[HN Gopher] A serious critique of Genshin Impact [video]
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A serious critique of Genshin Impact [video]
Author : CaliforniaKarl
Score : 52 points
Date : 2021-08-14 03:58 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| cardosof wrote:
| I wonder how I would be today of if my toys were helping me get
| addicted to gambling.
| Jxl180 wrote:
| Have you never opened packs of baseball or Pokemon cards hoping
| for a specific high value card? Have you never been to an
| arcade with token/coin pushers? That just replacing the
| gambling machine's quarters with tokens. Ticket and prize
| redemption games at Chuck-E-Cheese are 100% modeled after
| casinos.
| observer23 wrote:
| Gatcha is very similar to reality.
|
| Games without gatcha are arguably more about grinding from an
| equal starting point and only unless the gamer uses bots/cheats
| or pays someone for what they want like level/progress an account
| or their account when not grinding themselves.
|
| Gatcha brings the unequal reality we live in, well into the game
| world and where someone can spend their way to the goal without
| grinding as much. The reality we live, very much reflects the new
| game worlds that are now in existence thanks to gatcha and it's
| kind of remarkable that people are upset about it. We live
| everyday outside of games where one's misfortune or fortune
| reflects their life from the start to the end. The shortcuts that
| can be taken, what can be quickly achieved with funds, and that
| goes for anything from healthcare to lifestyle to even academics.
| CDSlice wrote:
| Since this video is 1h 41m long and many people here on HN
| probably don't know much about Genshin I'll try and provide a
| brief summary of the game. Genshin is an open world game in the
| style of Zelda BotW in which you play as an otherworldly traveler
| who was separated from their twin sibling by an unknown god when
| they arrived in the world of Teyvat. The sibling you picked then
| is kept asleep for 500 years until you wake up and begin your
| journey to find your sibling. This journey takes you across the
| world of Teyvat as you save people from dragons, Abyss monsters,
| and other threats. Gameplay wise you play with a team of four
| characters each with their own elemental skills and abilities. To
| beat the enemy mobs and bosses you have to combine these
| different elements to create reactions to amplify your damage.
| There are also a massive amount of open world puzzles to solve as
| you explore the world of Teyvat.
|
| The main problem people have with Genshin is that it is a gacha
| game so you gamble with premium currency to get new units and
| weapons. Although I do understand why people are extremely
| against this, in practice it isn't that big of a problem in
| Genshin because of the pity system that guarantees that you will
| get the 5* unit you want after 180 pulls but will normally happen
| after 150-160 pulls because of the soft pity system that greatly
| increases your chance of getting a 5* after 74 pulls (the hard
| guarantee is at 90 pulls). You are also guaranteed a 4* character
| or weapon after every 10 pulls and these are also very strong
| compared to the 5* units. You can easily beat the game with only
| 4* units, and in fact one of the strongest team compositions in
| the game is made entirely of 4* units. So any claims about the
| game being P2W aren't really accurate since there is no PvP
| content and the PvE content in the game is beatable by 4* units
| which are obtainable without spending money or a bunch of time
| grinding.
|
| So overall, I really enjoy Genshin and would recommend other
| people try it as well. It does have problems but they aren't as
| extreme as people make them out to be.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| > gacha game
|
| Parent knows this, but maybe other readers might not: Gacha is
| the Japanese name for those machines on the street where you
| put in a coin and a plastic sphere with a random toy comes out.
|
| Collecting a set of toys can get obsessive for some, in the
| same way collecting whatever in micro transaction games.
|
| I also have a question: other than the graphic styles isn't
| genshin impact closer to the online final fantasy games or even
| modern jrpg such as xenoblade?
|
| I've never played genshin, but from the little I've seen it
| just seems it's only the graphic style that matches BoTW
| kemayo wrote:
| The BotW comparisons come because of the world traversal
| mechanics, mostly. Genshin very-exactly copied the free-
| climbing + stamina + glider system that's pretty distinctive
| in BotW.
| minimaxir wrote:
| A few more notes:
|
| - You'll easily get 30+ hours unique of content with the main
| story without any need to pay money, which is good value for a
| free game.
|
| - As with all gacha games, you get a ton of free currency
| playing through the story naturally; more than enough to get a
| couple 5* naturally through pity or otherwise.
