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Mobile game gacha, why is it getting more and more aggrieved?

Game Grape 2024/07/07 21:32
Understanding gacha design is equivalent to understanding the essence of the game.

Text/Yiguang Flow

Not long ago, a friend in the industry complained that the UP pool of a popular mobile game was too aggrieved, and he changed his signature to "I want to quit the pit" after drawing. Originally, I wanted to persuade that, after all, the game has been played for so long and there are so many krypton krypton and it is all the cost, but I looked at the screenshot of his little assistant, and I couldn't say anything to my mouth.

After listening to his friend's bitterness, he realized that the evaluation given by such a "record" assistant was just a "normal person", and after thinking about how dark the face of the non-chief was, he suddenly shook his head and ended the topic.

In fact, we all understand that the paid design of most games, regardless of the packaging, can influence the final experience for players. Thinking about it from another perspective, if it weren't for the lack of choice, a game like this with a neat shipment rate and a crooked half, I really wouldn't dare to play it.

Looking back at the mobile games that I was addicted to back then, there were indeed a few people who made people so aggrieved just by drawing cards. I have to sigh that times have really changed.

01

Complication of gacha

In the past, the gacha game was very simple and straightforward, and there were not so many fancy intestines in terms of specific mechanics.

For example, the base probability of getting the highest rarity card in a single draw is 3%, so even if there are different pools and new promotion rules, this 3% is the bottom line. The shipment rate of cards of other rarities corresponds to it, taking 3% in SSR as an example, 15% in SR and 82% in R, and Granblue Fantasy in '14 adopted this set of rules.

Later, with the changes in the market, games with card drawing as the core payment mechanism can increase revenue without moving the basic probability, and there are only two feasible ideas, one is to learn Korean games, transform and bury more payment points in the game, and use hard means such as pop-ups, limited-time gift packages, and discount promotions to guide players to pay.

The second is to learn day tours, use more content and more card pools to stimulate players' desire to obtain and collect, and finally let more people change from single pushers (mainly people who like individual characters and pay for them) to multi-push people and even DD people (DD people, that is, fanatics who like and pay for no matter who they are).

In the early days of China, the fragment mechanism was preferred, and the card pool was filled in the form of "drawing incomplete cards" to increase income, but it was obvious that this was not something that players were happy to see, so after the two-dimensional game gradually became the protagonist of the gacha game in 14~16 years, the gacha mechanism of pure fragments was slowly eliminated.

At the same time, the mainstream second game also coincidentally began to choose to squeeze the basic probability, 16 years, at that time, the three major second games "Onmyoji", "FGO", and "Honkai Impact 3" all adopted the highest rare character shipment rate of 1% or 1.5% of this grade, among which "Onmyoji" also played the non-chief as a self-black stalk, which is also a marketing model.

Game grapes, mobile game gacha, why are you getting more and more aggrieved?

Not only has the basic probability been squeezed (of course, it can also be said that the domestic 1% is the mainstream, waving hands .jpg), but the atmosphere of the character + equipment mixed pool has also been formed from these second games. But obviously, the players who suffer the most in the long run, and the problem of low probability has also attracted policy attention, which is why there is a new rule of "probability must be publicized" at the end of 16.

This incident also reminded manufacturers that it is not advisable to blindly squeeze the basic probability, so what else can be done? In response to this problem, words such as "comprehensive probability", "size guarantee", and "50% UP" came into being. Interestingly, since then, domestic gacha games have begun to let themselves go all the way in the "word game".

02

"Gacha word game" in mobile games

From a purely commercial point of view, the essence of card gacha is to make players spend money. The essence of the word game on the gacha rules is to make players "more accustomed to spending more money".

It sounds a bit abstract, but it's like running a supermarket, if you just make a price tag and occasionally give a discount, you end up selling things in a step-by-step manner. However, if you flexibly use the rules and surrounding advantages to develop the market, such as the consumption of xx amount can be drawn, home delivery, fake one pays ten, community grouping, etc., the space for operation will be much larger.

In the gacha game, it may be easier for second-game players to pay for love and impulsively, but after all, before drawing, you must weigh the question of whether it is worth it in your heart. Correspondingly, the game's gacha design and word games should make players feel affordable on the bright side, and in fact, they should also create benefits for the game.

