually a weapon gacha disguised itself as character gacha
Gacha is type monetization for the developers to trick weak people into spending more money than what they willing to spend/can afford. It can be good or bad depending on how is used. In the case of our beloved gacha games you have to consider stuff like: Cost per pull, Rates, Pity, F2p income, Banner/rerun schedule (fomo), Powercreep etc. The problem is that Greed and Corpas are often bread and butter, making the Gacha look even more evil than what it already is.
Gacha games are fine and can be harmless if you have self control but I'm not gonna sit here and pretend I want my games to be gachas 💀.
There's a lot of bad with a little good. It's basically a proven way to run live service games.
I just enjoy the continuous stream of events and waifus to summon for.
And honestly there's really not much to go around for the type of games I want that aren't gachas.
Probably the only thing that would ever make me quit the genre is if making games like Trails became mainstream.
I want an absurd amount of connecting games and characters that I can just savor throughout the years. Or Suikoden/Eiyuuden Chronicle with its super large roster of characters.
All sorts of gambling is a disease for the mind, in 100 years we will look at this how we today look at smoking cigarettes. Anyway, dopamine go brr
It is better than watching ads every 2 minutes. Gacha is the lesser evil for me in F2P mobile games.
It's bad. Sure, there are a lot of games being made and they let you play for free but the actual model is bad. The only halfway passable monetization is the monthly subscriptions (battle pass or whatever they call it, it's the same). Getting whole generations hooked on gambling is not good for anyone except the shareholders of the companies that run these. There are a few decent games that I still play but that's despite the gacha system and not because of it.
Would you even try those games if you need monthly subscription (battle pass) first?
Well, free trial periods have been a thing for a while now. So there are options to the online casino we have now.
Maybe a slightly contrarian viewpoint, but kinda good with a lot of bad. In terms of design space, there are certain mechanics inherent to gacha gaming that you'd only want to implement if your goal was to frustrate players and take their money, like daily grinds for special resources, each of which only can improve a portion of your characters, and that's aside from the obfuscated and confusing resource economy. At the same time this leads to a gameplay experience that makes one consider not just what they need to do in the game world, but in the real world. Planning out your growth strategy not just in hours, but weeks if not months of real time. And successfully implementing a growth strategy and overcoming a barrier can be immensely satisfying. Or at least it would be if you didn't immediately run into another roadblock. In terms of content, complexity, and mechanics, in the better gacha games, they can at times have unparalleled growth as developers are forced to think of more varied and interesting ways for players to grow the strength of their characters which can at times lead to much richer and deeper experiences. A lot of gacha games have really awful stories that I just skip passed, or it's maybe a good story but I just get bored, but there are times when gacha games can have legitimately good stories and particularly being able to indulge in long-term story telling outside of a long-running anime or MMORPG is a treat. However the predatory business practices cannot be overlooked. Not only does the industry prey on people with gambling addictions but even its focus on fanservice feels predatory to me when I see how many people post in the weekly thread with whether the fanservice is good or not being a large factor in what they want to play. There's nothing wrong with fanservice on its own, but the people who *need* it are perhaps taking bad medicine.
I think the design and dev side of things is being really undertalked about in this thread. Even just the fact that game devs can have on-going work that doesn’t involve periods of intense crunch is a net positive for the industry. There are definitely structural positives to gacha if we zoom out past talking solely about the monetary strategy.
I don't really agree with the long-term strategy part. For most gacha games, the long-term strategy tends to be really simple. Do dailies, get daily resources, use on meta characters. Any amount of strategy tends to be simple enough that it's solved many times over and put into guides. It's basically a strategy present in other live service games like MMORPGs, though since MMOs (at least in the past) didn't sell you that power, they tend to have better long-term progression systems generally with more fun gameplay in the middle. I've also almost never come across "varied and interesting ways for players to grow the strength of their characters". It's almost always just another simple system with a number that increases with a daily resource (or, if the game is especially unscrupulous, with the cash shop). Maybe they add RNG or a skill tree, but even that tends to be solved by theorycrafters in a few days at most. It makes sense, as Gacha game developers are not incentivized to make the system interesting; they are incentivized to monetize the system or make the system a daily vehicle. The only system I would consider legitimately interesting is FEH's skill inheritance system. But that system is not only reliant on even more cash shop (aka heavily monetized), contributed significantly to skill power-creep, but also just straight up got neutralized by character powercreep once the monetary incentives set in for IS.
