My wife and I started playing Genshin Impact over the weekend (the PC version, "together" on just a single account) and it's honestly quite good, this feels like it could be a really interesting...
My wife and I started playing Genshin Impact over the weekend (the PC version, "together" on just a single account) and it's honestly quite good, this feels like it could be a really interesting landmark in free-to-play games.
It's a single-player RPG (with some optional co-op aspects that so far seem totally unnecessary) and mostly plays a lot like Breath of the Wild's open world. It has a lot of the gacha/grinding mechanics that you'd normally only see in MMORPGs, and while I can understand how people could spend money on it, so far there's been absolutely no need to pay anything, even though we've put a pretty good number of hours into it between the two of us.
I'm not sure if we'll eventually start running into a wall with it, but so far there's already a ton to do. The graphics and visual style are very good (as long as you don't mind anime) and it even has voice-acting available in 4 languages. I think it's a pretty impressive game, especially since they launched it across 4 platforms (iOS, Android, PC, PS4) and globally. They seem to have a lot of plans for continuing to expand it, and I'm sure they're going to do quite a bit with it if it's already having this much success.
You will, but that's also just where the content ends and gacha is the only thing left to do. Tbh you can just pretend the game ends there until the next content release.
I'm not sure if we'll eventually start running into a wall with it,
You will, but that's also just where the content ends and gacha is the only thing left to do. Tbh you can just pretend the game ends there until the next content release.
I play other gatchas but this one kind of boggles me. You don’t see it until you hit that wall. They gated resources so heavily that when you have a team of high level characters, you pretty much...
I play other gatchas but this one kind of boggles me. You don’t see it until you hit that wall. They gated resources so heavily that when you have a team of high level characters, you pretty much have no readily viable way to level up any new ones, completely negating any incentive to roll for more. I’ve got like 4 extra characters I don’t use at all and it’s not that I don’t want to but they’re pretty much just stuck at lvl 1. as I can’t justify any resources or the time it takes grinding to do anything with them.
There isn’t even cosmetics or anything. It’s very bizarre.
I've been playing it at my own pace and very much enjoying the exploration aspect. However from reading with the various subs, there is definitely a finite amount of stuff to do and a very...
I've been playing it at my own pace and very much enjoying the exploration aspect. However from reading with the various subs, there is definitely a finite amount of stuff to do and a very limited/grindy endgame. Rushing to the endgame or trying to min/max is not recommended, as new content comes out every 6+ weeks.
For anyone looking to play, its definitely got an anime + breath of the wild feel, which lots of exploration, world puzzles, mini-dungeons, combat challenges and plenty of main stories and side quests. The combat is fairly fun, as you have 4 party members you can switch between, with various elements. The elements react with each other in different ways, so fire+lightning is extra damage, water+ice is a freeze/stun, geo+anything drops a shield of the other element, etc, etc.
The gacha RNG is annoying, as the characters are a huge part of the gameplay, and getting specific characters other than the free ones is a nightmare of RNG. The lows of not getting good rolls offsets the (rare) highs of getting really lucky.
If you play at your own pace, its got many hours of exploration and story - with only 2/7 zones released so far. As with all gacha games, beware of spending money - these games are designed to have only a few main spending levels. The very affordable $5 or $10 a month for some recurring rewards (that encourage/require daily playing), the <$200 for first-time purchase bonuses, and the "whale" level where you spend hundreds or thousands of dollars. Know how much you want to spend going in, as these types of games are designed the same way casinos are - to take advantage of psychology to make players spend a ton of money. Its very easy to spend just a bit more for "one more good reward" or "just until I get the one character" - but the odds are very low, so before you know it, you've spent hundreds or thousands of dollars.
Yeah, even as someone that's open to spending money on games, the price of the "lootboxes" feels shockingly high. Without the first-purchase bonus, if you wanted to guarantee getting a single...
Yeah, even as someone that's open to spending money on games, the price of the "lootboxes" feels shockingly high. Without the first-purchase bonus, if you wanted to guarantee getting a single 5-star character (and not even a specific one), you'd have to spend almost $200 USD. That feels, like... 10 times too high to me, but obviously it works if they're making this much money. I'm definitely planning to be more in the $5-10/month tier.
