You've probably heard of Genshin Impact, the new gaming fad that's made literally 250 million in about month.
Initially people were really happy. Now a lot of them are not -- players who've played enough of the game to see there's suddenly nothing left to do and a virtual dead end to any investment they've made. Even "whales" (big spenders) who spent literally thousands in the game are disgruntled that they can't enjoy what they have.
A lot of players say the problem is Resin -- the system which throttles your access to materials for character development. In other gacha games this is "stamina" or "energy" or other names. Basically a resource that refreshes over time, a resource you spend to play the game. When you're out, you can buy more with money or just wait.
And with gacha very much a mobile phenomenon that doesn't expect players to stay logged in for hours at a time, it works well. Your fifteen minutes of break time can chew up all that energy and it'll be topped up again hours later when you get a good chance to play again.
Compared to other gacha games, the rate at which Resin refreshes is very slow. But despite the complaints about not having enough to do, the developers seem to not want to give out more. Or even to talk about it.
Because it's just a part of a bigger problem -- the real problem.
Genshin Impact doesn't have enough content.
That's why in the early stage, it was so popular. There was content to go through -- story, character progress, treasure hunting, etcetera.
Then after that "honeymoon period", content dried up. The world was explored. All the quests were done. Treasure was hard to find.
But players still wanted to play. They were willing to grind, especially to get materials to develop the many characters they obtained. Characters many players spent real money on to obtain through the gambling-style chance-of-content gacha setup where you only have a tiny chance of actually getting something you want when you spent money. Basically, a slot machine.
Compared to other gacha games, Genshin Impact doesn't have a lot of characters. The amount of development on each character is also very limited. If they let players do more or have more, players will quickly "finish" even the character development content and be stuck with even less to do. Their efforts in the game world will mean literally nothing because all the materials they get for character development will have nowhere to go.
Other gacha games appear to be very generous, giving away free draws for characters and resources, lots of play time, lots of loot to get. But this is an illusion. Because there is by orders of magnitude way more needed to finish character development and finish the story arc.
Similarly, the story in gacha games is broken up into many steps and in between those steps there's filler combat steps. So it's stretched out but each time a player takes a step, there's a feeling of progress and doing something. Even though the plot hasn't really progressed that much or there wasn't a lot of actual content to that story/storytelling.
In contrast, Genshin Impact's story lasts maybe a couple of hours. You do it in one or two sittings. Then you're done and it's back to grinding with no more story to look forward to for months until the next update.
What players are really complaining about is a lack of value for their time.
That value is measured by a feeling of progress.
As you progress higher in "Adventure Rank", your progress slows down in Genshin Impact to the point where it can feel basically static. You need so many resources but there's so little. You're forced to prioritize certain characters in your team and reserve resources for them when the next stage of character development is finally unlocked. And each stage will require you to have even more resources.
Some players spend hours looking for these elusive resources while others refuse to spend their precious time for so little return. Either way, the rate of progress or the cost of progress feel unacceptable.
In comparison, other gacha games give you a constant feeling of progress, even though in the grand scheme of things you are inching forward very, very, slowly. But at least the player feels like what they are doing matters, and they are getting AHEAD.
That there is a lot to do before you maximize the potential of a character then becomes not a depressing drawback, but an exciting process. You feel like you can keep progressing "without limit" when you actually do make tangible progress every day that affects your gameplay.
In contrast, Genshin Impact has a model of increasing difficulty overall whenever a player reaches various milestones by making enemies more challenging. This actually results in a feeling of falling BEHIND. Not only does it cost increasing resources -- especially the player's TIME -- to progress, but periodically you are pushed back down because everything just got harder. Again.
In Genshin Impact, you don't actually make progress.
You take a step forward only to then a step backward.
And at this early stage of release, when there isn't a lot of content to occupy a player's attention, it is natural that players will quickly reach a point where they just grind. Players are willing to grind if they are making progress.
But they're not actually making progress.
Especially if you spent money gambling to get a character you want but now face the fact that you need weeks of playtime just to develop that character so you can play them. Certainly there are some players probably happy enough to fill out their harem with waifus and husbandos and lolis and not actually use those characters in play, but for many other players there's just no point spending any money at all getting more characters.
And it's totally missing the point to say "you don't need those characters to succeed" when the focus of their advertising is luring players to want certain characters.
Even when you strive to make progress, HOW you do it in Genshin Impact is very unsatisfying. The materials you need are increasingly locked behind "RNG" (random number generation) -- basically another lottery system where you only have a CHANCE of getting them, and that's after you've spent your daily Resin, your allotment of play time.
So you can spend literally days playing Genshin Impact and feel like you haven't made any improvement to your characters/team at all. Because you haven't.
And Mihoyo can't really let players play more.
Because they'd just start hitting the limits of grinding and end up with literally nothing to do but accumulate resources uselessly... or just stop playing. Every time new story content arrives a player might do that, then stop. And online games need players to keep logging in and playing in order to have a chance to make the player spend money.
They could do what many non-gacha MMOs do, which is extend the character development to a new tier with each major update. But that won't change how players experience that grind. Right now, it's just not enjoyable and making them do more of a not-enjoyable thing won't add any more value for time. So it would need to be paired with making the game enjoyable -- something which they seem to be aiming for in the upcoming 1.1 update with new daily activities.
A compromise is to let players do more to develop their roster of characters.
But that only really works for players who end up with a lot of characters. Those players could actually have a reasonably satisfying time doing that, but players who actually don't have more characters wouldn't benefit. And players who refuse to develop more than a core team would still complain.
Comments
Post a Comment