|
| - As noted, the 4* units aren't bad; in fact some of the higher
| tier ones are given for free with no strings attached.
|
| - Unlike other gacha, this isn't a difficult game for just
| playing casually (which is normally a meta-incentive for you to
| gamble with the gacha) unless you are doing super-endgame
| things.
|
| - Unlike other gacha, there is no competitive element with a
| leaderboard/other players (which is normally a meta-incentive
| for you to gamble with the gacha)
|
| The biggest problem I have with Genshin Impact is Artifact RNG,
| which is heavily layered with no determinism.
| 1023bytes wrote:
| I second this, I've played this game casually for a couple
| weeks and never needed to spend any money. It just means
| slower progress, not no progress.
| berdario wrote:
| I played another gacha for about 2 years (stopped about 1
| month ago). I tricked myself into playing it exactly like
| that:
|
| > Ok, I'll try it out... but I'll drop it as soon as I'll
| hit the paywall
|
| The problem is that the companies like Gameloft, Mihoyo,
| etc. got extremely refined in giving you a *semblance* of
| progress, while never completely grinding the progress to a
| halt.
|
| It's pretty obvious after you invested some time: you can
| do some actions, but only up to X times a day. You can
| refresh the X with premium currency. You can convert
| premium currency into normal currency.
|
| In the meanwhile, the tool/weapon/vehicle/character, won't
| be unlocked right away, but it needs a certain sets of
| components to be accumulated.
|
| After you finally unlock it, you can improve it/tune
| it/level it up... but you'll soon hit a wall. To improve it
| any further you need to boost it/star it up/whatever. And
| you thus need to accumulate more components.
|
| Eventually, you might find time-limited events, which will
| you give you a special currency, which you can use to
| unlock more time-limited goodies... and eventually convert
| it into one of the other kinds of currencies.
|
| A lot of these concepts don't seem to be heinous: it's
| perfectly fine to provide a gradual way to unlock something
| in a videogame. The problem is that usually there's some
| different mechanism/puzzle/part of the story that leads you
| there. In a gacha instead the only thing that grants you
| the majority of those incremental milestones is the
| pull/loot/boxes/crates/packs.
|
| The reasons you put up with it are pretty obvious:
|
| - sunken cost: you already invested some amount of time
|
| - feeling of progress. Every inch closer to a goal keep you
| engaged
|
| - the rest of the game is genuinely well made
|
| Again: what would be a good amount of content for 10 hours
| of game, gets stretched and dripped very slowly across
| hundreds of hours. For longer games (like, RPGs) what would
| be dozens/a hundred of hours gets stretched in thousands.
|
| Even when I play a videogame, I don't want to just "kill
| time", I want an interesting experience, which ideally
| makes the most out of the hours that I put into it.
|
| Traditional/non-bullshit/paid in advance games make sure
| that I get that either with skill, or without having to
| sweat for it (lowering the difficulty). In a gacha, it'll
| be a neverending stream of pulls (also, they'll obviously
| keep adding derivative content, to give you more and more
| things to unlock)
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| > " _5* unit you want after 180 pulls_ "
|
| A casual search says "The minimum you can spend for a single
| Wish roll is $2.97" from
| https://www.gamespot.com/articles/genshin-impact-microtransa...
| so that's $534.60 to get a single character you want? Even if
| it were 1/10th that much with the pity system, that's still
| outrageous since new characters are released frequently.
| CDSlice wrote:
| Oh yeah, the prices to buy premium currency are absolutely
| outrageous and I won't even try to disagree with that.
| However, that really only matters if you want to collect
| every single character and/or get multiple copies of
| characters for their constellation buffs. The game is pretty
| generous with premium currency with most patches (the game
| releases updates on a 6 week schedule) giving enough currency
| for around 45-50 pulls. You can also pay $5 for the monthly
| subscription that gives you enough currency for 18.75 more
| pulls over 30 days. This is really the only way of buying
| extra premium currency that isn't outrageously overpriced. My
| main point was that you don't have to buy extra premium
| currency to have fun with the game or beat it.
| kemayo wrote:
| The article you linked to does note that the currency for
| rolls is handed out as you play as well, in what it claims is
| fairly generous amount, so you don't _have_ to spend extra.
| (But yes, actually spending money on this sort of game gets
| ridiculously expensive quickly.)
