Gacha Gaming General: explicitly shittier to extract more money from you

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MarcusSA: Sep 23, 2007

Dragon Quest of the Stars is out.

I guess its been out in JPN for 5 (???) years and just launched global?

# ¿ Feb 25, 2020 19:45

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 00:54

MarcusSA: Sep 23, 2007

If you make a thread link it. I�ve downloaded the game but haven�t dug into it yet.

# ¿ Mar 4, 2020 05:09

MarcusSA: Sep 23, 2007

Phyresis posted:

If you do want to spend a little, 11-pulls can cost as little as $4, which is well below the industry standard. Paid currency and free currency have no differentiation at all, they are the same thing.

What math are you doing to come up with this number? Its 30 gems to do an 11 pull and 30 gems = 23.99 in the store.

# ¿ Mar 5, 2020 07:07

MarcusSA: Sep 23, 2007

Phyresis posted:

there's a weekly pack of 59 gems for $7.99

who the hell buys raw currency besides clown whales

Ok I found it.

I mean I guess it works out cheap for your first 2-3 pulls but after that it ramps up to $23.

# ¿ Mar 5, 2020 16:56

MarcusSA: Sep 23, 2007

Yeah I�m enjoying it but yeah it kills my battery! I loaded it up on bluestacks and it runs pretty good though.

I dropped a few bucks (under 10) and have two SSRs now so that should carry me for quite a while.

# ¿ Mar 6, 2020 19:23

MarcusSA: Sep 23, 2007

Zotix posted:

What about rerolling. How important?

According to reddit (🙄) not super important or even needed. You can if you want but I didn�t even bother.

# ¿ Mar 6, 2020 21:12

MarcusSA: Sep 23, 2007

This game actually runs really well on my MBP under blue stacks (not plugged in so no dedicated GPU)

It murders my 11 pro max battery life.

# ¿ Mar 8, 2020 01:07

MarcusSA: Sep 23, 2007

Kegslayer posted:

Just started 7DS and I don't know what I should be doing.

There's like banners with only a couple of days to go, the main quest, side quests and then all the other side quests that pop up with the other side quests.

Yeah I'm not gonna lie there is a lot going on.

Just pull once and see which SSR you get and I'd hoard your gems for a bit.

Just work through what you can because there is a lot of stuff to do.

# ¿ Mar 8, 2020 01:21

MarcusSA: Sep 23, 2007

Verosa posted:

Looking at the patch notes on https://www.sdsgc.gg/patch it looks like Chapter 6 needs to be completed to unlock them. I don't know if that's just to create it, or if its needed to join too.

Probably for both. I�m only up to chapter 4 and I don�t see the option to even make one yet.

I�m off work today so if I get a chance to grind up that far I can make one.

I�m real lazy though so someone should really make a thread lol.

# ¿ Mar 10, 2020 19:39

MarcusSA: Sep 23, 2007

7DS looks great in bluestacks in landscape mode. Definitely makes things feel less cramped.

# ¿ Mar 10, 2020 23:44

MarcusSA: Sep 23, 2007

IMO it should be something anime titty related because lol @ the boobs in this horny game.

# ¿ Mar 11, 2020 02:10

MarcusSA: Sep 23, 2007

twistedmentat posted:

I figured I'd try it, but the 7DS game crashes as soon as I load it up in bluestacks. It did the same with Arkknights but no issues with Raid.

It works fine for me. Are you on the latest version? I had to redownload it because BS wouldn�t update.

The game looks gorgeous in bluestacks.

# ¿ Mar 11, 2020 04:56

MarcusSA: Sep 23, 2007

MonsieurChoc posted:

The open beta for Romancing SaGa android also drops the same day.

I don't have an adroid device. Are emulators good now?

Yes they are.

# ¿ Mar 22, 2020 19:13

MarcusSA: Sep 23, 2007

Boris Galerkin posted:

I�ll check out 7DS since it�s portrait mode and the other one isn�t.

I thought the 7DS: Whaling is a Sin thread was a general thread to complain about pay to win, cause of the title.

7DS is really good and pretty.

It�s very currency friendly too.

# ¿ Apr 5, 2020 00:31

MarcusSA: Sep 23, 2007

Policenaut posted:

Yeah the maintenance lasts until Thursday. I've been playing the soft launch for about a week now here in Canada and they shut us all out to get it ready for global release.

How is it?

# ¿ Jun 23, 2020 05:20

MarcusSA: Sep 23, 2007

Vhak lord of hate posted:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1r28Rq8xoGxAo_yrt_CL8n434Gdy0uWMVGt8idDabo60/mobilepresent?slide=id.p

Good beginner guide for re:Universe

Thanks!

