#And a bunch of micro transactions

[redlionknc]

Why does tumblrs ad of the week begin with some old lady poking like five holes into a condom. Why do the people who make these ads think this would entice anyone to play the shitty mobile game

[smidge-j]

They tiktokified my game

[ayeforscotland]

Bunch of right-wingers have got together to make gamergate’s shitty little brother.

Games aren’t bad because of diversity, games are bad because executives are greedy and have turned all your favourites franchises into micro-transaction live service games.

[simnostalgia]

The funniest thing about the news that project rene WON'T be a hard cut from TS4 to TS5 is that it makes me think that they were like "oh let's float this to the community and see if they like it..."

Then when we REALLY didn't it was like "OH JK, It's not part of the mainline series. Another 10 years of TS4!!!" So they're basically telling us without telling us like "yeah,,, we don't really believe in our product either. It's uh... not great."

Each piece of news is more hilarious and confusing than the last. Like, at this point, I really do feel like the higher ups are just sort of giving up on the series and being like "Let fucking Paradox figure this shit out."

I legit just don't believe that EA thinks they can make another mainline windows-based sims game because the market has changed too much and they don't think it's viable. I may be wrong but if I had to guess they're chasing the casual market and that market's mostly on mobile now and easier to manipulate with micro-transactions.

I think they're wrong, I just think that they don't understand that their audience changed. In like 2006, you had a bunch of teenagers who had computers and NOTHING else playing The Sims.

Now? Your audience is going to be mostly older life sim players and a much smaller group of young people.

Turns out alienating your older dedicated fan base to chase a much smaller group of 12-18 year olds that, let's face it, just don't care about the brand is a losing strategy.

It made sense to aim at that demographic in the 2000s, not so much now. LBY has a much better chance at succeeding because they're not trapped by a marketing strategy that was developed while Bush was still in office.

[dare-to-dm]

What's the ac unity debacle?

Assassin's Creed Unity had a legendarily bad rollout. Like, it's the poster child for modern games released in such a buggy state that they're almost unplayable and then fixed later with patches. You may have seen some of the pictures of particularly gnarly graphical glitches:

But there were also a lot of game breaking bugs as well, prompting a well deserved outcry from those who pre-ordered or purchased it on day one.

It also had more aggressive monetization and micro-transactions than previous titles. I didn't play it, so I don't know all the details of this. But I remember hearing that you would find treasure chests all over the world that you needed to purchase special currency to open. Stuff like that.

But all of that is stuff I could have ignored or gotten over once it was fixed. What really upset me and a bunch of other people was during development when it was revealed through marketing that the game would have a co-op multiplayer mode. A multi-player mode in which you could play 4 white guys. Which prompted some fans to ask "Hey, could we get a playable woman assassin instead of 4 identical dudes?"

And if the response had simply been "no", it still would have sucked, but it probably wouldn't have been a controversy. Instead of just saying no, one of the game leads tried to argue "Well, we'd love to put in female playable characters. But honestly, it just wouldn't be possible. It would be too much work. Too many new animations."

Which any fan of the series would know is a blatant lie. Because past games in the series already had fully animated playable women assassins. Other game developers came out of the woodwork to also call foul on the preposterous claim that it would be too much work to add a playable female character, so it was a complaint leveraged not just by angry fans but also by industry insiders.

Furthermore, during this time it came out that at least one of the company leads was let go for sexual misconduct against a female employee, and several other male leads resigned among similar rumors. One of whom apparently had specifically been using his influence to prevent the series from having women protagonists or to reduce their significance because he didn't believe they were good for sales.

So yeah, it was a shit show all around. And though I am a fan of the series, I've decided never to touch that particular title because I'm still mad about it.

[cakerybakery]

Adam looses a bunch of money in an embarrassing way. Mugged, crypto, micro transactions, or something. Lucifer finds out Adam no longer has the money, maybe he asks Adam why he didn’t buy the thing he went to buy, maybe he see a credit card statement, either way Adam, not wanting to admit he was robbed or tricked says the first thing to come to mind

“Strippers.”

“You spent $800 at the strippers?”

“Yes.”

