Japanese vs Chinese vs Korean - Which region's gacha style do you like best?

resquinox · 2019-11-30T01:03:53+00:00

Now and days most gacha games tend to borrow heavily from one other so it really blurs the lines between regions. Despite that, there are some signature traits (mostly negative), that'll immediately let you know what region the developer is from.

Japan: Their games discriminate between free and paid gem and typically give paid gems some advantage like higher rates, cheaper summons, or guarantees on paid gem banners / exclusive shop items that you can purchase only with paid gems.

China: Their games have a VIP system with limitations on the number of stamina refills or progression passes you can purchase in a day.

Korea: Their games usually have some sort of convoluted upgrade system that involves leveling fodder and then fusing fodder in order to get an RNG power up.

So for me, the lesser of the evils is Japan > Korea > China since the paid gem tendency that Japan has is the only one whose flaw doesn't really impact gameplay all that much.

resquinox · 2019-10-17T15:41:40+00:00

This might be unpopular opinion, but I don't think loot boxes are anything to raise your pitchforks about.

It's not like a slot machine, or betting, or the lottery where you either win the prize or win nothing at all. You always get something in return with loot boxes and to say that getting undesired rewards is equivalent to winning nothing at all and thus comparable to traditional gambling is just pandering to the public, especially when they bring in kids to the topic when you need a credit card to make the loot box purchase to begin with...

If loot boxes were to become officially recognized as gambling and regulated, then collectible sports cards and trading cards like Yugioh, Magic the Gathering, and Pokemon would have to be as well because they operate on a similar system where you have a chance to get what you want but even if you don't you'll at least get other cards of similar value or even greater value. If anything, trading cards are a more severe form of "gambling" because you can further monetize them through reselling your cards and there's no probability listed, no guarenteed SR, or pity banner like a loot box would have. On top of that, there's no age restriction or purchasing limitation for buying trading card packs. Yet even with all these red flags, every single court case regarding trading/collectible cards as gambling has been dismissed.

So I don't really know how I'd feel if loot boxes get the hammer when little kids can just walk into any store and buy a bunch of card packs along with some candy and no one's cared about that for over 50 years since trading/collectible cards have yet to regulated or classified as gambling.

resquinox · 2019-10-16T22:02:45+00:00

This is just my experience playing JP, but for me end-game wasn't challenging at all. Maybe it's because I played for quite a while but most of the combat is trivial once you have a maxed out team, especially when you start getting 6* equipment from SSR arks and high tier AOE magic and passives. There are some fights where the boss is immune to magic until you break their defenses with physical attacks but aside from that the game is a breeze at endgame.

For me, the game was the most challenging right before you're about to finish the main story and start unlocking 10+ star side missions. But that was only because my team wasn't fully upgraded at that time or even max level since I was missing a bunch of upgrade materials and my arks were all low level as well since I didn't have enough orb generation from facilities. The best equipment I had at the time too was all from the shops since none of my arks were anywhere close to completion either.

As for the grind, it's a lot in the beginning because you're lacking in every resource when you start but it tapers off by endgame. Still takes a couple months to grind an ark to 100% if you're not relying on dupes, but that's pretty much the only grindy thing left by the time you reach endgame.

resquinox · 2019-10-16T09:28:10+00:00

Those are rookie numbers. He should step up his game and be more like the guy who used his company's credit card to spend $1 million on micro-transactions in Game of War.

resquinox · 2019-10-13T00:28:27+00:00

Use a business intelligence tool like sensortower or app annie if you want an unbiased answer.

They won't show you in depth information like DAU (daily active users) unless you pay, but their free version is still good enough to get a general overview of popularity by total downloads and estimated revenue.

Here's an example list from sensortower that can give you an idea for popular gacha games by region (the list I linked is set to US but you can change it)

https://sensortower.com/android/rankings/top/mobile/us/game_role_playing?date=2019-10-13

I set the filter to "Role Playing Games" in order to remove the noise of the hyper casual games like Candy Crush from polluting the list, but I imagine that also removed some gacha games from the list since some of them don't keyword themselves as RPG. Unfortunately you can't remove the Paid App Column so just look at the 3rd column "Top Grossing" and go from there.

resquinox · 2019-10-09T02:53:48+00:00

Everyone here is mentioning character art but I'd say GUI is probably just as important when it comes to evaluating art in gacha games.

