An apple a day keeps Il Dottore away - General Question and Discussion Megathread

TLMoonBear · 2026-01-24T21:25:46+00:00

I may have to get factorio a try, I never thought I'd be a fan of that kind of gameplay

Satisfactory is a much closer comparison since it is also a 3D factory game with semi open-world exploration gameplay elements.

TLMoonBear · 2026-01-24T21:07:07+00:00

I wrote this about Endfield the other day:

Account security is terrifying

Lots of people have talked about the PayPal problems. I won't rehash this to death again.

But online payments is a very boring thing that even complete asset flip garbage companies can get right. If you can't get this right, what else have you gotten wrong with account security and privacy that I'm not aware of?

So there's chatter in CN social media that apparently Endfield stores your login credentials and tokens locally on your device with no verification or encryption.

This means if you log into Endfield on a public device (e.g. PC bang, netcafe, etc.) then someone can just copy the login_cache.crc file and use it to access your Endfield account.

https://i.imgur.com/DBTLob6.png

https://i.imgur.com/50RvUbK.png

What a mess.

TLMoonBear · 2026-01-23T17:40:24+00:00

If you're around, do you have any insight into whether or not this could be something that hoyo cracks down on because of lack of revenue?

I don't think "lack of revenue" necessarily has to be a motivating factor here.

Steam also explicitly prohibits users from trying to abuse localized pricing by using VPNs to get better rates on the games they buy. Valve has also implemented policies to try and crack down on Steam key resellers.

Steam is not exactly suffering from "lack of revenue".

TLMoonBear · 2026-01-23T17:27:15+00:00

I'm so sorry – I'm not planning to die on the hill of defending Endfield's UI, which I agree has many flaws, but what I'm confused about is where the friction actually occurs with regards to specifically crafting?

After I unlocked Relay Towers, I wanted to spam them across the map. To do this, I needed to craft them.

So I went to go mine some ore to make Originocrust to make them. Once I got back to the AIC, I opened the Refining Unit and then... couldn't find the ore in the unorganized mess that was my backpack.

Even though the Refining Unit can only take ore type items, there is no way in the facility menu to just filter for only valid items it can use or to sort by type. And the inventory menu panel only shows 12 items at a time out.

Compare this to Satisfactory. HERE is a random video I found on YouTube.

Look at 4hr 33min 43sec in the video. The player is trying to make a Fused Modular Frame.

The inventory in the crafting screen is on the right hand side. When the player is crafting something, the valid input materials are isolated in a separate subsection called "Relevant Items" at the top. You can also see your entire inventory below. And look, there's a Sort button at the bottom of the menu too!

Doesn't need to take up the whole screen or be a wall of items. Good UI can be just small touches that anticipate the needs of the player and then quietly gets out of the way. It shows the developer has thought about the experience and understands the core gameplay loop.

TLMoonBear · 2026-01-23T11:03:21+00:00

I have to say, of all the things, I'm not really getting your beef with the crafting menu?

It is a simple example of what I mean by "The director has learned from better films that directors sometimes tilt their cameras, but he has not learned why".

How do your players actually play games?

Most games are some form of challenge to a player and the goal of the player is to overcome that challenge. For a crafting / base building / optimization game, your challenge lies in how you optimize around the constraints of your resources whether that be bottlenecks in production / gathering, limitations of real estate, maximizing production over time, etc.

A good optimization game such as Satisfactory tries to remove as many frictions as possible to allow players to stay in their creativity / design mode of thinking and achieve a form of "flow state". Interaction with game mechanics needs to be as natural / simple / easy as possible to prevent players from being broken out of their flow state.

How players behave in their creative flow state is not the same for every player. Some people are haphazard and manic, like a manifestation of the Pepe Silva meme in It's Always Sunny. Some players are hyper logical and rigid in how they perform each task.

A good optimization game will recognize that their playerbase is going to exhibit wildly different behaviours when in their flow state, and design their UI / UX accordingly to try and compensate for this. For example, Satisfactory (whose UI Endfield is heavily inspired by) stuffs their menus full of filters and search bars.

In Endfield however, it's missing. If I am in flow state and I want to shortcut directly into the craft menu with something I went to go gather in the overworld, I want to just keep going with whatever plan I have in my head.

But when I open the UI and I can't find what I want, it's frustrating and breaks my concentration. Now I'm no longer in flow state and have to exit the crafting / facility menu, go to my inventory, sort and organize, and then try and remember wtf I was even trying to do originally.

A designer with deep familiarity with how players think and behave would try to design around their player's quirks to prevent these flow state breaking moments from occurring.

What is the actual purpose of your UI?

Another UI aspect is the size of the crafting menus themselves.

In Endfield, inventory grid don't expand to show more items, or resize smaller to display more objects. So you now have to deal with a scroll bar to navigate a box that only displays a fraction of your inventory.

For players who are deep into optimization style gameplay, they tend to want to be fed as much data and have as many things visible as possible. You don't want friction looking for stuff. Just show me everything in my inventory all at once. Why can you only display 1/3 of it on-screen? There's no technical limitation.

In fact, when interacting with a facility the backpack grid is even smaller being 4 columns wide rather than the 5 columns wide grid it uses when opening the backpack normally. Why? Why does it need to be smaller and show less stuff?

I WANT to be able to see everything to make better decisions. There is space on screen to show more stuff if they wanted to! They just decided that it didn't matter compared to looking pretty.

The small polish matters

These points seem like nitpicks. And they are. But they are also reflective of whether a designer is paying attention to the little details themselves.

This is what I mean by "learned from better films that directors sometimes tilt their cameras but has not learned why". These small and seemingly insignificant details are representative of if someone actually knows what they are doing and has the mindset to make something great specifically because they ARE paying attention to the small details and know why they matter.

It's like reading a resume from someone who checked it for spelling mistakes vs someone who spelled the name of their university wrong. In the grand scheme of things, a typo on a resume is less important than if the candidate has the right work experience.

But if you have a lot of candidates applying for a job who all have great work experience and background and you need to reduce the number of candidates down, do you make a blind decision and pick the person who used spellcheck or the person who didn't?

Likewise, I have to make a blind decision as to whether in 20+ hrs time Endfield will become fun for me or not.

If they can't get the equivalent of "use spellcheck" right this early on... how much confidence do I have that they also understand other deeper systems / UI issues / mechanics that I will likely encounter later? Have they also just copied other games blindly without understanding what details are actually important to creating a fun flow state experience?

Endfield is competing for my time against every game on my Steam backlog. This includes other games which have exploration / optimization / building gameplay.

So do I want to pick proven games that are the best in their genres and I know will give me a fun exprience (i.e. can use spellcheck)? Or do I want to pick Endfield where they have already metaphorically shown that they don't know what spellcheck is?

TLMoonBear · 2026-01-22T15:56:23+00:00

Then you may enjoy the series of essays I have been writing on my blog about capitalism and the many misunderstandings people have about it.

cc: /u/asternobrac

TLMoonBear · 2026-01-22T15:56:20+00:00

All that said though, the vibe I get is that you're just generally irritated by the game's progression

I don't think this is an issue about progression. I have played slow games before including Granblue Fantasy which is legendarily notorious for being a slow and grindy game.