Lucifer doesn’t believe him for a second

[xycuro-illuminati]

Fix(Save) TF2

(What's going on and what you can do)

For the past 5 years as of this point, Team Fortress 2 has been facing a bot crisis. There are groups of people who are hosting aimbot cheaters to join servers and swarm the player base by making the game unplayable (i.e., sniping players from impossible areas, using wallhacks to track others, spamming both in mic and chat loud music or vulgar, hate speech, votekicking innocent players for no reason, overall making a horrible experience to play on.) This has been happening in every server in casual mode.

While many community members have created community servers to combat the bots with their own anti-cheat, not everyone knows about them, nor are they always available for everyone to join.

And you might be thinking: well if community members can implement their own anti cheat, why doesn't Valve just do that then?

That's the thing! They haven't, and their negligence continues to this day as all they've done to update the game is fix minor bugs and add more micro-transactions despite fixing the MAJOR ISSUE AT HAND.

These bots aren't just aimbots, they go around spouting hatespeech as said earlier and the hosters will do everything they can to keep it that way. It's noted that these hosters have tried scamming the player base by stating if you fork over some cash, they'll stop the bot scripts. Along with some hosters going as far as DDOSing servers and DOXXING figure heads that go against them.

TheWhat Show's video on these bots perfectly explains the problem in full detail with great explanations and examples. He also has MegaScatterBomb as a guest, telling his story of how he was doxxed by these bot hosters and so much more, just because he was developing an anti-cheat to combat them.

Prominent tf2bers from Uncle Dane, FiskonaStick, Big Joey, Jontohil, Weezytf2, and so many others have made their statements on this topic, all agreeing that Valve needs to do something.

(Uncle Dane's video not only informs more about the situation but the clips he has just shows how frequent these bots are when hopping onto casual mode). Many FPS games have been inspired by tf2, this isn't us trying to stroke our egos, this is just the plain truth of it. So even if you're a fan of ow2 or valorant or any other game, this SHOULD matter to you and it SHOULD piss you off. CsGo, another Valve fps game, is starting to get the same bot problem as tf2, so who knows how long it'll take for this to spread even further. Remember that Valve owns Steam, and that these bots are on that platform, and they're allowing these bots to stay on their platform. If these bot hosters have gone as far as to leaking personal info of known tf2 figures, then what's stopping them from doing the same to random, innocent players of the game? So what are we doing? The tf2 community is spreading word about this bot crisis on multiple platforms. There is a website that you can find here that details what's going on and a petition going on right now. We plan on printing out every signature and mailing it to Valve themselves, to show that we love this game and refuse to let it be taken over by a bunch of bad actors that want nothing but to ruin the fun for everyone. We have nothing to lose, and we're only focusing on the major problem at hand, it being the bot crisis.

I ask all my followers and mutuals to please sign the petition and spread the word, even if you don't play tf2. This games means so much to be and as much as it pains me to watch it get flooded by these bots, it pains me even more to see Valve sit on their asses and do nothing about it.

[canigetacupofugh]

How the OGL will affect YOU the Player

Gamer Solidarity is important, but here are the ways it might affect you the player. If the new OGL happens as it was written in the leak, here's how it might affect you, the person who only plays - It WILL cost you more money - WotC/Hasbro wants to move to a monthly subscription. One D&D would see you paying a monthly fee even if you're not online. So if you're using something like Roll20 or Tabletop Simulator, you'd be paying licensing fees for D&D on top of whatever they charge to use their platform. (they also want to do micro-transactions, which could also make it pay-to-win, but I'll cover that in another point).

It will be harder to find a group - Gamer Solidarity means a lot to a lot of people. Those of us who are mostly unaffected are still likely to side with the creators of the content we love. People are going to be refusing to play the new version, and moving to totally different systems or playing the old versions straight from the books. It's also going to be harder to find somebody willing to GM, which leads me into the next point -

There will be less GMs - Even if you somehow don't care that it's goinng to cost more for GMs, the new OGL will make it harder for them to run the game (which, BTW, 5th is already a lot more work for GMs than a lot of other systems) it's going to make the pool of people willing to run D&D smaller. Just don't play the new system you might say? Well, WotC has made it so it costs licensing fees to run it with Roll20 or Tabletop Simulator- and they're charging GMs more. Not to mention how if a GM uses 3rd party content, that content may not be available anymore thanks to the new OGL. Also, if you manage to find a GM running the newest version, the micro-transactions WotC wants to add in will make balancing encounters much more difficult.

