How can GATCHA be WELL integrated into a GOTHIC like RPG?

[NotAI]

This is a very hard question. It needs a lot of thought.

It might be the way forward?!

Assuming there is a solution.

But as the saying goes, there is always a way, is there not? Thread is only half facetious.

A. It seems that all the characters must be gender swapped? Like a GOTHIC but no men at all? Except maybe the PC? Is this assumption incorrect?

B. Each character pulled has to actually change the possible solutions of many quests, to be worth it to players who normally don't like GATCHA?

It can be done by leaving hooks in each quest. Later content such as optional pulled content can then use these hooks, especially if using pattern matching to test for quest satisfaction.

GATCHA has to provide additional reactivity, it seems. To fit the requirement of making the game better rather than much worse as usual.

[J1M]

The gatcha items are sentient weapons. You need to select sentient rings and armor they can be friends with.

[rusty_shackleford]

what's a gatcha

[Valter]

what's a gatcha

gatcha nose!

[Val the Moofia Boss]

The gacha monetization model fundamentally interferes with the game design, since it is about selling people characters, be it for people's emotional investment in them or for the character's mechanical strength in progressing through the game. Because customers are paying/gambling specifically for individual characters (rolling $30 to $50+ just to get the base version, and then perhaps hundreds more to progress that character's talent tree), the game designers can't kill off or remove that the character from your party story purposes or to make the game more difficult (ie FF7 and FF10 removing your healer).

Rolling for weapons would be the least intrusive compared to characters, but people aren't emotionally invested in weapons so that would eliminate one of the customer's primary motivations for why the gacha business model works, and at that point you would have to reconsider just releasing a box that has all of the game in it.

[J1M]

what's a gatcha

It's a game where the focus is on collecting a large number of X where X is often characters from a franchise with an existing audience. Then they use power creep and FOMO to keep people on a collecting treadmill. Similar to an item level treadmill in an MMO.

Examples:
-Marvel Snap, each card is a Marvel character
-Asia action games, each character is the same girl with different hair
-Blizzard mobile trash, each RTS unit must be collected and levelled up

[rusty_shackleford]

so it's warframe

[J1M]

The gacha monetization model fundamentally interferes with the game design, since it is about selling people characters, be it for people's emotional investment in them or for the character's mechanical strength in progressing through the game. Because customers are paying/gambling specifically for individual characters (rolling $30 to $50+ just to get the base version, and then perhaps hundreds more to progress that character's talent tree), the game designers can't kill off or remove that the character from your party story purposes or to make the game more difficult (ie FF7 and FF10 removing your healer).

Rolling for weapons would be the least intrusive compared to characters, but people aren't emotionally invested in weapons so that would eliminate one of the customer's primary motivations for why the gacha business model works, and at that point you would have to reconsider just releasing a box that has all of the game in it.

That's why they are sentient weapons that have sexy ghosts living in them.

[rusty_shackleford]

overly possessive gf sword

[NotAI]

overly possessive gf sword

There's actually a comic book that's exactly that. It's called...I don't exactly remember...Daily Life of the Evil Sword...or something.

By the guy who did the official parody comic book for Elden Ring.

[Jordy]

The gacha monetization model fundamentally interferes with the game design, since it is about selling people characters, be it for people's emotional investment in them or for the character's mechanical strength in progressing through the game. Because customers are paying/gambling specifically for individual characters (rolling $30 to $50+ just to get the base version, and then perhaps hundreds more to progress that character's talent tree), the game designers can't kill off or remove that the character from your party story purposes or to make the game more difficult (ie FF7 and FF10 removing your healer).

Rolling for weapons would be the least intrusive compared to characters, but people aren't emotionally invested in weapons so that would eliminate one of the customer's primary motivations for why the gacha business model works, and at that point you would have to reconsider just releasing a box that has all of the game in it.

FF Opera Omnia did gatcha pretty well. You could unlock all the characters through the story mode which gets harder. The gatcha part of it was for weapons and materials to equip/upgrade your characters.

I was able to f2p it for a long time before I hit a wall and even then it didn't feel so bad. Although... now I think about it, that might be why they ended it.

[Demonic Fate]

But as the saying goes, there is always a way, is there not? Thread is only half facetious.

Oh, nice. Then you only need half your brain inspected.

GATCHA has to provide additional reactivity, it seems. To fit the requirement of making the game better rather than much worse as usual.

The only reactions I want to see are violently exothermic ones, preferably between a vat of acid and the bodies of those who want to put gambling in videogames.

[cpmartins]

How can PURE CANCER be well integrated with anything?
As someone already said, the fundamentals of gacha i.e. dopamine-induced drip feeds tailored to push ******* to spend their money, is incompatible with actual good game design.

