Least this isn't a Gacha game

I'm very thankful for that mind you GGG.

/walrus

Isn't it? I mean at it's heart, isn't a loot based game just a gacha game?

"

j33bus wrote:

Isn't it? I mean at it's heart, isn't a loot based game just a gacha game?

I think you know what she meant: pay real money to roll for game-affecting rewards (characters and items, usually). I find it amusing that one of the least predatory gacha games ever has put the word 'gacha' into the PC Masterrace lexicon. Typical, really.

PoE will never be a gacha game because it doesn't have to be. Mystery boxes are as close as it gets, and I'm fairly sure TencentGGG are almost as uncomfortable with that much as they are delighted at how much money they bring in. Gotta keep up that disgusted act though. Good for PR.

Friend spent 8 grand on this Gacha game for one single char mind you.

Imagine doing that in poe for a char / gem etc like that's some crazy shit right there but yeah the loot boxes in this game doesn't affect gameplay, in terms of this gacha game it does and I do mean a lot of it does.

"

I_NO wrote:

Friend spent 8 grand on this Gacha game for one single char mind you.

That says far more about your friend than the game. Assuming it's even vaguely popular, I can guarantee most people playing it don't put in all that much. It's the same basic financial model as PoE though: initially the whales make up for the freeloaders and minnows, but if the game is successful, it's the dolphins that keep it going, to the point where the threshold to be a 'whale' is much higher than when the game launched.

How's this for hilarious? From an early article (2011) on the topic:

"

Minnows spend the smallest amount possible in a month, typically $1
Dolphins spend a “middling” amount. Typically I forecast they spend an average of $5 per month
Whales spend a lot. Typically I forecast they spend an average of $20 per month.

https://www.gamesbrief.com/2011/11/whales-dolphins-and-minnows-the-beating-heart-of-a-free-to-play-game/

These days you're typically not a gacha whale unless you're over 100 bucks a month (and that'd be on banner rolls/gacha). Dolphins are anything from 10-99, usually averaging closer to 30-40 (a gacha ten pull here and there). Minnows are probably 1-10, and tend to gravitate to soft subscriptions like value pack 'VIP' passes, relying on game-given currency for their banner attempts.

Anyway, 8 grand for a character your friend REALLY wanted and would improve their enjoyment of the game probably makes more sense than 12.5 grand for a monster that took too long to design and just pissed everyone off with its cheap surprise stun, including me.

I mean, I'm pretty this is just another forget-me-not I_NO thread (not quite up there with AST...yet), but if 'at least it's not a gacha game' is the defense of your free to play game with *ridonculously* high priced cosmetic mtxes and implicit pay-to-play via excessive storage demanded by excessive currency types, eh...good for you?

"Gacha games are video games that implement the gacha (capsule-toy vending machine) mechanic. This is somewhat similar to loot boxes, inducing players to spend in-game currency to receive a random virtual item."

TIL. Anyway the mystery boxes are 100% gacha

They are, yes. But since their contents are cosmetic-only and the cost of the box is lower than the individual cost of the contents once it becomes something you can buy directly, they're close to the least predatory style gacha I've seen. Their only weakness is double-ups, and that's the necessary evil to keep the individual mystery box price so low.

They're also not a main part of the game itself, so I think it's still fair to say that PoE isn't a gacha game.

Yeah it's a gray area tbh but then you have "incidents" like quin (a streamer) doing a little overspending lmao

https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/iw1ge5/quin69_just_spent_920_worth_of_points_to_not_get/

"

pr13st wrote:

Yeah it's a gray area tbh but then you have "incidents" like quin (a streamer) doing a little overspending lmao

https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/iw1ge5/quin69_just_spent_920_worth_of_points_to_not_get/

Lootboxes working as intented here.

"

pr13st wrote:

Yeah it's a gray area tbh but then you have "incidents" like quin (a streamer) doing a little overspending lmao

https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/iw1ge5/quin69_just_spent_920_worth_of_points_to_not_get/

Yeah, that escaped the Wræclast bubble -- some non-Exile friends asked me about it, a few of whom know about my own involvement, most that don't. They were impressed at the non-p2w aspect to the mystery boxes, but once I explained how TencentGGG make what I figure to be the bulk of their mtx money (customised storage in conjunction with hyper-aggressive addition of items requiring said storage), they were...less impressed.

But even Quin's little overspend is pissfuckall compared to most gacha cautionary tales, which I'm sure people can find for themselves with a little google magic. It's somewhat telling that I DO play predatory gacha games but have spent nowhere near as much on them as I did PoE. I think the most I've spent on any one gacha game is around 4k over 4 years (Fate Grand/Order). I whale that one occasionally but far from compulsively. And this year being the shitshow that it is, I've put a whole 100 bucks into it. And even then you can play the entire story for free, easily, which is no small amount of content.

The current gacha sensation, Genshin Impact, won't even take our money for some reason, which I genuinely wanted to contribute to given how much sheer free play the game gives before you even need to start thinking about a paywall (which is rooted firmly in the game's endgame loop, and is unusually high to make up for it). Then I saw they made 100m in two weeks (that's a lotta waifu rolling) and felt far less concerned that I wasn't able to contribute. ^_^

So just as 'f2p' itself stopped being a dirty word even to PC Masterracers eventually, I think 'gacha' is going to worm its way in, but not in the extremely predatory form used in mobile games or, for that matter, EA debacles like Battlefront II. Because that's where the real money is, and now more than almost ever before, successful, sustained games are revealing themselves to be high-effort, high profit revenue generators first and foremost, with lesser concerns such as value for money, quality gameplay and artistic merit trailing behind (but not out of the picture, thankfully).