Your favorite 3rd party creators will probably leave D&D - There's a lot of content that's been published under the old OGL and instead of grandfathering that in, WotC wants to just revoke the license. These means legal action could possibly be taken against them, even if they're publishing for versions of D&D that are out of print. The new OGL also means that WotC is allowed to just TAKE their content - so for fear of having their IP stolen, a lot of creators just aren't going to make things for D&D anymore. For ANY version.

Public Play will be an even bigger nightmare - This isn't really the OGL here, but this monthly subscription and micro-transaction BS only rewards those with cash and you WILL find yourself at the table with some asshole who bought a bunch of crap and is making the session all about them. I was there, I saw it happen with 4th.

None of this will affect me! - Well, good for you I guess? If you already have a steady game group who is all financially well off enough (or has a member willing to sponsor those that aren't) and you're all excited to try out the next edition D&D - cool, but if there are enough of you, you're supporting the people who do NOT care about you or the game. All they want is your money - and wouldn't it FEEL better to put that money somewhere better? (if your answer is to play in person, with an old edition, from books you already have, you're actually already kinda supporting the movement against the new OGL - be vocal about it)

Final Points - WotC didn't make D&D, they bought it. We aren't talking about a creator trying to regain control of their IP here, we're talking about a greedy company that wants to squash the competition. 3.0 saw a huge D&D resurgence into popularity, thanks a lot to the OGL. They tried messing with it before, this is why 4th edition gets shit on so much - I was there. (4th is actually a wonderfully accessible system and corporate greed messed it up). Fifth is so popular because the OGL came back, because content creators could make stuff for the new system again. WotC wants to STEAL these creators content. It's baked into the new OGL - they want the 3rd Party Creators to pay WotC royalties but if they take your self-published content and print it in one of their official books? They owe you jack-all. This will change the face of how IP legally works if it's allowed to just happen. It sets a DANGEROUS precedent for large companies to be able to retroactively steal IP.

Call to Action - Be against it, be loud, share with others WHY this is bad. Vote with your wallet, because that's all that WotC cares about- they have shown us now more than ever before, they do NOT care about you or the community. CANCEL YOUR DnD BEYOND if you have one - they have actually said this internally that the only numbers they're looking at as proof of if this will work are the DnD Beyond memberships. Cancel it. Might I suggest Roll20, Foundery, Tabletop Simulator, or Obsidian Portal for storing your character sheets for now?

Hope this helped somebody. I might write more about this topic.

[ladyknightskye]

I’m going to note that in regards to Crab Day I -

Am participating because it is the kind of unhinged shenanigan I expect from Tumblr.

Do not expect it to “dig Tumblr out of debt” though I would argue that the people saying Tumblr can get help from the parent corp forget that in this capitalist hellscape a company that needs a bailout that isn’t growing in some other manner is considered a failure and must be fixed (why do you think we have Tumblr Live yall?)

Am aware that a bunch of the vocal proponents are apparently people I’d block because of rhetoric but this is a case of “oh no the worst person you know has a good idea.”

Am aware that I could give this money to a charity but have decided to instead use it for fun and to make my moots smile for a day. Also I beg people who don’t want to participate to you know, give the 3 bucks to charity and leave participants alone about it. This is the same sort of guilt tripping that turns a poor person buying a small Starbucks as a treat into the “reason why you’re poor!” It is not a crime to use my hard earned money for a little selfish stuff now and again. It’s not like all of us are billionaires blowing money on yachts guys.

Am choosing to give it to Tumblr because y’all, I’d rather them think that selling me stupid little micro transaction badges is better than, I dunno, trying to become Twitter, Tiktok, or Facebook 2.0 (have I mentioned the hellishness of Tumblr Live?)

Have I also mentioned it’s fun and if you don’t want to or can’t give your money to Tumblr you don’t have to? Let the rest of us have some fun. If you wanna participate, reblog crab memes or make crab art. Ask to receive crabs! Laugh at the stupidity of it all and enjoy the newest batshit Tumblr Holiday.

Do remember that @staff are a bunch of inmates running the asylum and they answer to their overlords. I refuse to bitch em out over feature that they are being forced to introduce.

Have I mentioned this is gonna be fun? It’s meant to be fun.