In the early gacha games, it was all about pure probability.

Basically, players only need to take a look at what the base probability is, and they will know whether the corresponding game is black. For example, a certain ancient second game is an uncapped、Pure probability card gacha game,Over the years,The single card shipment rate can be as low as 2/10,000,It's a real black-hearted giant pit.,Non-chiefs must be stuck on the rooftop in such a game.。

During this period, in order to maintain the retention rate of paying players, manufacturers will also find ways to optimize the gacha experience. For example, the classic identity tag mechanism and the prize pool mechanism according to luck, as the name suggests, distinguish identities according to the player's ability to pay, and then match different players with different prize pools, so as to achieve the purpose of creating reputation or increasing revenue.

The period after the above period is the period when the mechanism of spelling discounts appears frequently.

Affected by the incident of more than 2,200 consecutive draws of "Blue Fantasy" before it was shipped, the Japan Online Game Association put forward the requirement of "setting an upper limit and indicating the probability", although this is not a hard requirement, but it also profoundly affects the wind direction of Japanese travel, and since then the patio mechanism has been widely recognized and popular. The patio, or ceiling, is the upper limit of the gacha game setup.

Unlike later domestic guarantees, most of the patio mechanics are compensatory, that is, they are not included in the player's payment, but are compensated outside of the payment. The most typical feature is that you can't continue to draw cards after triggering the patio, you need to use the extra tokens generated by the gacha to count or exchange the cards for cards before you can continue to draw cards.

Game grapes, mobile game gacha, why are you getting more and more aggrieved?

For example, in the screenshot above, after reaching 300 patios, you can't continue to draw cards, and the icon for redeeming cards turns red, prompting players to redeem the cards they want before they can continue to draw, reminding rational consumption in disguise

The patio mechanism turns the bottomless pit of card gacha into a bottomed pit with a degree of demand, which raises the level of civilization in mobile games.

But after all, the patio is profitable, to get a higher income, the manufacturer either needs to roll the height of the patio, for example, the screenshot above is a 300 draw patio, then other games use 250 draws, 200 draws, 150 draws, and use a more conscientious patio to compete for paying users; Either you need to make a fuss about the basic probability, such as designing a combination punch with 180 draw patio + 0.6 probability.

Game grapes, mobile game gacha, why are you getting more and more aggrieved?

In any case, the emergence of the patio mechanism has turned the card drawing, a completely random event on the surface, into a random event within a certain range, and as a result, it has improved the player's certainty expectation of "shipment", the sense of surprise will not increase, but the sense of loss will be reduced, and the overall paid experience has become better.

And the change of the third gacha mechanism is not a good thing for players.

To sum up, at this stage, game manufacturers have played four tricks in the gacha mechanism:

The first trick, the mixed pool of men and women, this point has little impact overseas, and it is like this at home. In China, the mixed pool of men and women is a powerful tool for revenue, after all, the second game is mostly male-oriented games in the initial stage, and later it generally increases the source of income by expanding the audience base, and at the same time, as long as the intensity is pursued in the game, the player's male and female preferences will also be forced to equal, and the krypton will be krypton. At the same time, the mixed pool of men and women has evolved into a public opinion killer in the past two years, which has a profound impact, but I won't talk about it too much.

The second trick, the multi-UP mechanism, eats A's well, but also eats B's well, and focuses on a crooked one. Here is the name of the "Flash Chaos Kagura" mobile game, and at the same time UP two new characters, and then reproduce the three old characters of UP, with a full lineup of main C, auxiliary C, control, buff, and debuff, you just say whether to draw or not. Of course, there is no such outrageous in China, but when Double UP first emerged, the turmoil was not small, so I will not name it here.


The latest issue of UP characters, you read that right, a total of five

The third move, weapon mixing, is notorious, but it does bring good revenue to the game company. From a design point of view, the player operates the character, the character uses the weapon, and the value of the weapon generally does not exceed the character, so the value of the weapon to the player is actually not equal to the character, but in the card drawing mechanism, the mixed pool forcibly equates the character and the weapon.