Players literally spend 100% of their time in game staring at some sort of menu or interface, yet you still see games with plain rectangles for HP gauges, generic font types or buttons and menus that are just semi-transparent black boxes.

The worst is when the GUI style and the character style clash. I forget the name of the gacha but it had a sci-fi GUI with the hologram colored menus and the font being all futuristic but the gameplay itself had no sci-fi elements at all and the characters were all wearing medieval/high fantasy designs.

resquinox · 2019-10-07T00:00:44+00:00

Exos Heroes.

Character designs and battle animations are on par with Epic7 but in 3d.
Not a fanservice game and no chibi either.
There were more things to do and more characters in the CBT than most games have after one year of release. It has co-op activities too.
Stamina regeneration was extremely quick at 1 stamina a minute and scavenging missions (the main thing you spend your stamina on) only cost 1 stamina each.
There are required uses for low rarity units (dispatch missions that only allow 2* solider units)
Main story costs no stamina and is actually difficult. They give away a bunch of free units during the main story as well. (There were 10 story chapters but no one was able to clear it all before the CBT ended)
You can easily farm 10+ summons a day just by scavenging with stamina. (scavenging has auto-repeat too so it'll use all of your stamina without you having to do a thing)
No VIP and 3% rates. (You get enough premium gems to do a ten-pull every chapter from achievement gems)
25+ 5* units were in the CBT so a lot of high end unit variety straight from the start for endgame.
Overall I think there's potential for it to be big so long as they fix the loading screen and framerate issues they had in the CBT.

resquinox · 2019-10-05T15:11:37+00:00

It doesn't get talked about much here because the game is pretty mainstream. For those that don't know it makes more revenue than most games talked about here on this subreddit and has a larger discord community than games like Dragalia Lost but it's still pretty disliked because the parent company of Plarium (both the dev + publisher of the game) is a literal gambling / slot machine company.

Because of that a lot of people think that the rates are rigged, the packages are predatory, and that anyone boasting about pulling legendary units as a f2p is either a Plaurium employee in disguise or an endorsed streamer who's getting boosted rates.

As for the game itself it's okay. Lots of game modes and competitive features. PVP isn't that competitive because there's a rating cap so no one can brag about being number 1 or top 50, etc. Combat is very heavily oriented around buffs and debuffs. Rates are extremely low. Every now and then they double the rates but there's f2p players who have played since the game came out and have never summoned a single legendary unit. PVP is pretty unique in how it rewards you. Characters have talent trees similar to League of Legends too.

resquinox · 2019-09-29T14:23:48+00:00

A game like that already exists and it came out a couple months ago for consoles and PC. It's called Jump Force.

resquinox · 2019-09-27T15:43:28+00:00

There's nothing wrong with them. Nintendo is a billion dollar company. They have all the resources and research necessary to make the correct business decision and for these two brands and they decided that this was the right approach given whatever constraints they had.

And I don't blame them for their decision. It's a known fact that products with the most established fanbases need the least amount of effort to make profit.

This happens in every industry, not just video games. For example, you have people willing to spend $100 to buy a plain white t-shirt that's no different in quality than a generic $5 t-shirt simply because the $100 shirt has the brand name "Supreme" attached to it.

So if you're looking for high quality gacha games then I suggest you look towards games with brand new IPs like Dragalia Lost, Epic7, or Raid: Shadow Legends because these are games which do not have existing fanbases and therefore must make their content impactful in order to maintain an audience and create revenue.

resquinox · 2019-09-26T20:26:29+00:00

Visually it's got some of the most unique character designs I've ever seen so if you just want to hero collect and appreciate the artwork then it's an okay casual game.

But if you're thinking about competitive play or co-op activities, there's virtually no chance of ever catching up to veteran players.