# ¿ Jun 25, 2020 06:12

MarcusSA: Sep 23, 2007

Kheldarn posted:

Has anyone tried Langrisser? If so, does it play more like Fire Emblem Heroes or Final Fantasy Tactics? Also, is it good/fun?

More like Fire emblem but I just couldn�t get into it.

For whatever reason the game didn�t grab me.

# ¿ Jun 27, 2020 02:15

MarcusSA: Sep 23, 2007

Bruceski posted:

If my team's fine is there any reason to hold onto the platinum tickets? Will more units get added to the basic gacha?

If it�s like other games that pool probably won�t change. I�ve just been using them.

# ¿ Jun 27, 2020 06:25

MarcusSA: Sep 23, 2007

Someone who is better writer needs to make a romancing saga thread because drat there is a lot going on.

I like the game a lot but some of the mechanics are a bit weird.

# ¿ Jul 6, 2020 03:15

MarcusSA: Sep 23, 2007

Visual Basic Bitch posted:

I don't have it in me to maintain an OP or add pretty pictures and stuff but here's an effortpost on the most central mechanic that IMO is the most confusing part of the game. The material I saw floating around on reddit was poorly written, incomplete, or assumed you were on the JP client. Or videos that were way too long for me to give a single poo poo about. This is basically the core concept of like 99% of what makes this game unique compared to other gacha JRPGs. Feel free to steal this for whatever. Or don't idgaf

Characters vs Styles - If you're familiar with object-oriented programming at all, the easiest way to sum it up is that characters are classes and styles are objects.

For those of you who aren't broken husks who write code for a living: Each character is the foundation for their corresponding styles. A single character, like Barbara, has an A rank, an S rank, and an SS rank. It doesn't have to be linear like that either - Gilbert has two SS ranks!

Characters have:
- Base stats
- EXP pools
- Skills/spells, kind of (it's easier to think of them as being style-specific though)

Styles have:
- Stat modifiers (i.e. all those percentages you see when you level them up)
- Skills/spells (I'm just referring to this as "skills" from now on unless there's a meaningful distinction)
- Abilities
- Levels/a level cap that can be increased using those puzzle piece things
- Innate physical/magical resistances (which can then be modified using equipment)
- Skins!

Skills are learned with one of the most famous(?) SaGa features - sparking (Reuniverse calls it Grasping, I think.) Basically whenever you use a style in battle, if they haven't already learned all three of the skills they have access to there's a chance that they'll "spark" and learn one of those skills. They can also spark an existing skill, which increases its rank. Ranks makes the skill better. As of this writing (and I know nothing about the JP client so idk what will/will not change for any of this) skills max out at rank 99.

Once a skill has been learned by a style, it can be "inherited" by any other style that character has. That skill's rank is also character-based. Basically, once a skill has been learned it is unlocked for the character, not just the style. However, only one skill can be inherited at a time, meaning that you'll only ever have a maximum of four skills on a style for combat (the style's 3 skills + 1 character/inherited skill). There's no cost to changing it and it can be set in each party configuration; this lets you set up inherited skills to complement party comp without it being a pain in the neck.

The coolest part of all this is that whenever a new style comes out (like Christmas Monika) that means that whatever effort you've put into that character already makes bringing that style up to speed much quicker!

Three reasons why the character/style system is very player-friendly:
- Each new style increases the potential amount of inheritable skills (though some characters have the same skill on more than one style.)
- Since EXP is character-based, you can zerg a new style to level 30+ if you've been using that character a ton and have a buttload of EXP sitting around. I have more than one character at 99999 EXP and nothing to do with it until I increase their level cap or unlock a new style for them.
- Shared base stats means that a new style isn't going to be starting out from scratch, even if they're weak until you put some levels into their style.

Stat modifiers are all those percentages that you see whenever you level up a style. For example: Let's say the character Barbara has a base agility of 10. (should go without saying but these numbers are completely made up.) The S-Barbara style has an agility modifier of +10%, so that style's agility is 11. SS-Barbara has an agility modifier of +20%, so that style's agility is 12. If, while using either one of those styles (or another one!), Barbara gets an AGI + 1 at the end of a battle/expedition/whatever, that increases her base stat. That means that S-Barbara now has 11 + (11 * .10) and SS Barbara has 11 + (11 * .20). As far as I know the game always rounds down but I'm not certain.

There's one stat that is static across all styles: HP. Unless there's an ability that modifies HP (beats me!) a character's HP is never going to vary between styles.