In this way, the mixture not only dilutes the probability of the character, but also dilutes the value of the player's hand, which can be described as a double layer of weakening the feedback and sense of gain brought by the card draw to the player. The most classic description is "comprehensive probability", for example, it seems that the shipment rate is 3%, but in fact 1.5% is weapons, and the remaining 1.5% is characters.

The fourth trick, the miscellaneous mixed pool, is more outrageous than the weapon mixed pool, which is the miscellaneous mixed pool. In the pure character pool, the filler is at least the fragments or equivalent counters after the character is repeated, and in the character weapon mixed pool, the filler is also the fragments or equivalent counters of the character and weapons, but the miscellaneous mixed pool is forcibly mixed into the character pool with unequal items, which greatly reduces the experience of gacha.

The emergence of these four tricks can be said to make the gacha game enter the era of demon dancing, and its core logic is to use the content that does not meet the player's value expectation to mix into the card pool, so as to lower the player's expectation of obtaining the expected card, and ultimately increase the total revenue of the game.

Now entering the post-"Genshin Impact" era, the gacha mechanism of domestic gacha games has been basically stereotyped into a routine, that is, the template of "low patio (pseudo) + low probability + size guarantee + mixed pool".

Game grapes, mobile game gacha, why are you getting more and more aggrieved?

Among them, the low patio is well understood, generally a specification of 160; The meaning of the pseudo-patio is that the patio does not contain a compensation mechanism, and the last draw before the player reaches the patio limit directly increases the shipment rate; The low probability is also intuitive, and the basic probability of most gacha games today is no more than 2%, of which 3D games are less than 1%, and most are 0.6%;

The meaning of the size guarantee is that a rare shipment is triggered when the half well is triggered, but it is not guaranteed to be a UP card (generally a 50% probability of a UP card), and the UP card shipment is triggered when the whole well is full, of course, the small guarantee is easy to be crooked, if it is double UP with the same pool, the big guarantee must also be crooked, after all, there is no compensation for self-selection, and the statement of "including the probability of guarantee" is also easy to confuse; The mixed pool is a combination of one or more of the male and female mixed pools, the character weapon mixed pool, and the character miscellaneous mixed pool.

It can be said that if compared with the early years, the gacha mechanism of today's gacha games is more extreme and utilitarian, and the extreme means that the basic probability is so low that it is negligible, and the shipment depends on the bottom guarantee; Utilitarianism is that game manufacturers will not give up the possibility of making players "crooked", after all, as long as they are crooked, they can re-run the process of small guarantees, which is all income.

When "non" and "crooked" become the norm, the intuitive impact on players is a significant weakening of the sense of surprise.

Therefore, "At present, the small guarantee has been crooked five times in a row", "I have been crooked for a year", "I am really speechless, the small guarantee is 80 crooked, and the big guarantee is 80 before it comes out", "From the time of play to now, all crooked" and other remarks can be said to be very common. Judging from this trend, it is not surprising that the slot spit out by friends in the industry at the beginning of the article, as well as the evaluation of that "normal person".

03

Mobile game gacha is getting more and more aggrieved,

Who is to blame for this pot?

If the gacha mobile game is just a little more black-hearted in the gacha design and text guidance, it will not breed such a wide range of player resentment.

However, it is the player who draws a card that is the starting point of the game. It's okay to focus on collecting and lightly cultivating the game.,If it's a numerical game.,Then the player not only wants a krypton card.,But also have to cultivate the liver.,Waiting for players here.,There are also eating the same card.、Ascend to the stars、Breakthrough、Constellation、Passive、Upgrade、Equipment...... If you encounter a little conscience, the cards with the same rarity can share duplicate materials to cultivate, and if you encounter some pits, you can only rely on the same card to break through, then you have to go back to the card pool to crawl and roll a few back and forth.

What's even more inappropriate for the son of man is the cultivation tree that eats cards fiercely, such as a picturesque krypton gold App, the highest rarity SSR of opening a server gacha card, the basic probability is not low, and you can even choose the expected card to lock the shipment, which seems to be very conscientious. In fact, to develop a team of UR+, you have to capture about 360 cards, and you have to correspond to the attribute or card of the same name.

You think the draw is the end, but in some games, the draw is just the beginning.

