[jonathanyc]

I’m not too familiar with gacha games, so I was intrigued. I thought the criticism of EA’s former CEO was funny. But the rest of the article felt like a lot of term-dropping and examples that aren't linked together into a cohesive theory, so I’m kind of disappointed. I think this industry talk about monetization (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNjI03CGkb4) and Tynan Sylvester’s book “Designing Games” were a lot more informative.

For example, the blog post says this but then doesn't really elaborate on what any of the clauses mean ("repeatable design levers", "without compromising the core gameplay experience"):

> A healthy long-term monetization system should therefore have repeatable design levers that can be used to reliably generate demand without compromising the core gameplay experience.

In contrast "Designing Games" has a whole section on fixed/variable reward schedules, e.g. (pg. 210):

> We can avoid such shelf moments by superimposing several fixed ratio schedules. Consider what happens when the player can get a dollar for every 10th chest, a diamond for every 10th rock mined, and an arrow for every 10th goblin killed. ... The player shifts focus back and forth between activities, never missing a dopamine-driven beat.

I asked some friends who play gacha games and they mentioned “stamina” mechanics as something that makes these game addictive. I’d never heard of it before, but apparently you’re limited to perform X number of actions per day. You can purchase some additional stamina/actions, but this creates FOMO if you don’t log in every day.

[johnnyanmac]

>I asked some friends who play gacha games and they mentioned “stamina” mechanics as something that makes these game addictive. I’d never heard of it before, but apparently you’re limited to perform X number of actions per day. You can purchase some additional stamina/actions, but this creates FOMO if you don’t log in every day.

yeah, stamina is a mixed bag. The downside is that it limits how much you play and forces you to play X amount if you don't want to waste it. the "upside" is that it equalizes out most player progress. If you aren't someone who spends a ton of money to buy more stamina (and few gacha bank on this as their revenue. It's 90% about the character releases) you'll probably have similar progression to your other friends, or if someone jumps in 1-2 months later they won't be completely in the dust to players who played day 1.

I think the other final straw is macro abuse. You don't limit stamina and the sweatiest gamers will simply automate the process and go beyond human limits of how much you can play. I think this is why even the few games I know that tried a stamina-less system end up implementing stamina. Similar to using captcha to limit web crawlers from the huge minority of those abusing it.

I should note though that modern gacha don't really "limit" your casual progress that much compared to western games. By the time stamina is a scarcity, you are probably finished with the story content and are simply grinding some form of gear, similar to an MMO. Stamina in modern gacha is there to limit that grind, not wall off playing the story.