It's bad, but because it, the game is free.
Awful. Gacha is a staple of predatory monetization, FOMO, gambling and basically everything wrong with playing games. Just, uh ignore the three gachas downloaded on my phone
Overall bad. It's not a healthy practice for the end user. It needs hard regulation like any other form of gambling. But right now it's the Wild-West.
Wild Wild East for us
Bad but I still play and enjoy the games. But I also have the self awareness to know that the reason I play and enjoy them is because of their addictive natures. They work like Facebook or TikTok or reels on Instagram. Read the book Hooked by Nir Eyal and you’ll see the reason why and a breakdown of the loop. It’s powerful stuff that companies, ever since the smart phone became a thing, have utilized to essentially hook and rewire the behaviours of us humans.
Considering how horrible micro transaction is becoming in gaming, gacha gaming is just apart of a bigger problem.
100% bad. Creates way too many addicted spenders. I still play them f2p, BUT I'd be OK if they were removed from gaming. We'd be back to how it was \~15 years ago, which were great times.
Bad, the only reason i have great self control is because i got expose to the genre as a fully functioning adult that was taught financial management. Cant say the same to the people who grew up with the genre or started playing them when they were kids
It's terrible. It's predatory and incentivizes practices that make the games feel awful to play to try and get you to spend money to feel better about making 'progress'. The only ways we get away from it is for it to be less profitable then not doing it that way OR if it gets regulated hard enough that it becomes basically illegal. I.e. it's here to stay.
It's bad. A game's monetization will *always* influence the design of the game. A game that sells for a flat dollar value is incentivized to be as good of a game experience as possible so more people buy the game. A live service game is incentivized to keep players for as long as possible, hence the reason why MMOs have adopted the dailies model so that players log on every day and keep interest in them. A gacha game is incentivized to make players spend as much as possible on microtransactions, and the design of the game will always reflect that as well. I'm going to put Nikke on blast for a second because the 160 wall is a perfect example of this. In Nikke, you can't progress until you get 5 SSR characters to MLB, which is 4 copies of each. Why does this wall exist? Does it serve an actual gameplay purpose or make the game more interesting? It does neither; the system exists just to create frustration that might tempt a newer player to spend money. You can even see this with the free SSRs that are supposed to help you with this - they give you one on half anni and one on anni, and that's it. They could have given you Rei in addition to Kilo on the half anni and it wouldn't change the meta of the game (since Rei sucks anyway), but they did not do this; because it is not in their financial interest to make players progress past this wall any faster. You see this littered about in many, many gacha games out there. Stamina systems, dailies, drip-feed on resources; those are not made to promote long-term strategy or whatever. They exist to build frustration in players and push them closer toward the cash shop. Gacha games in the past have even done much worse than this; it took a lot of high quality market leaders to ensure the horrendous stuff like time-limited slots get stamped out of the gacha mainstream altogether. The point is incentives. If people are incentivized to be corrupt and prey on people, they will do exactly that. Gacha games are incentivized to push microtransactions and prey on addictive behaviors, so that's exactly what they will do. Every single time; even the supposed "f2p friendly" leaders of the space does it in spades. They just manage to hide it much better behind a veil of PR or quality or, most commonly, by bribing people with free stuff.
Bad. Way bad.
50/50 is the worst thing ever, making young people into gambling addicts.
What’s the good half then
they're talking about 50/50 mechanics for pulling SSRs, which to me has been a lot better than the previous industry standard as with it came an overall reduction in pulls needed to get things (both hard pity and expected rate). still predatory for being gacha as a whole, but cost going down might lead to a reasonable pricing eventually (it won't but there will be cheaper options out due to competition)
As opposed with zero-pity banners? At the very least, players will only have to save two pities worth of gacha currency to get the featured character. Now the problem here starts with poor currency gain which is worsened by poor player planning.
