|OT| This is GachaCouncil - Playing with money
- Thread starter Li Kao
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Reverse: 1999 preload up, including PC (it's a ~4GB download from the launcher): Reverse: 1999 | Pre-registration Available Now
Launches in.... ~19 hours I think? Weird time, but hey.
Launches in.... ~19 hours I think? Weird time, but hey.
Arknights: Endfield exists!
Honestly looks really interesting conceptually? Open World Action RPG where you're building structures to traverse and probably gain other benefits, with the trailer also hinting at building up a base.
Honestly looks really interesting conceptually? Open World Action RPG where you're building structures to traverse and probably gain other benefits, with the trailer also hinting at building up a base.
The good news in this is case is that the localization is ass, so it's not even worth bothering and you don't have to find the time.The aesthetic of Reverse 1999 looks great but where am I supposed to find time to play another GAAS game
I didn't expect to play it for all that long, but I sure expected to play it for more than ~15 minutes. Alas.
What a waste.
Ah, ok. My only real experience with gacha games is Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail, so I guess I'm spoiled!
Yeah, those are currently the only ones that try to also be a proper "console/PC"-game experience, I think.
Well I guess Tower of Fantasy tried, but it's not a good game.
I do think Genshin kinda kickstarted a "new wave" of higher budget gachas. Stuff like Arknights Endfield, Wuthering Waves, Girl's Frontline 2, Project Mugen, etc... and we'll probably see the first fruits of that soon-ish.
Mainly from China though, Japan has been left in the dust on that front imo.
I'm seeing a lot of ladies, but no men other than the bear, the furry, and the MC. Hopefully that's just marketing, cause I'm not going to pull for big boobs.New Zenless Zone Zero trailer for the next closed beta announcement.
Shows some new characters and enemies.
I really dig the vibe of this game.
Soon my life will just be Hoyoverse games at this rate
Yeah, seems to be way more lopsided as of now, that's true.
They've shown 4 playable male characters (and only 1 of them looks "human")
+ the main character
vs 12 female characters (that all pretty much look human with at most animal ears, horns or a different skin color)
I'm also hoping it will end up more balanced but I'm not so sure about that. But we'll have to see.
Thanks for posting these!Yeah, seems to be way more lopsided as of now, that's true.
They've shown 4 playable male characters (and only 1 of them looks "human")
+ the main character
vs 12 female characters (that all pretty much look human with at most animal ears, horns or a different skin color)
I'm also hoping it will end up more balanced but I'm not so sure about that. But we'll have to see.
Yeah, none of those would be something I would want to play as.
So the new ZZZ beta is up and huh... I've played it what, a tear and a half, two years ago?
And I had my gripes with it, mostly in the simplistic combat and the rogue lite element being terrible.
... yeah they didn't improve any of that. Arguably, it feels worse now with less broken characters to test with and more of the actual progression, combat already felt dull and slow against bigger enemies, and now it's not even fun to play most of it.
Since the rogue lite elements in HSR in Simulated Universe were pretty bad and turned it into a chore almost immediately, and Misty Dungeon in Genshin was turned into a trash heap, I wasn't too confident, and it seems to follow the mold in ZZZ... but hey, they added shit minigames in the hub, so that fixes everything I guess?
But at least HSR was 99% waiting around for the game to complete itself (so much fun I dropped it early, came back and was shocked at the poor quality of the patches and it doesn't seem to get any better...), that won't be possible in ZZZ, so I can't imagine how grindy and repetitive the game could be...
And I had my gripes with it, mostly in the simplistic combat and the rogue lite element being terrible.
... yeah they didn't improve any of that. Arguably, it feels worse now with less broken characters to test with and more of the actual progression, combat already felt dull and slow against bigger enemies, and now it's not even fun to play most of it.
Since the rogue lite elements in HSR in Simulated Universe were pretty bad and turned it into a chore almost immediately, and Misty Dungeon in Genshin was turned into a trash heap, I wasn't too confident, and it seems to follow the mold in ZZZ... but hey, they added shit minigames in the hub, so that fixes everything I guess?
But at least HSR was 99% waiting around for the game to complete itself (so much fun I dropped it early, came back and was shocked at the poor quality of the patches and it doesn't seem to get any better...), that won't be possible in ZZZ, so I can't imagine how grindy and repetitive the game could be...
You got into the new beta? I did not
From what I've been seeing and reading (not too much though, cause I don't wanna spoil everything since I'll try it anyway) I think I'm going to like it, lol.
