WUWA is one of the examples of a real F2P they give so much free stuff(astrites) that I spend not to get a character but to show my appreciation to the developers.
@ Because you would be supporting a company with pretty predatory practices. They might not be as bad as Genshin or the like, but that doesn't change the fact that they rely mostly on "whales" to fund them.
@@TheAwkwardGuy yeah but who cares. Yeah its predatory. Its a gacha game ofc it is. But you dont need to whale or spend any money to do the entierty of the games content. But if you want to spend money to get a shinier character or 2 why not?
I enjoyed both game that I'm a Tuna/Dolphin in Wuwa and also an amoeba F2P Wuwa. And a Goldfish in PGR. ****BEHOLD THE EXPLANATION FROM REDDIT GUIDE**** \-f2p - amoeba floating in the ocean, no impact whatsoever \-goldfish- idk how this got in the ocean but hes the guy that bought like 1 pack at the start of the game with his free google play $5 card (minimal impact but unlikely to grow) \-Tuna - dude who wants to support the game wholeheartedly but does not have that much disposable income to do so, still tries to get that bp / daily gem login purchase (in wuwa terms the monthly lunite pass whatchamacallit) can grow to be huge but usually gets eaten by other things before then (impact depends on growth stat) \- dolphin - has disposable income and wants to support the game, will not spend crazy amounts but is willing to cash out if they see something they like. religiously buys the monthly pass & bp and will swipe if they see a char they like and want to get them. might not seem like it but this usually tends to be the most populated tier depending on the game and can generate massive impact in large pods. \- whale - usually deemed to be the biggest spenders, while not min maxing everything they tend to put in many times over what dolphins spend. solo impact can even outclass small - medium pods of dolphins - imagine that 1 guy wiping out your guild in the guild war? thats this guy. \- leviathan - mythology class spender, the guy playing gacha while eating a subway in his ferrari, probably just out from a boardmeeting. it will be easier to count which characters he doesn't have maxed out. If this guy is ever missing any characters its only because he wasn't playing the game at the point that character was available which is rare since they usually start from even when the game was still in closed beta. This is the one guy who if he streams will get people asking if his gem numbers at the top right of his screen is real or is it edited. Impact is so large that it can be seen in games where there is a leaderboard. Unless hes just chilling the gap between him and the other ranked places will be significant except in situations where multiple leviathans occupy area in that case then any person after the group of leviathans will have a significant difference compared to them.
i dont mind aslong as they spend my money for good quality updates, story, maps and character, i help them fund the game and they help me stay away from depression
I always reminded myself of the spending of Gacha Games. But when someone other than myself explain this stuff to me, it just makes me want to quit Gacha Games completely. I have always been against spending on games 5 years ago, and now there isn't a month of the year that i dont spend over 100$ on Gacha Games (even if that $ is distributed to multiple games). I have slowly gotten more careless the more Gacha Games i play/played. Thank you for reminding everyone how easy it's to be manipulated over time. You've been heard and I want to comply with 7:04-7:12. Informative videos indeed.👍
Damn bro glad I helped 🙏 You don't need to quit gacha games though. Just never put in any money on them. The companies get enough money from whales as is. I'd put way more money into these games if they had reasonable shops (Like Path of Exile, for example).
@@TheAwkwardGuyTrue, but I don't like putting too much time onto a game exploring (I can play 2 hour a game and not explore its map) and get depressed after losing 5050. It's much easier to leave a gacha game than trying to play as f2p. Money has been the short-term problem solver for every 5050 I have lost.
@ Alright man if that's how it is from your perspective then enjoy your time away from gacha games 🙏 So many great games out there to play that aren't gacha.
the ideal gacha game system would be: 1. limited banner never expire, you can pull for them any time after they release 2. after certant amount of pull, you get the cahracter guarantee, no 50/50. and the pitty counter carry over to any banner you wish to pull 3. allowing player to out right buy character from the point shop that you often get point from pulling 4. give enough currency for F2P player to pull at least 1 character they want each patch 5. the game allowing you to buy pull using direct legal currency instead of the premium currency exchange now let that sink in that this system will NEVER exist in our timeline
Yeah because the real world is not ideal. Ideally I shouldn't have to work and earn my money, but I should be able to sit and enjoy my life and get paid for existing. Ideal is by default not practical. This is why we set tolerance points to strike a balance between ideal and practical.
I mean a lot of what you describe is found in Arknights, you can buy 6 stars in yellow cert shop for free. You never have to spend, tons of free units, etc. You can even farm roll currency, albeit it's not efficient and hurts your account progress to commit to it, but it's possible.
I miss the days of the subscription model, like $15/mo in mmo's and that was the only cost...now it's cash shop, battle pass, 2nd subscription level, 3rd subscription level. Create a problem and sell you the solution. Buy skins for $30+ instead of earning it in game.
To anyone watching this. Wuwa is yes a gacha game but is one the most f2p friendly gacha. Idk why this video is made of Wuwa instead of Genshin or HSR. Specially genshin. They make vibrant and colorful characters so that they are more captivating to their audience who are mostly minors
It's mostly because I actually play Wuwa and the game still does have the exact same practices as pretty much any other gacha. It's all a spectrum of near-best (such as Wuwa) to near-worst (Genshin, or your average phone game with insane MTX) Still a great game though that I play 100% F2P and am having a lot of fun.
