Ah, yeah it might be kind of rough on an SP. You could play it normally though tbh. The menus are flipped but once you’re in the game there’s not much difference playing it flipped on its side
that’s pretty much it. if you don’t like the first, you probably won’t like the second. if you DO like the first, you might prefer the second one. personally i bounced off of both of them around 10-15 hours in, for similar reasons, but I did find the 2nd game a little more exciting.
Sure, but, technically, without Gacha games I would t have discovered my ex wife sexting another dude. Because she was attempting to hide the money she spent in credit cards I didn’t have access to, then wanted me to pay.
Which led me to digging around, discovering the unaltered statement, then she got drunk and the phone was open in her hand playing some stupid virtual bingo and a snap popped up and wouldnt you know it
While I definitely have a lot of issues with how fast people said “Gacha and loot boxes are okay if it is Genshin Impact”, I have the same general reservations I did back when it was about loot boxes in Overwatch or nu-Battlefront 2.
Yes, it is real shitty and a great way to pad out a game into a grind. And the goal is obviously to encourage RMTs to bypass it.
But also? It is like people for got ARPGs and MMOs and the like. The common refrain among older “gamer” Millennials is something like “I almost flunked out of school because of WoW/Everquest” and the like. And a lot of us have stories about staying up all night doing Bhaal runs to get a specific drop in Diablo 2 and so forth.
And, at the end of the day, it is the same thing. It is a way to artificially increase engagement with the option to RMT your way out of it. Studios have found ways to pull all those RMTs into the game itself (so that they get a cut on every legendary sword sold) but it is still the same skinner boxes.
Not to mention games like Balatro or Vampire Survivors that take massive inspiration from casino and slot machine design and mechanics. Yes, they don’t have additional purchases (DLC aside) but there is something to be said when EVERYONE owns a ten dollar game because everyone who touches it can’t stop gushing about the flashing lights and bells.
And, much like with loot boxes, I am really hesitant for any “We passed some random ass legislature. Mission Accomplished™”. When the underlying skinner box concept is still the basis of so many games.
Thanks for calling them out for being Skinner Boxes (also known as an Operant Conditioning Chamber). When my friends were having addiction issues with WoW 20 years ago, I called it out as being addictive because it was a glorified skinner box. Nothing has changed, it’s just become more exploitative.
For anyone unfamiliar, it’s a science experiment. There’s two rats in two boxes. One rat has a lever that, when pressed, drops food to the rat. The rat only presses the lever when it is hungry. In the other box, the rat has a lever that randomly outputs food, but never consistently. A lot of the time, it produces nothing. The rat in that box spends all day long pressing the lever. Since it has no idea when the food will come, it panics and never stops trying to get more food, unsure if it will starve if it does not.
This is Diablo/World of Warcraft and the “Epic Loot” problem. People are clicking on the games endlessly looking for that top tier loot drop. It’s the same thing, because the results are inconsistent, people get addicted to the grind of trying to find the “best” item.
Also, thanks for pointing out that it doesn’t matter what game it is it’s still not okay. It wasn’t okay when it was WoW, it’s not okay when it’s Genshin Impact.
While I understand and agree with your premise to a point, aren’t you advocating for the removal of all randomness in videogames? As long as random factors are tied to outcomes, games will always be playing off that desire that the Skinner Box highlights. I’d argue that the entire modern rogue-lite genre is predicated on the fact that sometimes you will get “better” powerups, upgrades, etc., which leads to better outcomes. Auto-chess games are similiar, where hitting good random rolls leads to high powered teams and easy wins.
Mastery of both these genres requires both a wide birth of knowledge, and flexibility as you make due with what you are offerred, rather than simply always having the best things at all times. These are skills that are fun to have tested and build master in, and I don’t really think we should eliminate that from games. I agree that the worst offenders are simply trying to feed off human addiction rather than build are emergant gameplay situations, but any rule that targets the addict chasers is likely to catch other games with randomization in the crossfire.
I understand I didn’t make it clear in this comment and I apologize for that, elsewhere in the thread I made clear that I don’t want games like WoW/Diablo/Borderlands/Balatro to get banned, but I do think it’s important to recognize how their systems work and can impact people with addiction/gambling issues. I think we haven’t ever actually had a conversation about that aspect of these games, and I think it may be an important one to have, even if it only deeply affects a small sliver of society. Out of 9 billion people, a sliver is still often millions.