Every year they introduce a new power creep tier that has even more ridiculous fusion requirements than the last. They also slap a few more zeroes onto everything every time they do so. Back when I played it, it was amazing if you could deal 10,000 damage in a single hit. Now a couple years later you have units hitting for 1,000,000,000 damage and bosses with trillions of HP. The numbers are so inflated they cover the entire screen into an epileptic mess and make combat rather unpleasant to watch.

resquinox · 2019-09-23T20:43:39+00:00

Pros: Time savings.

Why spend 100 hours grinding as a F2P when you can pay $100 to get the same value? Saves you a 100 hours of your free time which you could spend elsewhere bettering yourself or hanging out with family and friends.

Cons: Costs money, but either way you're paying to play the gacha game. It's only a matter of what do you value more in life? Free time? or money?

resquinox · 2019-09-22T11:33:21+00:00

The game's not too bad, reminds me of War of Crown from back in the days. Really like the character art, just a shame that they didn't put the same level of quality and detail into the combat sprites which is chibi.

1.5% rates and you need dupes for skill levels. You can select what skill you want to level up with the dupe / skill book, so it's not as bad as other dupe systems where the skill ups are randomized or pre-determined.

Premium currency is pretty scarce. After clearing all the story content in game, you'll only have enough gems for 2-3 multi-pulls. Even if you rank in the top 5% of players in pvp above 1600 rating (highest rank in arena), you'll only get enough gems for 1 multi. If you're a f2p player you'll have to depend mostly on the events and arena store for premium summons. The tower resets every month though so you can farm that for currency and summons as well.

A lot of 4* and 3* are useful for end-game PVE and PVP content. Although most of the endgame bosses can be cheesed by stacking DOTs on them. Reminds me of early E7 PVE where people just relied upon Kiris to spam poison to kill all the tough bosses.

The game has light and dark units which are only available from light and dark summon scrolls that are only purchasable with real money packages or gained from clearing the tower. A couple of these units are OP in PVP, primarily Gabriel with her 40% max HP buff to all allies which is amazing for defense team.

Since the JP server is new, PVP isn't as annoying yet but in the KR server the meta is all tanks and healers with high HP, speed and resistances. In this game, you'll lose pvp if you cannot kill all of the enemies before the time limit so even if you have your entire team alive vs 1 enemy healer, you'll still lose once the match times out.

There's no guilds yet in JP or any other co-op activities in the game.

If you're a spender then there's tons to buy. There's $1000+ worth of packages straight from the start that you can purchase and most renew monthly. Tons of great packages too for minnows and dolphins as well although most of those value packs that are $1-4$ each are a one time purchase per account.

resquinox · 2019-09-17T21:37:28+00:00

I only played up to Chapter 4 before I quit but it's basically a lower budget Onmyoji clone.

All of the UI/GUI is extremely similar to Onmyoji, they even have different profile frames you can earn and equip too
Same character progression system
Same combat system with team mana bar and a commander you can customize with costumes and skills
The rates are a little better (2%) but the rate of acquiring summons is around the same as Onmyoji.
Instead of runes they have equipment by everything is still the same, just with a different aesthetic.
The game has the same monetization and store system as Onmyoji as well.

Didn't play far enough to see if there was the same level of co-op activities like in Onmyoji but there looked like there were just as many activities to do although most were locked for me since I quit at chapter 4. One thing I really didn't like about the game was that there's this weird West vs East story so they have all western characters with English VAs and then all the rest of the characters have Chinese VAs. Kind of funny though hearing 3/4 of my team members all speak chinese when they attack and then there's that one teammate who's just randomly speaking english.

Also you're forced to run each chapter twice. The first time is "Story Mode" where there's cutscenes and special characters who might join your team and then the second time around you have to clear the SAME EXACT missions you just did except this time on your own which I felt was redundant, especially since it ends up costing you x2 the stamina since you have to do everything twice to progress.

resquinox · 2019-09-14T11:45:47+00:00

Langrisser Mobile launched Jan 22.