I really like the TV stuff, conceptually. I jumped into KyoStinV streams randomly and saw a bunch of different levels with their own gimmicks and puzzles.
When they first announced the game I thought every level was supposed to be a roguelike or something (was thinking TV mode = roguelike) but they seem to be just properly designed levels and the roguelike stuff is just an extra mode (I haven't watched anything from that though).
I've heard the ratio between TV and combat is pretty lopsided at least early on and navigation could be better, so I hope they look at that, but in general I can see potential for a lot of variety and also quantity - the abstract nature of it should make content production easier than having to fully model everything.
Combat looks stylish and like it would feel fun, but since I haven't played it I have no real opinion on it. I've heard both good and bad about it.
From what I've been seeing and reading (not too much though, cause I don't wanna spoil everything since I'll try it anyway) I think I'm going to like it, lol.
I really like the TV stuff, conceptually. I jumped into KyoStinV streams randomly and saw a bunch of different levels with their own gimmicks and puzzles.
When they first announced the game I thought every level was supposed to be a roguelike or something (was thinking TV mode = roguelike) but they seem to be just properly designed levels and the roguelike stuff is just an extra mode (I haven't watched anything from that though).
I've heard the ratio between TV and combat is pretty lopsided at least early on and navigation could be better, so I hope they look at that, but in general I can see potential for a lot of variety and also quantity - the abstract nature of it should make content production easier than having to fully model everything.
Combat looks stylish and like it would feel fun, but since I haven't played it I have no real opinion on it. I've heard both good and bad about it.
Girl's Frontline 2 opening just released and the CN server is launching tomorrow. Those reload animations near the end chef's kiss. See how G36 (the maid girl) reload the rifle.
Also don't believe in the light-hearted tone. Those developers at Mica know how to fuck with people emotions.
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There's a new Zenless Zone Zero interview with the producer from Famitsu (it's in Japanese). Reiterates a bunch of stuff that was already known, but also some new and it's an interesting read.
Trying to summarize it (with DeepL) - there's still more at the source though:
Trying to summarize it (with DeepL) - there's still more at the source though:
- It's a young team, with the core members (about 10) all being new to leading a game production. Team is currently over 300 people big and still expanding
- New setting not at all related to Honkai or Genshin
- Setting has a "post-apocalyptic" theme, but the core story is not very grim. It reads like they want to portray a sort of slice-of-life vibe of "ordinary" people living in this post-apocalyptic Urban Fantasy world
- The story is going to be focused on the city of new Eridu at the moment. They currently plan to gradually expand it to the outskirts. (It reads like it could eventually expand even beyond that if they want to in the future though).
- There are going to be more mini-games added to the arcade, it's intended as a break from fighting and questing and also they want to share the arcade culture with a younger audience no longer familiar with it
- CBT2 added sub-requests for specific playable characters, they intend to do more like that so that people can learn more about the playable characters
- There are currently humans, intelligent animals, people with animal characteristics and robots in the game, and there will be more species. The team is trying to think of "what do the players not have seen yet" when coming up with characters
- Ben and Koleda currently have a special interaction when fighting together, because the team thought it would make sense. They are planning to add more like this where appropriate
- They want to give every character a unique fighting style and weapon which turned out to be a lot of work and it's also hard to find reference material
- In the design of the combat, they emphasize controls that provide "strong feedback" to the player. The stagger system, character switch QTE and new support action system (parries, etc) are designed around that philosophy.
- He mentions multiple times that they want the game to be accessible even for people unfamiliar with action games and streamlined the controls and systems multiple times as they found that when looking at the market, many people weren't able to enjoy traditional "hard" action games due to the controls being too difficult. (Basically it will be flashy and feel good to play, but not be super complex, at least in terms of input complexity).
- After CBT1 they've reorganized the system. They categorized the levels into 3 different types (story, exploration, puzzles) and de-emphasised the roguelike elements in these regular missions. They moved these to the newly created Hollow Zero mode instead.
- They are still experimenting with that mode and the stages
- It might eventually be possible for players to create their own stages in the future, once they feel the system has sufficiently matured
- No plans for auto-combat and skips at the moment
- They have plans for implementing end-game content, but no timeline yet
- The release date will depend on the beta feedback they've gotten.
This might just be me having played too many anime games recently (and by that I mean 2 games - Star Rail and Genshin) but those outfits don't look egregiously NSFW to me anymore. I mean sure, technically, you'd get in trouble if you got caught looking at that at work but... I dunno, maybe I've seen too much fan art and uh... trust me, the well for NSFW goes very deep.