Game grapes, mobile game gacha, why are you getting more and more aggrieved?

That's you

The reason for this is ultimately cost pass-through.

Fifteen years ago, the project was only 1 million; Ten years ago, if you made a game, you could set up a project with a few million; Seven years ago, I made a game, and I couldn't play it with 20 or 30 million; The game five years ago cost 50 million to set up a project, and of course, there was a strong miracle monster "Genshin Impact", and the development cost was 100 million US dollars; Now that the project is set up for a new tour, no one may be optimistic about it if it is less than 80 million.

The cost is high, so it is natural to have revenue to fill the hole, after all, in most game tracks, it has become almost a common phenomenon to extend the payback cycle, and if you want to make a profit, you have to increase the payment. For those products with diversified payment mechanisms, there are many points that can be regulated, such as appearance sales, season passes, gift packs and benefits, etc., but for gacha games with a single payment mechanism, the previous methods may not be universal.

As a result, most games default to the fact that the probability of squeezing is passed on to the player. Some time ago, I even saw a pure AI vertical painting game, and I also learned that set of 0.6% probability of the best card pool, focusing on a contemporary Jiang Taigong, willing to take the bait.

Of course, there are also designs that try to make profits, such as the "shipment rate increase" mechanism, that is, after reaching a certain number of gachas, the shipment rate of rare cards increases with the number of gachas until the shipment returns to the normal value. For example, mechanisms such as ten consecutive must-gets, self-selection, and locking expectations are all from the perspective of discounts or weakening "crookedness" to give players benefits.

Game grapes, mobile game gacha, why are you getting more and more aggrieved?

There are also games that reduce the size and height of the guarantee well because of competition, such as the big guarantee is reduced from 180 to 160, the small guarantee is reduced from 90 to 80, etc.; Even games that have increased their base shipment rate because of the voice of players, regardless of whether the base probability of these games has reached the general level of 3% in the early years, they can be regarded as a clear stream against the trend in today's environment.

Game grapes, mobile game gacha, why are you getting more and more aggrieved?

In my opinion, the "word game" played out in gacha games today is still a new Snakin box after all. In the past, the Free to Play and Pay to Win games built a Snajin box that allowed players to change from "three to five hundred buyouts of a 3A is quite expensive" to get used to "not just a 648".

So now a new Sinakin box has been subtly formed: "Look at these mobile game masterpieces now, the characters are good-looking and sexy, the speech is good-sounding, and the card pool patio is still low, I like it so much, isn't it worth spending more 648 on them?"

04

Can gacha return to simplicity?

Talking about this, I'm actually more afraid of today's gacha mobile games, longer and longer gacha instructions, more and more complex biting and chewing words, it is really big to see, it is difficult to find the pleasure of drawing cards when playing games in the past, and I am always forced to count the gains and losses.

This makes me wonder if gacha can go back to what it used to be. This may be difficult, because the premise is that the gacha game needs to enter the stage of price comparison and service first, so that there can be a move to make profits, and by pushing it back, those who can fight each other's price war and fight for service quality are basically products and companies on the same level.

Then the rules formulated by many leading products such as "Genshin Impact" will inevitably need to be competed by games of the same specification, the same quality, or the same value level that players think will have a chance to reduce the price and even affect the gacha mechanism.

In fact, so far, the domestic head gacha games, especially in the second game, the non-budding stage of the must draw (pay for ten consecutive must get the rarest random character), self-selected coupons (pay to buy a voucher that can be selected and get the rarest character in the past), these preferential and promotional mechanisms are extremely rare, not to mention the gacha mechanism that involves deeper benefits.

Of course, the card drawing mechanism ultimately serves the player's feelings and experience, and the reason why the card draw has become an enduring payment mechanism is that the sense of surprise and sense of gain it brings to the player are the key elements. And the pure text and mechanism are far from all that is drawn cards, for example, some overseas head mobile games are used to making a fuss at the welfare level, at least to make the white prostitution party draw satisfactorily, and then create a card drawing atmosphere for the heavy krypton party.

In the end, the quality of the gacha and the quality of the experience still have to be judged by the player, what amazing or outrageous gacha designs have readers encountered, and what kind of design do you think is excellent?

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