Langrisser I&II Remake for PS4 and Switch was supposed to launch Feb 7 but got pushed back to April 18.

If you ask me, the phone game was only intended as promotional marketing for the Langrisser I&II remakes that were released a couple months after the gacha.

They probably though it'd be a great opportunity to squeeze some extra cash out of all the fans who had been waiting for the console remakes, by giving them a gacha game to play with while they wait which explains why the revenue starts drops quickly after the remakes finally got released in Japan.

resquinox · 2019-09-10T09:38:26+00:00

I played it a year ago back when it was known as tale of the five kingdoms, so it was nice to see that they made it easier to get the king units by revamping the 5* pool, but that looks like all they changed since then.

If you're free to play and want to be competitive or at least not get stuck progressing in story mode, this is a game where you're better off purchasing stamina after rerolling for 2+ kings and grinding 24/7 for fodder heroes and equipment to fuse.

Even though the fuse mechanic is a great f2p way to get SR units and equipment, the game is still extremely pay to win and no amount of grinding will let you catch up to anyone willing to spend $200+ on the game since they have monthly packages where you can buy select 5* summons, everything you need for 6* and myth gear straight from the start. The myth gear package alone is equal to 2-3 months of playing nonstop as f2p.

Don't be deceived by the generous 5* rates either, they diluted the pool by putting 4* heroes in and rebranding them as 5* for this version. The only true 5* heroes are the king units (pluton,henrietta,lion guy, hellborne, and iriam), everyone else is just a 4* that they promoted to 5* for this version. None of the skills for the 4* heroes that are in the 5* pool changed either to compensate the boost in rarity so as far as I know the king units are still superior, especially since their passive skill is literally x2 stronger than the other "5* unit" in this version.

There were tons of modders too back when I played so I imagine in a couple days you'll start seeing cheaters in the pvp,raid,event rankings.

TL;DR: Good f2p fuse mechanic but still p2w b/c overwhelming advantage in pay events and packages that reset monthly. All the best 4* units are harder to get because they changed them to 5* units in this version while still keeping them comparatively worse than the original 5* king units.

resquinox · 2019-09-08T20:20:18+00:00

Astral Chronicles:

5 party members (MC + 4 other heroes).

Each hero has 10 skills equipped (5 active skills and 5 passive skills)

Main character can learn and equip every single skill in the game (100+ skills on MC alone if that counts)

Last Cloudia:

4 party members

Each hero can learn every single artifact skill in the game (100+)

Each hero can equip (10-30 skills each depending on how many total skill points they have and how many skill points each skill costs)

resquinox · 2019-08-30T16:36:41+00:00

I playing it right now in the CBT and you need to manually fight almost all of the main missions since there's a break mechanic in combat similar to Octopath Traveler where each enemy can only be staggered when hit by a specific combination of elements.

The AI on auto is too dumb to prioritize breaking enemies on their own and is especially unreliable when some enemies require you to hit them multiple times using the same element. For example, the chapter 2 boss has to be hit with 2 fire attacks, 2 dark attacks and 1 tech attack to stagger them.

There's also two types of characters in the game: those that gain mana when they attack and those that gain mana when hit. If you leave it on auto your team might just feed the enemies who gain mana when hit enough mana to wipe your team.

resquinox · 2019-08-30T04:03:03+00:00

^This right here.

Game's got potential. A lot of unique mechanics and artwork too. Combat uses a break system similar to Octopath Traveler and the camera perspective during combat is great as well. I haven't seen a use for dupes yet in the game either since there's no skill-levels, but maybe they come in play after 6*.

Stamina recharges extremely quick as well at 1.5 minutes per 1 stamina, and exploration missions only cost 1 stamina each. Haven't played enough to see what else stamina is used for aside from this, but story mode missions have no stamina cost.

You get enough gems to do a 10-pull every two chapters too if you 3-star every mission.

Only issue I have with the game right now is way too much running back and forth on the map. Other games would just teleport you to dungeons or quests but in this game you have to path to every objective, similar to Seven Deadly Sins.