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| It can't be all that generous: " _In just six months since
| release, Genshin Impact has reportedly crossed over $1
| billion in revenue..._ " from
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2021/03/24/genshin-
| im...
| level3 wrote:
| It's generous enough if you aren't aiming for every
| premium character. If you play all the story content and
| events, and are doing the daily quests, you'll pretty
| much earn enough for a guaranteed 5* (80-90 pulls) in
| about 6 weeks (the length of one version update).
|
| So if you're a free player, you can save up for a
| character you really want, or just pull and be content
| with whoever you get.
| minimaxir wrote:
| Mobile game economics are funny like that.
| Zababa wrote:
| Something that hasn't been mentioned is that a lot of
| people tend to obsess over some characters, independently
| of their gameplay value. That's usually how gacha games
| make a lot of their money.
| smukherjee19 wrote:
| There are people who spend thousands of dollars every
| single month on mobile games in general, and Genshin is
| no exception. They are called "whales".
| specialist wrote:
| Wow. I love the toon (non-photorealistic) rendering. Add some
| wiggle and bounce, you practically have a Disney movie.
|
| I've been out of the loop for a long time. Is this now (finally)
| common? Are there articles, papers for how it's done? Mid-90s, I
| had a lot of video game concepts predicated on toon rendering. My
| young son was infatuated with Doom and I had hoped us parents
| would have better alternatives.
|
| I may have to try this game, just for the eye candy alone.
| smukherjee19 wrote:
| I have only played this game for 50 hours or so, and have yet to
| reach middle game, so what I write will be biased likewise. I'm
| sure others will be talking about the system and how it's a mix
| of an open world RPG and a gacha game.
|
| 1. For the money aspect, I did not spend a single cent in the
| game (nor do I plan to). Yet the experience has been wonderful so
| far. Yes, if you spend thousands of dollars every month on this,
| you'll be able to get the latest and greatest characters. But for
| a free-to-play player like me, I need to plan out the way I spend
| the gacha currency called "primogems" very wisely. The game gives
| you quite some primogems when a new area and new quests are
| released and you play through that content (we've had 3 areas so
| far in 1 year including the one at the beginning), and after that
| you get a limited amount regularly by doing daily quests and so
| on. Usually a free-to-play player can save up enough to get 90
| pulls in a couple of months or so? Therefore, advance planning is
| needed. I enjoy planning like that so I like it.
|
| 2. About progression: I feel it doesn't matter whether you're F2P
| or a paying player. Because, the whole grinding system is gated
| behind a system called the "resin", which is a thing that
| replenishes to full in about 24 hours, and it's the same
| regardless of how far you are into the game. And if I'm not
| wrong, EDIT: as someone below pointed out, you can buy resin with
| money, but the exchange rate of the amount spent becomes awful
| very very quickly. That means, as you go to end game, either
| you'll run out of things to do, or you won't have enough resin to
| accomplish all you want to do. At that point, it'll be more like:
| log in, do the dailies that take 20 minutes, kill some bosses
| using raisin for another 20, and some other stuff and you're
| done. That is, once you've cleared ALL the story and world
| quests, and that'll take atleast a few hundred hours in my honest
| opinion.
|
| 3. For pay2win: I don't think it's a pay2win game. There are some
| units that the game gives you for free, and once you reach a
| certain level called Adventure Rank, you get to participate in
| events that give free 4*s. Some of the units are really really
| strong even in end-game (Xiangling comes to mind). Besides, even
| if you don't have the "best" team for a given character, there
| are characters you can substitute in. It just depends on how
| brain-dead you want to be when choosing your team builds and
| actually attacking the monsters (my favorite example for this is:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTrRZEZ0wO4 where the guy
| literally takes the free characters the game gives out, and uses
| the game system, skills, and so on to beat abyss 3, which is
| quite hard for a beginner. I was able to clear this stage at the
| early game thanks to this person's proof that it's possible to
| actually clear content even with starting characters.)
|
| That out of the way, here's what I love about the game:
|
| 1. The story. I am a sucker for great stories, and Genshin is
| done quite well. I actually decided to start with a new account
| after sinking dozens of hours into an old one because I went
| through the story too fast (one chapter in a week). This time,
| I've decided to take my time and enjoy the story like fine-aged
| wine.