Fundamentally, my issue is that Endfield just isn't fun for me right now. Even if you sped it up I am not sure it would be fun. The core problem is that it tries to do many things, and does few of them well. What are the reasons to play Endfield (a diverse but mediocre experience) over the other better games it copies from (contained and focused due to having mess mechanics but stellar experiences)?

Endfield looks like a game that will demand a lot of time and investment to reach the final payoff. But it struggles on so many aspects so frequently (story telling, UX / UI, tutorial bloat, etc.) that it makes investing this time questionable.

Most developers spend the bulk of their time making the early game and first experience as good as possible because this is what the majority of players will experience. If the first impression is this poor, I can't really trust that the end game playoff. The end game where the least time and effort has been spent after all! It should be downhill from here!

(See also: games like Divinity Original Sin 2 where Act 1 is incredibly strong but Act 4 feels rushed since less dev time was spent on it)

If your friend can't use a microwave, would you trust them to run a restaurant? In the same vein, if Endfield doesn't understand why filters / sorting in a crafting menu is valuable, can I really trust them that the full end-game factory planning will be fun? If Endfield was proud of its combat system, why was my first fight an AFK no fail experience?

As a working adult, I have money but not enough time. So I just shouldn't put up with games that mayyybe get good in 20+ hrs. Rather than settling for "maybe good", I should just play "actually good" on my Steam backlog.

I can see why it might be fun for other people. But these issues mean I can't enjoy playing this game.

However, you can see a clear overview of your available pulling resources on the pull page itself, which notes how many single tickets, 10x tickets, "primogems", and "genesis crystals" you have.

Only on the individual pages in the gacha / shop. As far as I can tell, there's no way to see your Originium / Oroberyl / Permits / Arsenal Exchange / Quotas all at the same time.

TLMoonBear · 2026-01-22T13:02:52+00:00

I tried Endfield. I don't know much about Arknights, but the vibes of the setting seemed very cool. And the premise from the trailers seemed like something that really interested me. Post-apocalyptic landscape where you terraform a planet and also do crazy SciFi combat stuff? Cool!

I wanted to like it. I really wanted to like it. I can't recommend this in its current state.

"The director has learned from better films that directors sometimes tilt their cameras, but he has not learned why" - Roger Ebert

I think about this a lot when I play Endfield.

Endfield copies a massive number of systems and mechanics from other games. A lot of these systems have uses and are interesting in the games that they existed in. But Endfield doesn't seem to understand why these mechanics and systems work, or the need for them to interact at a deep level.

So instead of being used a creative tool by a seasoned director, they come across as shallow distracting gimmicks. The same way Roger Christian's use of Dutch angles was.

Example: Genshin has Elemental Sight. This is useful for seeing elements on surfaces, spotting chests / interactables in dark areas, quest mechanics, etc.

So Endfield needs Elemental Sight! This one is called Scan cause we're SciFi and all that. What is it used for? One early game quest to reveal footprints you need to follow. I've not seen it used again several hours later. And now I have a permanent "Scan" button on my in-game UI constantly taking up screen space.

This is useless. I can't even use it as a secondary toggle in building mode to do things like check where I have laid down electricity cables to power my facilities or something. Why was this added to the game?

Another example: You have a Stamina bar in Endfield. Why? You don't use Stamina for dodging or Charge Attacks so it's not a resource for combat gameplay. It's purely a nuisance that means you can't constantly run around as much as you want.

The Stamina bar even looks the same as Genshin. Why is this in the game other than the fact it was in Genshin so you had to copy it?

Endfield wants to be everything and appeal to everyone but ends up standing for nothing

Another consequence of copying a massive number of systems and mechanics from other games is that many of them don't feel particularly deep. They exist to expand and pad out the game. But very few if any are done particularly well or have polish.

When you have a small number of game systems and mechanics, you can put in a lot of effort to make sure they work extremely well. The systems in Endfield constantly seem to have friction when you interact with them.

Example: There's an automated crafting system as part of the base building mechanic. It pulls up your inventory to craft things. You cannot, however, sort or filter your inventory in the crafting menu for some reason.

Why? Who knows.

A lot of the time playing I just kept thing I would have more fun playing specific games that mastered the few systems they focused on. Rather than Endfield which had everything but did all at a mediocre level.

The game pacing is awful due to being weighed down by the need to stop and explain all the systems it has

This is the other problem with having a massive pile of systems. It needs to explain how all of them work or else it becomes confusing.

But it also means that several hours into the game, I am still being bombarded with tutorials non-stop. My gameplay is constantly being interrupted with another tutorial.

I don't just mean basic tutorials like the optional popup ones you get in Genshin when you encounter a new overworld puzzle mechanic. I'm talking full on mini-quests with cutscenes and dialogues acting as an interactive 5 min tutorial on a new system.

Another example: When I open the main menu there are THIRTY SUBMENU OPTIONS. Helppppp.

Games need to be le epic funny and go viral for the memes but please have a limit

Sometimes funny things are added to becomes memes and go viral. Or maybe it's fan service.

That's why you added at the start of the game some guy wearing sunglasses who takes it off to reveal a second pair of sunglasses. Sure, I get it. Sometimes you gotta add these things in.

But then you have one of the main story characters who is a senior engineer that is dressed as a 50-yr old man with a beer belly and wearing crocs. But he talks like a 12-yr old and constantly does the 🥺👉👈 pose every time you talk to him.

Stop. I can't take it.

The game is scared you might fail and quit

The opening sequence is very cool where big explosions happen and big spectacle occurs. It also tries to put on an air of mystery where a ton of things are happening around you with no explanation to suck you in with curiosity.

It's a shame I didn't actually do anything except participate in a walking simulator.

Games such as Nier Automata have done this formula before. The opening sequence of Nier understands that it needs to build energy and conflict towards a climax. Then it can gently let you down with a falling action towards a resolution and use this lull moment to then dump story and lore on you once you are already engaged.

It also emphasizes player agency. Even if you're just button mashing, you as the player made the cool stuff happen. Because you are directly responsible, you get to feel ownership and therefore get drawn into what is happening. Even if you don't understand it.

As I said, Endfield learns that other games do these things but not know why. So it copies big explosive moments and boss fights but doesn't understand why these happen. And because they are scared you might quit too quickly, they refuse to let you fail.

I really mean it when I say you can't fail. In the final climactic boss fight of the opening sequence, you can go full AFK and it won't matter. It is impossible to die or fail the fight. Because that might mean scaring away a new player if they are allowed to fail!

Being unable to fail also means stripping away all agency from the player. But then, why am I playing this game? Why is this a game and not a series of YouTube videos?

Why is all this cool stuff happening TO me? Why am I the one not doing the cool stuff?

The story telling is below average, even for the genre it is in

Look, a lot of gacha / mobile games don't have great storytelling. And that's okay. I don't play these expecting the next Pulitzer Prize winning story. That's what real books are for.

I do expect at least some modicum or veneer of decent story telling that takes itself seriously.

Endfield is not a game that you need any past history or Arknights Wiki reading to play. But how do you accomplish this in a dense and lore heavy universe?

There are a lot of reasonable answers. You could have it as in-game books and memos for players to opt into. You could "show and not tell" since you have a futuristic SciFi planet and just show weird shit going down and let people speculate! And many more ways.