No, guaranteed pity banner, that's what the Snowbreak developer is looking into implementing in the upcoming patch alongside the 50/50 banners. So instead of the 50/50 with 80 pity, it's guaranteed limited character at let's say 110 pulls.
I dunno why this is downvoted to oblivion. This is a very important topic, all things considered, especially on this sub. But back on course with the topic, it's actually bad. Now major game companies are doubling down on games as a service (GAAS) to compensate for production costs of their single player outings. The earnings of mobile games now truly dwarfs the earnings of even the highest grossing videogames of all time (Mario Kart 8 lol) even on a monthly basis. Of course major game companies would want a piece of that pie. But since not all their mobile attempts are successful they resort to the GAAS model and that pretty much caused the current awful trend in the videogame market right now. It's pretty awful overall. Single player games are in danger of becoming rarer and rarer as times go by.
The topic itself has value I agree. But post deserves to be downvoted by being a low effort one-liner question as its content. A better quality post would provide some background intro, the OP's thoughts as well and why he thought so, and also give some counter perspectives that he might know of, before asking people to 'discuss'.
Gacha is the monetization methods. As long as it is a fully functional game with a lot of content, I don't really mind. You could have worse. You could have WoW with: Monthly subs, continual XPAC (expansion) price box, mounts, buying gold, rampant bots spamming shit, different tiers of preorder, etc.
"Gacha" is just a type of monetization, if its "good" or "bad" really depends on the developer, you could have a game that is full on predatory cash grab or another game that uses the funding from the gacha to constantly pump out high quality gameplay/story. The cool thing about this monetization method, is that it allows people whom may not be able to afford buying games, to play the game for free, while those whom have the means to spend money can support the game, and the other thing is this monetization method turns the game into a "live service" type of game where developers will constantly create new content aslong as the game is running. Personally, as someone whom plays them for the story, it has allowed me to enjoy gaming in a different way, traditionally I would buy lets say a JRPG, I would play nothing but that JRPG on my free time for a month or however long it took. With gacha instead I enjoy the story 'bite-size" where I get a little bit at a time and im following several different "stories' from multiple gacha.. kinda reminds me how TV used to be before streaming was a thing, you had to wait a whole week just to watch a new episode of your favorite show, it was like a nice treat you got once a week (except when the show turned to shit in later episodes lol) or an "event". Now with streaming I instead just binged the entire season in a few hours and then never think about that show again XD
I don't think gacha games contribute anything positive to the gaming culture. But I also believe gacha system is the only way to do live service and provide stable income to game developers. Like I can't imagine working for a traditional game company where they might go under if a game they developed for a few years ends up being a dud.
Live service games with monetization models other than gacha existed for a long time and still exist today. It’s just in the mobile space they can’t compete against gacha without regulations. How can you compete with legalized gambling for children?
"Necessary" evil, bc money. Considering the increasing cost and *risk* of producing single player offline games. Just one successful live service games could fund quite a few traditional AAA games development, and that's with the latter shoving more MTX on top of DLC. The problems are shareholders who only know about $$$ and not passionate about/ understanding gaming allowed to take the rein and yearly bonus while laying off employees left and right; and (hot takes) your traditional gamers circle struggling to understand the business side of making games.
I'm convinced if valve wasn't privately owned it would have been closed by someone like embracer group by now
I think they’re too expensive for very little. Idk how we reached a point where a a multi in some games costs 20$. It’s a waste of money. The monthly cards and battle passes I think are fine however
Most gachas offer short gameplay loops to players with not much time to play. And that is great because there are gamers that just want to read a bit of story, do a little fight when they're on a break and be done with it. But the FOMO, the monetization, the manipulation (like selling low priced stuff to incentive spending), fuck that. Especially when the game is designed with problems that you can solve by spending (VIP PASS...)
They are games. Overall they let a large number of people play them, often for no cost to them. That's good. Everyone should be able to game. The monetization is scummy but that's just kind of capitalism.