[hoosegowcayuse]

I can’t believe people are disappointed about the new lethal company update because 3 new moons, a reskin of an original moon, TWO new entities, patches, and quality of life updates all done by ONE GUY in 3 months apparently isn’t enough for a bunch of snot-gobbling big toed youtube short watching vtuber shitheads. I was fucking THRILLED. It was literally the amount of work I expected if not more. I’d like to see them try to do all that shit in 3 months. making a game is actually hard. and with how popular it’s gotten the game is still 10 fucking dollars which makes it SUPER available. people didn’t even have to pay for the update. there’s no micro transactions either. why do people find it so hard to be decent and appreciative I will never know

[theaceofskulls]

Because I constantly get ads for it, have seen outlets actually speaking about it, keep getting codes from GW about it, and seen a couple YTers do sponsors for it, I figure I should mention my thoughts on Warhammer Tacticus.

Short summary, it's a hexgrid based strategy RPG game for mobile platforms where you run short missions to grind out for upgrading and unlocking characters.

So yes, it's a wallet hunter.

I'll say that it doesn't accomplish this with FOMO of the "you'll maybe never get this cool thing again" in the traditional way, more the "man, wouldn't this deal that won't last forever get you the cool thing you want right now", but honestly let's just open here and say that because it's primary purpose is to try and pull revenue from you, this game will always be about the psychological battle between you and it's monetization and that's honestly going to prevent me from every heartily recommending it no matter the quality of the actual gameplay and it's as far as you need to read if you're looking to know "Will this be my staple game?"

Now for those who want to continue and want to know how the game is and what the monetization is and why you'll bounce off it, we can continue.

The gameplay is actually fairly fun, tasking you to construct a team of various factions (sometimes limiting you to specific factions alone) to face different types of enemies.

Some missions are puzzles, some are stat checks, and some are more whacky ideas of smashing together simple mechanics to see what works.

The roster is well thought out and fun to see what they'll come up with, pulling a couple of well know named characters alongside a smattering of "best of the bunch", taking a unit from various groups and condensing them down to a single character.

You gather resources and gacha material that's used for upgrades and character unlocks (with a classic shard system where you can get tokens you can eventually cash in for characters or their upgrades), and it's mostly non-offensive. Standard gacha warnings but that's not the monetization method that actually will cause you to wage the war of wills. That's actually one of the paid solutions to said war.

Instead, it's a stamina system that basically meant after a few hours with the game, the average amount of gameplay you could get would be 15 minutes at most until you were forced to wait an hour or two before resuming, practically pushing you into a pay-to-play model.

Now, I play a bunch of F2P games as well as subscription MMOs and have no issue in theory with these as concepts and the idea of monetizing mobile games, but the practice ends up being this antagonistic relationship with the game as you can feel it needling you for micro-transactions.

Anyways, this is all a very polite way of me saying that Tacticus is a game that feels like it could've been worth playing, and I felt compelled, even in my small, mostly niche corner of the internet to speak up as I keep getting bombarded with ads to talk about it, especially because it's one of those games where you don't immediately feel like it's as predatory, with how much is available via gameplay.

Also it's just hilarious to see that the predatory monetization is like almost 15 years out of date and stolen from late 2000's facebook games even with the gacha system in the game. It's very much in line with 40k's in universe "we are using outdated stuff because we don't want to invent new things" approach.

[nicolestamas]

Paywall CC and Micro-Transactions Are Basically The Same Thing: An Essay

EA/The Sims 4 recently announced and implemented Daily Login Rewards which a number of players aren't thrilled about, as it appears to be a precursor to the introduction of paid micro-transactional content. There's a poll on The Sims Community (bottom of the page) where over half of respondents say they do not like this new feature. Players are tired of having every penny squeezed out of them that EA can manage, and with the sheer number of paid DLCs out there now I think we can all agree that it's too much.

On the Custom Content side, however, it seems users are incredibly divided over the notion of charging for making CC. Many players argue that creators spend a lot of time and energy in creating content, and that it's not unreasonable to want to be paid for those efforts. And I can understand that. These days it seems that every time someone has a hobby or side activity they do, they're encouraged to try and turn a profit from it if they're reasonably good at it. There are custom content creators out there who have fundamentally changed the way The Sims 4 plays and I have no doubt in my mind that the contributions of the CC community is a large part of why the game is still so popular despite it initially launching almost a decade ago.

