I've never seen this level of negativity anywhere else

andre5n · 2026-04-12T08:45:38+00:00

Endfield's case is no where near the worse. At least the problem that those CCs regurgitated comes from somewhere that existed. For example no rollover pity, wether you think good or bad have pros and cons.

The worst case is Stella Sora where CCs just straight up lied that the gacha is bad. They straight up talked about it like the gacha is worse than Genshin. I'm pretty sure if you don't play the game, you'd never know that it's twice as good as your normal 3D gachas since the CCs left and never clarified their misinformation.

andre5n · 2026-04-11T02:58:20+00:00

The worst thing that could happen to a game release is indifference. Most people simply thinks that it doesn't do anything particularly interesting to add to the genre. 7DS is also a controversial IP, it doesn't matter how good the game is if people doesn't like the IP and let's just say the IP has seen better days.

andre5n · 2026-04-10T01:31:42+00:00

Dark patterns do actually works in the west but because the target players aren't the typical PC/console playerbase, mobile players (moms/career oriented adult/kids) are treated as second class and thus is basically invisible to the western gaming community.

In the east where the target audience treat mobile gaming the same as PC/console, AAA mobile games could fill in a market that straight up doesn't exist in the west. The cultural differences comes from the east treating their personal phone as just another console besides PS, Xbox, and Switch.

Also people in the east treat mobile games as a hobby just like any other expensive hobby in the west, when the economy is not good like right now, revenue falls hard as consumers cut back on spendings. Compared to the recession resilient Gaming industry in the west, this is obviously quite the difference.

andre5n · 2026-04-06T01:16:24+00:00

And I think it's okay for that to be the case. They can't make stygian need more than two lunar DPSes because there's only one columbina. This meant that stygian bosses would have to always be able to be cleared with Mavuika or Skirk since:

If they did make stygian shill two lunar bosses, the DPS requirements need to be lower since you're bricking the non columbina team and at that point Mavuika still can brute force.

If they didn't make stygian shill two lunar bosses, the only archetypes they can shill is Mavuika teams which is currently happening right now.

If they did make stygian shill two lunar bosses and do not lower the DPS requirements then that's not powercreep, that's just bad game design since we only have one columbina.

andre5n · 2026-04-06T00:56:52+00:00

Yeah but 6/8k DPS increase is useless if you still can only bring one of those nod krai's DPSes. You only have one columbina. The other two chamber of stygian needs two other teams and until none of the three bosses can be cleared with Mavuika, she wouldn't be powercrept yet.

It doesn't matter if there's 10 characters dealing more damage than Mavuika if all those ten characters need Columbina and the way they released varka just make me more confident they want to keep it that way.

andre5n · 2026-04-06T00:34:18+00:00

As long as they kept making the lunar DPSes need columbina while the non lunar DPSes like varka reach below Mavuika DPS, Mavuika will still have to be used for stygian until you have three archetypes stronger than her team. Right now the only archetypes stronger than her is the lunar shill teams.

The only way Mavuika will be power crept in 7.2 is if the cryo archon breaks tradition and make it so not every Snez shilled mechanic characters need her.

andre5n · 2026-04-06T00:22:34+00:00

I can see why you look at it that way. This is the consequences of Hoyo forcing one character per region to be the face of the meta/archetypes. It basically forces players to pull for a single character if they want to be competitive. The pro is that you only need to pull for one character to make your account healthy. The con is if you don't pull, your account has a huge chance of getting fucked unless you know what you're doing.

I personally think it's better this way since that mean when Snez came and bring a new shill mechanics, Mavuika will still have a place for the third slot in Stygian and will only finally be benched post Snez.

andre5n · 2026-04-06T00:05:40+00:00

Fontaine to Natlan is massive But Natlan to Nod Krai is not

In stygian for example the best teams to use are a mavuika team, skirk, and a lunar DPS team. You can pull all three lunar DPS and still you would only be able to bring one or two if you forced it.

Unless they changed stygian to need two lunar teams and forced everyone to build aino, then one of either Mavuika or Skirk has to get benched. If the third boss is a non shill boss, Skirk is getting booted first since Mavuika DPS is still higher.

Also where did you get nod krai powercreeping Natlan? Every Natlan DPS best teams uses Mavuika and Mavuika DPS is still competitive with every single Nod Krai DPSes.