[NotAI]

It needs more analysis. There's something strange about it, that gives hope. You know, like, hope for change.

► Show Spoiler

ESSAY. Gatcha as successful revenue model seems to only be possible based on the fact that some people really care about leveling a specific character, rather than mechanically identical or even more powerful characters. Just because the specific player's strange subjective aesthetic preferences.

That is usually an aspect of luxury goods and absent from games.

Games are traditionally about actions and interactivity, not appearance.

Otherwise gatcha actually would not work, whatever the feelings that come from random reward or surprise rush.

How do we know that? Because otherwise gatcha would just be procedural price discrimination, which is annoying to nearly any customer in a market.

It's the reason coupons are sent to everybody. If a repeat customer gets a special coupon, by chance, any few others, and yet others hear about it, rather than shop again until they get a coupon, most likely, they will stop shopping there at all until they are offered a matched price. Markets are social wholes. Everything is relative everything else.

This means all surprise mechanics or "gambling" explanations are not what is going on here.

Most likely, gatcha works based on very strange preferences that much of the casual audience has.

The preference for which character is "coolest" is totally arbitrary and varies from individual to individual. Some player are fixated on "cool". Among those, different players will pay a lot to get and level up different characters, because their fixation is subjective, maximizing revenue.

A rolls X on the first try. B rolls Y on the first try. But A is fixated on how Y looks. And B is fixated on how X looks.

Core gamers can't grok this "silliness", because we usually don't buy luxury goods at all. We don't get fixated on the looks of anything. Only what it does. Utility. Reactivity.

It's not the random parts that makes it work, but the fact that (a) casuals are the primary audience, (b) some of whom have exceptionally strong preferences (possibly lexicographic) for aesthetics of characters, (c) which differ from person to person, (d) over game mechanics...which is very unusual compared to the typical core audience of gamers.

Well, any game aimed to a casual audience is probably bad as a game. Casuals play few games and don't compare games much. They also don't care as much about how quality the pure mechanics are. The devs know this and put in little effort on what they think will not change sales to that audience. Result is mostly bad games as games.

The typical gamer rolls a character and just plays with that. You can beat say Genshin Impact with any character just as well. But enough people want a specific character, based on how it looks.

If so, then this might actually be used to subsidize reactivity? Which gamers want but are not willing to pay more for in general? Needs more thought.

What if devs ignore the perverse incentives instead and don't minimize the game part of the game instead?

[Eyestabber]

what's a gatcha

Loot boxes, but ****** managed to make them more convoluted, opaque and predatory so absolute fucktard "gaymers" can support them despite complaining about EA doing the same thing. Also:

@NotAI this thread is garbage and you should *************, ******.

[Rand]

Yeah, no.

[Norfleet]

How can PURE CANCER be well integrated with anything?
As someone already said, the fundamentals of gacha i.e. dopamine-induced drip feeds tailored to push ******* to spend their money, is incompatible with actual good game design.

More importantly, how exactly do you square "push ******* to spend more money" with "single player RPG"?

[Tinky Winky]

what's a gatcha

weeb buzzword for "lootbox" originated from Gashapon machines
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gashapon

[MC_Sea]

The best way Gatcha can be implemented to a Gothic like RPG is by purely using either in-game currency (No microtransactions) or perhaps a special item with different qualities gained from doing sidequests that can also be bought with a certain amount of gold. You would go to a building dedicated as a help center for quests and use said items/currency at the service counter. What type of person answers your request depends on how much currency you spent and what type of request you sent. The helper that arrives can be anything from an adventurer, a hunter, a mercenary, a priest, an animal companion, etc. Once you exhaust the pool of helpers, you will receive equipment that is tailored to helpers that come from those sort of requests as compensation. The services that you can request gradually expand as you progress through your adventure and the currency/special items become higher quality or come in higher amounts.
That's the only possible way I see it working while respecting the in-game lore.

[Tweed]

Gatcha because if you want to stay competitive they gatcha by the balls.

[Tinky Winky]

The correct answer : send both to an incinerator where they can be burnt and therefore, "well integrated" into dust.

[NotAI]

The correct answer : send both to an incinerator where they can be burnt and therefore, "well integrated" into dust.

Both? You don't like Gothic? Why?

[quetzalcoatl]

Probably prefers the superior Baroque aesthetic

[Tinky Winky]

The correct answer : send both to an incinerator where they can be burnt and therefore, "well integrated" into dust.

Both? You don't like Gothic? Why?

I love Gothic but not the abomination you are trying to design, better burn it to the ground.