Anyway, I tried out Atelier Resleriana when it released a few days ago. Mostly because I like Atelier games. I know it's not fair to compare budgets for Koei Tecmo and Mihoyo but god damn their games could be from different planets in terms of production values. In fact, Resleriana is nothing but menus. There's no notable gameplay to speak of. I'm told that's actually how gacha games are, especially from Japan, and the ones I've been playing are the exceptions. Well, I've not gotten around to playing Ryza 3 but I've had it installed since last year and seeing this game installed next to it, I just ask myself why I shouldn't play the real game instead. But if you're a fan of Atelier, I suppose it's worth checking. One interesting thing is that they've built in rerolling at the start into the game. Kind of the opposite of what other devs do which is to make you play for a while to discourage you to reroll for good starters. Here, they make you play the tutorial, then you do your first pulls and if you don't get the characters you want, you can just delete your data, restart and skip the tutorial and get right back to pulling.
I found out a friend of mine (same one who has so many opinions about how I should play Genshin) actually plays something like 5-6 gacha games. He has enthusiastically recommended that I try some of them out because they're free. I'm barely able to keep up with the 2 I'm playing right now so I'm not super inclined to try anything new but I figured I'd ask here anyway. His first recommendation is Nikke which is not actually available in our country. He has an android phone so he just downloads APKs but I have an iphone so I can't do that. I did download the PC client through a VPN but I have to pretend to be in Europe just to sign in. Is it worth it? Another game he recommended is Punishing Grey Raven which looks nice in trailers I guess. Then he said I should try Honkai 3rd when it gets it's reboot at the end of this month. Again, realistically, I don't think I can keep up with more of these games. At this point I'm no longer confident I can even catch up with Genshin before Natlan drops. Also I'd like to play other games as well. So I'm not really feeling like getting into new gachas but I figured I'd ask for opinions here anyway.
Anyway, I tried out Atelier Resleriana when it released a few days ago. Mostly because I like Atelier games. I know it's not fair to compare budgets for Koei Tecmo and Mihoyo but god damn their games could be from different planets in terms of production values. In fact, Resleriana is nothing but menus. There's no notable gameplay to speak of. I'm told that's actually how gacha games are, especially from Japan, and the ones I've been playing are the exceptions. Well, I've not gotten around to playing Ryza 3 but I've had it installed since last year and seeing this game installed next to it, I just ask myself why I shouldn't play the real game instead. But if you're a fan of Atelier, I suppose it's worth checking. One interesting thing is that they've built in rerolling at the start into the game. Kind of the opposite of what other devs do which is to make you play for a while to discourage you to reroll for good starters. Here, they make you play the tutorial, then you do your first pulls and if you don't get the characters you want, you can just delete your data, restart and skip the tutorial and get right back to pulling.
I found out a friend of mine (same one who has so many opinions about how I should play Genshin) actually plays something like 5-6 gacha games. He has enthusiastically recommended that I try some of them out because they're free. I'm barely able to keep up with the 2 I'm playing right now so I'm not super inclined to try anything new but I figured I'd ask here anyway. His first recommendation is Nikke which is not actually available in our country. He has an android phone so he just downloads APKs but I have an iphone so I can't do that. I did download the PC client through a VPN but I have to pretend to be in Europe just to sign in. Is it worth it? Another game he recommended is Punishing Grey Raven which looks nice in trailers I guess. Then he said I should try Honkai 3rd when it gets it's reboot at the end of this month. Again, realistically, I don't think I can keep up with more of these games. At this point I'm no longer confident I can even catch up with Genshin before Natlan drops. Also I'd like to play other games as well. So I'm not really feeling like getting into new gachas but I figured I'd ask for opinions here anyway.
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As always, it depends on what you're looking for. Nikke is a glorified idle game. Did not like it one bit, even the PC client is just slow and unresponsive, it does not feel great, and it's more than light on gameplay.
PGR has great gameplay, but it demands way too much time weekly. Especially when you start to fight bosses in multiple modes, and you have to do 40, 50 times the same one in a week... it's rare but it happens, an the difficultly is not Hoyoverse faceroll.
Their next game, Wuthering Waves will be a Genshin like, it's in beta right now.
Honkai 3rd I'm waiting for the full reboot, it seems interesting but nobody can give a full opinion for now... the base game as it is today is... okay. It's like PGR but not as good.