Which form of manipulation specifically? And yeah all these concepts are done worldwide. All stores do this and have done this for the longest time lol
@TheAwkwardGuy I mean most of it's manipulation,just like youtube pushes ourageous and hate comments in a video,to make people comment more,or how hateful videos are pushed forward or extremist topics are trending on twitter,just to give a few examples,this is not coincidence,they know what human psychology reacts more to and that's what they push forward
My goto 5 rules for deciding if I wanna spend on gachas are these 1. Have I played consistently for more than 2 weeks) If I do clearly I do enjoy the game enough to commit to playing it daily 2. Needs > Want) Imo you should only ever summon on things you need so as your whole team is up to par with end game stuff but this rule can be broken if they are your absolute favorite character cause Fun triumphs all 3. Patience) You should wait till the last day or two before spending your limited stuff cause events will happen and give you more to work with and because of rule 4 4. Leaks) when it gets closer to end of banners leaks of the next character become way more common and you can use that info of upcoming stuff to help decide if you should summon or wait since if that next character isnt something you need or want you now know you have that whole banner period to save up again 5. Its your wallet not mine) this is trumps all other rules cause at the end of the day you know how much $ you have and and its your choice what you do with it you should still be aware of how much you do spend and please don’t go bankrupt over pixels But thats just me everyone else may have their own rules to follow but at the end of the day its a game that we play to have fun no matter much or how little we spend
Rule 2 is a nono for me, I only pull for characters I like (1 copy) and the rest is to S6 Alpha expy. I only spend on monthly pass because of the enormous difference in money/pulls ratio.
I get your point. But battle pass is a way to let F2P players to play it free without becoming a P2P like FFXIV. If gachas start dropping predatory tactics, they still need to make money so they can give us quality stuff.
sometimes I think about it in terms of how many fully fledged games i could buy with that amount of cash and its truly staggering how much money people (me included) will shell out for a gacha that could have been spent on full AAA titles or something. but sometimes, a two hundred dollar carlotta + prf weapon just scratches that itch. even if the game is inevitably heading towards an EoS by nature of it being gacha and a live-service model.
Oh yeah for sure. Like, 5$ per month is 60 bucks. And that's JUST the subscription. Either 1 AAA game or like 3-5 indie games. Honestly, I would shill far more for gacha games if they had a much more reasonable price. Problem is, it's almost certain that the majority of players would still be f2p and it just wouldn't work for most companies (I assume lol). Would love to have Carlotta (Shadowheart) though 🙏
ADHD is my thing and well spent money on GI and regretted it the most thinking why wuwa did not come out first 😢 but learned my lesson and i only buy monthly sub in wuwa and save up and got the characters i want and have fun with. ❤
as Azur Lane player and collector, I have to say it pains me to see that it is not possible to collect every character in game not only as f2p, but even low spending is not allowing that... I open wuwa shop and see nothing of value in there... wish they would move more into direction AL went, monetizing on skins rather than characters themselves...
some mmo's got a subscription, so spending 6 bucks a month on the currency pack and maybe the battlepass might be ok. But why spend anything when you can play a quality game for free and have others pay for its development.
Ikr. Let the whales pay for it lol Thing about MMOs though is that subscription-based ones usually are supposed to not have any "infinite" purchase potential. In Wuwa, you can just keep paying more and more money for extra power.
@@TheAwkwardGuy the only time "wasting money" happens is the moment you pay for the idea of "future investment". The moment you think it's an investment is already a bad move by itself. Sunk cost fallacy is a legitimate drive for a lot of gacha players nowadays whether it would be money or time, it's scary to even think about it.
Meanwhile Azur Lane a gacha game that doesn't earn from gacha but earns with skins instead. And the game has been running for almost 8 years. It's also one if not the most f2p friendly gacha out there
I think what you are saying is true and valid, but I must point out some of the flaws I subjectively saw in your reasoning/arguments. It's gonna be a long read, but I'd like to know your thoughts! 02:06 Here's the thing, if the shop was the ONLY way to obtain pull currency, then this would be a problem, but gachas have F2P methods to obtain pull currency. I actually am tired, and kind of annoyed how people always bring up cash shop, as if they are trying to prove a point, while the reality of a gacha player (which even you know deep down) is we get our rewards from playing the game, it's content and events too. We also get free currency sent to us in mails on various occassions. In an ideal world, we'd like to have a "gacha" without the cash shop, but that's not practical for monetization, as it's all a business. We need to be smart and set our tolerance limits of how "greedy" a gacha gets (cough cough HYV titles, I'm guilty too). This is where from personal experience, Kuro Games has striked a very good balance, favorable to the players, and not the company. 05:04 We all know how boring the game gets when you really invest THAT much into a character, as it trivializes game content, and WuWa especially is advertised and marketed as a tougher game with amazing combat experience. So it's totally unnecessary for 100% of players. People do it for other reasons, and hopefully make an informed and well thought decision on their IRL expenses before doing so. 05:50 This argument is actually very stupid, and I'll tell you why. In the real world, humans are also categorized based on the amount they earn. It doesn't really mean it reinforces the idea that "You are just someone who earns X bracket of income, and nothing more than that". Categorization is important for several reasons. In the context of gachas, it allows people to plan their pulls better. Categorization doesn't invalidate you as a human, but help better on decisions based on that categorical data, it aids in statistics and decision making. F2Ps usually are very strict with pull planning, while "low spenders" can be more lenient. Whales don't really care because they blow a lot of money, they don't need to worry about currency management. Tbh if anything, I personally think being F2P/low spenders kind of trains you about the real world skill of "budgeting" which is very helpful. Even if the real world, you always manage your expenses BASED on your income, instead of buying everything you see, then having to get loans and go on debt. 06:12 "Generous" is totally valid, depending on what we set our tolerance limit as. Nothing in the real world is 100% generous, or we'd not have to buy anything. But if X brand of product gives the same for cheaper, they can be called more "generous" than other brands. "Generous" is a comparative term, not an absolute term, and we often use this word in comparison to current standards/norm. For me personally, If I can pull atleast 1 5 star per patch f2p, it's generous, provided what I pull isn't made irrelevant 3 patches later (cough cough HSR). TL;DR: Reality of the gacha experience vs the points presented in the video are actually totally different. As long as you don't NEED to must have every limited character, you really never have to touch the cash shop. I know I haven't ever touched the cash shop, and I don't need to, except well, I buy the monthly pass every month. $5 per month on entertainment is valid, we spend on subscriptions nowdays anyways. I don't buy Netflix, etc. so why not. But I'll be doing it because I love Kuro Games and plan to spend, even if I don't need the Lunites xD Jinhsi skin fund ig