One of the few, or maybe the only, ways that EA has actually behaved in a pro-customer fashion is by making it part of their EULA that creators can't charge a bunch of money off of creating CC, I believe due to the .package file type being their proprietary creation. I doubt it was their intention to protect consumers with this rule but nonetheless, we benefit from such a policy. As the years have passed though EA has begun allowing creators to profit off of CC creation by offering "an early access incentive for a reasonable amount of time" and while there's no hard time period given I did see on one EA page (which of course I can't find now) that the Early Access period should be around 3 weeks. I personally feel like 1-2 weeks of early access is reasonable, but can deal with 3-4 weeks. Anything over a month is unreasonable to me.

I say this all to preface a story I want to share that happened to me yesterday. There is a creator (I won't say who) that has had a CC collection in Early Access for over a month with no stated release date. I've been eyeing it specifically to write about for my work at Snooty so it's something that all users should be able to acquire, and while I personally have no problem finding alternate sources for overly paywalled CC I acknowledge that not everyone is comfortable doing that, especially in light of the recent malware attacks that have hit the Sims 4's CC community.

I wanted to report this creator to EA, as they've told us to do for such circumstances, but was frustrated to find that all the steps EA has previously outlined for reporting these EULA violations no longer work. I made a post about it on Reddit to r/TheSims and while I got plenty of likes on the post I ended up deleting it after a few hours because so many commenters were too focused on the creator I was complaining about not being "bad" compared to others out there, and calling me entitled for not wanting to wait for their CC set to release. And I get it, I'm not entitled to anybody's creations. None of us are. But it really surprised me how so many people were coming to bat for this person who was doing a wrong thing, and being upset with me who did nothing but call out that said person was doing the wrong thing. For the record this person charges $5 for their lowest Patreon tier and they have over 45,000 members.

Which brings me to now. I've been thinking about it all day and comparing the reactions from these Redditors to the reactions people had when the Login Rewards stuff started. People who are very anti micro-transaction don't seem to realize that paying for custom content is, essentially, the same thing. On the subject of entitlement, just as I'm not entitled to a creator's CC they should not be entitled to my or anybody else's money. And here are my reasons:

It goes against a policy that, intentional or not, benefits the consumer over the corporation. We don't get many "wins" like that from giant companies like EA. Everything is expensive nowadays and there are players out there who only have the base game and whatever freebie DLCs have come out, relying on CC to make their games more fun. Overly restricting CC access to these players is essentially punishing them for being poor, and that's uncool.

Unless a piece is specifically being commissioned by someone, creating custom content for The Sims 4 is not a hardship on creators. Typically when people are paid to perform a task it's a specific task someone else wants them to perform. Many CC creations are things the creator themselves decided they wanted to make regardless of whether they expected anybody else would use it.

Paying for CC is not at all a guarantee of quality or originality. I know of at least one creator (who was part of the big CC doxxing scandal a few years ago) that got caught straight-up stealing meshes from another creator, and had the audacity to charge money for what they stole. I've also seen examples here on Simblr of paid content that doesn't actually work because the maker never tested it in-game and just went by what they could see in blender.

Some creators try to circumvent the policy by hiding their stuff behind ad links, where they put users at risk of infection by malicious content from less-than-savory advertisers.

There's no transparency with CC makers. Lots of people are anti-CF right now because of where they're funneling some of their profits but for all you know, the creator you paid for that content is doing the same thing and they don't have to tell you about it. Once that money leaves your account you have no idea what it's going towards.

I do think there are ethical ways to make money off your CC. Have a reasonable Early Access period of no more than a month at most. Offer commissions. Provide piecemeal content for free and charge for the option to download in bulk. Request tips. You can still profit from your creations without barring users who cannot afford to pay for them.

And some might say "you work for a website that charges Early Access for content!" and you're right. But here's the thing: none of that is my content. The little CC I have made is and will always be free. If it were up to me they wouldn't do Early Access at all, but everything goes free in 2-3 weeks anyway.