PGR has great gameplay, but it demands way too much time weekly. Especially when you start to fight bosses in multiple modes, and you have to do 40, 50 times the same one in a week... it's rare but it happens, an the difficultly is not Hoyoverse faceroll.
Their next game, Wuthering Waves will be a Genshin like, it's in beta right now.
Honkai 3rd I'm waiting for the full reboot, it seems interesting but nobody can give a full opinion for now... the base game as it is today is... okay. It's like PGR but not as good.
Pretty much, yeah. There are some exceptions, like Another Eden being more or less like an old-school 2D JRPG and I wouldn't be surprised if there are a couple more like that, but most gachas I'd say are primarily menu/stage based (and yeah, those typically don't do much for me either).
Hoyoverse basically came in and flipped the market on its head by making big budget gachas with actual traversable worlds that blur the line between mobile/console/PC.
The "next generation" of gacha games is following suit, but really only from China with stuff like Wuthering Waves, Arknights Endfield, etc. Japan is lagging massively behind.
As for the games you asked about:
As Line said, Nikke is basically a glorified idle game. I played it a bit on launch but the client didn't feel great and it somehow had too much busywork for me despite there not being much gameplay. The story seemed promising, and people say it's been really good, but can't comment on that. Music is great. It's also really, really horny.
Punishing Gray Raven had very fun combat but it got way too repetitive for me. Dunno if it's different now, but their first event had a bunch of stages with story and after you completed that you grind the same stage over and over again multiple times for the entire duration of the event, because it's just the most efficient use of Stamina. Bleh. And yeah, the various weekly modes. Story wasn't anything to write home about up until where I played it. Great music though.
Honkai Impact 3rd is... interesting in that it feels like multiple different games duct-taped together. It very much starts out with that typical stage- and menu-based "classic" mobile format, but you can see how Hoyo has already been trying to move it towards something closer to Genshin/Star Rail over the years, with some story chapters later down the line getting fully realized traversable areas with side quests and puzzles and all that. And Part 2 is moving even further into that direction.
Storywise it's... uneven? Again you can really see the evolution where it starts out fairly lightweight and unremarkable in terms of story, but they eventually start taking it a lot more seriously. Even then, not everything is good and it has a tendency to ramble about it's pseudo-science concepts, but the highs are really high.
One nice thing about it is that you can completely ignore the gacha and basically treat it as a regular action-RPG, since after the first few "tutorial" chapters, they very quickly only let you play as predefined characters for the story, with some chapters having their own in-chapter progression systems for whatever characters you play as at the time.
Your own characters are really only relevent for all the various weekly sidemodes, from which you get most of your currency income. But since you don't need characters to play the story, you can just ignore that if you're just in for that and don't care that you won't be getting new characters much.
Even so, it's a massive time committment at this point. I have no concrete numbers, but just playing through all the current story stuff is easily 100-200+ hours, probably even 200 at minimum.
I'm not entirely sure yet how things are gonna work with Part 2. You definitely don't need to play through all of Part 1 to start it (maybe some? I don't know), but I know everyone gets one of the new characters at max level fully geared for free, so I have a no idea how progression is going to look like for a new player. I also don't know how the weekly modes and all that will work. I think it's out in China already and global will get it on the 29th, but I'm not that tuned in on all the ongoings with that game, since I don't play it daily like Genshin or Star Rail.
It's pretty rough. It's really "old school mobile", with a lot of bite size missions and a lot of pressure to spend money.
More modern games like those made by Hoyoverse are just regular open world RPG or JRPG with just one of the icons in the menu being the shop. I assume we'll see more of those in the future, since it's just taking any other "classic" game, making it F2P and adding MTX for characters and such... much more approchable, and then they get you.
Yeah, from what I've seen/heard it's basically a gacha with design from 10 years ago.
Modern ones tend to be less time-consuming and then you have the Hoyoverse games that are for the most part just regular RPGs that happen to run on a phone, with more upcoming games also moving in that direction.
The second (and most likely final) Wuthering Waves beta started yesterday and I watched a bit of the beginning.
I have mixed feelings about it.
The beginning of the story really is not good. I dunno if it picks up later or anything, but as a first impression it's just bad. I watched the very beginning of Genshin as a comparison and was really surprised just how much better that works in comparison, and the Genshin intro really is not high literature (it's very smartly structured though)
Graphically it looks good. Character designs aren't really grabbing me all that much though.
Combat looks fun, but can't really judge it's feel and depth from just watching the early game.
The Echo system seems really cool tho, conceptually. "Capturing" monsters and equipping them to use a skill that summons them or transforms you into them is rad.