Love the long and thought out reply. Gonna try my best to address each point from my perspective. 1. Yeah I know that it is possible to "do well" on your own without paying. I'm completely F2P and I can easily do 100% of the story content in the game and like 90% of the "events/challenges" in the game. However, it's not like I don't think about buying the Lunite Subscription/Battle Pass from time to time. I have a friend who spent like 300$ on Genshin Impact over like 3-4 years. And obviously, there are people who spend thousands on games like this. I can totally understand the idea of wanting to spend money to "support the company", but it's not like they're some small indie company that even need the money. They're trying their best to hunt for whales which are worth more than 100x of my paying friend. Again, it would be great if everyone worldwide each put in some money to support those games, but that obviously won't ever happen. 2. Yeah it's not necessary. Unfortunately, the game still offers a near instant-win button for people that pay thousands of dollars to get maxed resonators and weapons. You might think that no one would spend a significant amount of money on stuff like this, but...There have been people taking LOANS to buy some League of Legends skins (Which is just a cosmetic offering no in-game advantage). There's no telling how much money people lose on Gacha games. 3. I get that you're "planning out" how you're going to spend money, but it also makes you feel "ok" with paying a certain amount of money per month. There's no reason at all to drop any money in the game (I don't need to, for example, but I can't help but keep looking at that Lunite Subscription). Extrapolating this to real life would give us the "Don't buy a starbucks coffee" line (Which is ridiculous because your wages are more relevant for how much money you can save up tbh) which I only agree with in the sense that you literally could just change your routine from spending 10 bucks on 1 thing per day to spending 2 bucks on another instead. Why pay 5-20$ per month on a gacha game instead of buying tons of cheap indie games, for example? 4. I just can't help but think that they're just not being generous at all. They're offering you more because they need to compete with Genshin Impact and others. Genshin didn't change anything for years since they had no real competition, but now they do with WUWA. Could at least call Kuro Games "Competitive" rather than "Generous". 5. I also want to spend money, not for getting more resonators or anything, but just to support Kuro games and their business model! I mostly don't because I can't help but think that they certainly have enough whales to last them for a decade lol.
I like the video overall, it does go into the psychology, but I wish it had touched more on gacha as a buisness model. Because you mention it would be "far more optimal for everyone to spend a small amount of money", but optimal towards what? The developer's bottom line? Their liquidity? Stable finances month to month? These aren't things you can evaluate without insider knowledge. There could be a whale who has single handedly funded 5% of the studio for all we know. Would it be more optimal for the players? Which segment of players, exactly? Whales? Undoubtedly they'd save money. Maybe even high and low spenders. But any money they save is money that now isn't being spent on development to make the game greater for everyone. And that's before we even talk about the word of mouth advertising f2p players that attract high and low spenders alike to these games in the first place, and keep communities feeling alive. There's all kinds of buisness models to choose from besides the gacha one, from basic pay to play, to games a service subscriptions, to pay to win or convenience mechanics, to cosmetics locked behind battle passes. You might not like the gacha buisness model, but it has the lowest risk out of all the options. You can almost always rely on the few whales who burn through their wallets at the launch of your game, before the public even knows if it's good or not. That's why the gacha market is so oversaturated. Then we get into a more tricky issue, and that's the design of the game itself. You can't really transition a gacha game into a non-gacha game, like you can go from subscription to pay to play to free to play. It would fundamentally change how you acquire characters, in a way that's not reconcilable with your previous players. It's just wayyyy too risky. Making a live service game pay to play is basically never sufficient. You have to get some portion of your players to spend extra on it to sustain development. You simply can't rely on your updates being so well-received, that you have permanent player count growth. That's naively unrealistic. Not every game can be a Marvel Rivals. Most live service games are going to die within a year or two. Not to mention that as a player, if I'm buying or subscribing to play it, I want to play the *full* game. Most players these days are content with not getting a full game (in my opinion because their slop standards are too low) - but it doesn't change the fact that all future developed content, will be lacking. Some character, some skin, some game feature that would make your experience as good as it can be, is gatekept from you deliberately, because the game cannot survive without charging you extra for it. The developers are disincentivized from releasing anything that might compete with their premium offerings, hell, even their own *past* premium offerings, leading to enforced mediocrity and lack of creativity, only made worse by profit motives. That's a shit buisness model if you ask me. Whereas for gachas, all that's really kept from you is a character's sequences making them OP. Maybe some character skins. But they're typically not vastly higher quality than the standard offering, because that too is something they expect whales to spend on. Developers are even incentivized to make their characters as fun and balanced as possible long term, should they want to retain their revenue stream from them during re-runs. Their future success is directly correlated with their content update quality. If they release a subpar character, or a boring new region, they're gonna feel it on their bottom line immediately. This link is not as strong for other buisness models, where a backlog of permanently available popular guns or skins are their cash cows. Man, this comment turned out way longer than I intended. Let's hope youtube / google doesn't censor it lol
@@Google_Censored_Commenter Well it didn't get censored! I agree with everything you wrote and to clarify what I meant: Imagine if all the paid money was spread over the entire playerbase equally rather than being concentrated on the top paying customers. Basically like a subscription model for old MMOs like WoW and Runescape.