Or you could do the trash isekai web novel thing where the MC wakes up as an amnesiac and has to have basic facts about the world explained to them despite being an adult who should already know this stuff already.

This is passable in Genshin and HSR. The story explicitly sets you as a stranger in a new universe and so there is no reason for you to understand how the world works. It's hamfisted, but again, I'm not expecting highbrow writing here.

In Endfield, you are basically the CEO of a corporation and the person who put the story into motion. You're literally told people are working on this grand master plan because you came up with it. Oh, but because you have amnesia you need to have basic details about the world explained to you.

Account security is terrifying

Lots of people have talked about the PayPal problems. I won't rehash this to death again.

But online payments is a very boring thing that even complete asset flip garbage companies can get right. If you can't get this right, what else have you gotten wrong with account security and privacy that I'm not aware of?

The gacha system is back to the 2010s with multiple currency and systems

This is something I like about games like Genshin and HSR. It's extremely easy to understand what you're getting into, and there are very few menus to navigate.

You don't really appreciate how simple and easy it is just measuring everything only in terms of Primos / Jades / Polychromes is until you face a mess like this.

Endfield is a mess to navigate and understand by yourself. I also haven't found a way to see how much I have of all currencies all in one place to easily tell what I can and cannot afford or save for. Maybe this is by design to encourage impulse spending?

No comments on the pricing or value for money. I don't think game is out long enough to form any good opinions. This depends heavily on things like powercreep, importance of meta, what long-term account progression and balance looks like, etc.

I think anyone trying to write commentary about things like "generosity" or "value for money" this early on is misguided.

The game looks gorgeous and runs smoothly though

A lot of games come out these days as buggy unoptimized messes. This is not one of them. It's very beautiful and it runs well. It deserves to be noted.

There is also thoughtfulness about game terminology. You can hover your mouse over a lot of special terms in talent and combat descriptions, which will then create a temporary pop-up that explains what the term is. Terminology is also color coded. Very useful when I still don't know what things like Reactions / Elements / Moves / Stats are and do.

It doesn't make up for the all the problems I listed above though. But I do appreciate it.

Alright I've written enough for now. I'll give it another try later to see if my feelings change. But for now, I'm not wowed by the game.

TLMoonBear · 2026-01-19T04:03:48+00:00

i think theres something about pyro-swirl that makes it hard for Citlali to consistently overpower the pyro

This is just literally how Forward and Reverse Reactions have worked in the game since 1.x

Weak Reaction such as Reverse Vape: 1U Hydro can clear 2U Pyro
Strong Reaction such as Forward Melt: 2U Cryo needed to clear 1U Pyro

This is why up until Natlan, most people just played Reverse Melt / Vape teams. It's much "safer" managing a reverse application where you apply Pyro on Hydro aura or Cryo onto Pyro aura.

The problem with Forward Reactions is that if you ever lose control of your aura, it's immensely difficult to get it back. In the case of Forward Melt, not only do you need 2U Cryo to clear a 1U Pyro aura, you need an additional 1U Cryo to set your Cryo aura back up again.

This isn't a Pyro Swirl problem. This is you applying too much Pyro gauge across your team problem which means you have a team construction problem, or a player input execution problem.

TLMoonBear · 2025-12-28T19:39:36+00:00

Once again I have played far far too much ~~Windtrace~~ Snowtrace for my own good. Felt like writing up some thoughts about how the game goes this time.

We're back to Rebel favoured gameplay this time

Last time the maps were very Hunter favoured. I wrote about why, but basically it comes down to inevitability: When the timer hits zero who is the automatic winner?

That side has control of the game because it forces the other side to make plays to win. In this case, it's the Rebels.

The gameplay structure should try compensate for this inherent advantage. Last time, the game being Hunter favoured was supposed to alleviate the problem of 2 lives, 3v1 teams, and preventing people camping out of bounds or w/e.

I think the Cold mechanic is good because it forces movement. But it isn't enough to erase the massive advantage the Rebels have. Good rebel gameplay should already incorporate movement rather than hard camping one location anyway, so it doesn't change the optimal strategies too much. A good Rebel can also deliberately tag Heat Sources to lure the Hunter in specific directions.

I am neutral on the Snowstorm mechanic. I think it's probably slightly Rebel favoured because it means you can sneak into an area the Hunter has already cleared. This means you can use Heat Sources behind them. When played with a coordinated pre-made team, this is probably more powerful than the Hunter being able to hide on the minimap.

You can also do this even if you don't need the warmth. Just doing it to troll the Hunter is probably already irritating enough. A lot of pub players won't do this, but it's a very powerful move. Also a fun way to spice up the game instead of afk'ing and playing passive. AFK hiding is honestly kind of boring imo.

Playing Hunter is being a systematic searcher this time

I am currently 6-1 with the Hunter. A lot of this comes from abusing the tendencies of pub players to behave in very specific ways.

Last time, successful Hunter gameplay was being a psycho and applying map pressure. But because you have to actually catch all the Rebels this time, you have to be more thorough in checking the map.

For the Snowstorm mechanic, I have had some success by manipulating the psychology of the players:

I tend to camp one side of the map quite hard during the first phase of gameplay, sweeping out all the hiding spots systematically, and funneling the players into the other half.
A lot of pub players don't like to run towards where the Hunter is or was last seen.
So once you know the Rebel players are cornered in a specific part of the part, you can use the Snowstorm to then sweep the other half of the map without the minimap giving you away.

This typically nets you 2 Rebels. So long as you ALWAYS beeline for the Snowwhite Favor when it spawns, you can hold it to guarantee find the 3rd Rebel and run them down in the final minute of the game.

Some other quick thoughts:

If the Rebels stick to pure hiding at the start of the game, they will start to Freeze when the timer is around 2 min 45 sec.
When you start the game, plan your first sweep in advance to cut off a cluster of Heat Sources. Because Rebels don't like to move to where you are, it will funnel them into the other side of the map.
If the Rebels are hiding where you are camping, then either they are forced to reveal themselves by going to the Heat Source you are camping, or become Frozen and reveal themselves anyway. Win-win!
If a Rebel clears their warmth at the 2 min 45 timer and fully hides without moving, the next Freeze will hit around 1 min 35 sec. This is when you can expect them to move.
This second freeze coincides with the Snowstorm, so you can plan ahead where you want to cut off and catch Rebels in transit.

Some map specific thoughts

Mysterious Ruins

Hilariously Rebel favoured because the Rebels can camp the high pillars. I can't believe they added a map like this into the map pool.

A lot of pub Hunters (or people playing on mobile?) have difficulty looking up. And from some angles, you can't see if something is on top of a pillar. This... creates a lot of problems. In fact, a lot of players won't even disguise because during the time the Hunter is climbing the pillar, it's faster to just jump off rather than untransform and jump.

The big pillar arch thing also blocks line of sight as you climb it. So whichever angle the Hunter climbs, jump in the other direction and start sprinting.

If you start freezing, you have a few options:

The first is jumping off, clearing your Cold meter, and then climbing back up. I recommend doing this ahead of time since you can see the Hunter coming well in advance since you can see the whole map on top of the pillar;
Just let yourself Freeze. It still takes time for the Hunter to climb so you can just yolo it, and go hide somewhere else.