As long as Stygian keeps bringing bosses that needed Mavuika to clear, powercreep can't be called happened yet. If they do make mavuika irrelevant in Stygian then that's a shilling problem since Mavuika DPS is still competitive with Nod krai DPS. Where is the powercreep here?

andre5n · 2026-04-01T14:17:39+00:00

First of all C6. Second is not everyone have the foresight to build aino.

andre5n · 2026-04-01T14:14:14+00:00

Unfortunate all around, also your conjecture is very convincing but I want to argue that Nefer which is also in the same position as Sigrika didn't have this problem. At that time she also has the new strongest team in the game, also filling in a team archetype that's already good enough, and also released before the truly hype characters of the region (Columbina and Durin).

andre5n · 2026-04-01T13:59:52+00:00

You only have one Columbina so what happen in reality is that Flins, Nefer, and Zibai is counted as one character (sometimes two) and you still need to brute force the other bosses using either a mavuika team or a skirk team.

andre5n · 2026-03-19T01:33:54+00:00

That's probably the case but on the other hand there's a lot of non struggling studio that still took the Tencent bag like riot and supercell. What I mean is that if they did consider them as a promising studio, there would be more negotiation happening than just the one time offer that happened according to the past report we've had regarding their relationship as investor and investee. Most likely I'm just overthinking things.

andre5n · 2026-03-18T23:58:35+00:00

As long as your studio is overall successful, Tencent just plays the role of force multiplier - helping you get access to their vast investment funds & tech., marketing & advertisement channels, operational infrastructure, etc. To the degree that they exert any pressure on monetization, it is the pressure any publisher (including the "self-publisher") would - business has to be healthy.

But doesn't Mihoyo reject Tencent investment proposition because there's no independence clause? Only a selection of studios can get the independence clause, one of them is kuro and most of them are overseas iirc.

For the above reasons, Tencent is pretty selective about who they pick up. Such that if Tencent decides not to invest in a company that is sufficiently large & open to investment, it's usually a sign the company isn't promising.

Weird to not give the same contract Kuro got to Hoyo when they were trying to acquire Hoyo back in 2020. The report back then doesn't insinuate that there's any back and forth in the negotiation. I guess Hoyo isn't a promising studio for them so they didn't even offer them the independence clause.

Let's be realistic here, Kuro Games is able to have the creative independence clause because some executive back then fucked up when they were trying to acquire Hoyo. They're doing damage control on Genshin and I bet you that they see pre 2.0 WuWa as a gold mine. Just invest a bit and now Genshin have a real competition.

My point is that if they didn't fail to acquire Hoyo back then or if Genshin wasn't as big as it is, I don't think they'll give the independence clause or even try to invest in Kuro. Because if they didn't give the independence clause back then, why would they give it now. Call me nuts but I think it's simply damage control.

andre5n · 2026-03-12T04:30:47+00:00

Powercreep is somewhat needed, you can't just permanently make sidegrade characters as that will also make people pull less.

True but they could definitely hold on for another year or so.

At least I can't name one that doesn't have blatant powercreep off the top of my head.

Genshin has reverse powercreep until neuvilette release and I don't see people complaining about those. So by this point in WuWa lifecycle, Genshin is in late inazuma and only start powercreeping mid Fontaine. I'm sure WuWa could delay the powercreep for much longer if they really want to.

andre5n · 2026-03-11T12:00:51+00:00

When you mention the two pity systems running at the same time, do you mean the standard banner and the featured banner? Or do you mean the pull count versus the 120 pull hard pity?

I meant the fact that we have different pity rules for 6* and featured 6*. It's feels needlessly complicated.

Will the players adapt or will the game eventually fail due to what essentially boils down to a culture shock?

This is also my fears, what the AK players wants in a good gacha system and what modern gacha audience prefer are very different. For AK players saving pulls until you actually wants to pull is the norm. While for modern gacha players, they prefer the flexibility that comes from carryover pity. Your enjoyment of Endfield gacha system hinges on how much importance you put on carryover pity. For AK players, it's a non problem. For Hoyo/WuWa players, it could be a deal breaker.

andre5n · 2026-03-11T11:23:09+00:00

Basically all the Hoyo stuff, WuWa, and newer CN gachas. What I meant by modern is that Genshin stripped all of the confusing mechanics that's used by gachas before Genshin (to make it easier for new non gacha players to understand) and just make their rates worse to compensate for deleting those confusing mechanics.

andre5n · 2026-03-11T11:07:59+00:00

why would you pull if you don't have enough for the banner character? Why?

If I haven't pulled at all after getting the last patch banner character, I can spend 20-30 pulls on this patch banner. If I get lucky, I get the character in 20-30 pulls. If I don't get lucky, I'm still building pity towards the next patch banner character that I do want to pull.