Exploration looked... fine? Nothing that particularly stood out to me, but nothing that seemed offensively bad either. But I really only saw a bit of very early stuff. I saw people that actually played it calling it pretty lackluster/sparse/empty, which is also a bit worrisome.
It also still needs a lot of polishing. There's wrong translations, grammar issues, text not fitting into the box and being cut off and stuff like that fairly frequently. I know it's a beta, but considering they don't have that much longer, I fear this is going to come in very hot.
I have mixed feelings about it.
The beginning of the story really is not good. I dunno if it picks up later or anything, but as a first impression it's just bad. I watched the very beginning of Genshin as a comparison and was really surprised just how much better that works in comparison, and the Genshin intro really is not high literature (it's very smartly structured though)
Graphically it looks good. Character designs aren't really grabbing me all that much though.
Combat looks fun, but can't really judge it's feel and depth from just watching the early game.
The Echo system seems really cool tho, conceptually. "Capturing" monsters and equipping them to use a skill that summons them or transforms you into them is rad.
Exploration looked... fine? Nothing that particularly stood out to me, but nothing that seemed offensively bad either. But I really only saw a bit of very early stuff. I saw people that actually played it calling it pretty lackluster/sparse/empty, which is also a bit worrisome.
It also still needs a lot of polishing. There's wrong translations, grammar issues, text not fitting into the box and being cut off and stuff like that fairly frequently. I know it's a beta, but considering they don't have that much longer, I fear this is going to come in very hot.
Mixed bag for me too.
The story... is there, more randomly amnesiac character that is actually super important, and a lot of terms that are not explained to you so easily... it's pretty common nowadays I guess, but I don't like that much.
More concerned about the characterization, especially with how different it is with the original story they had, it feels a bit duct taped together, well see in the complete game.
The world looks nice, but the image quality is pretty crap, I don't know what they did post processing and image reconstruction, but something is very wrong, very obvious when you compare the crisp UI (that is just Genshin - I guess they also scrapped their original one all in holograms...) to the blurry rest.... and the chromatic aberration is also nasty.
It's kinda empty though, and a bit disparate. They clearly fucked up the size of the models, doors being like 5m tall is telling, they did not have a proper pipeline for the game world and the characters, that might explain why a lot of it feels a bit disjointed and even the nice animations are a bit strange when you climb on things.
The combat is very PGR... but I'll wait to see how it goes, as balance is not complete obviously, so basic mobs are punching bags that get stunlocked, bosses a bit longer... and the echo system is cool in concept (there's even shiny versions of mobs), but in practice, it's artifact RNG on steroids.
And if the game kept the difficulty and grindyness of PGR, this system alone is a deal breaker - the amount of grind and RNG involved just to be able to do anything will be ghastly, let alone if they push for a challenging endgame.
Again, impossible to know how it will be in the end, but there are potential design decisions that will obliterate any hope it has to be a popular casual game as it is right now.
The story... is there, more randomly amnesiac character that is actually super important, and a lot of terms that are not explained to you so easily... it's pretty common nowadays I guess, but I don't like that much.
More concerned about the characterization, especially with how different it is with the original story they had, it feels a bit duct taped together, well see in the complete game.
The world looks nice, but the image quality is pretty crap, I don't know what they did post processing and image reconstruction, but something is very wrong, very obvious when you compare the crisp UI (that is just Genshin - I guess they also scrapped their original one all in holograms...) to the blurry rest.... and the chromatic aberration is also nasty.
It's kinda empty though, and a bit disparate. They clearly fucked up the size of the models, doors being like 5m tall is telling, they did not have a proper pipeline for the game world and the characters, that might explain why a lot of it feels a bit disjointed and even the nice animations are a bit strange when you climb on things.
The combat is very PGR... but I'll wait to see how it goes, as balance is not complete obviously, so basic mobs are punching bags that get stunlocked, bosses a bit longer... and the echo system is cool in concept (there's even shiny versions of mobs), but in practice, it's artifact RNG on steroids.
And if the game kept the difficulty and grindyness of PGR, this system alone is a deal breaker - the amount of grind and RNG involved just to be able to do anything will be ghastly, let alone if they push for a challenging endgame.
Again, impossible to know how it will be in the end, but there are potential design decisions that will obliterate any hope it has to be a popular casual game as it is right now.
I can't unsee the weird model sizes anymore after it's been pointed out
(pic from a reddit video)
I worry that the game is going to come in very very hot.