|
| 2. The graphics. The graphics in this game are of an extremely
| high quality when it comes to non-physical rendering (NPR). If
| you're somewhat acquainted with anime-style toon shading, this
| game does it very well. No, it doesn't look like a cinematic
| Hollywood movie, and it's not meant to look like one. But its art
| style might be the best I've seen so far when it comes to NPR.
|
| 3. Maybe a bit niche, but the Japanese voice acting is top-notch.
| MiHoYo have good taste when it comes to choice of voice
| actors/actresses. Note I don't know anything about the
| English/Korean/Chinese ones.
|
| Lastly, I'll just rant a bit about how I feel when I hear people
| say "there's nothing to do in this game". Sorry for sounding
| rude, but no game has infinite content for anyone to consume;
| this isn't Netflix binge-watching. To me, the best way to consume
| this game is slowly and steadily. Think of it as dining a full-
| course meal at a nice restaurant with a nice atmosphere. Of
| course it's different from gobbling down a Big Mac at McD's and
| washing it down with Cola. You slowly take bites of each food
| that is served, a sip of the drinks that are served, and relish
| the taste. I feel that's the best way to get maximum enjoyment
| out of this game. Come back home after a long day and unwind with
| it for an hour or two, and then put it away for the next day.
| It'll easily last a few months, and the game's updated every 6
| weeks with new content with small events in-between.
|
| TL;DR: This is a fantastic hybrid of single-player open-world RPG
| and a gacha game with fantastic graphics and story that I feel
| would be best enjoyed slowly. If you have the chance to, I highly
| recommend to try it.
| level3 wrote:
| Just to note, technically you can buy resin with money (you can
| replenish your resin with primogems, up to 6 times a day), but
| it's not very cost efficient so you're generally better off
| using those primogems on wishes. And like you said, you
| eventually run out of things you'll want to spend extra resin
| on.
| smukherjee19 wrote:
| Ah, forgotten about that. Yes, you're right. Corrected,
| thanks!
| bserge wrote:
| I play it.
|
| Besides the main story and occasional events, there isn't much to
| do in this _single player_ game.
|
| Login every week and do some exploring and fighting, like Black
| Desert and other games, pretty much. Or just wait for some event,
| which usually has some entertaining story or game mode (there's a
| tower defense thing going on now). Other than that, there ain't
| much to do.
|
| Think of it more like an unfinished, constantly updating version
| of the old Fire Emblem GBA games.
|
| Others here said it "can't be enjoyed without paying" - no, it
| actually can't be enjoyed much at all. I.e. if you don't like it
| in the first hour, you won't like it no matter how much you
| spend.
|
| Whether you pay or not, it's literally the same experience, but
| fewer characters (they're all the same basic types, so who
| cares).
|
| People who spend on games with gacha elements are very
| interesting as I fail to see the point of it.
| kemayo wrote:
| ...why are you playing this game when your comment seems to
| boil down to "I don't like it"?
| bserge wrote:
| "Play it" is a stretch for two hours a week. I do like the
| story and events, which are rare.
| keewee7 wrote:
| Chinese apps and games dominating the West makes me feel like a
| Soviet citizen in 1991 watching Coca-Cola and McDonald's ads pop
| up everywhere.
|
| We are truly in China's century.
| politelemon wrote:
| Chinese media in general definitely making a larger footprint.
| In seeing literature as well as TV shows and movies becoming
| more known.
|
| I am half wondering if I ought to be learning mandarin now.
| Hjfrf wrote:
| Are they really? There are a few popular mobile games, but
| mostly predatory skinner boxes at high risk of regulation.
|
| Translations of Chinese books/films/comics are still
| consistently awful.
| echelon wrote:
| Genshin is a pretty stunning example of how quickly Chinese
| development and animation studios have grown to develop world-
| class media.
|
| Many consider this game better than Zelda: Breath of the Wild,
| which is one of Nintendo's crowning achievements.
| 2bitencryption wrote:
| > Many consider this game better than Zelda: Breath of the Wild
|
| Is Genshin Impact a pretty and technically impressive BotW-like
| game? Yes.
|
| But Breath of the Wild is, by many accounts, considered one of
| the greatest games of all time [0]. I have never heard anyone
| suggest this of Genshin Impact.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_games_considered...