We got very lucky and got Keqing in one of our early sets of wishes, and I'm not sure if the game would be as enjoyable if we hadn't. She's definitely the most fun character to use for general combat out of the ones we have.
Was this a long-anticipated release? Is this an all-new IP, or tied into some already existing franchises, or what? I think I may have heard the name in passing sometime but I'm trying to figure...
Was this a long-anticipated release? Is this an all-new IP, or tied into some already existing franchises, or what? I think I may have heard the name in passing sometime but I'm trying to figure out how/why the mobile game in particular has made so much of an... uh, impact. I guess there was a lot of buzz?
I neither play Genshin Impact (yet?) nor know any Chinese, but from what I gather: Genshin Impact is developed and published by Shanghai-based studio miHoYo Genshin Impact seems to be separate...
I neither play Genshin Impact (yet?) nor know any Chinese, but from what I gather:
Genshin Impact is developed and published by Shanghai-based studio miHoYo
Genshin Impact seems to be separate from miHoYo's other releases, but prior to Genshin Impact they released Honkai Impact 3rd (or Houkai 3rd depending on language/region I think?) which was the third entry in the Honkai series and a spiritual successor to one of their other games
If I'm not mistaken, all of miHoYo's games have been released to mobile platforms. Honkai Impact 3rd was officially released to PC in December 2019, several years after the game was out. While Genshin Impact released on PC, PS4, and mobile devices at the same time on September 28, 2020 with plans to release on the Switch and PS5 at some point.
Honkai Impact 3rd (and maybe the series in general) in addition to having a large fanbase has other related media, which includes an anime series and multiple manhua series.
As for why it is popular, there are probably several factors, but I don't think I am qualified to answer.
It’s a little disingenuous just calling it a mobile game as it’s on PC and PS4 as well. It’s popular because it’s a solid Breath of the Wild-esque game filled with anime girls.
It’s a little disingenuous just calling it a mobile game as it’s on PC and PS4 as well. It’s popular because it’s a solid Breath of the Wild-esque game filled with anime girls.
I didn't say it's just a mobile game, I'm asking about the success of the mobile version specifically. That market is presumably different enough and broader enough than those who play on consoles...
I didn't say it's just a mobile game, I'm asking about the success of the mobile version specifically. That market is presumably different enough and broader enough than those who play on consoles for this success out the gate to be due to more than simple word of mouth.
Well cross save with PC means they’re all going to also download the mobile game as well as that’s a neat feature you don’t see much. Also, I mean look at the game, it’s pretty incredible for such...
Well cross save with PC means they’re all going to also download the mobile game as well as that’s a neat feature you don’t see much. Also, I mean look at the game, it’s pretty incredible for such parity between a PC game and mobile. There’s not much else like it on a phone. Word of mouth is the success story here, everybody in gaming circles has been talking about it and streaming it.
There’s also the fact that it’s free, predatory gatcha system not withstanding.
It seems like the Asian countries are their main target market (from the article, the US is only the source of 18% of the mobile revenue), and I have no idea if there was much hype for it there. I...
It seems like the Asian countries are their main target market (from the article, the US is only the source of 18% of the mobile revenue), and I have no idea if there was much hype for it there. I follow North American gaming media pretty closely though, and didn't see much about it at all. It had trailers included in some significant events (that's how I found out about it), but other than that I don't remember much. I didn't even realize it had released until a couple of weeks after it came out.
My wife and I started playing Genshin Impact over the weekend (the PC version, "together" on just a single account) and it's honestly quite good, this feels like it could be a really interesting landmark in free-to-play games.
It's a single-player RPG (with some optional co-op aspects that so far seem totally unnecessary) and mostly plays a lot like Breath of the Wild's open world. It has a lot of the gacha/grinding mechanics that you'd normally only see in MMORPGs, and while I can understand how people could spend money on it, so far there's been absolutely no need to pay anything, even though we've put a pretty good number of hours into it between the two of us.
I'm not sure if we'll eventually start running into a wall with it, but so far there's already a ton to do. The graphics and visual style are very good (as long as you don't mind anime) and it even has voice-acting available in 4 languages. I think it's a pretty impressive game, especially since they launched it across 4 platforms (iOS, Android, PC, PS4) and globally. They seem to have a lot of plans for continuing to expand it, and I'm sure they're going to do quite a bit with it if it's already having this much success.