All of this is to say that players need to stop and really think about what they're contributing to when they side with extended paywallers. They violate the EULA, often expecting payment for content nobody asked for, with no quality control or safety measures in place for the consumer. It's not unreasonable to want to profit off of a hobby but you're no better than EA by barring your shit behind a perpetual paywall or locking it for an unreasonable amount of time. I'm not entitled to the things you make and you're not entitled to get paid for making content in a proprietary file type you didn't invent for a game you didn't create. And if you think EA doing micro-transactions is bad but paywalling CC content isn't, you need to rethink what you actually support.

Lastly I want to thank the CC creators out there who release their content for free. There are many insanely talented people out there creating amazing stuff for this stupid game that they don't charge for, and a lot of it is far better quality than some of the shit people expect you to give them money to access. I love that I can share some of these creators for my job, so more players can learn about their incredible work and enhance their games at the same time. YOU are the reason the CC community is thriving and YOU are the reason they game is still going strong.

[squea]

very new to minecraft, but interested in buying it! which version should i get? 🫨

yO that’s so exciting omg well if u get java it also includes bedrock and vice versa so you no longer have to choose bedrock vs java. i’ve only ever played it on java on pc as i’m not a console player! java is the version you want if you’re interested in modding and community content ie resource packs. bedrock has a bunch of micro transactions but tends to run better on lower spec pcs and matches the console version. personally i’m a java advocate but now it doesn’t really matter because they’re sold together anyway 💕

[meatsex]

🔥 video games

same as music, play what you want fuck the world

i miss the times when videogames werent tangled in a rampant capitalist hell though, you know micro transactions, 70 dollars games, unfinished releases that get that final content later on as dlc, its a nightmare, thank god the independent devs market and movement is still a thing, but even then i feel like the line between indie devs and AAA devs has become blurry

i rarely immerse myself in games the way i used to as a teenager, where id play something and inmediately make fanart, but i dont think this is a bad thing, as much as i dread the big catalogue of things i want to play that i own, im fine with playing a single thing that has a big effect on me rather than a bunch of smaller ones with short bursts of enjoyment (not saying this is bad, short games or playing games for small amounts of times is good too!) ive also stopped playing games for long amounts of time to focus on my art instead, which im satisfied and happy about, so i dont particularly miss rotting my time away playing stuff 24/7

lately it feels like ive done my big boy gaming on my ps4, finishing things there (p3r, re4r, both doom games, etc etc) and keeping my pc for things like multiplayer or playing with friends, but im sure this will change when i get a better setup, i have a lot of things i bought for exactly the time i can actually run shit on this machine and im looking foward to that

[lord-pigeon]

The thing you're not getting about why genshin is worse is because events are not meant to be the primary source of quartz in fgo. It comes from your weekly log in, live streams, 50 day ten pull, ascending servants to their second last ascension, story quests, free quests and the ten quartz you get from doing ten of them, rank up and interludes and the quartz you also get for doing ten of those, and special occasions like anniversary and new year. If you do ten rank ups you get a ten pull and you can do this in maybe an hour or two, now try grinding a ten pull in genshin. It'll be a lot more time investing and taxing considering you're just pressing buttons in fate. Also genshin's odds are just lower and it bleeds whales way harder by making constellations do more than just damage and they make modern 4 stars suck without them. Yes genshin has a better pity but that isn't the be all end all, you need to get 5 copies to max a 5 star in fate where as genshin its 6 AND 5 copies of their weapons. I could keep going on about ways that it's worse all day long, especially when genshin has way more micro transactions and predatory practices like battlepasses and resin but take that fate is worse is utterly baffling tbh

Oh boy let's get into the math here because this is where the fun begins.

Don't get me wrong, I'll never defend Genshin's dogshit practices, but I have a personal grudge against FGO fans sucking on it when it's literally the bastard of the mainstream bunch. This argument is me pitting garbage against garbage to say which one is stinkier.

This gonna be long so I'm putting this under a cut:

Alright FGO dailies list (I'll use NA for FGO, since Genshin is a global server schedule):

Day 2=1 SQ, Day 4=1 SQ, Day 6=2 SQ and Day 7=Ticket (3 SQ equivalent)

Total: 7 SQ

Needed for a tenfold: 30 SQ

Weeks needed for a tenfold via Log-In alone: 4 weeks and 4 days. 32 days total.

It should be noted that if you miss a single day, it resets from the very start. You must log in no matter what. It might take but a few moments, but note, you have to.