Realistically they have a couple months at most. July/early August is gonna be their absolute latest date unless they want to go toe to toe with Genshin 5.0, which sounds like suicide.
Localization needs work, they seemingly haven't finished recording the english voices, there are basics that need polish from what I've seen (like that model size weirdness - it's not the biggest deal, but it does cheapen the impression a bit, and if you have many such small things... Also yeah, makes me worried about their post-launch content pipeline).
I don't have an opinion on grindyness/challenge/combat depth and stuff like that. I see where they could go wrong (or at least in a direction I personally wouldn't like), but way too early to tell.
(pic from a reddit video)
I worry that the game is going to come in very very hot.
Realistically they have a couple months at most. July/early August is gonna be their absolute latest date unless they want to go toe to toe with Genshin 5.0, which sounds like suicide.
Localization needs work, they seemingly haven't finished recording the english voices, there are basics that need polish from what I've seen (like that model size weirdness - it's not the biggest deal, but it does cheapen the impression a bit, and if you have many such small things... Also yeah, makes me worried about their post-launch content pipeline).
I don't have an opinion on grindyness/challenge/combat depth and stuff like that. I see where they could go wrong (or at least in a direction I personally wouldn't like), but way too early to tell.
That tiny model is funny but it could be a Nahida type situation where it is supposed to be a halfling.
Nah, that's a regular-sized character
Anyway, I watched some more materials and it really does look fun at its core.
Really will come down to how polished it will be on launch, and after that it will come to post-launch content and daily/weekly/farming time requirements. At least for me.
I watched some footage of Wuthering Waves and it seems fine to me. I like the more muted and realistic art design as compared to Genshin. One thing I would say is that their UI just feels unpolished and unappealing... like maybe they could work on it a bit more to make it look more pleasant. The biggest issue with the game though is that it's so similar to Genshin and how are you supposed to find time to play another huge game like that? Some content creators are saying that this game will 'fix' one of the biggest issues of Genshin which is that it's not hard enough... meaning WW will be harder and thus more time consuming and man, you get to a certain age and that is not at all a selling point for a game...
Finding the right balance is going to be key, but tricky.
They are obviously trying to position themselves as "Genshin for people who want more combat-focus/-content". But I assume they also know the casual audience is just much larger, so they'll want to be welcoming to them as well.
I think trying to please both sides is always harder then focusing on one since:
- if you make lots of very hard content, casuals might not engage with that so effectively you've given them no content or they do and burn out faster if it's too frequent and "required" (i.e daily farming, premium currency sources).
- if you make lots of very easy content, everyone can engage with it, but hard-cores might get bored and it's not the content they want - and this is also what Genshin already does, so you'd be clashing head-on which also does not seem too smart
- even if there's enough content for both sides, the ratio could still drive people away. Let's say it's an even 50/50 split and I can a situation where some casuals go "this is fun, but I don't have access to half the game, why should I not just look for a game that focuses more on content that I like". Same in the other direction, but probably not as strong a pull since the options there a fewer.
- time commitment is a similar situation where one audience wants something without daily grind and another part of the audience wants a game they can play 24/7, the Echo system seems to be trying to make a compromise here, which leads me to
I looked a bit more into how the system works currently and I'm seeing potential issues, yeah.
- You can farm main stats "infinitely" since they drop from monsters. I say infinitely in quotes, because you're limited by daily monster respawn unless you jump worlds via co-op. Farming moster drops in Genshin is not a particularly riveting experience, so this could become extremely annoying after the initial "gotta catch em all" hype wears off.
- Levelling echos and substats are gated by Stamina anyway, and there are 2 different sinks: EXP and substat unlockers. Since you can farm echos via the overworld, they do not give you EXP, you need specific EXP materials that you get via Stamina. Only once you've upgraded an Echo to +5, will it give Exp when uses as fodder to level another echo (~75% I think).
- Levelling echos does NOT unlock substats, only unlock substat slots. You need another Stamina-gated material to unlock substats. (You only unlock them once, they do not upgrade when you level the echo higher).
- Substats can of course all roll into trash, but if you fodder the echo with unlocked substats, the target echo does not unlock its substats, you need to unlock them via that Stamina-gated material again
- I think there is some domain where you can pick an Echo to farm for Stamina instead of overworld-grind and you get some EXP and Substat unlockers as well, but currently it does not seem cost-efficient at all
- There's a daily drop boost when farming Elite/Boss Echos where you're guaranteed to get an Echo drop 5 times a day, could also burn people out if those fights are too hard
I guess they can tweak numbers and as you say it will depend on "how necessary is having good Echos?", but yeah. I do think they have their work cut out for them.