| bserge wrote:
| I don't have a Nintendo and will never buy one, but I do have
| a phone.
|
| And yeah, the first time I played Genshin I was amazed at the
| quality for a mobile game. It quickly ran out of content so
| now it just sits there, quick fun for half an hour.
|
| imo Dragon Raja was better (amazing pvp, damn addictive) but
| was absolutely ruined by the microtransactions and small
| servers aspects.
| FooBarWidget wrote:
| What exactly is so controversial or disagreeable about the
| parent's comment as to warrant so many downvotes?
| kemayo wrote:
| I didn't downvote, but maybe the "many consider" weasel-
| words? It's one of those ways to make a fuzzy and unprovable
| claim that you're advancing but not quite saying _you_ think
| it. (Plus, I 've not seen that claim _actually_ made, though
| I 've not gone hunting for it.)
|
| It'd be sort of weird to compare those games at that level,
| anyway, since although there's some superficial systems
| similarities (Genshin thoroughly copied BotW's open world
| traversal mechanics), they play incredibly differently. It's
| like saying "tennis is a better game than chess", or in video
| games "Doom is a better game than Tetris" -- the genre
| difference is so great that I don't know if you can
| meaningfully compare them.
| kibwen wrote:
| I didn't downvote it, but the comment exemplifies the problem
| in both how right and wrong it is. Genshin Impact has the
| potential to be a great game, but it's utterly ruined by the
| gacha garbage that infests it. It's extremely disappointing,
| and makes you depressed at wondering what an excellent game
| it could be if it didn't have such a predatory and self-
| defeating business model.
| bserge wrote:
| It's interesting because I just don't see it. The game's
| monetization is just a new character every month or
| something like that.
|
| I'm impulsive as hell, but I never had the urge to spend
| money in Genshin. And I spent almost immediately on Dragon
| Raja, yeah that game got me good. Fortunately the devs
| ruined it.
| FooBarWidget wrote:
| That seems like an unfair reason to downvote the post. One
| could dislike gatcha as a business model but the post is
| about China's capacity to design a game irrespective of the
| business model. The quality of the artwork, music, etc
| stands on its own regardless of whether one personally
| dislikes the business model.
| wpietri wrote:
| How can one have a great game that is harmful to the
| players? To me that sounds like: "This food is truly
| excellent so let's honor the chef. Whether it's full of
| rat poop and heavy metals is a totally separate issue."
| FooBarWidget wrote:
| And how exactly is it "harmful"? Your comparison isn't
| even right. This is free food that comes without
| ustensils and without a table. You have to pay for a
| table and ustensils, but the food is edible without them,
| and the ingredients and the way they're prepared stand on
| their own. Especially if you consider that not long ago,
| this part of the world couldn't prepare such a meal at
| all, even if they provided all the tables and ustensils
| in the world.
|
| I've been playing this game for almost a year now and I
| just don't see the parts where they "harm" you if you
| don't pay. If you can point out concrete examples of this
| "rat poop and heavy metals" that you get unless you pay,
| please do let me know.
| wpietri wrote:
| Gambling addiction is a serious problem that destroys
| lives. We should not be exposing kids to things with
| strong addiction potential.
|
| If you'd like a concrete example, here's a guy who
| realized he had a problem after dropping $15k and decided
| he needed professional help to quit: https://www.reddit.c
| om/r/gachagaming/comments/b2fopn/i_spent...
|
| After someone close to him died, he went back to it: http
| s://www.reddit.com/r/gachagaming/comments/p3qxfr/gacha_p.
| ..
|
| If you'd like more, there's plenty out there about the
| harms of gambling addiction. One can argue that adults
| should be able to ruin their lives as they please, but I
| think there's no excuse for letting adults exploit
| children in ways that can create lifelong harm.
| FooBarWidget wrote:
| The point about gaming addiction in kids is fair. But
| it's also off-topic. The discussion isn't about whether
| gatcha should be allowed. It's about the gatcha
| supposedly ruining the game's quality or enjoyment
| thereof, which is a completely different topic.
|
| Also, not only kids play games.