It's just bad. Gambling in general is bad. Gacha games being played by (mostly) young people is a horrible thing as well. It makes some of them addicted to straight up luck games, and that's just sad.
The practice of Gacha is gambling, and gambling is bad. However, there are loads of fun things Gacha games have, and for the most part, they've done some great things. Memorable characters, memorable story segments, some real fun gaming moments, I believe we all have that one good thing we experienced playing Gacha. The gacha aspect is bad, and for the people with lack of impulse control, doubly so, no doubt. But the rest is good, there is soul behind some of these games that managed to last long. It certainly isn't as bad as current AAA gaming industry, oh that's for sure. Regarding the Gacha aspect, the way current games handle it, you can equate it to micro transactions. 180 pulls to buy a character, for example. So it really can't be called gambling in it's truest sense, because in gambling, you stand to lose. Gachas guarantee you the character at some point, there is no guarantee in gambling. It's glorified micro transaction with a coat of RNG. I don't think any upcoming Gacha game can find a success without pity and carry-overs. Anyway, yeah. It's good and bad. Gacha games seems to be getting more and more into the territory of AAA, with very high production values, so I'm kind of looking forward to what people are gonna be cooking.
Certain IPs and stories that have come out of gacha games, very good. The model of regular updated stories and introducing new characters is just appealing for a lot of people. That's why I love gacha games. So many awesome stories, lore, music, characters, etc. But the actual mechanic of gacha? Overall bad. It's designed to get you to spend as much as possible, and preys on psychological vulnerabilities. You really have to just learn to navigate the bad when you play gacha games.
I don't know. Have you seen how many gaming companies, especially those under the Embracer Group, literally got wiped off the face of the earth? I don't think whatever is bad with gacha games is comparable to that one. Also remember: EA has released literally the same game for years, way before gacha became hot in the West. And before people start asking me for how this is relevant to the topic, I'm seeing this thread as yet another way to say "gacha bad" so I hope people have their arguments ready instead of rehashing the same stuff as with every thread that touches this issue.
It's just r/gachaghaming hivemind. Majority is just parrot that regurgitating the same opinion. I 100% agree with you that gaming industry have many evil practice that gacha gaming is still in overall good side.
This shouldn't even be a discussion, it's overall just...bad???
Good bc a lot of people can play them since they're free and some gacha feel like full-on RPGs, not just character collectors. Bad because it can prey on the addicts.
Overall bad, most of the game are just waifu crashgrab with brainless gameplay but they sell because the power of waifus and gambling, sad
Bad
i play gi and hsr. if gacha means quality updates every 6 weeks - so be it
That’s the hook for gambling addiction
if you don't have any money - they can't get you. real. i mean, anything can become an addiction. if you're being smart about your money in gacha (or anything generally) or don't spend at all - you're fine and can enjoy free game with constant content
There are good and bad aspects of it. If you're looking for * A game that never ends * Costs $0 to play then it's good. If you're * Into sampling lots of different games * Without spending any money then it's also good. But if you want to experience everything a game has to offer completely in 10 to 100 hours, or you loathe having your progress tethered to the date on the calender, then it's bad. Honestly there's only two objectively negative issues with the current market. One is that most of these games are made to be disposable, and that's what's given them their reputation for being "trash" in popular consciousness. Think about how few games even meet the minimum standard of old NES jRPG's. Why the hell aren't there *hundreds* of games with a overworld to walk around in? Secondly is how centralizing the gacha is to the game. If all your real rewards are received through the gacha, what's the reward for actually playing the game? (I really do loathe the Genshin model of putting weapons in the gacha. Despite that I think its lower power creep and lower pressure to push players into getting new units is healthy overall.) One thing that really absolutely sucks though is how married the market is to *phones*. Good luck making a successful Mario or Megaman clone with *touch* controls...
Modern games often don't even have an over world to walk in. I can't see that being something to judge it on. That shit died back in the PS2 era.