And yeah, I still do want to give it a try and I do believe it will be fun, but I think there's a good chance it will be fun initially, but not over the long run, at least for me.
But I admit I'm a bit biased, since I'm basically the Genshin target audience that wants something chill and easy in my live-service games with little time commitment, but still having access to all or almost all the game offers.
Also yeah I guess this too. I looked through a character list here and there's no character that immediately jumps out as "omg they look so good I need them" based on design alone. None of the male character designs are doing it for me and from the female ones I guess I like Baizhi and Danjin the most, though admittedly the weird looking "pet" or whatever it is in Baizhi's art is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
I can't actually quite put my finger on why that is though. I think it might be partially the color schemes where many characters having predominantly black and white makes them look kinda samey to begin with and also having so much black and white makes the ones that are colorful (i.e. the pink and blonde haired girls) stick out too much and clash with the others? Also I guess maybe something about the faces and/or hairstyles?
A lot of them also seem very familiar.
Jiyan is basically DHIL, especially when you see his combat animations. Lingyang looks so much like the early leaked concept art for Gaming that it cannot be a coincidence. Verina gives me huge Nahida vibes.
In other news Honkai Impact 3rd's Part 2 starts next week
I continue to be extremely curious about how well Part 2 will start off, how noticeable the changes will be and how it's going to be received overall.
They also have their Special Program tomorrow and just the thumbnail makes it look like it will be a ride, lol
I have never watched any of these for this game, so maybe I'll check it out.
I continue to be extremely curious about how well Part 2 will start off, how noticeable the changes will be and how it's going to be received overall.
They also have their Special Program tomorrow and just the thumbnail makes it look like it will be a ride, lol
I have never watched any of these for this game, so maybe I'll check it out.
I tried Honkai 3rd Part 2 yesterday.
First impressions are pretty positive!
Firstly, the game finally has proper Mouse support for gameplay.
Secondly, I've played the first new main story act and the new characters make a good first impression and the story setup so far has been intriguing. One of the locations you get to also has a really fucking cool premise on a conceptual level and has me extremely fascinated: A city that runs on equivalent exchange powered by fear. People trade fear to create what they wish for out of nothing. Just really interesting stuff.
The new combat changes seem fun so far, though I probably haven't understood all the details yet. The new areas are cool.
I also appreciate that they still have you use a team of trial characters and have completely gacha-independent progression for the new chapter. Which means I can still play the game without engaging in all of the weekly modes that require me to actually build a character and what have you if I want to.
First impressions are pretty positive!
Firstly, the game finally has proper Mouse support for gameplay.
Secondly, I've played the first new main story act and the new characters make a good first impression and the story setup so far has been intriguing. One of the locations you get to also has a really fucking cool premise on a conceptual level and has me extremely fascinated: A city that runs on equivalent exchange powered by fear. People trade fear to create what they wish for out of nothing. Just really interesting stuff.
The new combat changes seem fun so far, though I probably haven't understood all the details yet. The new areas are cool.
I also appreciate that they still have you use a team of trial characters and have completely gacha-independent progression for the new chapter. Which means I can still play the game without engaging in all of the weekly modes that require me to actually build a character and what have you if I want to.
So it looks like a 3rd Zenless Zone Zero beta could be announced soon.
If we assume "soon" means it would start sometime late this month or beginning of April -> It then would last most likely for about a month -> 1-2 months until release. Based on precedence from Star Rail and Genshin timelines.
So, potential release could roughly be sometime in June or July. Which is a good window that is right between Genshin and Star Rail stuff.
There's also a potential Wuthering Wave release date flying around that got exposed via the EGS: May 30th. If true, that would also be a good date, though I worry the game is gonna come in hot and flounder. The beta apparently lacks polish, the localization is clearly not done, the echo system has a high chance of burning out people fast after the honeymoon period wears out and while the combat looks fun and flashy, I genuinely do not see much depth for teambuilding there right now (which makes me wonder how they are going to sell new characters outside of looks/animations/story - just bigger numbers, so powercreep central?).
And even assuming they can iron everything out in time, will they have enough post-launch content ready?
I'm genuinely curious about its reception.
If we assume "soon" means it would start sometime late this month or beginning of April -> It then would last most likely for about a month -> 1-2 months until release. Based on precedence from Star Rail and Genshin timelines.