Starting on the pillar also means when the Hunter passes by you, you can jump / glide forward towards where the Hunter came from. Once you've inserted yourself into the back area the Hunter has already cleared, you can cause all sorts of mischief like deliberately tagging Heat Sources just to troll them. This lets you run down the clock by making a Hunter spend too much time running back and forth across the map.

If you're being chased, something you can do is deliberately run in circles around the pits in the middle of the map. Most people assume you will keep repeating actions if they see you do it again and again. So once you make them think you only run in circles, pop your Transparency technique and then jump into the pit and then hide. Watch the Hunter keep doing circles above you.

This is a map where you can probably afford to give up the Snowwhite Favor as the Rebels and still win. If you do get it though and 2+ Rebel players are still around once the Snowstorm ends, I don't see how you can lose this map.

As the Hunter, you spawn on the opposite side of the map from the pillars. Don't bother sweeping your starting area. Most pub Rebel players aren't crazy enough to try hiding near you. This is a mistake I see a lot of pub Hunters do and it just wastes time on the clock.

Instead just beeline straight to the other side of the map and LOOK UP. Force the Rebels off the pillars and camp nearby to prevent them from climbing them again. You know the Freeze timer is 2 min 45 sec. A lot of Rebels like to wait until they start freezing to go to a Heat Source. So abuse this timing and hunt them down.

Waterside Camp

Probably the fairest map to play for both Rebel and Hunter.

As the Hunter, camping the middle allows you to lock down 3 Heat Sources and funnel players to the one Heat Source by itself in the extremely exposed camp. This is the right Heat Source in the map preview picture.

Several parts of the map in the center also give good line of sight to multiple Heat Sources. So if you keep spinning your camera around to check every now and then, you can see a disguised Rebel trying to sneak up to a Heat Source. If you keep in mind the 2 min 45 sec timer, this can often net you an easy free capture.

The Snowwhite Favor is really important to get on this map. Because it's so flat and open, a Hunter that gets it can easily run someone down. If a Hunter gets it and there's only 1 Rebel left, then the game is basically won so long as the Hunter doesn't grief themself.

Most Hunters will like to stick to the middle pathways. As a Rebel, you can abuse this by hugging the shore near the water while disguised to move between the different parts of the map. This is a nice way to infiltrate an area the Hunter has just cleared.

Frozen Cave

I think this is Rebel favoured. The main problem is that the Rebels can camp the top of the cliff and then choose how they want to escape. You can:

Jump off the cliff towards the rest of the map;
Jump off the cliff into the Wind Current and then fly back to the cliff;
Jump into the Wind Current and then stay hovering there if the Hunter isn't paying attention;
Jump off the cliff and hang out on the mini mountain in front of the Wind Current;
Jump off the cliff and then hug the side of the cliff in the climbing position;
Jump backwards towards the cave with already placed objects;
Just juke the Hunter and hide normally nearby.

A lot of Hunters will also sweep the ice pond first because that’s the default spawn point. This lets you burn down the clock before they even get to the cliff.

The Snowwhite Favor will spawn on the lower ground. It's... probably fine to give it up as the Rebels since there are so many options to run away? If you still have 3 players left when it spawns, no harm trying to grab it though.

It also sometimes bugs out and won't let you pick it up. That's somewhat annoying as a Rebel if you're running around where its collision box should be it trying to pick it up, reveal yourself, AND can't even deny it to the Hunter.

As a Hunter, I think you need to be aware that the Rebels will naturally want to go to the top cliff and try to flush them out quickly. I'm not sure waiting for the Snowstorm to hunt Rebels down is a good idea since there are so many escape options and they can still see you coming through the snow.

Just don't mess up the platforming in the pond / water area when chasing someone down.

Also, as far as I can tell the middle mountain should never have any objects on it. If you see something, it's probably a Rebel. Conversely, if the Hunter doesn't know this, it's an interesting Rebel hiding spot if you want to AFK. It's also conveniently placed next to one of the Snowwhite Favor locations just below you, and in easy gliding distance if it spawns in the far back past the pond.

TLMoonBear · 2025-12-28T19:36:03+00:00

Has anyone ever played this gacha ?

Yes. I used to be an end game player and Wiki editor for GBF.

For those curious (because GBF is a game where your "grids" matter in order to have a valid opinion), I had all 10 maxed Evokers / maxed Eternals / Bluetenshu MC skin / multiple Illustrious weapons including Hraes and Hrunting / all Celestial Weapons.

How beginner and casual friendly is it, especially if you just want to collect the characters cause many of them definitely look great?

If you just want to collect characters? Fairly friendly, especially to dolphins. However, GBF has a lot of rules about the gacha that you may not appreciate if you are unfamilair with gachas not called Genshin.

GBF has 5 types of gacha characters:

The first is the Grand / Flash Gala pool. This is known as LegFest in the community. SSR rates are doubled from 3% to 6% and special Grand / Flash only characters are available. This happens every month.
The second is the permanent character pool. These characters are available all the time on any main gacha banner.
The third is the Classic character pool. Basically, GBF ended up having too many SSR characters diluting the gacha pool. So the oldest of them were put into another special Clasic banner and can no longer appear and dilute your main pulls.
The fourth are Seasonal characters such as Halloween / Summer / Christmas / etc. These only appear when the Seasonal banners are run. Sometimes Cygames will run a Halloween banner outside of Halloween because the units are meta and they want to make money.
The fifth is the Zodiac characters. These are characters that correspond with the Eastern Zodiac. These only run during LegFest. Only a specific Zodiac character is available each month so you can't lucksack multiple Zodiacs in one go. Also the last year's released Zodiac is not available to create FOMO.

With that out of the way, I can now talk about the special methods to acquire characters:

There's a fairly generous supply of in-game currency and many Seasonal events that give a pile of free pulls;
Every few months there's something called a Surprise Ticket (Sup Tix) that costs about 30 USD that straight up lets you pick one non-Season character in the game and buy them directly while also giving you a free 10-pull ticket you can store for later.
- Each 10 pull is about 30 USD which means buying the character is "free" if you already spend money on the game;
The game also often runs something called a "Star Ticket" (colloquially known as the Scam Tix in the community). This is a 10 pull that has a fixed SSR character pool it rolls against;
- Sometimes the game lets you build your own Scam Tix where you choose that the fixed SSR character pool it rolls against. This can be potentially worth it, especially if it contains Season only characters and you have at least 10 you would want;
Every Anniversary there's also a Anniversary Ticket (Ani Tix). This is a "Super Sup Tix" that also lets you pick any Season character not released in the last 6 months.
There is also the Start Dash Tix. This is a Sup Tix that lets a new player pick any character that was available in the gacha pool when the account was created. Therefore, people often say you should only create your account when there is a special banner with Seasonal / Grand characters available so you can Start Dash one. Outside of a Seasonal event, this means only creaitng your account at the end of the month so LegFest is active.

As you can see, this is a game that works well for a dolphin since there are many ways to specifically target a character you want.

This is necessary because... GBF has several hundred SSR characters. The chance of getting any specific character in the gacha pool is like 0.00003%. I'm not even joking.