Anyone not saying bad is deluding themselves. There is no plus side to gacha mechanics for the player. Its a product designed to exploit you, no matter how fun you may think it is or appreciate other aspects of the game. These are products that ruin peoples entire lives.
The game being free is the benefit.
Free + having an active community + a big roster of playable characters is a big plus to me As long as you can control your spending, be it your time or your money, it's fine
>There is no plus side to gacha mechanics for the player People enjoy gacha payouts. Bingo, lotteries, prize drawings - these are all RL games that use chance to pick winners. There's a dopamine rush to getting a lucky roll, which is enjoyable. Even a basic boardgame like monopoly uses dice rolling to generate positive/negative outcomes. People like the feeling of winning, and simple games of chance create that feeling.
Yes, I know how dopamine works. Exploiting that to get money out of people, is bad. Exactly what I already said. Hope that cleared things up.
Agreed that gacha monetization is bad. Chance-based rewards are a gacha mechanic and show up in more than just gacha games. Ex: Xenoblade 2. Also shows up in many rogue-lite game modes within gacha games. YMMV, but some players enjoy it and that makes it a plus when it's not tied to monetary exploitation.
Gacha also appears in other AAA games. Example: Team Sonic Racing
Out of curiosity, what is the plus side to violence in video games for the player? Is killing enemies just there for players to feel good or is there some actual benefit to the player?
An outlet, entertainment. Also the important part is it doesn't cause you to possibly gamble copious amounts of money.
What OP asking is gacha gaming, and not only gacha mechanic. I agree with you if you're only talking that gacha mechanic. But if you're talking about gacha gaming as a whole, I disagree. Gacha gaming is still overall in the good side of game industry.
It's pretty bad. The monetization is very predatory.
You shouldn't have asked that here, there are many people frustrated with life.
Do you mean this sub or all of Reddit
its bad
Bad. Sure their monetary method allows for them to be easily accessible (99% being free to download), but they are in the simplest sense, gambling that’s available to kids. They employ the same strategies casino’s employ to hook gambling addicts. I really believe they should have stricter regulation.
Oh, it’s awful. I won’t be surprised when we see more gacha being implemented in full price AAA games. With how much money Genshin and star rail bring in you know every gaming company wants a piece of that now
Paying for single character to play, and stories being bad as hell, and gameplay mid? Gachas are bad and destructive for game industry
I don't think they're destructive inherently, but they definitely shouldn't be the standard for any type of gaming experience.
They are. Big players dictates the market and mihoyo created a trend for making you spend a lot of money on hazard to get something or (in other games) pay a lot (like 60£ or more) to just get it while also treating playerbase as trash and never giving anything because it's better to drain money instead.
Yeah but that doesn't determine gacha games as a whole. I'll never say gacha gaming is a good thing for the gaming industry but I don't think it's inherently destructive because none of the points you mention specifically come with every gacha game. Some are more predatory than others, and some aren't predatory at all. Still wouldn't recommend the average person play a gacha game though lol.
It actually does because those are businesses that optimize everything to increase money
But that doesn't translate into it being inherently destructive. It'd be a different story if EVERY gacha game was specifically made to get people addicted to gambling so companies could siphon up all the money, but that's just not the case all of the time, and even with games that are like this, they usually die off very fast due to everything you mentioned earlier on top of other issues.
That's a copium
Not really lol. We'll just agree to disagree I guess.
Overall bad, but weirdly more honest in general? Might be due to the countries of origin of most gacha. I feel like gacha companies in general are more up front and less shitty about their gambling. The games are entirely about it and they aren't busy trying to convince people it isn't. Might help that gacha games seem more targeted at adults and less at selling gambling to children. Something about the way western devs putting multiple layers of loot boxes, subscriptions, and their public marketing around them feels worse. It's the same monetisation as a gacha game, but it feels like they're trying to pretend they aren't just selling gambling to kids.
Only in the sense that other people are paying for your entertainment (as long as you don't become a large spender)
Gacha/mobile gaming changed the industry, for better or worse you decide, but there's a reason if today we see games as services, multiple expansions, boosters and item shops in those which used to be "one time buy only" products.