You will, but that's also just where the content ends and gacha is the only thing left to do. Tbh you can just pretend the game ends there until the next content release.
I play other gatchas but this one kind of boggles me. You don’t see it until you hit that wall. They gated resources so heavily that when you have a team of high level characters, you pretty much have no readily viable way to level up any new ones, completely negating any incentive to roll for more. I’ve got like 4 extra characters I don’t use at all and it’s not that I don’t want to but they’re pretty much just stuck at lvl 1. as I can’t justify any resources or the time it takes grinding to do anything with them.
There isn’t even cosmetics or anything. It’s very bizarre.
I've been playing it at my own pace and very much enjoying the exploration aspect. However from reading with the various subs, there is definitely a finite amount of stuff to do and a very limited/grindy endgame. Rushing to the endgame or trying to min/max is not recommended, as new content comes out every 6+ weeks.
For anyone looking to play, its definitely got an anime + breath of the wild feel, which lots of exploration, world puzzles, mini-dungeons, combat challenges and plenty of main stories and side quests. The combat is fairly fun, as you have 4 party members you can switch between, with various elements. The elements react with each other in different ways, so fire+lightning is extra damage, water+ice is a freeze/stun, geo+anything drops a shield of the other element, etc, etc.
The gacha RNG is annoying, as the characters are a huge part of the gameplay, and getting specific characters other than the free ones is a nightmare of RNG. The lows of not getting good rolls offsets the (rare) highs of getting really lucky.
If you play at your own pace, its got many hours of exploration and story - with only 2/7 zones released so far. As with all gacha games, beware of spending money - these games are designed to have only a few main spending levels. The very affordable $5 or $10 a month for some recurring rewards (that encourage/require daily playing), the <$200 for first-time purchase bonuses, and the "whale" level where you spend hundreds or thousands of dollars. Know how much you want to spend going in, as these types of games are designed the same way casinos are - to take advantage of psychology to make players spend a ton of money. Its very easy to spend just a bit more for "one more good reward" or "just until I get the one character" - but the odds are very low, so before you know it, you've spent hundreds or thousands of dollars.
Yeah, even as someone that's open to spending money on games, the price of the "lootboxes" feels shockingly high. Without the first-purchase bonus, if you wanted to guarantee getting a single 5-star character (and not even a specific one), you'd have to spend almost $200 USD. That feels, like... 10 times too high to me, but obviously it works if they're making this much money. I'm definitely planning to be more in the $5-10/month tier.
We got very lucky and got Keqing in one of our early sets of wishes, and I'm not sure if the game would be as enjoyable if we hadn't. She's definitely the most fun character to use for general combat out of the ones we have.
Was this a long-anticipated release? Is this an all-new IP, or tied into some already existing franchises, or what? I think I may have heard the name in passing sometime but I'm trying to figure out how/why the mobile game in particular has made so much of an... uh, impact. I guess there was a lot of buzz?
I neither play Genshin Impact (yet?) nor know any Chinese, but from what I gather:
It’s a little disingenuous just calling it a mobile game as it’s on PC and PS4 as well. It’s popular because it’s a solid Breath of the Wild-esque game filled with anime girls.
I didn't say it's just a mobile game, I'm asking about the success of the mobile version specifically. That market is presumably different enough and broader enough than those who play on consoles for this success out the gate to be due to more than simple word of mouth.
Well cross save with PC means they’re all going to also download the mobile game as well as that’s a neat feature you don’t see much. Also, I mean look at the game, it’s pretty incredible for such parity between a PC game and mobile. There’s not much else like it on a phone. Word of mouth is the success story here, everybody in gaming circles has been talking about it and streaming it.
There’s also the fact that it’s free, predatory gatcha system not withstanding.
It seems like the Asian countries are their main target market (from the article, the US is only the source of 18% of the mobile revenue), and I have no idea if there was much hype for it there. I follow North American gaming media pretty closely though, and didn't see much about it at all. It had trailers included in some significant events (that's how I found out about it), but other than that I don't remember much. I didn't even realize it had released until a couple of weeks after it came out.