Genshin dailies list:

10 Primos per Comm/action, total of 40, and a 20 Primo bonus for turning into Katherine

Total: 60 Primos

Needed for tenfold 1600 Primo

Weeks needed for a Log-In alone: 26 days total.

Genshin's big detriment is that while you never lose your place, you need to spend time on Commissions. It can be anywhere from 5-10 minutes, which is a bit of a serious timesink. It's a bit better with the Fontaine update but it's still a pain in the ass for those on the go.

Alright, but Lord, that's just raw Log-In, what about monthlies?

Monthlies are the same, since both give you 5 tickets/fates to use. Genshin is at the disadvantage here since you need to spend the stardust you get from summoning on it, but Fate also requires you to spend Mana Prisms. Fundamentally similar, it's just that Fate wins out by the small margin Mana Prisms are slightly easier to obtain.

What about pity?

Eat my ass, Fate's pity system just happened cause they were getting this ass beat monetarily and they gave up and did a base-tier QOL update. Six FUCKING years we waited for pity and its over 900 SQ??? ((330 pulls btw))

I saved a whole year and a half back for Musashi's inital release and I just barely had that shit. And that was events, dailies, so on and so forth. (I got her in three tickets so nobody come at me with the fact I'm just a bitter old bird who didn't get my cute girl.)

While there's the 50/50 mechanic with Genshin, that levels the idea of 180, and that's going to hard-hard pity. No matter what, you can, and will, at least get the character you want.

Now what if we include Weapon Banner, since people assume Weapons+Characters *must* go together rather than it just being BIS and disregarding the completely different game mechanics of turn-based FGO and action rpg Genshin (<bitter).

Weapon Hard Pity is 240 pulls. You get a Fate Point for 80 pulls if you don't get your directed weapon, and you get another one if you get screwed again. Two Fate Points guarantees the next 80 is what you want.

Now, that might equal 420 pulls, but there's a catch few people acknowledge: Soft Pity.

Genshin has a system that, the closer you get to that hard pity, the higher the rate goes up. Therefore, it's not often someone actually goes to the hard 80 or 90. I'm just using the hard numbers as a point.

FGO is a hard pity, nothing about the rates changes from Summon 1 to Summon 330. Plus no guarantee you actually even get something from those 330 pulls--at least in Genshin you get a Basic Banner character who has some measure of utility you can use to make progress.

Also FGO pity doesn't carry per banner, but Genshin's does, so if you get fucked over and wanna wait a few months, you have another shot instead of wasting all of it cause you got close but no cigar.

But what about upgrades? Constellations?

NP-bonuses are rather minor and not as key as say, Xiao C1 or Hu Tao C1, so FGO has the edge there. However, that leads me to the side point of:

Weapons.

Reasonably, everyone talks about how the 3-star weapons suck, yadda yadda. You get so many weapons from the game as welfare that are good and can be used by multiple characters. You don't need a 5-star weapon, just because you aren't hitting 300k a hit doesn't mean shit.

Genshin has a lot more versatility in team building than FGO tbh, since a lot of FGO's boils down to "Do you have Merlin/Skadi/Chen Gong/Waver/Tamamo/Castoria/Support Caster.png" that you can then use with any other character.

Not saying Genshin doesn't have that too with Qinqiu and Bennett, but due to the nature of Spiral Abyss, people have gotten smart about using others instead of just them cause it's a split up team system.

Citation: I didn't get a single 5-star Weapon until Year 2.5 of Genshin. Fun fact, I also didn't have a single DPS 5-star either (all I had since launch was Diluc and Venti), until fucking Cyno came out. I managed to play the game just fine.

Now in FGO NA, I was also there since Launch, and I didn't get my first SSR until the Solomon raids, in which I finally got Florence Nightingale. I was playing the game carried by Kiyohime, Salter, and throwing SQ at revives. And guides, christ, so many guides it made Arknights look elementary.

What about general SQ/Primo flow (the Anniversaries and whatnot mentioned)?

FGO, the year of 2023, had, according to a Reddit post which I can link if people want the source, is: 2571 SQ, tickets included.