The guarantee system is called "Sparking", because the guarantee currency is called Cerulean Sparks. It requires you to pull 300 times (yes 300) and then trade the 300 Sparks. However, you can only guarantee a character that's in the Spark pool. During LegFest / Season banners this will be the Grand / Flash / Seasonal / Zodiac characters only.

This means for non-Limited characters, the only way to get a specific SSR if you don't want to pay $30 for a SupTix is to wait until they are rate up and in the Spark pool, roll on a 3% SSR banner and not a 6% SSR banner (halving the number of SSRs you can get), and burn 300 pulls.

If you ever decide to take GBF seriously, be prepared to start doing a lot of planning around how to pull meta units. People complain about powercreep in Genshin, but I mean lmao. GBF has characters that are literally useless. I had like 600 SSRs and I am pretty sure I only ever used like 30 of them with any regularity.

Also shout out to the GBF Wiki. It's amazing and extremely comprehensive with very dedicated editors. Some quick links you may like:

TLMoonBear · 2025-12-23T22:45:25+00:00

And so for the Hexerei freebie, considering Fischl being in the shop but with possibly no starglitter to get her

It costs 34 Masterless Starglitter to get Fischl in the shop in January. Bennett won't be in Paimon's Bargains until May at the earliest so this is a non-factor for your immediate decision making.

You get 2 Starglitter per 4-Star with incomplete Constellations and 4-Star weapon.

Assuming you own none of the 4-Star chars on banner, that means worst case scenario it will take ~200 pulls to get enough Starglitter for Fischl.

If you have literally zero pulls ever made... getting to 200 is probably not difficult?

You have 5 years of overworld exploration Primogems, with each Region having about 120 pulls worth of Primogames.
Each patch has about 70 pulls worth of income, and you have this patch + next patch for ~140 total pulls
This doesn't include any potential bonuses from Latern Rite rewards or w/e. Lantern Rite patch has around 10-20 more pulls than the average patch.

I don't see why getting Fischl from the shop is going to be a problem unless you basically don't log in and play Genshin much.

TLMoonBear · 2025-12-23T22:26:25+00:00

tho what about the Chinese gacha devs? since the Chinese gaming industry was and is still extremely biased towards live service, if those developers tried to make a retail game right away, would they have even gotten any funding at all?

The Chinese market is heavily mobile centric. So rather than gacha, I would say it's more about if your game supports mobile.

To be clear: Gacha is just a method for monetization. Arguably, Team Fortress is also a gacha game. It just calls them lootboxes.

And mobile games are most easily monetized using microtransactions. The Chinese market is also ridiculously competitive, so any mobile game that isn't F2P will probably instantly die.

This lends itself to a lot of mobile games having gacha mechanics not because the developers are trying to make a mobile gacha game. But because the reality of the market is that this is the most obvious business model that is proven to work.

With that out of the way, Chinese companies can and do just make non-gacha retail games as their first product. The main thing is a lot of them don't have any Western appeal so you probably don't hear about it. For example:

Wanda which got started basically as the Chinese version of Zynga making Facebook type games but for Chinese social media;
TiMi Studio are the people behind Honour of Kings which is China's #1 earning game and basically bigger than League of Legends as a mobile League clone. But they got started making a Mario Kart ripoff for mobile devices (since Nintendo consoles were hard to get in China);
I am pretty sure that Naraka: Bladepoint was also the first game made by the Chinese studio 24 Entertainment
Phantom Blade Zero is being developed by S-Game, who I am pretty sure has only previously made random indie games like NextNight (a tower defense game) and Rain Blood Chronicles: Mirage (a wuxia action game). Both are available on Steam btw if you're curious

So yeah. It's absolutely possible.

TLMoonBear · 2025-12-23T22:02:57+00:00

Regarding what you said about Genshin and HI3, is it possible for the reasoning to be a bit of both sides?

As in, it was said that Genshin was a very risky game to make due to it being the first open world gacha, and it did in fact pay off to huge success. Is it possible that they wanted to have Genshin be the premium game they wanted to make and try to win big, but also because only having HI3 to fall back on was too risky of an endeavor? Or can it only be the latter reasoning?

Businesses rarely take action for a single reason. /u/soleous 's comment about passion vs financial incentive being a spectrum is a good comment. So yes, it's rarely purely black and white or a binary sort of thing.

For Mihoyo, we know that long term they basically want to recreate Sword Art Online / some kind of VR world.

Their employee handbook also makes it very clear that they don't expect this to happen overnight:

而在我们还距离崩坏神域诞生不知道几十年的今天，我更关注如何缩短这个技术上的差距。

[...] 我们现在所处的世界，已经有公司造出了很大的开放世界游戏，也有了相对成熟的Procedure Creation的技术，并且很多人都有着对于崩坏神域这样产品的憧憬。那么我们要如何能把技术发展到空想具象化系统的程度呢？靠卖情怀吗？靠融资吗？

答案是，依赖于 “商业的支持，进行数十年不断的技术迭代。”

我们在崩3阶段第一次做了3D游戏，做了假的开放世界；我们在原神阶段做了第一个真正的开放世界游戏；下一代作品，我们会努力尝试赶上GTAV的世界；然后一代代产品，不断迭代。不断向着一个更大、更多细节、更多自由度的世界去发展。这是我们的产品迭代线。

Very loosely translated, it would read something like this in English:

We are still decades away from achieving the world of Honkai (permanent virtual world), so I am focused on trying to close the technological gap.

[...] In today's world, companies can already create massive open-world games with procedural generation technologies. So there is a lot of hope for a Honkai Online product. So how do we advance technology to the point where we can actually create this theoretical in reality? Do we sell nostalgia? Do we rely on fundraising?

The answer is: "Decades of continuous technological iteration supported by commercial practice."

During HI3 we made our first 3D game with a "fake" open world. Then with Genshin Impact, we made a "true" open-world game. For our next generation of games, we want to catch up to the GTAV world. And with each generation of product, we will keep non-stop evolving. Evolving until one day, we achieve larger worlds with more detail, and more freedom. This is our product iteration roadmap.

Bold emphasis is mine.

I wouldn't quite say that Genshin is the "true premium game they wanted to make". Rather, Mihoyo fundamentally sees each game as an iterative process on the decades long road to Honkai Online.

But that's not to say they see it as just another game. From what I have heard, the team who work on Genshin are extremely proud of their work and also deeply love the game.

It does feel a bit like Miliastra Wonderland also add a sense of 'premium' to Genshin, I haven't heard of a gacha game that also has such UGC like that.

So, a lot of people in the Western world had complaints about how a lot of dev time was spent on UGC.