@@TheAwkwardGuy Cool, hope my comment helped you understand that a different buisness model (spreading it out) also means you attract different types, and different numbers of players. So the imagination can't ever really become a reality. It's a bit like how under communism it's imagined everyone is paid the same, while everyone works the same jobs. Not realising that the reason people do riskier / harder jobs is partly because of the higher pay in the first place, so it makes no sense lol.
@@Google_Censored_Commenter I mean yeah. It is the state of the world, because that's just how we do things. People find putting a few dimes into an arcade machine to play a game very different to putting a few dimes into a video game.
Theory: You have to spend hundreds of dolars to get just one character. Reality: Day one player just paying 5$ per month and not every month: 8 limited characters, 2 of them given for free, 3 lmited weapons. Small time investment, I tend to skip events, don't think about dailies (I just check them after a play session and they happen to be completed). Never bought packs from the store. There is a lot to warn players about gacha games' dark patterns, but if someone has moved the bar towards more consumer friendly practices, that's Kuro games with PGR and Wuwa, just look at the features Genshin included AFTER the release of Wuwa, no ammount of community complaints could do that. So even if it's still a gacha and has dark patterns, it is good to recognize when things are moving in the right direction. They are more generous and they respect player's time more. Now just a petty remark: Gacha is not actually a videogame genre, just the monetization system, gacha games can be open world adventure games, shooters, turn based rpgs...
Oh yeah definitely. I am only using Wuwa as background footage/an example since it's the only one I'm playing at the moment. However, as you said, it still does a lot of those predatory practices. And yeah it's not exactly a "genre" but it can still be used that way since it's pretty obvious what someone means when they say "Gacha Game".
I get the monthly 5$ sub and the podcast thing for 10$ every 1.5 months. Averages at about 11-12$ per month... which is less than when i paid a sub for WoW. With those 2 alone i got every limited 5* the game has..... and weapons for about half of them. 😂 12$/month for the entertainment provided is fair.
Wish that WuWa had the Character Banners be 100% guaranteed (No 50/50) if you haven't own that character yet. Whales still gonna go all in for S6 and don't care about 50/50 anywaybut as a F2P/Low spender, it really sucks to lose 50/50 and not get the featured character. Consider that just 1 Limited Character + Their Signature on average costs more than a fully pledged Triple-A game.
WUWA is one of the examples of a real F2P they give so much free stuff(astrites) that I spend not to get a character but to show my appreciation to the developers.
I honestly also want to spend some money on Wuwa, but I can't help but think that they've got way more than enough whales to keep them afloat lol
@@TheAwkwardGuyI spend money to buy the pass because I think that Kuro deserve the support
@@TheAwkwardGuy how is that relavant. If you want to and have disposable income then do it.
@ Because you would be supporting a company with pretty predatory practices. They might not be as bad as Genshin or the like, but that doesn't change the fact that they rely mostly on "whales" to fund them.
@@TheAwkwardGuy yeah but who cares. Yeah its predatory. Its a gacha game ofc it is. But you dont need to whale or spend any money to do the entierty of the games content. But if you want to spend money to get a shinier character or 2 why not?
Well, no one can trick the true F2P ones! We either get stuff or quit the game! But there is that one game that doesn t trick anyone called PGR!
Yeah PGR and WUWA are pretty easy to play F2P. Been enjoying my time ever since release lol.
I enjoyed both game that I'm a Tuna/Dolphin in Wuwa and also an amoeba F2P Wuwa.
And a Goldfish in PGR.