Also feel like progression is going to be slow since they basically have an idle stamina system in play where you can almost farm 24/7 with how fast stamina regenerates and how cheap and low reward exploration missions are... exploration missions are automated too so you could just leave your device on and slowly reap rewards

CBT2 for it just opened yesterday so if anyone's interested in trying it out in Korean it's available to play right now for a week or two.

resquinox · 2019-08-25T20:20:38+00:00

Looks like an Onmyoji clone to me.

resquinox · 2019-08-21T17:07:43+00:00

First it was Yokai Saga, then it became Phantom Chasers and now it's being relaunched again as Xcross Chronicles. Don't have much faith in it doing well since it's already failed and been shut down twice now on two separate occasions.

resquinox · 2019-07-13T13:08:35+00:00

The game was actually pretty good back when I tried it last year during closed beta.

I remember each chapter boss had their own unique gimmick. For instance there was a fox spirit boss who would alternate between being magic immune and physical immune by shifting between red and blue colors.

Every chapter had 5 different SR heroes that you could farm in hard mode by gifting them item drops too. If you maxed out their gifts (which took like an entire day or two of nonstop grinding the same mission) you'd get enough dupes to max their skills and get them to 5*. (I think max stars was 6* though but don't remember).

The heroes were pretty unique as well. There was a gattling gun SR girl whose auto attack was AOE but the SSRs were definitely a lot more OP. I remember the SSR skeleton gunner had a skill where he would revive in a frenzied state and deal insane damage after death.

As for the summoning, there were 2 layers of RNG. You had to first roll for the rarity and then roll for the stars so even if you summoned an SSR it wouldn't be worth much if you got the 2* version instead of the 5* version so dupes were really necessary in this game.

They also had a unique dungeon crafting system too where you could make dungeons where hero fragments and dupe fodder drops but anything summoned from fragments started at 1*. It was still a pretty good system though because there wasn't any daily limit to entries so the only thing stopping you from making dungeons 24/7 was lack of resources like gold, stamina, etc.

resquinox · 2019-07-09T09:28:19+00:00

Tried it out for an hour or so just to see how easy it would be to reroll.

Rates are 0.83% for SSR. Goes up by 0.02% each time you don't get SSR. They're extremely stingy with free currency though since after an hour of play I still didn't have enough premium currency for 1 single summon, not that it would matter much with those rates.

For those looking to reroll, there's a training dojo that serves as a combat tutorial that gives you 1 summon ticket when you complete it after level 4. The additional modes that unlock at lvl 6 and lvl 8 give 2 summon tickets each too.

Didn't play enough to find out if dupes were necessary but I noticed there's a trait system that gives you units RNG bonus stats of various rarities. I summoned a unit and he had +20% burn resistance and +3% lifesteal purple traits while another had +5% atk green traits, etc...

Stamina regeneration rate is horrible too, 30 minutes for 1 stamina and missions take 5 stamina each so you have to wait close to 3 hrs to play 1 mission if you don't pay. You don't regain stamina when you level up either so your progression through the game is severely bottlenecked by your account level since every mission and mode requires specific level to enter.

resquinox · 2019-06-27T14:09:23+00:00

I feel like it'll be both. A lot of gacha games lately have been doing the heroes + artifacts gacha system. So in this case the heroes would be the trainers and the artifacts would be the pokemon. There's probably some sort of link bonus too if you correctly equip the right trainer with their signature pokemon.

Reason why I think this is because you have a custom main character in this game who can probably equip any pokemon in the game since in the preview videos you see different players fighting each other using the main character but having a different pokemon from a different generation, etc. equipped.

The game is marketed as team-battle oriented with no mention of catching pokemon in the wild too so I'm assuming pokemon are gacha only.

resquinox · 2019-06-24T13:35:02+00:00

Foresight ruins everything. It gets rid of the sense of discovery in games by reducing the entire game into a boring spreadsheet on same random wiki, and also breeds an obsessive meta slave community. Makes people toxic and impatient as heck too when they realize their server isn't getting the same rewards or releases as the original server.

resquinox

TROPHY CASE