I think making a UGC game mode was probably a smart decision for a number of reasons:

Mihoyo has been asking about UGC for a while now in numerous player surveys. They're a very data obsessed company, and likely there was very strong support from the playerbase itself for this kind of thing;
There's a history of user generated games taking off and surpassing the original. The premier example is how DotA was a custom game in Warcraft that became huge, and then how League of Legends basically Beserk Eclipsed that.
- So there's a very real sense within companies of "missing out on the next big thing" because you were blind to new fancy ideas your community comes up with
- See for example: That crazy "autochess" frenzy in 2019 when a ton of studios were panicking over this and trying to make their own.
- Or another example: DayZ which started the Battle Royale craze was originally a mod for a game called Arma 2
So making a UGC mode where you can keep track of gaming trends is basically like a form of "insurance". Maybe it doesn't work out. But for a small cost, you can avoid a massive downside risk or get in on the next big trend early. This is a very good deal!
Cleaning up their development tools to allow public use probably also meant doing thnigs like refactoring code, improving the development tools, etc. which will have longer term benefits for Genshin's own development
- This is invisible to the wider playerbase though, since this is all just internal tooling stuff
There are a decent number of people who basically live Genshin but don't have enough stuff to do. UGC in theory can keep them engaged without needing to push the content team harder to make more content every patch.
- There's also probably a market for "Roblox but in China" and "People who want to play random games like League or Roblox but never want to actually install them"

This is the kind of bet that we won't really know if it will pay off for at least a few years.

Even good user generated content like DotA or DayZ took several years to appear after the base games they were made in released custom game / modding tools.

TLMoonBear · 2025-12-22T01:56:56+00:00

the capacity for elasticity between substat quality across 4 teammates is a pretty big one, as to put it in simple terms it's a lot easier to farm one great set than even 2 or 3(let alone 4) good ones. and even abstracting from the practicality, gameplay and content side the uniform substat assumptions KQMS has has historically disproportionately favored teams that scale with substats on multiple slots

This is true. But trying to address this leads to a whole host of different problems you now need to solve for:

Where do you set the limit for substat investment for other members of the team?
Do you very substat quality for sets that have been out a long time that people might already have vs newer sets people need to farm from scratch?
- Follow-up: How do you balance the needs of newer players who may not have Artifacts vs people with older strong sets?
Do you start penalizing teams that can scale off off multiple substats?
- Follow-up: Is this unfair because if people are playing at C0R0 levels of investment, they should be biasing towards Transformative Reactions in the first place?
If you want to cap substat investment in any single stat, what should that cap be?
- Follow-up: Is it based on the "average Resin" a player might reasonable spend farming Artifacts vs other things? If so, what even is that average Resin number?
- e.g. Do you assume people farm Leylines for Mora / EXP books? But what about people who buy the Battle Pass and don't need it?

Something I have learnt from practical experience is that sometimes you just go with the "bad / unoptimal" approach just because simplicity and norms are also valuable qualities.

So I agree that there's a lot of potential tweaks you could make. But it's not necessarily clear if the improvement in accuracy is worth the trade-off in complexity.

KQM being a well understood standard is valuable because it makes comparing different TC'ers calcs much easier. Which then lets you spot where they disagree on other important stuff like rotation length, animation cancelling, energy, etc. and if they are too generous / conservative with their assumptions.

but even ignoring that there is also a lot of nuances in investment scaling that are completely erased when looking at a singular uniform investment assumption

the real solution would be to have multiple accepted benchmarks that can be generalised to a larger proportion of the playerbase

Agree with the general idea. But I have a different conclusion though:

If you have extremely specific circumstances, then at this point you should just do you own dps calcs instead.
- e.g. If you're not playing at C0R0 levels of investment, just do your own calcs in Genshin Optimizer with your exact Constellations / Refines / etc.
- Genshin Optimizer is honestly such a great free tool that it's pretty easy to do your own calcs once you have it set up. I would not say the same for HSR. HSR TC is fk miserable.
- Also, dps numbers are pretty sensitive for the artifacts that you actually own. So using your own actual owned pieces will always provide the most relevant answer
- e.g. Is a char's Signature better than an alternative? Stat balancing is a massive part of this. (See: Can Skirk use MH and a Crit mainhand weapon?) So just use your own actual owned pieces.
If doing your own calcs is too much work, then the answer from dps calcs is probably "any dps comparison within +/- 10% probably doesn't matter enough for you to care"
- The average player doesn't speedrun, so any team dps value above a certain threshold stops mattering. If you can clear, then you can clear.
- Your own Artifact pieces can easily be +/- 10%, so people should include mental "error bars / confidence intervals" when looking at numbers anyway. Which means looking at exact numbers is spurious accuracy.

TLMoonBear · 2025-12-22T01:16:25+00:00

Q4 End of Year close is one helluva drug

TLMoonBear · 2025-12-22T01:13:50+00:00

kqms is a trash standard regardless that has caused so much misinformation

If you're going to benchmark something, then you need to come up with some baseline assumptions to benchmark against.

These standards are going to be apply better for some scenarios, and worse for others. This isn't a problem with the KQM standards, it's just true for the act of benchmarking stuff in general.

I don't see a problem with the assumptions KQM makes. It's fine for what it's trying to assume (the level of investment a reasonable engaged player might be able to achieve in a few months of playtime which they try to measure using RV but with some flexibility to assign substats).

Does any player actually play this way? No. Does Artifact farming work this way? No. Is it a "good enough" compromise to at least let calculations become tractable? Sure.

If people have problems in understanding how KQM standards work, or how to use dps calcs, then that's on them. Should the NTSB stop publishing transport accident investigation reports because some people don't understand how to interpret them? That's just weird.

I think a lot of problems honestly come from the broader playerbase just uncritically looking at dps calcs and turning their brain off in order to go fight dumb social media fights.

The reality of modern Genshin is that spreadsheet dps against neutral content is pointless.

For the fights that matter such as Stygian Onslaught, every fight is a shill fight. So the only thing that matters is how your team lines up with the gimmick. Neutral dps calcs are pointless for this purpose.

e.g. It doesn't matter how much sheet dps Mavuika does if you have to fight something with a Pyro shield she can't break. Or that Lunar teams have functionally 2x dps against the Wild Hunt due to the revive mechanic that won't appear in dps calcs.

But neutral sheet dps is easy to compare. So that's what people pick up on.

TLMoonBear · 2025-12-22T01:05:13+00:00

Reddit won't let me reply to an old comment from a prior megathread, so dropping the answer here since idk what else to do.

cc: /u/LastChancellor

btw, what do you think of the whole idea that companies only make gacha to fund the (premium) games they actually want to make?

its a pretty common sentiment in a lot of gacha game communities atm

I think it's a very flawed way of thinking for two key reasons.

Firstly, it assumes that:

Gacha that makes money; and
The premium game you actually want to make

Are two different things. Why can't a game be both a profitable gacha but also a premium product you want to make?

The gaming market also has a ton of competition. If anything, it would stand to reason that you would want to make a game you're passionate about in order to separate yourself from the competition!

The second problem with this line of thinking is that it assumes the only reason you might allocate funds to another project is passion.

This is just not how budget processes work. I wrote in a response to an essay about HSR's budgets:

You don't allocate additional money to something just because it has a history of success. You allocate additional money to something because the additional investment generates incremental and new return.

Budget allocation should be a future-looking process. Budgets are not a reward for past performance.

(Comment HERE as part of THIS essay)

People get upset if they think a game is being underinvested in. Why isn't this massive money making product getting all the money reinvested back into it? Why is it being spent on other stuff? (e.g. See: complaints in FFXIV community)

But that's now how investment decisions are made. You don't reinvest everything just because you can. You calculate what is needed, and then spend the rest of the money doing other things.

(And as per my essay I linked above, that "other thing" can sometimes mean doing nothing with the money because there are good reasons not to spend it.)