****BEHOLD THE EXPLANATION FROM REDDIT GUIDE****
\-f2p - amoeba floating in the ocean, no impact whatsoever
\-goldfish- idk how this got in the ocean but hes the guy that bought like 1 pack at the start of the game with his free google play $5 card (minimal impact but unlikely to grow)
\-Tuna - dude who wants to support the game wholeheartedly but does not have that much disposable income to do so, still tries to get that bp / daily gem login purchase (in wuwa terms the monthly lunite pass whatchamacallit) can grow to be huge but usually gets eaten by other things before then (impact depends on growth stat)
\- dolphin - has disposable income and wants to support the game, will not spend crazy amounts but is willing to cash out if they see something they like. religiously buys the monthly pass & bp and will swipe if they see a char they like and want to get them. might not seem like it but this usually tends to be the most populated tier depending on the game and can generate massive impact in large pods.
\- whale - usually deemed to be the biggest spenders, while not min maxing everything they tend to put in many times over what dolphins spend. solo impact can even outclass small - medium pods of dolphins - imagine that 1 guy wiping out your guild in the guild war? thats this guy.
\- leviathan - mythology class spender, the guy playing gacha while eating a subway in his ferrari, probably just out from a boardmeeting. it will be easier to count which characters he doesn't have maxed out. If this guy is ever missing any characters its only because he wasn't playing the game at the point that character was available which is rare since they usually start from even when the game was still in closed beta. This is the one guy who if he streams will get people asking if his gem numbers at the top right of his screen is real or is it edited. Impact is so large that it can be seen in games where there is a leaderboard. Unless hes just chilling the gap between him and the other ranked places will be significant except in situations where multiple leviathans occupy area in that case then any person after the group of leviathans will have a significant difference compared to them.
i dont mind aslong as they spend my money for good quality updates, story, maps and character, i help them fund the game and they help me stay away from depression
Oh they sure do!
And stay strong bro, hope your struggles get easier 🙏
Wuwa can manipulate me idc .. they cook
I always reminded myself of the spending of Gacha Games. But when someone other than myself explain this stuff to me, it just makes me want to quit Gacha Games completely. I have always been against spending on games 5 years ago, and now there isn't a month of the year that i dont spend over 100$ on Gacha Games (even if that $ is distributed to multiple games). I have slowly gotten more careless the more Gacha Games i play/played. Thank you for reminding everyone how easy it's to be manipulated over time. You've been heard and I want to comply with 7:04-7:12. Informative videos indeed.👍
Damn bro glad I helped 🙏
You don't need to quit gacha games though. Just never put in any money on them. The companies get enough money from whales as is.
I'd put way more money into these games if they had reasonable shops (Like Path of Exile, for example).
@@TheAwkwardGuyTrue, but I don't like putting too much time onto a game exploring (I can play 2 hour a game and not explore its map) and get depressed after losing 5050. It's much easier to leave a gacha game than trying to play as f2p. Money has been the short-term problem solver for every 5050 I have lost.
@ Alright man if that's how it is from your perspective then enjoy your time away from gacha games 🙏
So many great games out there to play that aren't gacha.
the ideal gacha game system would be:
1. limited banner never expire, you can pull for them any time after they release
2. after certant amount of pull, you get the cahracter guarantee, no 50/50. and the pitty counter carry over to any banner you wish to pull
3. allowing player to out right buy character from the point shop that you often get point from pulling
4. give enough currency for F2P player to pull at least 1 character they want each patch
5. the game allowing you to buy pull using direct legal currency instead of the premium currency exchange
now let that sink in that this system will NEVER exist in our timeline
Yeah because the real world is not ideal. Ideally I shouldn't have to work and earn my money, but I should be able to sit and enjoy my life and get paid for existing. Ideal is by default not practical. This is why we set tolerance points to strike a balance between ideal and practical.
I mean a lot of what you describe is found in Arknights, you can buy 6 stars in yellow cert shop for free. You never have to spend, tons of free units, etc. You can even farm roll currency, albeit it's not efficient and hurts your account progress to commit to it, but it's possible.
Category 2 already exist in PGR 100% limited character in 60 pull.
Category 4 if you do daily and weekly event is enough to get the limited character
1 character per patch? really? that's ideal? you can get every character every patch in azur lane.
@@xSandamxYeah but that’s just a png floating, it doesn’t even come close to wuwa 5star quality.
I miss the days of the subscription model, like $15/mo in mmo's and that was the only cost...now it's cash shop, battle pass, 2nd subscription level, 3rd subscription level. Create a problem and sell you the solution. Buy skins for $30+ instead of earning it in game.
To anyone watching this. Wuwa is yes a gacha game but is one the most f2p friendly gacha. Idk why this video is made of Wuwa instead of Genshin or HSR. Specially genshin. They make vibrant and colorful characters so that they are more captivating to their audience who are mostly minors
It's mostly because I actually play Wuwa and the game still does have the exact same practices as pretty much any other gacha. It's all a spectrum of near-best (such as Wuwa) to near-worst (Genshin, or your average phone game with insane MTX)
Still a great game though that I play 100% F2P and am having a lot of fun.
