When Gacha Rules Lose Their Limits: Duet Night Abyss and the Acceleration of Grind

TL;DR

Duet Night Abyss removed key gacha limits by allowing unlimited grinding and making all characters and weapons earnable in-game. However, it retained gacha-style power creep, endgame framing, and FOMO incentives.

This creates a paradox: players can pursue whale-level power for free, but feel intense pressure to do so. Even though the grind is fast, easy, and often AFK, the perceived effort feels unreasonable because the target feels mandatory, unclear, and socially reinforced.

The result is accelerated gacha burnout without traditional gacha gates.

When Gacha Rules Lose Their Limits: Duet Night Abyss and the Acceleration of Grind

Paid character banners are not the only defining trait of a gacha game.

Before looking at how Duet Night Abyss (DNA) is different, it’s important to understand what structural elements it removed from the traditional gacha model—and what it kept.

What Defines a Typical Live-Service Gacha Game

Beyond paid character acquisition, gacha games are typically built around a set of interlocking systems:

• Daily energy or stamina limits that cap progression
• A steady cadence of vertical power creep
• Challenging endgame modes tuned around optimized builds
• Monetization through the ability to grind more or faster

These systems work together in predictable ways:

• Developers can calculate how much progress players can realistically make
• Power creep can be paced to keep players chasing future upgrades
• Endgame difficulty can be tuned against expected progression ceilings
• Daily limits act as a hard cap, converting impatience into revenue

Crucially, most players accept that whale-only power levels are unattainable. That acceptance stabilizes expectations.

What DNA Removed—and What That Broke

DNA made two major structural commitments:

• Players can grind missions essentially without limit
• All characters and weapons can be earned fully in-game

This fundamentally breaks several gacha assumptions:

• Time-convenience monetization loses impact when grinding is free and unlimited
• Progression ceilings previously reserved for whales become theoretically attainable by everyone
• Players begin targeting full builds and multiple copies as a baseline expectation
• If everyone can play like a whale, players expect to clear everything like one

This creates what can be described as a whale-free economy with whale-level targets.

What DNA Kept from Gacha Games

Despite removing these guardrails, DNA retained many gacha behaviors and frameworks:

• A regular cadence of vertical power growth
• Endgame modes that heavily reward optimization and meta builds
• Seasonal, FOMO-driven incentives to engage with endgame immediately

In other gacha games, these endgame rewards would commonly translate into cash shop currency. In DNA, modes like Immersive Theatre instead offer early access to featured characters and weapons—free, but gated behind progression and performance.

The Paradox of DNA’s “Easy” Grind

Mechanically, DNA has some of the easiest and fastest grinds in the genre:

• Many missions can be cleared in under a minute
• AI Partners can handle most or all combat
• Repetition becomes an advantage, enabling predictable and AFK clears

By any traditional measure, the grind is closer to an idle game than a punishing action RPG.

Yet players consistently complain that the grind is intolerable.

Why the Grind Still Feels Unreasonable

The issue is not difficulty or execution. It is expectations.

• Early progression is fast and forgiving, creating a generous baseline
• The transition from midgame (e.g., purple wedges) to endgame (fully amplified gold wedges) is an exponential spike
• Endgame participation is socially and systemically encouraged through FOMO rewards
• Because full power is theoretically attainable, players treat it as necessary rather than aspirational

Compounding this is uncertainty. There is no clear way to know how much power is “enough.” Influencers and guides clearing content effortlessly with fully gold-equipped, meta characters establish a safe target—even if that level of power is not strictly required.

The result is a perception problem:

• The workload to reach the perceived endgame state feels enormous
• The urgency to be “ready” feels high because a season only lasts so long
• Short perceived readiness windows combined with large effort produce the feeling of unreasonable grind

This perception persists even though the mechanical grind itself is fast and easy.

Why Live-Service RPGs Don’t Have the Same Problem

Live-service RPGs also allow unlimited grinding, but they differ in key ways:

• AFK and ultra-fast clears are rare or impossible; play demands attention
• Players complain more about lack of content variety than about grind volume

The deeper difference lies in progression structure:

• The power cap is stable for long periods
• There is a clear, achievable end state for characters or classes
• Endgame is usually optional, with no FOMO pressure

This long progression window dramatically reduces urgency. Players can finish a build, feel “done,” and experiment with alternatives without feeling behind.

Accelerated End-of-Life Gacha Dynamics

DNA’s situation is not unique.

The First Descendant followed a similar path: no paid character gacha, infinite grind, and early emphasis on endgame. Players could earn everything, grind endlessly, and quickly converged on optimized builds. They also complained heavily about grind, engaged in AFK behavior in co-op, and rapidly disengaged.
Duet Night Abyss has a similar model but with trivialized and accelerated grind. And it still doesn't work.

The lesson is not that generosity is bad, but that gacha-style expectations collapse much faster when traditional pacing limits are removed. What would normally take months of friction and monetization pressure can play out in weeks.

Conclusion

Duet Night Abyss removed the limits that traditionally stabilize gacha systems, but retained the cadence, framing, and expectations of gacha progression.

The result is an accelerated feedback loop: whale-level goals without whale-only gates, easy early progression followed by sharp endgame spikes, and a growing perception of unreasonable grind—not because the grind is mechanically harsh, but because the target feels mandatory and excessive.

Until expectations, endgame framing, or power targets are re-aligned, this tension is likely to persist—no matter how generous or automated the grind becomes.