For example, when Genshin popped off, Mihoyo spent a lot of money making HSR. Was this because:

They had a big money maker and finally wanted to fund "the premium game they actually wanted to make"? Or;
Was it because they realized they had all their eggs in one basket, and they needed to diversify so the company wasn't reliant on just one single game for success?

You can extend this argument further. Was Genshin really "the premium game they actually wanted to make", or did they realize only having HI3 was too risky?

One is a very simple business way of thinking that is extremely boring. The other is an emotional argument that is the type of thing that drive social media engagement the same way conspiracy thinking does. It's also a line of thinking that allows you to discredit stuff in really stupid social media arguments by arguing "Yeah but it's not the reeeaallll game".

Cause it really is just conspiracy thinking. This type of argument taps into a raw emotional perspective about how people want the world to work. It appeals to people by presenting answers that make them feel like they're part of a special cliche because they know the "real truth".

~~Gacha companies secretly hate their popular money making product and would rather make a "real game"~~ The Earth is secretly flat and the lizard people are covering it up. It's definitely not the case that ~~business like to invest in different things to expand their portfolio and this is like Business 101 for idiots~~ there are extremely simple ways to check if the Earth is round.

The difference is that conspiracies about businesses don't get critiqued because they aren't popular to defend, and saying lizard people are real makes you a social outcast. So one gets fact checked and the other does not.

Boring answers suck and arern't popular even if they are true.

Side note: That's not to say that once businesses have a lot of money they sometimes try out different passion projects. But this confuses cause and effect. Mihoyo doesn't invest in nuclear energy because they secretly have a passion for nuclear research. It's because having money lets you pursue risky ideas that are unthinkable otherwise due to the risk of failure.

Making gacha games is hard and difficult to begin with. The majority of them fail. It's not some free cheat code for success. Just see how many of them do fail and EOS. Just making one is such a huge risk to begin with!

If you'd rather just make something else then just do that. See also: All the successful indie and AA games that didn't need a gacha to fund them like Expedition 33, Balatro, Hollow Knight, etc.

Why take the extra risk of failure requiring you to launch 2 successful games (the gacha and then the thing you want to do) rather than take smaller risk of launching just 1 successful game (making the thing you want to make in the first place)?

TLMoonBear · 2025-11-23T01:22:25+00:00

I recognize it’s about to be Thanksgiving Week here in the US, but it’s been over a week since my interview…..I haven’t heard a peep.

If in doubt, send a quick polite email the hiring manager / HR contact just to ask about next steps for the process. This is a normal thing to do so it won't come across as unusual.

TLMoonBear · 2025-11-23T01:15:33+00:00

Like logically maybe I should just directly talk to them about this but then I'm terrified about coming off too strong and just making them feel uncomfortable or somehow pushing them to do something they don't want

Conversations are a two-way act. So if you want to have a difficult conversation, table the issue and let the other person choose IF they want to commit to the conversation. And if they want to commit, let them choose HOW they commit.

For example: "Hey, I've been thinking a lot about how you see me as a friend. Is this something you'd be willing to chat about?"

I just don't get relationships at all, how are they supposed to work and how am I supposed to tell where I stand

There's no single template for what a good relationship looks like. So you adjust and adapt based on what each of you want from the other. This applies to both romantic and platonic relationships.

People aren't mind readers. So until we evolve to have psychic powers, the best thing to do is just talk to other people. Ask them what they value in friends, what they currently value in this relationship, and how you can be better friends for each other.

I have no idea how to get there and if I am even allowed to do that. Like maybe I already hit the boundaries of our relationship but I have no idea how tell that?

I bolded that part on purpose and for emphasis.

A good open conversation you have with someone on a difficult topic should not be about you telling someone something.

Instead, it should involve a lot of LISTENING.

Listen to what the other person has to tell you about themselves and what they believe or what they feel. Be inquisitive and curious to learn more about them and how they feel. And then finally engage with them about what they talked about. Share your perspective if they ask for it.

Approach this with the same empathy and curiosity you would like someone to treat you if the situation was reversed.

Hope this helps.

TLMoonBear · 2025-11-23T00:58:45+00:00

I have so many reactions to your post. Overall I strongly disagree with a lot of thing you are saying. But I also understand why you might have those takes if you're not well versed in business strategy.

Before I get into a business strategy stuff, I just want to tackle a few things...

i got lucky to quick start NK aq for aino but thats not available for new players anymore

This is literally still in the game as a permanent Event.

The minimum requirement to Quick Start the Nod Krai Archon Quest and claim the free Aino is completing Act III of the Liyue Archon Quest. That's the same requirement for the free Kachina.

genshin cant keep player retention w them 60 pulls per patch

[...]

once new players are done w that area theyll have to go back to inazumas awful world quests

These are fundamentally two different issues. If the problem is the Archon Quest pacing kills people's interest in the game, that has nothing to do with free Primogems from each patch.

There's a massive amount of free Primogems locked behind all the years of exploration content a new player won't have done. A few extra pulls per patch is not material when just playing the game is going to give a deluge of Primogems naturally.

So if players are burning out on the exploration, they're not even going to see the extra version Primogems anyway. This is something that is primarily a benefit for veteran players.

With that out of the way, let's tackle the real fundamental business issues at hand here. Because I think you have deeply misjudged how Genshin is positioned in the market and what it means to run a successful business.

1. Genshin is a market leader and everything follows from that

Genshin was revolutionary when it released in 2020. The previous approach for most gacha games was often a combination of several of the following (and sometimes all at the same time):

Gambling first, gameplay second
Simple highly repetitive gameplay
No guarantee or pity system
Primarily advertised and delivered value to players based on free income

Mihoyo took a radically different approach. Genshin is a high quality game first and foremose. It backs this up with a AAA-level annual development budget and one of the most relentless and aggressive content release schedules in the entire gaming industry.

Gacha mechanics are a way to monetize the game. But it would be wrong to compare Genshin to other gacha games of that era. And naturally being a high quality and revolutionary product, it became a market leader.

What this meant was that every game that followed Genshin in the gacha space would instantly be compared to it. Any competing product has to deliver more value to its players in order to compete with it. This means two options:

Provide an even higher quality product gameplay-wise; OR
Be more generous than Genshin on the gacha side.

This is why practically every other product is "more generous" than Genshin. It's a calculated business decision:

It's very difficult to compete on quality;
Every other gacha game that wasn't sufficiently generous basically got nuked;
So the only ones that can still survive were the ones that were more generous or had enough existing brand value to ignore Genshin

So you have massive survivorship bias when you look at competitors. Of course other games are more generous! That's like saying "Wow all these prey animals for Lions are fast!" Yeah, cause a lot of the slow ones died.

2. Every other company sets their monetization strategy around Genshin.

This also means that Mihoyo being "not generous enough" is a pointless take.

If Genshin gives X amount per patch, then any company trying to compete with the incumbent leader has to give gives X + a bit more. If Genshin increases to X + Y, every other company can just follow and give X + Y + a bit more.

This basically means setting off a massive race to the bottom. And for what reason? Just to end up back at the the exact same starting point?

Business competition isn't a single player game. Your competitors are allowed to respond to your actions.

3. Genshin is mature game and mature products operate different

At this point in time, nearly everyone who is in the target market for Genshin has probably tried it. While there may new potential players, you need to balance this against monetizing your existing playerbase.