The reason is prices remaining stagnant while production costs have increased a hundred fold and production time has tripled. You used to play the modern equivalent of $100+ per game that took a year or two to make at the cost of a could hundred thousand. Now it's $70ish for a game that took 4 years and cost 20 million or so.
I enjoy gacha games. I spent years playing FFBE and never spent a dime. I just wish more effort was placed in making good gacha games.
Some good points by everyone here. For the people who said “absolutely bad”, why do you continue to play gacha games?
Because we're addicted /hj I assume its because its 1. Technically free 2. Easy to play since its available on phones 3. Long term progression 4. Consistent updates Theres some really good gacha games if only it didnt have monetization in the form of gacha. Gacha isnt really a game genre imo, its just a form of monetization which is what we hate and is bad for gaming
>For the people who said “absolutely bad”, why do you continue to play gacha games? Because it is just so happened to be a gacha game
Good, it tough a lesson that you really could use irl like gamble suck.
I dont see anything wrong with gacha gaming, if people cant control their gambling addiction then that is 100% their problem. Im not in any shape or form responsible for others people choices and if it leads them to get fucked. With this said, I also dont think gacha gaming itself is a huge boon. the reason I play gacha games and what I do think is a huge positive is the fact many become big games that come the east. In a day and age where big games in the west are mostly woke garbage likely to cause normal people to vomit, eastern games are a breath of fresh air. Only issue we have is all the censorship applied over said games.
It's bad. Game companies take things from a typical free to play gache like dailies, gambling and stuff and applies to their pay to play game.
Bad if you have money to spend. As I’m F2P, it often gives me better experiences than single-player mobile games.
Bad however make player addict and company profit Its like drug that make game industry stop/slow/stuck to develop innovation game (why risk to create new game when you can get more with less effort from gacha) Looking back to around 199x-200x many greate game appear and we dont have mobile gacha game yet (and here now in present in hope of get better game than before since technology develop so much and we got remake of that classic game to be hype for)
You're basically just asking if gambling is bad. Yes, it's bad for the people who have no self control and are struggling financially, otherwise you have fun.
It’s bad. Imagine an alternative model where you could just buy a character for $9.99 and pay part of the cost with your premium gems. Or, if you paid a $15-20 subscription and got all the characters with the sub. The only reason you’re seeing more and more games do this is because certain companies can make absolute bank. Nothing about the actual gacha is a player friendly model.
Torchlight infinite does both those things and it's still making garbo trash money even though it's a real fun game.
This is why gacha is a player hostile model. If you want money, you try to make it into gacha and loot boxes.
Overall? Probably no due to the amount of cashgrab involved in proportion of the content / effort pushed. I personally like it, because this allows me to enjoy the game's story for long time with constant update. But also I am pretty selective on what games I play, and would spend proportionally on what update they pushed. Good story and fully voiced (including chara and event stories) is a minimum requirement for me. So far I had good laugh almost every month in HBR. The monthly 3500 yen Is worth it for me. Plus monthly 500 yen to purchase new music release.
bad but makes the most money so the companies won’t stop.
It's bad as long as they put economic designer in the process creation
The monetization system is bad in that it encourages and relies on whales who spend far too much on gambling. It's bad for the spenders. But I would have loved getting to play games like this when I was a penniless student, for free. I have shifted a lot of my gaming time to gacha games. The ones I enjoy the most deliver good art, likable characters, and interesting stories. That's a lot of entertainment, for free. I make it a point to buy a monthly once in a while for my favorite gachas, because the devs have delivered value worth a few bucks. It being a live service game means they regularly deliver content and events. A good aspect about the monetization is that gacha games are very responsive to player feedback, and they have to continuously deliver player value to stay profitable. The anti-player DEI nonsense in AAA games is not going to work in the gacha gaming market. They can't afford to do that. Many gachas have EOS'd for less. So overall, I think gacha games are good for gaming because it's a high risk space where devs work hard to cater to players interests. The successes and failures of gacha games give gamedevs many lessons on how to make better games, and gives players more ways to enjoy gaming.