Kind of like of like how manipulation on the internet works nowadays but in a form more resembling that of gambling
Which form of manipulation specifically? And yeah all these concepts are done worldwide. All stores do this and have done this for the longest time lol
@TheAwkwardGuy I mean most of it's manipulation,just like youtube pushes ourageous and hate comments in a video,to make people comment more,or how hateful videos are pushed forward or extremist topics are trending on twitter,just to give a few examples,this is not coincidence,they know what human psychology reacts more to and that's what they push forward
My goto 5 rules for deciding if I wanna spend on gachas are these
1. Have I played consistently for more than 2 weeks) If I do clearly I do enjoy the game enough to commit to playing it daily
2. Needs > Want) Imo you should only ever summon on things you need so as your whole team is up to par with end game stuff but this rule can be broken if they are your absolute favorite character cause Fun triumphs all
3. Patience) You should wait till the last day or two before spending your limited stuff cause events will happen and give you more to work with and because of rule 4
4. Leaks) when it gets closer to end of banners leaks of the next character become way more common and you can use that info of upcoming stuff to help decide if you should summon or wait since if that next character isnt something you need or want you now know you have that whole banner period to save up again
5. Its your wallet not mine) this is trumps all other rules cause at the end of the day you know how much $ you have and and its your choice what you do with it you should still be aware of how much you do spend and please don’t go bankrupt over pixels
But thats just me everyone else may have their own rules to follow but at the end of the day its a game that we play to have fun no matter much or how little we spend
Rule 2 is a nono for me, I only pull for characters I like (1 copy) and the rest is to S6 Alpha expy.
I only spend on monthly pass because of the enormous difference in money/pulls ratio.
@@BaconGamer498 Agreed. I only wish that people don't go bankrupt/lose a lot of money on these games.
*explains why not spend 5 dollars*
(It makes sense, I understand it)
*I go to the convenience store and spend 20 dollars*
I always been F2P and I know the ins and outs of NOT to spend willy nilly.
I get your point.
But battle pass is a way to let F2P players to play it free without becoming a P2P like FFXIV. If gachas start dropping predatory tactics, they still need to make money so they can give us quality stuff.
sometimes I think about it in terms of how many fully fledged games i could buy with that amount of cash and its truly staggering how much money people (me included) will shell out for a gacha that could have been spent on full AAA titles or something.
but sometimes, a two hundred dollar carlotta + prf weapon just scratches that itch. even if the game is inevitably heading towards an EoS by nature of it being gacha and a live-service model.
Oh yeah for sure. Like, 5$ per month is 60 bucks. And that's JUST the subscription. Either 1 AAA game or like 3-5 indie games.
Honestly, I would shill far more for gacha games if they had a much more reasonable price. Problem is, it's almost certain that the majority of players would still be f2p and it just wouldn't work for most companies (I assume lol).
Would love to have Carlotta (Shadowheart) though 🙏
ADHD is my thing and well spent money on GI and regretted it the most thinking why wuwa did not come out first 😢 but learned my lesson and i only buy monthly sub in wuwa and save up and got the characters i want and have fun with. ❤
WuWa has my support. I’ve been able to enjoy to game without spending insane amount of money. So far I just do the monthly subscription.❤
as Azur Lane player and collector, I have to say it pains me to see that it is not possible to collect every character in game not only as f2p, but even low spending is not allowing that... I open wuwa shop and see nothing of value in there... wish they would move more into direction AL went, monetizing on skins rather than characters themselves...
Just get the 5$ sub and the podcast thing for 10$ every 1.5 months... i do and got every limited 5* along with weapons for half of them.
some mmo's got a subscription, so spending 6 bucks a month on the currency pack and maybe the battlepass might be ok. But why spend anything when you can play a quality game for free and have others pay for its development.
Ikr. Let the whales pay for it lol
Thing about MMOs though is that subscription-based ones usually are supposed to not have any "infinite" purchase potential. In Wuwa, you can just keep paying more and more money for extra power.
and majority of them fall down into sunk cost fallacy in which im no exemption of until the servers finally shuts down
Yep. Have a friend that won't try Wuwa because he sunk 300$ into Genshin and doesn't want to "waste" it.
@@TheAwkwardGuy the only time "wasting money" happens is the moment you pay for the idea of "future investment". The moment you think it's an investment is already a bad move by itself. Sunk cost fallacy is a legitimate drive for a lot of gacha players nowadays whether it would be money or time, it's scary to even think about it.
@@campsky17 Yeah it's pretty nuts. This is what dailies do to a mfer lmao
Meanwhile Azur Lane a gacha game that doesn't earn from gacha but earns with skins instead. And the game has been running for almost 8 years. It's also one if not the most f2p friendly gacha out there
Exceptions to every rule 🙏
indeed, the most F2P friendly gacha.
Congrats on the S1!
Thanks lol I can't believe I got lucky while recording B-Roll footage lmaooo
@@TheAwkwardGuy Awesome! It might be predatory but, man!
The dopamine hit of that gold goes hard!
Great Video BTW
give the game some money to make a game better and update
Who knows, maybe I would spend some money eventually just to support the devs 🤷♀
You still have time to change the thumbnail to HuTao for engagement while the irons hot.
Damn might be a nice idea though I already tested out 3 different thumbnails and the current one was the best lol
I think what you are saying is true and valid, but I must point out some of the flaws I subjectively saw in your reasoning/arguments. It's gonna be a long read, but I'd like to know your thoughts!
02:06 Here's the thing, if the shop was the ONLY way to obtain pull currency, then this would be a problem, but gachas have F2P methods to obtain pull currency. I actually am tired, and kind of annoyed how people always bring up cash shop, as if they are trying to prove a point, while the reality of a gacha player (which even you know deep down) is we get our rewards from playing the game, it's content and events too. We also get free currency sent to us in mails on various occassions.