| f00zz wrote:
| Right, but despite that I think it's still possible to
| acknowledge the high level of production value that went
| into it. Never played it but it does look pretty. Edit:
| also, nice music:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1O7LpOTBfM
| cwizou wrote:
| Another Chinese game that I've been very impressed with is
| Dyson Sphere Program (a Factorio-like game on galactic scale),
| it's still in Early Access on Steam, by a fairly small team but
| it's already insanely impressive in scope, and they are
| improving it constantly.
| thewarrior wrote:
| The other day there was a thread about how many HNers enjoyed
| using TikTok. They are progressing quickly and many seem
| unwilling to acknowledge it.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| So which stage are we in? One- anger or have we progressed to
| four- depression?
|
| Perhaps it doesn't matter it's all fuel to China's
| nationalism.
| esturk wrote:
| Anger is actually stage 2. Stage 1 is denial.
| echelon wrote:
| TikTok is far and away superior to US social media.
|
| Twitter is full of rage and hate, and I can't stand it.
|
| Instagram is posers and people being fake.
|
| Facebook is people posting fake news, baby photos, politics,
| and inspiration quotes for a life most are unwilling or
| afraid to live.
|
| Reddit is going after the lowest common denominator.
|
| YouTube is losing its edge and making it harder to succeed as
| a new creator.
|
| TikTok embraces collaborative world building and positivity
| in a way I've never seen before. It's a total breath of fresh
| air. It feels good, wholesome, and truly creative.
| lofatdairy wrote:
| I'm not defending any of these social media corporations,
| but the worst people are on every platform and tiktok is
| not exception. Tiktok also can appeal to the lowest common
| denominator, it also has rage, hate, conspiracy theories. I
| think where tiktok's advantage is that that vine wasn't
| ready to leave this world so its creative medium hasn't run
| its course, and its algorithm actually feels well designed
| as apposed to instagram and youtube
| ItsMonkk wrote:
| It's about the long tail. If I look at the people that I
| have subscribed to on YouTube, and then take the mean of
| their count of subscribers, the mean is probably over a
| million. When I do the same on TikTok it's about 10k.
| There were probably the same people posting the same
| content on YouTube, but because there is no discovery, I
| never found them, and they never found viewers, so they
| stopped.
|
| What you are subjected to on each platform is based on
| the discovery methods of that platform. There are
| probably very good reasons that American sites tend to
| have really bad discovery, it means that Ads are more
| impactful and it gives the creator of the algorithm all
| the power.
|
| So it's not that bad people don't exist on TikTok, but
| because their discovery system is so good I end up
| watching content that I like. Whereas on YouTube, because
| the discovery system is so poor, I am subjected to watch
| things that the platform favors. YouTube favors high-
| energy, face-contorting, lowest common denominator
| content. Up until now because YouTube has been the only
| source of internet video, I had to go along with it as it
| was the best we had. Suddenly I don't.
| pushrax wrote:
| I find it very easy to tune my YouTube recommendations.
| If I open my homepage I see quality content on machining,
| optical physics, ML, jazz theory, battery tech, chip fab,
| interior/exterior design, rocket nozzles, etc... and not
| a single contorted face.
| wpietri wrote:
| Maybe you are following the wrong people on Twitter? Switch
| it to "latest tweets" rather than the default of "top
| tweets" and then you'll only see the people you follow.
|
| I see plenty of creative, funny, and thoughtful content.
| I've learned a ton. There's some that I like that I'd call
| "useful outrage"; some of the things going on in world need
| that. I see very little "rage and hate".
| bassman9000 wrote:
| There's literally thousands of raging and berating tiktoks
| in the SJW category alone. What are you talking about.
| KittenInABox wrote:
| > TikTok embraces collaborative world building and
| positivity in a way I've never seen before. It's a total
| breath of fresh air. It feels good, wholesome, and truly
| creative.
|
| This used to be what Twitter and Instagram and YouTube were
| described as in the past. There's still plenty of gaming
| views and influencer stuff being done on TikTok, it just
| hasn't become ubiquitous yet. Or maybe the format means we
| as a population need to re-adjust to see it. I'm mentioning
| this because I've seen toxic stuff on TikTok already about
| niche hobby interests. Stuff like getting people cancelled,
| internet drama, people posting videos of themselves crying
| over it, etc.
| Natsu wrote:
| Instagram isn't so bad... if you follow accounts that only
| post cute animal pictures.