Also, and I do apologize, (especially if it was just a typo) but it is actually “wide berth” not “wide birth.” Otherwise, I agree with your point. However, I really did have friends who struggled with WoW in functionally the same way I have had other friends struggle with drugs and alcohol. They were in the minority, but they existed. I think it’s important to find ways to help those people deal with those issues without impacting the large number of people whom it does not. As I said elsewhere, I personally don’t have good ideas how to achieve that, I just know the conversation should happen. I would hope more clever and thoughtful people than I could have good ideas.
While there certainly are problems with other games, at least every game you mentioned is fully transparent about the price tag. Balatro doesn’t exploit whales by concealing how much it'll cost to get anything.
They're different issues. The fact that people can and do financially ruin themselves over gacha is a lot more serious, and trying to conflate that with something like Balatro ultimately muddies the message.
I think gacha is a predatory business model that should be illegal, and yes that includes Genshin. But no it does not include Balatro, because Balatro isn't gacha.
Its the same idea. It is taking concepts that are known to prey on those with addictive tendencies and turning that into a game.
That is why I referenced games like Diablo and WoW. They were more about making people spend time but… time is money.
And THAT is the problem. Knowingly taking advantage of the kind of stuff that rubs dopamine emitters real nice. Because a lot of us can dip in and out of a gacha and not get ruined. And others will fail out of college because they NEED that drop
Money is not everything. That is why I keep pointing out the time argument (and you keep ignoring it…). Gaming cafes tend to take advantage along those lines but also just look up horror stories like that couple that was so engrossed with WoW (?) they let their baby die.
At the end of the day: Warning labels and acknowledgement of what we are exposing ourselves to goes a long way. Rather than just saying “I like X so X can’t be bad” until it gets to the point that people insist it needs to be illegal because they cannot help themselves.
…but the core of Balatro is literally in its random presentation. The blinds are random, the jokers are random, the store is random, the planets are random, the tarot cards are random, it’s all random. World of Warcraft didn’t need you to pay money to get epic loot either, but I still had friends ruin their lives over chasing epic loot in WoW. I haven’t had any friends ruin their lives over Balatro yet, but I also don’t think it’s impossible for that to happen. Obviously Balatro isn’t “gambling” in the sense of taking a risk with actual real money, but otherwise it still fits the definition of a skinner box.
Because at their core, when a massive amount of the gameplay revolves around random chance, it’s very easy to get addicted to it.
Well what do you want the solution to be? I think it's easy to say that games should be transparent about what you're paying for, my stance is that gacha should be outright illegal because of that. But I don't think it makes sense to go after any and all kinds of randomness in games.
I’m not the one who made the original post so I’m not asking for a solution for this.
I’m pointing out how hard it is to lay down a line in the sand and say “this one is bad and this one is good” because sadly, but very arguably, the core game mechanics are addictive themselves.
I remember the couple in China South Korea whose baby died because they were playing too much WoW.
I mean, in the US before the reversal of the Chevron doctorine, the easy solution would be to pass legislation banning “dark patterns” then assign a regulatory agency to design guidance and enforce the law
The core of lots of games revolve around random chance, and plenty of those exhibit no addictive behavior whatsoever. I’d certainly like to hear a research psychologist’s take on it though.
…and because literally every mechanic in the game is random. The whole game is a skinner box. I say this as a fan of Balatro.
To quote myself from elsewhere in the thread: The blinds are random, the jokers are random, the store is random, the planets are random, the tarot cards are random, it’s all random.
That’s literally what gives Balatro an addictively replayable quality.
I think the fact that people treat them different is the argument that, when the company themselves are taking a cut of that RMT, they have a financial incentive to design systems that would make you want to use it, even more so than when it’s something done against the TOS.
It’s why Diablo 3 had to remove it, the grind got much better after it was gone.
I think there’s something to be said about completing some games on yard difficulties, and Fire Emblem falls in that category. The category is puzzle games that require insane tactical strategy.
A lot of unit based RPG’s function this way, and they do a really good job a lot of the time. But that is just one way to play the game, and quite frankly grinding through levels to “properly” beat a certain difficulty is certainly a better option for the majority of players.
There is something unique about finally completing a damning level, but it’s only something that is there if the player has the drive to get that fulfillment.
I wouldn’t say you have big dum, more likely you just value your time and the engagement of the game is more rewarding on lower difficulty, due to the element that is driving you to play the game. That is to say, it’s aspects of the gameplay and the story that keeps you coming back, not necessarily the insane strategic plays needed to beat a hard level.
Both are completely valid forms of gameplay, the hardest difficulty is often min-maxxed and tends to account for a small section of players, and is probably included partly for replayability.
Those games have a tough start, but if you can get over the initial hump then you can do pretty well in later level. That is until the final boss where shit hits the fan again.
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