In an ideal world, we'd like to have a "gacha" without the cash shop, but that's not practical for monetization, as it's all a business. We need to be smart and set our tolerance limits of how "greedy" a gacha gets (cough cough HYV titles, I'm guilty too). This is where from personal experience, Kuro Games has striked a very good balance, favorable to the players, and not the company.
05:04 We all know how boring the game gets when you really invest THAT much into a character, as it trivializes game content, and WuWa especially is advertised and marketed as a tougher game with amazing combat experience. So it's totally unnecessary for 100% of players. People do it for other reasons, and hopefully make an informed and well thought decision on their IRL expenses before doing so.
05:50 This argument is actually very stupid, and I'll tell you why. In the real world, humans are also categorized based on the amount they earn. It doesn't really mean it reinforces the idea that "You are just someone who earns X bracket of income, and nothing more than that". Categorization is important for several reasons. In the context of gachas, it allows people to plan their pulls better. Categorization doesn't invalidate you as a human, but help better on decisions based on that categorical data, it aids in statistics and decision making.
F2Ps usually are very strict with pull planning, while "low spenders" can be more lenient. Whales don't really care because they blow a lot of money, they don't need to worry about currency management. Tbh if anything, I personally think being F2P/low spenders kind of trains you about the real world skill of "budgeting" which is very helpful. Even if the real world, you always manage your expenses BASED on your income, instead of buying everything you see, then having to get loans and go on debt.
06:12 "Generous" is totally valid, depending on what we set our tolerance limit as. Nothing in the real world is 100% generous, or we'd not have to buy anything. But if X brand of product gives the same for cheaper, they can be called more "generous" than other brands. "Generous" is a comparative term, not an absolute term, and we often use this word in comparison to current standards/norm.
For me personally, If I can pull atleast 1 5 star per patch f2p, it's generous, provided what I pull isn't made irrelevant 3 patches later (cough cough HSR).
TL;DR: Reality of the gacha experience vs the points presented in the video are actually totally different. As long as you don't NEED to must have every limited character, you really never have to touch the cash shop.
I know I haven't ever touched the cash shop, and I don't need to, except well, I buy the monthly pass every month. $5 per month on entertainment is valid, we spend on subscriptions nowdays anyways. I don't buy Netflix, etc. so why not. But I'll be doing it because I love Kuro Games and plan to spend, even if I don't need the Lunites xD Jinhsi skin fund ig
Love the long and thought out reply. Gonna try my best to address each point from my perspective.
1. Yeah I know that it is possible to "do well" on your own without paying. I'm completely F2P and I can easily do 100% of the story content in the game and like 90% of the "events/challenges" in the game. However, it's not like I don't think about buying the Lunite Subscription/Battle Pass from time to time. I have a friend who spent like 300$ on Genshin Impact over like 3-4 years. And obviously, there are people who spend thousands on games like this. I can totally understand the idea of wanting to spend money to "support the company", but it's not like they're some small indie company that even need the money. They're trying their best to hunt for whales which are worth more than 100x of my paying friend. Again, it would be great if everyone worldwide each put in some money to support those games, but that obviously won't ever happen.
2. Yeah it's not necessary. Unfortunately, the game still offers a near instant-win button for people that pay thousands of dollars to get maxed resonators and weapons. You might think that no one would spend a significant amount of money on stuff like this, but...There have been people taking LOANS to buy some League of Legends skins (Which is just a cosmetic offering no in-game advantage). There's no telling how much money people lose on Gacha games.
3. I get that you're "planning out" how you're going to spend money, but it also makes you feel "ok" with paying a certain amount of money per month. There's no reason at all to drop any money in the game (I don't need to, for example, but I can't help but keep looking at that Lunite Subscription). Extrapolating this to real life would give us the "Don't buy a starbucks coffee" line (Which is ridiculous because your wages are more relevant for how much money you can save up tbh) which I only agree with in the sense that you literally could just change your routine from spending 10 bucks on 1 thing per day to spending 2 bucks on another instead. Why pay 5-20$ per month on a gacha game instead of buying tons of cheap indie games, for example?
4. I just can't help but think that they're just not being generous at all. They're offering you more because they need to compete with Genshin Impact and others. Genshin didn't change anything for years since they had no real competition, but now they do with WUWA. Could at least call Kuro Games "Competitive" rather than "Generous".
5. I also want to spend money, not for getting more resonators or anything, but just to support Kuro games and their business model! I mostly don't because I can't help but think that they certainly have enough whales to last them for a decade lol.
Don't let others fool you❤
Fr 🙏
@TheAwkwardGuy just be F2p
I like the video overall, it does go into the psychology, but I wish it had touched more on gacha as a buisness model.
Because you mention it would be "far more optimal for everyone to spend a small amount of money", but optimal towards what? The developer's bottom line? Their liquidity? Stable finances month to month? These aren't things you can evaluate without insider knowledge. There could be a whale who has single handedly funded 5% of the studio for all we know.
Would it be more optimal for the players? Which segment of players, exactly? Whales? Undoubtedly they'd save money. Maybe even high and low spenders. But any money they save is money that now isn't being spent on development to make the game greater for everyone. And that's before we even talk about the word of mouth advertising f2p players that attract high and low spenders alike to these games in the first place, and keep communities feeling alive.