| catillac wrote:
| This comment is a bit rosy on TikTok, and your stereotypes
| are off a bit. I use all these platforms, and all things
| you attribute primarily to a single platform above have
| bled into the other platforms, where format allows. Just
| look to Instagram stories for a lot of examples of people
| posting inspirational quotes, or to YouTube for plenty of
| fake news channels, or to Facebook to see lowest common
| denominator posting. The locus of each of those things may
| rest with your stereotyped examples, but reality is much
| more nuanced.
|
| One can find all of these things on TikTok. Right now it's
| just new so it feels more optimistic and you want to see it
| more optimistically.
| pushrax wrote:
| Different platforms for different things. I never use
| TikTok, because the video media I consume is almost always
| long form informative content. YouTube is the only media
| giant with a large supply of this, and it continues to
| accrete such creators and content faster than anywhere
| else.
| ryneandal wrote:
| A new Never video. I'm all in, I know what I'm doing this AM.
| burlesona wrote:
| We'll, I'm curious to know what this is all about, but at 1h 41m
| runtime this video is less a critique of the game and more a
| documentary about it. I couldn't find a written summary anywhere
| - does anyone know of one?
| firekvz wrote:
| He is just against gacha style games, as everyone should be
| (gambling addiction enforced by gaming addiction)
|
| So the whole video sums up his experience in how without having
| to pay a bunch of money, you couldn't win/have fun properly
|
| But this video could be about any new game (online mmorpg)
| nowdays and be still the same
| numpad0 wrote:
| Haven't clicked the link or even played Genshin but I believe
| the novelty is it's:
|
| 1) a proper singleplayer JRPG style game,
|
| 2) in "App" format with gacha mechanic.
|
| Previously 1) and 2) didn't occur in a same title. If it's an
| App, it would have extremely simplistic gameplay with gacha,
| or if it's a JRPG, there were at most DLCs and certainly not
| gacha. But they just made it no longer the case.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| "how without having to pay a bunch of money, you couldn't
| win/have fun properly"
|
| The story of life. Many such cases.
| whoknew1122 wrote:
| > But this video could be about any new game (online mmorpg)
| nowdays and be still the same
|
| Let's go ahead and address the smaller point here first.
| Genshin Impact isn't an MMORPG. But that's not the biggest
| issue here.
|
| The biggest issue here is that Genshin's gambling model is
| not the same as any new game.
|
| ---
|
| The difference between Genshin Impact (which I played for a
| week, and spent about $100 on) and other games, is that you
| must gamble for a chance to progress in a meaningful way. To
| say this is an issue endemic to all new games simply isn't
| correct.
|
| Most games these days to have some sort of microtransaction
| model. That's true. However the core gameplay and progression
| system in Genshin is locked behind loot crates. This isn't
| the model 'any new game' uses.
|
| There are two main ways games use microtransactions:
| cosmetic, and game-impacting.
|
| Cosmetic microtransactions make cosmetic changes in your
| character or the world around it. No impact on gameplay other
| than you find something new more aesthetically pleasing.
|
| Then we have the game-impacting transactions. Most games that
| allow game-impacting transactions (i.e. are 'pay 2 win'),
| allow you to essentially sacrifice time for money. You can
| spend hours in game grinding for an objective, or you can
| spend real life currency to automatically unlock the
| objective.
|
| What Genshin does is different from most games. There are
| certain important ways in which you simply cannot progress
| without spending money. And everything is locked behind a
| loot box. That's the problem. The problem is with the loot
| boxes and gambling; not exchanging time for money.
|
| There was a game that I spent over $2,000 on. It was an
| online 'free-to-play' game with over 70 characters. Each
| character was around $15-20. Or you could play the game for
| about 40 (real) hours to grind up enough currency to unlock
| one. This was fine though, because you picked which character
| you unlocked and it was unlocked.
|
| Genshin makes you buy boxes with a chance to drop what you
| want it to drop. That's what makes it pernicious.
| FooBarWidget wrote:
| Which parts are inaccessible without paying? Maybe I
| haven't progressed far enough (haven't finished the Liyue
| Archon quest) but all the money I spent so far is just for
| weapons and additional characters. They make it _easier_ to
| defeat enemies but defeating enemies without those upgrades
| is still doable.