This Reddit post involved Servant NP Ascension Quests, Events, Chunked Log-In Bonus, Live Streams, Bond Stuff, ect ect (also, stuff you can't do if you didn't roll them, the post was being generous with people getting what they rolled or had)

That is about 85.7 tenfolds. So, if you don't spend a penny and not miss a day of logging in, the average joe might get about 2, 3 hard pities on who they want. Presuming I'm doing the math right on that.

Genshin, in the year of 2022, had, according to another Reddit Post, roughly 100k Primogems.

That equals about 62.5 tenfolds, or over 620 Fates. Now, tossing that into the system with someone with the worst luck imaginable that wants a character, that's about the same amount of 3 to 4 guaranteed pities.

One might note that the numbers are about the same, and yeah, that checks. However, there's a lot of variables, such as Spiral Abyss for Genshin, and actually having the characters to do Interludes on.

Half-baked conclusion

FGO is a money sink, Genshin is a time sink. They both sink your serotonin. Nobody wins.

Look, I play both, I have grief with both, I have fond memories of both. I wouldn't have a stupid expensive Okada figurine sitting next to a custom Cyno plushie if I hated these games.

But they're gacha, they're both out for your money, it's just that one is just a raging cunt about the whole affair.

Reddit Post Citations:

[doubleddenden]

I have done the Worst Possible Pokemon Day prediction. I have done the NO Way in Hell Will it Ever be This Good prediction. Time for the "realistic" prediction.

Nostalgia bait video of game progression throughout the years or scene of everyone playing Pokémon

Pokemon Go is doing a thing I guess, probably BW2 Kyurem

Unite- they're adding Miraidon and have already told us, but they need to take up time.

Masters has a bunch of gems and events idk. Looks like someone is getting a Mega Tyranitar I guess

Cafe ReMix is gonna do a thing- did they already add Miraidon? I don't keep up with it tbh, looks boring

Pokemon Sleep has some kind of thing. Maybe more pokemon added?

Merch announced- its bland and over priced, but someone will buy it. The only thing I want are hats

Pokemon Concierge season 2 trailer?

Next Pokémon game- most likely ILCA Unova remakes (I'll argue this if I have to, but they're just short of a cowboy and large mole driving a car and honking a Driftveil inspired La Cucaracha carhorn through the streets of New York with the obvious hints they're dropping in games and in literal NYC right now lately).

Legends Unova or something in that vein announced for either December 2024 or January 2025. This will be the last Switch mainline game.

Music video, probably Hatsune Miku

Less likely to happen, but on the table

Gb, GBC, and GBA ports to eshop or NSO

New Pokémon movie announcement featuring the first mythical since Zarude- most likely the Horizons cast

Something about Horizons anime- Sprigatito evolves?

New anime mini series based on SV DLC? Maybe centered on Carmine, Kieran, the BBE4, and Ogerpon.

After that is where you start getting surprises, good or bad. Side games won't replace a mainline game release or dlc as proven by PMD DX, so they could do whatever from here.

Reasonable but random predictions, not all but maybe one or more could happen, most likely not

PMD Explorers Remake

PMD Mobile game with micro transactions and live service

Pokemon crosses over with something

tcg digital card game on Switch

Pokemon racer game

Will not Happen, imo:

SV dlc pack 2. They seem pretty done with it tbh, even with all the loose ends. Can't blame them for being tired of adding content to a broken game that's still not finished and is being held together with scotch tape and Elmer's glue

Johto re remakes YET: simply because I think those will be an early Switch 2 title to get as many people on board the next system akin to how LGPE drew in the Go, genwunner, and main crowd to the Switch, and they can't announce it because Nintendo hasn't officially revealed the Switch 2 yet. I'll say they'll announce that next year.

Kalos- yeah I see you there, you dumb bastard, still huffing that Kalos Copium 11 years later. Let it go, man. Let. It. Goooo. Southern Kalos is NOT happening dude. At least, not this gen. It didn't happen in Alola, not in Galar, and it's not happening in Paldea. They're not skipping gen 5 to get to you first.

Overall I expect a similar response to the 2021 Pokémon Day Presents. A mixture of under, over, and straight up whelmed. Thorough disappointment for everything but Legends Arceus, from what I remember. Maybe they'll make my day and surprise me with something amazing, but I feel that the ILCA Unova Remake will probably piss a lot of people off while the Legends game excites me and everyone else.