Horrible. There's no way anyone thinks gacha gaming is good. People got all annoyed at ea for basically having gacha in their games. I seriously doubt any mentally stable person would think gacha is good for gaming
It's 50/50.
I think GAAS, compared to the traditional model, is better because developers don't need to gamble a lot of money just to create a single game. I would rather play a slightly worse version that improves over time than pay in full while still experiencing bugs here and there. Now, if we are talking about the monetization model, out of all the choices, gacha is the worst one. Honestly, I miss the old way where you could get new characters as event rewards without pulling a single time. But right now, you need to do gacha to make progress for your account. Then, your question of whether it's good or bad for gaming? I don't think it matters that much. A good game will be good regardless of its monetization model, and vice versa. It's just that gacha games are cheaper to make, so there will always be more low-quality gacha games in the market.
Its bad for gaming, but honestly considering how greedy companies are recently with full price triple A's having paid content like battlepasses and microtransactions i don't see gacha being as bad as like a decade ago, at the very least i can download them for free
Gacha is a business model. I'd rather play Gacha than any other shit with consumer unfriendly features or pricy titles for 70€+ etc Time is limited, and I just want to have some fun. Gacha serves well
I'd say bad, it took so much of mmorpgs population.
Is the best thing that could hapend to the japense/chinese industry
Companies have found a way to make games—even huge budget ones—that 80-95% of players get to enjoy for free. Sure, they're exploitative and I'd prefer an economy structured differently to fund this kind of thing but games like Genshin spend one BOTW per year on a game that millions of people enjoy without spending a penny. That's gotta be worth something.
It can help push for quality and more playable game on mobile than those ads filled non-gacha game. For PC and consoles, if I can choose to buy Helldivers 2, or download a free to play Helldivers 2-like game and I have to gacha for the guns, or heck, the helldivers emote and skins, I'll much prefer the former than the latter
Good. You have more choices of games to play.
Bad
It is a well known fact that people who go to a reddit called R/Gachagaming hate any game that has gacha in it.
Gacha is inherently a bad thing to the core. It promotes bad business decisions for the customers and let's be real is very unhealthy just like regulated gambling. Furthermore I have seen some games, single player and multiplayer try to push gacha elements into their games that aren't the standard gachas we know of.
It's literally destroying the gaming industry, gacha and DLC's, battle passes, ingame shops in general, skins etc. Everything should be ingame, like they used to do, they used to release full games with hundreds of hours and secrets you discover to get skins, unlock characters etc, now you just pay for it, it just sucks. I've been waiting for years for a high quality turn based RPG that isn't gacha with hundreds of hours of gameplay like the old Final Fantasy series for example, but they just don't want to make them anymore because they can make a HSR and make you pay for every single character, or they make a ''remake'' like FF7 and instead of making an unbelievably awesome FF7 with current graphics wich is what people were asking for, they just divide the game in 200 parts and sell each one of them for a full price, and the worst part is people get easily gaslighted and even defend it... gaming companies don't really care about gaming anymore they only care about money. It's really sad seeing people supporting these games and even defending these predatory systems...
So you're saying you're willing to spend $140~$170 on every game? That's the price adjusted for inflation those old games would cost, and they only took a year or two to make vs 4+. You wouldn't, and thus the system we have.
You're the perfect example of what i'm talking about, you believe everything they want you to believe. And yes, i'd much rather waiting even 10 years for full masterpiece, than playing (and paying) for DLC's every single year, same with a movie, with a painting, with music and with any form of art, i much rather them taking their time and make a masterpiece, like they used to do. It's a lost battle at this point, there's so many people like you, sadly, i'm just venting out my frustration.
You should play BG3
I like JRPG and anime oriented games but yeah BG3 is really good, that's a good example of how it is still possible to make really good profitable full games. Sadly there's not many games like it.
Gacha game is live service model where the pressure for money shifts on the player. It's like crownfunding with gambling. And one way to counter piracy by design The cons is the game longavity is tied to a centralized server, which have cost to maintain.