So, potential release could roughly be sometime in June or July. Which is a good window that is right between Genshin and Star Rail stuff.
There's also a potential Wuthering Wave release date flying around that got exposed via the EGS: May 30th. If true, that would also be a good date, though I worry the game is gonna come in hot and flounder. The beta apparently lacks polish, the localization is clearly not done, the echo system has a high chance of burning out people fast after the honeymoon period wears out and while the combat looks fun and flashy, I genuinely do not see much depth for teambuilding there right now (which makes me wonder how they are going to sell new characters outside of looks/animations/story - just bigger numbers, so powercreep central?).
And even assuming they can iron everything out in time, will they have enough post-launch content ready?
I'm genuinely curious about its reception.
Unlikely at this point. Maybe if the ZZZ beta had started sooner after the announcement, but the countdown still has 12 days left (assuming it will coincide with the start date). I'm thinking more June or early July now.
Man, I don't want to come across as someone who is just dumping on Wuthering Waves every time I post, but this is just blowing my mind.
The closer we're getting to release the more I think this is just gonna be a hot mess at launch. This game is going fast from "maybe this is gonna be the first serious Genshin-competitor" to "I guess it's gonna be better than Tower of Fantasy" for me.
Only expanding/trying to set up a proper localization pipeline 2 months before release and only because overworked employees managed to convince their higher-ups is just insane. I feel bad for the localization team.
At the very least I would be surprised if this hits "mainstream" on the global side given all of that. Now to see how it will be received in China and whether this is indicative of how other parts of this project are managed as well, because if so, good luck.
I can't help but feel that they just tried to run after Mihoyo without much thought or vision but found themselves way out of their depth, but now it's way too late and they have to release something because they are most definitely bleeding money and have investors breathing down their neck.
This will have roughly been in development for the same amount of time as Genshin (they said development started in 2021, and it's a 2024 release, Genshin development started in 2017 and release was in 2020), but imo the actual meaningful development time is going to be much less for Wuthering Waves given the amount of drastic changes they've been doing.
Just to compare, they've drastically changed combat core mechanics, aesthetics (both world and characters) and even story between first showcases (1 year ago) to now. Meanwhile when Genshin released its first closed beta also about a year before release, they've had all of these fundamentals already locked down and it's just been mostly refinements and new things instead of redoing existing things over and over again.
I'm even more curious now how their post-launch roadmap is going to look like. I wish them the best, but this is giving off big "development hell" vibes now.
The closer we're getting to release the more I think this is just gonna be a hot mess at launch. This game is going fast from "maybe this is gonna be the first serious Genshin-competitor" to "I guess it's gonna be better than Tower of Fantasy" for me.
Only expanding/trying to set up a proper localization pipeline 2 months before release and only because overworked employees managed to convince their higher-ups is just insane. I feel bad for the localization team.
At the very least I would be surprised if this hits "mainstream" on the global side given all of that. Now to see how it will be received in China and whether this is indicative of how other parts of this project are managed as well, because if so, good luck.
I can't help but feel that they just tried to run after Mihoyo without much thought or vision but found themselves way out of their depth, but now it's way too late and they have to release something because they are most definitely bleeding money and have investors breathing down their neck.
This will have roughly been in development for the same amount of time as Genshin (they said development started in 2021, and it's a 2024 release, Genshin development started in 2017 and release was in 2020), but imo the actual meaningful development time is going to be much less for Wuthering Waves given the amount of drastic changes they've been doing.
Just to compare, they've drastically changed combat core mechanics, aesthetics (both world and characters) and even story between first showcases (1 year ago) to now. Meanwhile when Genshin released its first closed beta also about a year before release, they've had all of these fundamentals already locked down and it's just been mostly refinements and new things instead of redoing existing things over and over again.
I'm even more curious now how their post-launch roadmap is going to look like. I wish them the best, but this is giving off big "development hell" vibes now.
Well Genshin was a miracle of software development. So many stars aligned for that game to come out the way it did. It would be madness to try and replicate that success.
I think maybe WW should have started with a China only release to see if it picks up and makes money and then they could spend another few months polishing up the English and other language versions if they were having quality issues. People will wait a while for a game to launch in their region but if you start seeing typos and stuff in the tutorial of a game there's a high chance you drop it and never go back.
I think maybe WW should have started with a China only release to see if it picks up and makes money and then they could spend another few months polishing up the English and other language versions if they were having quality issues. People will wait a while for a game to launch in their region but if you start seeing typos and stuff in the tutorial of a game there's a high chance you drop it and never go back.