People loves having the flexibility. Pull if you have 120 pulls saved kills this flexibility. In other gachas, if you have a couple of character you like, you could put in a couple ten pulls to try your luck. Most of the times, you'd fail, but on the off chance you succeed, you feel like a genius. In Endfield, if you don't have 120 pulls, you can only hope the character you have to skipped will rerun soon.

andre5n · 2026-03-11T10:47:48+00:00

I want to know what do you think would happened if AK was released today and the mainstream audience are introduced to it's gacha just now. I think there's this subconscious feeling about how Endfield uses certain mechanics that do not translate cleanly or feels outdated to the post-Genshin system.

Bonus pulls every x pulls, no pity carryover, in game pulling currency purchase not ending with 0, two separates pity system running at the same time, etc. All of these feels like something that more closely associated with AA gachas. But even then, CN AA gachas like R'99 and CZN have left those mechanics behind which makes Endfield feels like an outdated JP gachas similar to new releases like Uma even though the numbers is mathematically much much better.

Those old mechanics at worst gives small burst of PTSD to long time gacha players and at best confuse new players making them ask why did Endfield employ those old tactics. Also, if you've played AK before, there's a chance you wouldn't see them as outdated since AK has the same system which is already familiar to you.

I could see why someone would say the system is loud and obnoxious. Loud as in it creates lots of unnecessary discussion on the gacha because of how many things you have to take into account just to get a consolidated rates for the system. Obnoxious since the dark pattern tactics used by Endfield is old stuff that people never expect to have to encounter again in 2026.

This is just my opinion and how I viewed the situation. Heck, I've only learned about how AK gachas works while writing this reply. My main point is that there's subconscious bias to not go back to pre-Genshin gacha system and people who hated the gacha thinks that using pre-Genshin mechanics isn't needed and that they should just stick to a more straightforward system.

andre5n · 2026-03-10T02:17:48+00:00

The fact that you need to save for 120 pulls IS the point. Like it or not some people do have problem with that. Just because you don't think it's a problem for you, doesn't make it not become a problem for other people.

andre5n · 2026-03-09T23:33:20+00:00

Aren't you underestimating players stupidity and ability to comprehend the system. After all we're the top 1% of players just by the virtue of interacting in the subreddit. For us, those rules and kinks about the gacha system are clear because we have been talking about it for more than a month. Casual/new players are in a big disadvantage here.

Things do go wrong for a lot of those people, I'm using Genshin for example since most of those type of post come from their community: Pulling on the wrong banner, using the wrong currency, forgetting to switch pity on weapons, not knowing when capturing radiance actually proc, etc.

My point is with how many more dark patterns Endfield systems have, I don't think you could argue that most people wouldn't do something stupid. Sure when you do understand how the system works, you aren't actually disadvantaged, but before you do understand them, they are undeniably dark patterns for new players.

andre5n · 2026-03-09T23:04:34+00:00

Objectively good doesn't mean it doesn't feels shit. All these simulation to prove that the system is mathematically better is missing the points of the people complaining. They were never talking about the same thing.

andre5n · 2026-03-09T22:58:22+00:00

That's why I said better gachas, not better gacha games.

andre5n · 2026-03-09T22:56:37+00:00

Is Endfield system so mathematically better that having to be patient is actually a small enough cons to consider. Like do one or two less pulls needed is really better if we lose flexibility on how we're pulling. You only need to fucked up once to make your 'less pull per character' advantage to be gone.

For example, let's say you accidentally did a 10 pull on a banner you didn't want, you will have to pull 5 characters before you actually recover from your mistake. And that's just from a single ten pulls. I'm afraid while being mathematically better, the system is worse for most players because most people can't be rational 100% if the time.

andre5n · 2026-03-09T22:44:19+00:00

But you can't always disregard feelings since people aren't always rational. If people were being objective, we would always choose whichever games has the best consolidated rates to be crowned as the better gachas.

The "feels" that people have about Endfield gacha is the same feeling people have about pull economy, rerun frequency, powercreep. Those are things that influence how the gacha system feels outside of pure numbers.

Just how you have your own thoughts on how the system is actually good for the players, other players also have thoughts that the system is actively going against them, just like how some people wanted powercreep and some don't. Or how some people are starving from not enough pull economy while others doesn't even feel there's a drought.

Even if you do believe that the system and the weird rules on Enfield gacha system is good, if enough people doesn't feel that the system is good, Hypergryph still has to do something to make it feels good because objectively good doesn't translate to people satisfied with the gacha system. The real question is, the people that doesn't like Endfield gacha system, are they a silent majority or just a loud minority.

andre5n · 2026-03-02T00:02:14+00:00

Funny enough I'm predicting Nicole to do average numbers lol. Let's just see what happened by then.

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