I spend 0 dollars and play high quality games for months on end. I say overall good :)
It depends on the game, honestly. Some gachas have fairly generous models for low and no spenders where if they stick with the game for a long time while spending "MMO subscription" levels of money, they can see a lot of content. I haven't played too many gachas but Genshin and HSR stick out to me as being accessible to low or no spenders, although the predatory side of these games still exists and nobody should deny that. I enjoyed Genshin and HSR in spite of their monetisation models (as comparatively generous as they are), not because of them. However, many others are blatant money farms with far more predatory monetisation where you will not be able to get to the end of the content or story without paying, sometimes a lot of money. I would say that overall the gacha market leans towards being bad for gaming but I would struggle to call the leading gachas like GI and HSR worse than, say, Call of Duty, FIFA, or any of the other yearly sports games. I would support regulation that limits the amount of money both monthly and in a year that under-18s can pay in gachas, and there should also be a self-exclusion scheme for gacha/loot-box type games like GAMSTOP is for problem gamblers the UK.
for me if u can't control your spending that your problem tbh , the way gacha games create FOMO is the same with brand product, ppl wants limited shoe, clothes u name it the only problem that i hate about gacha is kid/teen can play it and they are too young for those predatory system can lead to bad habit when they are older and i can say the same for Activision/EA
So alcohol and drugs are good? You not being able to control yourself is the problem? That's basically what you're saying cause gambling is an addiction just like the others
Ehhhh... it created Elysia, so no.
50:50
Its overall good because most of them came from free despite pulling characters sometimes need RL money because you're exhausted all of free limited resources
Imho, it should be regulated, like minors can't use money in gachas. Ofc, there is always 'mother account', but some parents buy alcohol and tobacco for their kids. If you're an adult, then you can do with your life whatever you want.
It's neutral. Gaming at large went to shit when it went mainstream 20ish years ago. Going from a mid-sized industry to rivaling movies as one of the greatest sectors of the entertainment industry has a lot of good aspects, but also significant downsides. By the time gacha entered the scene a while later, all those things were already in motion.
Gacha mechanics itself is just RNG which is a good design in gaming To keep player engage but the monetization of RNG in any form is bad for gaming
As an AVID HSR player and spender... no, it's overall bad. At least with things that are specifically Gacha Games, you know ahead of time exactly what you are getting into. For many other games with "loot boxes", which is just gacha, it's faaaaaar worse.
For the overall gaming industry? That's bad. But I'm enjoying it. First free, second dopamine, and last i like grinding, i like progression and horny
For gaming ? Bad For casuals like me ? Good. I dont care "70$ full offline games" as I dont have patience and motivation to play those anyway --- and Im mostly low spender in gachas
If you like depressing story, gacha games are right for you. If not, you should go somewhere else.
Overall good. Gacha gaming is a good form of MMO. Anything that gacha gaming does bad, MMO does it worse. And the fact that customers have a say to the development of the game is a good thing. Of course there are a bad thing too, like story won't be completed. But overall it's good.
Genshin my beloved
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is the best Xenoblade and it's the only one with gacha in it. Even better, it's actually a weapon gacha disguised itself as character gacha
Gacha is type monetization for the developers to trick weak people into spending more money than what they willing to spend/can afford. It can be good or bad depending on how is used. In the case of our beloved gacha games you have to consider stuff like: Cost per pull, Rates, Pity, F2p income, Banner/rerun schedule (fomo), Powercreep etc. The problem is that Greed and Corpas are often bread and butter, making the Gacha look even more evil than what it already is. Gacha games are fine and can be harmless if you have self control but I'm not gonna sit here and pretend I want my games to be gachas 💀.
There's a lot of bad with a little good. It's basically a proven way to run live service games. I just enjoy the continuous stream of events and waifus to summon for. And honestly there's really not much to go around for the type of games I want that aren't gachas. Probably the only thing that would ever make me quit the genre is if making games like Trails became mainstream. I want an absurd amount of connecting games and characters that I can just savor throughout the years. Or Suikoden/Eiyuuden Chronicle with its super large roster of characters.
Every videogame should let me gamble
Womp womp people can't take a joke lol