Since this is SaGa where nothing can be straightforward, you don't gain stats when you level up using EXP. Character stats are increased either via combat or expedition. At the end of a battle, there's a chance that a character will gain +1 in any stat, or multiple, or maybe even more than +1 in a stat (though that's really rare outside of expeditions.) In general, lower rarity styles have better chances of stat increases. When you look at a style's details, any stat with a blue arrow has a higher chance of increasing after battle, and two blue arrows means it's even higher.

But! This is SaGa! Nothing is straightforward!! In some cases, while a lower rank style might have better growths in more stats, they may not have the best growth in the stat you care about. If you're trying to raise Emerald's INT, you're better off using SS-Emerald than A-Emerald since SS-Emerald has an increased chance of INT growth and A-Emerald does not. A-Emerald has better growths in several other stats whereas SS Emerald's only good growth is in INT. No matter what, if you use a character enough with any style their stats will eventually go up. If you're lazy and just want to grind stats across the board without thinking overmuch, the best option is to just toss the lowest rarity you've got in there. This is the right option most of the time. And again, you can grind out stats using a low rarity style and then pump all that EXP you earned into your high rarity style that'll be more useful for difficult content. It's really nice!

One last note: some "characters" don't always have the same name. This applies to a lot of Romancing SaGa 2 characters since there weren't really named characters too much in that game but an easy to parse example is from SaGa Frontier. A-Red and SS-Alkaiser are different styles of the same character, because Alkaiser is just a superhero powerup secret identity of Red. All of the character/style rules apply to them just the same as any other character/style.

The shortest possible explanation: Characters have multiple styles. You improve a character by using one of its styles, which also improves that character's other styles/gives you resources to spend on any of their styles that you'd like.

---

Honestly all of this is way less scary than it sounds in practice. It's a lot written down but once you've spent some time with the game it feels pretty intuitive. And now that I'm used to it, it feels like a really cool system that I wish more games would adopt. I used to play a lot of FEH and it was always weird having like 18 different Camillas lying around or whatever.

I hope this was useful! Let me know if there's anything else you are confused about. I am a big SaGa dork and this game is basically directly targeted at me and my broken brain. Writing words about it is also much more fun than doing my actual job.

Thank you so much for this! It helps a lot.

This game is really really good and the half sta event really kicked things up a notch of a lot of people.

Game is good.

If anyone wants to join us in the DFOO discord we have a channel set up there to figure all this out.

https://discord.gg/WT5zCv

# ¿ Jul 9, 2020 18:55

MarcusSA: Sep 23, 2007

Visual Basic Bitch posted:

Stuff

I made a thread for the game and included your post.

https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3932227

# ¿ Jul 9, 2020 20:56

MarcusSA: Sep 23, 2007

I guess this belongs here but has anyone seen anything about Genshin Impact? It�s an action RPG / MMO (?) with cross play (supposedly) between Xbox,PS4,PC,Android, and iOS.

https://youtu.be/S1WmmsEXtyE

It�s in closed beta now with maybe an open beta coming in a week and due for release in September.

I tried to find a non annoying person streaming the game but was kinda unsuccessful lol

I�m cautiously optimistic for it.

# ¿ Jul 16, 2020 05:09

MarcusSA: Sep 23, 2007

RoyalScion posted:

I've been in the last closed beta, although I haven't been playing much over the past 2-3 days because it's all getting wiped and I don't feel like burning out on it before it's even released.

Much like has been said by others it's very BOTW-like. There are definitely a number of issues though:

1. The gacha rates are terrible (even for gacha) and the rate you earn currency is fairly slow once you finish all the non-repeatable quests; once those are exhausted the main sources right now are dailies (50 crystal) and abyss (depending on your clear speed and floor level probably around 200-500 a week?) The base rates are .6% for a 5 star, 5.4% for a 4*, and 94% for a 3*. You are however guaranteed at least a 4* on the 10th pull if you don't pull one by then (similar to HI3's gacha works if you've played it). You are guaranteed a 5* at 90 pulls on limited banners, but it only has a 50% chance to be the rate up; otherwise you would be guaranteed it at the 180th pull. Pity does carry over between limited banners, however. For reference $100 buys you about 8k crystals based on conversion from chinese pricing (they can purchase already in their CBT) and how much crystals cost in the developer's other game HI3.

2. Artifacts are pretty awful upgrade-wise right now because getting experience for them is terrible AND they have the random substat/mainstat system from Epic 7 which to put it shortly means probably 95% of artifact syou pick up will be mediocre.

