(no subject)

[kradeelav]

gacha worm-brain luck apparently has been shining on me 'cause now i've got ... +9 ziharks within 300 orbs; just need one more and a bunch of feathers for the max there. :3  (it's kind of funny because i've been going with my gut on 'do i feel lucky at this particular moment?' and it's a little... spooky how true it's been holding out? pisces! never bet against us!) 

my stance on gacha games have been softening a bit with how genuinely fun this has been for the last ... six? months? i think FEH's saving grace is that it does incorporate the best two parts of the mainline games - the sheer addictive quality of the gameplay itself, plus getting attached to your faves by cultivating them like a garden (slowly figuring out the denseness of skill builds also being key).  In a meta way i see it like a puzzle from start to finish - tinkering with and slotting in the right combos of skills, with the right combos of characters, with the right combos of teams ... and having the patience to do it right the first time. it's gotten a lot more satisfying to see maps i never would've been able to beat in my first few months suddenly becoming easy as hell - and they're still brutally unforgiving if you happen to not have a hard counter to whoever in the enemy team.  ('haha zihark go brrrrrr' @ brave!edelgard being a meme i'm tempted to make) 

'they're unregulated gambling' is... yes, true to an extent, but other than just recently starting to pay for the Pass (felt like it was fair considering the hours of entertainment I've legitimately sunk into it, and a nod of encouragement to recent moves of seasonal units getting a lot better and Tellius rep), never felt the need to be a whale.  IS/Nintendo doesn't feel quite as criminally soul-sucking greedy as say... EA was with ME3 and the DLC being the best part of that game. If I'm pointing fingers, it'd be more that way and at a lot of other mobile games who are a lot more guache about ads in particular.

Comments

oh shit is that a lua rolling in with pretentious drive-by linkspam—

[queenlua]

re: gacha games: i thought em reed's take on gacha games was pretty interesting—they take, i think, a still-mildly-cynical perspective, but, crucially they're one of the first game critics i encountered that seemed interested in discussing them in more interesting terms than "lol gamification," "lol unregulated gambling," and argues they're more similar in spirit to pinball and/or "an excuse to play with the computer," etc. if pretentious game critics are your thing, you may dig it :P

Re: oh shit is that a lua rolling in with pretentious drive-by linkspam—

[kradeelav]

LOL yeah actually that was the very post that sort of quasi-inspired this one; maybe not "inspired" as much as 'was rolling around with it while making an update' kind of vibe. Think i saw it in your recent game theory linkspam?

But yeah- it's interesting on that tangent given it's both 'how gacha slots in as an experience' vs 'how FEH specifically slots in as an experience different from and yet similar to the mainline games' 'cause the chess vibe seems perfectly built for that pick up and go standpoint. not to mention the more pokemon-aspect of "growing' your team over a much longer period of time, heck, months being the average, years for some ... idk! it's a different experience for sure.

Re: oh shit is that a lua rolling in with pretentious drive-by linkspam—

[queenlua]

omg hahaha, yes, i DID link it in that post, i just didn't know anyone had actually clicked through the links, delightful :D;;;