There's all kinds of buisness models to choose from besides the gacha one, from basic pay to play, to games a service subscriptions, to pay to win or convenience mechanics, to cosmetics locked behind battle passes. You might not like the gacha buisness model, but it has the lowest risk out of all the options. You can almost always rely on the few whales who burn through their wallets at the launch of your game, before the public even knows if it's good or not. That's why the gacha market is so oversaturated.
Then we get into a more tricky issue, and that's the design of the game itself. You can't really transition a gacha game into a non-gacha game, like you can go from subscription to pay to play to free to play. It would fundamentally change how you acquire characters, in a way that's not reconcilable with your previous players. It's just wayyyy too risky.
Making a live service game pay to play is basically never sufficient. You have to get some portion of your players to spend extra on it to sustain development. You simply can't rely on your updates being so well-received, that you have permanent player count growth. That's naively unrealistic. Not every game can be a Marvel Rivals. Most live service games are going to die within a year or two.
Not to mention that as a player, if I'm buying or subscribing to play it, I want to play the *full* game. Most players these days are content with not getting a full game (in my opinion because their slop standards are too low) - but it doesn't change the fact that all future developed content, will be lacking. Some character, some skin, some game feature that would make your experience as good as it can be, is gatekept from you deliberately, because the game cannot survive without charging you extra for it. The developers are disincentivized from releasing anything that might compete with their premium offerings, hell, even their own *past* premium offerings, leading to enforced mediocrity and lack of creativity, only made worse by profit motives. That's a shit buisness model if you ask me.
Whereas for gachas, all that's really kept from you is a character's sequences making them OP. Maybe some character skins. But they're typically not vastly higher quality than the standard offering, because that too is something they expect whales to spend on. Developers are even incentivized to make their characters as fun and balanced as possible long term, should they want to retain their revenue stream from them during re-runs. Their future success is directly correlated with their content update quality. If they release a subpar character, or a boring new region, they're gonna feel it on their bottom line immediately. This link is not as strong for other buisness models, where a backlog of permanently available popular guns or skins are their cash cows.
Man, this comment turned out way longer than I intended. Let's hope youtube / google doesn't censor it lol
@@Google_Censored_Commenter Well it didn't get censored!
I agree with everything you wrote and to clarify what I meant: Imagine if all the paid money was spread over the entire playerbase equally rather than being concentrated on the top paying customers.
Basically like a subscription model for old MMOs like WoW and Runescape.
@@TheAwkwardGuy Cool, hope my comment helped you understand that a different buisness model (spreading it out) also means you attract different types, and different numbers of players. So the imagination can't ever really become a reality. It's a bit like how under communism it's imagined everyone is paid the same, while everyone works the same jobs. Not realising that the reason people do riskier / harder jobs is partly because of the higher pay in the first place, so it makes no sense lol.
@@Google_Censored_Commenter I mean yeah. It is the state of the world, because that's just how we do things. People find putting a few dimes into an arcade machine to play a game very different to putting a few dimes into a video game.
Theory: You have to spend hundreds of dolars to get just one character.
Reality: Day one player just paying 5$ per month and not every month: 8 limited characters, 2 of them given for free, 3 lmited weapons. Small time investment, I tend to skip events, don't think about dailies (I just check them after a play session and they happen to be completed). Never bought packs from the store.
There is a lot to warn players about gacha games' dark patterns, but if someone has moved the bar towards more consumer friendly practices, that's Kuro games with PGR and Wuwa, just look at the features Genshin included AFTER the release of Wuwa, no ammount of community complaints could do that. So even if it's still a gacha and has dark patterns, it is good to recognize when things are moving in the right direction. They are more generous and they respect player's time more.
Now just a petty remark: Gacha is not actually a videogame genre, just the monetization system, gacha games can be open world adventure games, shooters, turn based rpgs...
Oh yeah definitely. I am only using Wuwa as background footage/an example since it's the only one I'm playing at the moment. However, as you said, it still does a lot of those predatory practices.
And yeah it's not exactly a "genre" but it can still be used that way since it's pretty obvious what someone means when they say "Gacha Game".
I get the monthly 5$ sub and the podcast thing for 10$ every 1.5 months. Averages at about 11-12$ per month... which is less than when i paid a sub for WoW.
With those 2 alone i got every limited 5* the game has..... and weapons for about half of them. 😂
12$/month for the entertainment provided is fair.
I start on. 1.3 and only won 1 50/50 😂😂😂
If weapon not guaranteed I’m cooked man.
@@low-keyvibin3189 Yeah I love that weapond are 100% guaranteed. Would be insanely hard to make decisions about those weapon banners if they weren't.
Ama wahale so i don't care much for f2p genshin is still one of the best gacha every created
Yesss Konami
who is gonna tell him about PGR.
Wish that WuWa had the Character Banners be 100% guaranteed (No 50/50) if you haven't own that character yet. Whales still gonna go all in for S6 and don't care about 50/50 anywaybut as a F2P/Low spender, it really sucks to lose 50/50 and not get the featured character.
Consider that just 1 Limited Character + Their Signature on average costs more than a fully pledged Triple-A game.
@@duytran9086 Yeah the prices are nuts if you actually pay for them.