3. It's not too bad right now but the curves for mats to upgrade your hero and weapon limit breaks seem very steep so you would have to do a ton of grinding, some of which is gated by:

4. Stamina (Resin); it takes about 16 hours to cap out your resin (120) and it functions as the stamina of the game; basically a lot of things (especially the things in point 3) besides just general open-world mining/grinding etc take lots of Resin.

5. It definitely still controls like a mobile game to some extent (well it is) because of the auto-targeting and some other jank in combat. It runs terribly on PS4 from what I've heard but relatively fine on mobile.

6. The element based combo system is pretty fun but doesn't seem that deep right now; the main problem is right you don't get a free character of every element currently so if there's scenarios that favor certain elements you could have more trouble.

7. Stamina gets better later when you get upgrades but at the beginning it is terrible and the default walk speed is slow.

Outside of those things (which definitely seems like a lot) the combat is fun, the visuals are actually pretty slick and the game runs well aside from minor bugs. There's a decent amount of hidden treasure/quests to find as well, although if you're not a fan of the open-world thing naturally you wouldn't enjoy it.

Thanks for this!

I assume you are playing on the PC? Those do seem like a lot of negatives but I�m still interested!

# ¿ Jul 16, 2020 06:15

MarcusSA: Sep 23, 2007

RoyalScion posted:

Yes, I'm playing on PC; the developers only gave access to one platform for the accounts so I can't try the other ones, unfortunately. It's definitely a cool game and I hope they can lighten up on the mobage/monetization elements a bit, but I'm not exactly holding my breath either. China had their open beta announced for autumn but nobody knows if NA will get one at the same time.

Ah ok well thanks for the write up. I'm gonna hope they tune it a bit to be more friendly (not gonna hold my breath) and I do like a lot of the features the game has so far.

# ¿ Jul 16, 2020 09:11

MarcusSA: Sep 23, 2007

Phyresis posted:

https://twitter.com/to_crestoria_EN/status/1282970593017683969

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bandainamcoent.crestoria_ww

I'm gonna download this.

There isn't a whole lot out there yet but I do like the fact that they skip the reroll bullshit and let you pick the best character (or whatever)

This dude kinda outlines the dudes you should pick

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmC9SoXQ75A

The game looks great though. The animations look amazing from the videos I've seen so far.

# ¿ Jul 16, 2020 09:58

MarcusSA: Sep 23, 2007

Bruceski posted:

11 minutes to say three heroes. Doesn't even show stat screens to point at things of note while he rambles.

https://gachagamer.com/tales-of-crestoria-tier-list-best-ssr-guide/ for a text unit breakdown for folks like me who process visually better. The video guy was gung-ho about Cress, Velvet and Leon. I don't know enough about the game to endorse or refute either site's tier picks.

Yeah there isn't much info out there right now.

Reddit says that Estelle is a good pick as well since shes the only SSR healer

They are pretty gungho on Leon though

# ¿ Jul 16, 2020 11:18

MarcusSA: Sep 23, 2007

Bruceski posted:

Picked Leon, pulled Velvet and Rita. 2 SSRs in 23 pulls when it's 5%, one of which tends to be regarded highly (haven't checked too hard on Rita)? I'll take it.

Yeah I got an account with Leon, Vicious, and Yuri who seem to all be pretty decent.

Gonna reroll a few more times to see if I get anything better but starting with 3 SSR's seems pretty ok when they are all decent enough.

EDIT: Hmm got another roll of Estelle, Milla, Leon which isn't terrible either.

EDIT AGAIN: So there are challenge missions and one of the last rewards looks to be an SSR select ticket so I feel like just getting two good dudes and using the ticket on the 3rd might be a good idea.

MarcusSA fucked around with this message at 12:19 on Jul 16, 2020

# ¿ Jul 16, 2020 11:48

MarcusSA: Sep 23, 2007

Bruceski posted:

I was surprised when I turned my phone over to reach the charger and the game didn't flip.

What are you playing on because it definitely flips on my iPhone 11 Pro.

# ¿ Jul 16, 2020 19:55

MarcusSA: Sep 23, 2007

GeekTheMage posted:

I'm still stuck on Challenge Missions stage 1 because one of the missions is to say something in chat and it's broke lol

I had to let it sit there for a while before the chat came up.

The game seems to run ok on my 11 pro max but my phone gets hot as hell.

# ¿ Jul 17, 2020 02:37

MarcusSA: Sep 23, 2007

I made a guild for this dumb tales game.

GoonSquid (it can be changed later).

Pretty sure it�s just open to all

# ¿ Jul 17, 2020 06:15

MarcusSA: Sep 23, 2007

How TF are the power up dungeons still hosed up?

