[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.