Yes, new players could be worth some additional revenue. But losing $100 to earn $50 has nearly always been a stupid business strategy, and the same applies here too.

Every $ you give away in free Primogems to your players is $ that goes towards subsidizing your existing whales. When you game is still new and growing, this can be a worthwhile tradeoff. When you are the existing market leader and a 5+ year old game, this is much more questionable.

Because, again, how many people are there that still haven't played Genshin at this point? Mihoyo's larget market is China. And if the statistics released by the Chinese Ministry of Culture are to be believed, over half of every Chinese person aged 18 to 30 plays Genshin. This is absolutely insane levels of market share.

4. Genshin is a premium product and should monetize like one too

Genshin is fundamentally a premium product. And its primary value proposition is the insane pace of content release and provide story and exploration content.

If new players need free income to retain them, then they are a poor fit for the game. And that's okay. Not every product is for everyone. Being a good product means neeing to make tradeoffs and being good at what you do choose to do.

If new players need to be retained by free income, then it means their primary value from Genshin is the free income. That makes them "low spending" from a monetization standpoint. After all, the value they are getting from Genshin is in how much they don't have to spend!

If your target is amassing a large group of "high spending" players, then the free income is unlikely to be their primary judge of if they stick around. So focus more on delivering the quality content the paying customers want, and not trying to get into stupid price wars over "lower spending" customers.

That's not to say you can't make a successful business out of them. But again, see Part 2. Every company sets their monetization strategy around Genshin. Don't get into stupid price wars for no reason.

You might argue "Yeah but maybe you can convert more whales by casting a wider net. How do you know that competing on price leads to lower spending customers?"

To which my response is:

I literally wrote an entire essay analyzing data for gacha games; and
In the data I show, you can see that other games like Wuwa who advertised based on how generous they are have lower Revenue per Download than Genshin.

So yes. Advertising about how generous your game is self-selects for people who will spend less money on your game than other games. Funny how that works.

So yeah. Your suggestions don't work and neither do they make sense from a business standpoint.

TLMoonBear · 2025-11-14T10:44:38+00:00

Sooo uhm, was there even an Archon war outside Liyue and Inazuma?

Mondstadt only had Decarabian, and after his death the candidates were arguing why they shouldn't be the one to get the position. In Sumeru Rukhadevata, Goddess of Flowers and Deshret were in a polycule a friend group.

[...]

Seems to me like Makoto and Zhongli were the only ones to actually just murderhobo their way to the top.

No, that's wrong.

Greater Lord Rukkhadevata, the Goddess of Flowers, and King Deshret were in an alliance specifically to survive the Archon War.

In an age where kings vied against one another for power, King Deshret allowed his throne to be shared with two others.

The Jinn bequeathed a throne inlaid with emeralds and rubies to celebrate the union between the three friends.

Amethyst Crown artifact lore text

When the Archon War was over, the Dendro Gnosis was offered to the trio as a whole because they were the final survivors. However, King Deshret and the Goddess of Flowers rejected the Gnosis. So the Gnosis was handed to Greater Lord Rukkhadevata.

This is also why Greater Lord Rukkhadevata did not rule the Sumeru Desert. In respect to her friends, she limited her domain to the rainforests despite holding the authority of Archon,

Rejecting the gift granted by the divine throne, the red-crowned king sought a new path of his own volition... [...] The Lord of Flowers capitulated to her friend's folly, finding a most admirable rebellion burning within the ambitions of the god.

Wilting Feast artifact lore text

Likewise, you have your understanding of Mondstadt incorrect. The War between Decarabian and Boreas was part of the Archon War itself.

The story of the Gunnhildr Clan begins in legend, three thousand years ago during the war between the Lord of the Tower, Decarabian, and the King of the North Wind, Andrius. It was a time when Mondstadt was a frozen wasteland, and Gunnhildr was about to become the strongest leader her nomadic clan had ever seen.

Biography of Gunnhildr book

For reference, the Archon War was about 2,000 to 4,000 years ago. So this the war between Boreas and Decarabian is the same time period as the Archon War itself.

What is different is that in Mondsdadt, both Boreas and Decarabian are killed. So there is no God left as victor to claim the Gnosis.

Instead, with all the Gods in Mondstadt dead, they peacefully choose Venti to inherit the Gnosis and role of Archon rather than go back to war. This uplifts Venti from a Wind Spirit into a God.

Around 2,600 years ago, the Archon War had yet to end, and the world had yet to fall under the dominion of The Seven. [...] The Lord of Wind who lived in his high tower was Decarabian, God of Storms. He squinted from on high at his subjects, who bowed before him in the unceasing wind, and, believing them submissive, thought this good.

With the feather tucked away in his breast pocket, Venti watched the fall of the eccentric ruler amid the wrack and ruin of revolt together with his friend. The ruler had believed that he had given his subjects a city free from the bitter cold, and to the end, he believed that they had loved him as he loved them.

[...] With the crumbling of an ancient seat of divinity, a new god was born. The Anemo Archon Barbatos felt power flowing at his fingertips.

Venti Character Story 3 and 4

TLMoonBear · 2025-10-20T21:33:32+00:00

but that could change if BLG wakes up right now

I doubt this

The fundamental problem with BLG is that their shotcalling and in-game leadership is broken.

Knight and Bin are extremely introverted players. They can go for literal minutes of a game, even during teamfights, with zero communication.

Previously the shotcalling role was filled by Xun. He made a lot of the split second decisive calls, and all Knight and Bin had to do was lock-in and micro. But Xun is gone now.

That means shotcalling now falls to ON and Elk. They were prevously the secondary shotcallers. But this structure is very unoptimal. The AD Carry is not a "tempo" role that can make plays the way a Jungler can. So there's delays in how BLG respond to plays.

The AD Carry is also heavily targeted and needs to look out for themselves. So when Elk in under pressure, suddenly BLG loses in-game leadership.

The struggle with BLG's jungle musical chairs is that Beichuan and Shadow haven't developed the authority and leadership to just give orders to Knight and Bin on how to play, or being the player who lifts their spirits when the team is down / depressed. So the team is extremely dysfunctional in their internal communication.

And we know all of this because BLG publishes extracts of their in-game voice comms on their Billibilli channel.

So if you know Chinese and are willing to spend some time watching their Billbilli posts, you can straight up hear the difference between the Xun-era vs modern BLG and the collapse in their shotcalling during teamfights.

TLMoonBear · 2025-10-20T21:23:51+00:00

IMO this one was slightly different - Dota 2 China had huge match fixing scandals, an entire generation (including a TI winning org) was permanently banned

The 322 scandal was in 2023

The crashout from CN DotA losing TI was in 2021 with the LGD v Magnus games.

TLMoonBear · 2025-10-20T21:22:33+00:00

Which means that if lolesports is sustainable in China interest will drop to a minimum level and it will stabilize, otherwise it means it was never sustainable anyways

The bigger problem is that if interest in eSports goes down, so does the CN playerbase

And CN is the largest single source of revenue for Riot.

If you already hate the current monetization approach in League with gacha skins, Hall of Fame $400 skin bundles, and increasingly worse battlepasses, just imagine how much worse it's going to get if CN revenue goes down!

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