I haven�t been able to enter a single one

# ¿ Jul 17, 2020 23:15

MarcusSA: Sep 23, 2007

Kalion posted:

A workaround I found on reddit:

Go to "Train" a water or darkness character, click on the Water Elixir, click "Found At" and then select any of the locations to travel to them. If you click the arrow to go back on the party lineup screen, it'll take you to the quest page of all the water xp quests.

lol that is amazing.

I'll try that now... that shouldn't be a thing two days into the games launch and doesn't inspire much confidence TBH.

Edit: That works and its fuckin stupid that it works.

# ¿ Jul 18, 2020 00:06

MarcusSA: Sep 23, 2007

Kheldarn posted:

poo poo like this, multi-draws being 10 instead of 10+1, not having the Daily Reset be the same time as every other loving gacha, is bullshit. There's no acceptable excuse for it in Gacha Gaming TYOL 2020.

Also not having a pity is kinda poo poo too.

So far this is not a great game. It looks nice when its not trying to melt my phone but there are lots of shity things about it.

A standard 10 pull is $39.99 too.

# ¿ Jul 18, 2020 01:33

MarcusSA: Sep 23, 2007

I don't think this game is gonna last TBH.

There are already people jumping ship and a few not so good reddit posts lol.

No honeymoon period here folks.

# ¿ Jul 18, 2020 08:07

MarcusSA: Sep 23, 2007

100 degrees Calcium posted:

So keeping in mind all gacha games are bad, what is like... least bad, these days? Honestly the only things I really hate are PvP and real time co-op (as opposed to just dragging a friend's unit along for carries, which is cool and good).

Romancing Saga.

No drat PVP.

# ¿ Jul 21, 2020 00:45

MarcusSA: Sep 23, 2007

Phyresis posted:

the answer is Romancing SaGa Re; Universe, sleeper gacha hit of 2020

Also we have a thread!

https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3932227

It�s a good game.

# ¿ Jul 21, 2020 04:00

MarcusSA: Sep 23, 2007

Whoreson Welles posted:

Oh cool, I was hoping Genshin was going to come up in here! I heard about it a couple months ago and was lucky enough to get into the current closed beta.

This is a great writeup by RoyalScion and I want to summarize the key points that I very strongly agree with:

-The gacha rates are baddd.
-The artifact system needs some work to not be tedious (including being able to see who is wearing what).
-The elemental combat has a lot of fun potential but I do wish they gave you all of the tools earlier without relying on pulls (I really wish I had a melee character who could apply flame damage faster than the starter archer girl who has to charge up a bow shot).
-I�ve been playing on PC and mobile and the game looks and runs great on both. The animations are smooth and the controls are pretty solid even on a touchscreen.

I hope this game hits well and the devs are willing to listen to feedback during beta and improve some of the gacha elements. The polish they put on this seems almost on par with that of Dragalia Lost. I think it does a fantastic job adding gacha characters into a BotW world and honestly I try to keep myself from burning through it because I want to savor the quests and exploration when it releases. I also heard the main campaign is pretty hefty even for a free-to-play mobile title.

To reign in my gushing though, I wouldn�t be surprised if a lot of people bounce off of it at launch because of the gacha rates and late game grinding, and that�s fine too because everyone has their preferences. I personally just wanted something that breaks the gacha mold and I think this game is going to do just that, even if just for a few months.

Thanks for the second opinion! I�m definitely interested in it because it does seem to change things up a bit. I also like cross platform play a lot as well.

# ¿ Jul 21, 2020 04:20

MarcusSA: Sep 23, 2007

100 degrees Calcium posted:

Does I need to have any familiarity with the saga series to dig on Re; Universe?

I don�t know anything and I love the game.

# ¿ Jul 21, 2020 05:04

MarcusSA: Sep 23, 2007

Samael posted:

After Arknights being my first actual gacha I have gotten into, I've burnt out a little on it and looking for another gacha to play which has good art, strong gameplay loop and a decent community. I've bounced off girls frontline, another eden, AFKarena and SinoAlice so far. Any recommendations?

7DS is really pretty and plays well.

# ¿ Jul 26, 2020 10:13

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 00:54

MarcusSA: Sep 23, 2007

vulturesrow posted:

Hmm, I tried this and it didn't really grab me but I didn't make it far into the game. I like the show so I was hoping I'd like it more then I did. It just seemed like a really generic gacha. What do you like from a gameplay perspective?

Well the animations are top notch and I kinda like the card battle system which feels pretty different from the other games out there.

# ¿ Jul 27, 2020 06:27

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Mobile Gaming > Gacha Gaming General: explicitly shittier to extract more money from you

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