| whoknew1122 wrote:
| I don't mean that the game is _unwinnable_ (to the extent
| that such games are winnable) without spending money. But
| the core mechanic is swapping between different
| characters for combos and synergies. You 're severely
| hampered without paying to get other characters and
| increase your weapons.
|
| I remember getting Hu Tao when she was just released. She
| was (and I guess still is?) one of the best characters.
| But I didn't have the roster to really play her to her
| full potential. So it's back to the loot crates to try
| and pull other characters that synergize with her and
| help her reach her potential.
| level3 wrote:
| Being unable to maximize a specific character's potential
| is pretty far from where you said "there are certain
| important ways in which you simply cannot progress
| without spending money."
|
| There's nothing in the main content that requires you to
| have a 5* character/weapon, even though it's certainly
| easier with them.
| minimaxir wrote:
| > But the core mechanic is swapping between different
| characters for combos and synergies.
|
| The game gives you a free character of each element to
| handle the necessary synergies.
|
| There's a difference between "severely hampered" and less
| effective at end-game content.
| FooBarWidget wrote:
| Hm? I'm super-lazy game mechanic wise. I spend money. But
| 3 of the chacters on my team are free, and I almost never
| use combos because I can't be bothered to do complex
| stuff. I'm sure I don't maximize my damage-per-second but
| I still enjoy the game and defeating nearly all enemies
| is completely doable even with casual gaming skills.
|
| If the critique is "I can't maximize to the absolute
| highest stats without paying" -- then sorry, I think
| that's an attitude full of false entitlement.
|
| Heck, look at this frickin video about how they produced
| the Liyue OST: https://youtu.be/pFrKZxStL_U They
| commissioned a _massive_ Shanghai orchestra team to
| produce excellent music. And we get all this amazing
| stuff for free.
| derefr wrote:
| Pay-to-win and pay-to-have-fun are actually pretty distinct
| game-design philosophies. There are a lot of free-to-play
| games that _are_ pay-to-win for at least some element of the
| game; but where the game can still be _fun_ without paying.
|
| What usually happens in _pay-to-win_ designs is that the game
| can be played, if more slowly, in a fun way, for as long as
| you're playing against other regular people who _also_ aren't
| paying-to-win. This lasts _until_ you get good enough to end
| up on the competitive-ranked top leaderboard; at which point
| the only way to _advance_ on that leaderboard is to pay for
| extra-fancy items /equipment, because everyone else on it
| already did. (Analogy: doping in sports. Nobody in the minor
| leagues dopes, because nobody else does, so there's no _need_
| to do it. But everybody at the top does, because everybody
| else at the top does, and so doping is the only way to even
| stay viable in the major league. The sport _is_ "fun",
| without doping, right up until you hit the majors. Then,
| suddenly, having any more fun requires doping. That's
| traditional pay-to-win.)
|
| With traditional pay-to-win game design, you can still
| extract fun from the game without paying, _if_ you treat "the
| game" as being just the subset of the game that lasts until
| you end up in the major league with all the doping players.
| If you think of that point as the point where you "beat the
| game", put it down, and don't play it any more -- and the
| game up until that point was fun and worth playing -- then it
| wasn't a waste of time to have played it.
|
| Genshin Impact is apparently _not_ this type of game, though.
| It's the _other_ kind of free-to-play game: the kind where
| you're at _no_ point having fun if you're not paying. (But,
| of course, which tries to give the _illusion_ that you can
| have fun, sort of like a casino tries to give you the
| _illusion_ that you can have an edge.)
|
| It takes a pretty deep dive into a free-to-play game to
| figure out whether there's a subset it that is fun to work
| through without paying. So I don't fault the author for
| needing to spend an hour on the topic to properly prove their
| thesis out.
| heywintermute wrote:
| It's a free game that heavily revolves around buying lootboxes
| to unlock characters/items and is known as a gacha game[0] They
| are often intentionally designed to make it really difficult to
| experience the full game without being forced to spend real
| money on lootboxes.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gacha_game
| antonvs wrote:
| That seems like a bit of an overstatement to me. I've been
| playing for free for a while now. I'm at adventure rank 25,
| and my characters are all at levels 40-50. I've unlocked all
| the maps that are accessible at this level. There's a long
| list of quests and challenges that I have yet to get to.
| There's plenty of fun to be had without spending money, and
| in fact I'd recommend it as a good free open world RPG.
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