Buttflapper

Damn that's wild. Any business that has that drastic of spikes of profit and loss cannot possibly be sustainable. I can't see how it could be. Look at the automobile giants in the USA. All it took was one major economic event to bankrupt them, and they got bailed out which should've never happened. It's bullshit.

Are you sure about that? This is a huge amount of information. I put all the facts into Claude and asked it who was correct, you or me. It told me I'm correct based on the facts provided to it. So even a multi million dollar language learning model came to the same conclusion I did.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ZZZ_Official/s/9zjV0zSVkC

Getting 5-star resets your 4-star pity, which is different from GI/HSR system

I see other comments being guilty of poor reading comprehension lol.

OP is correct that in GI and HSR the 4* pity works differently than in ZZZ (and WuWa for that matter)

• in GI and HSR, getting a 5* does not reset 4* pity. It may delay it if 4* hard pity happens to coincide with a 5* pull, but you will then be guaranteed a 4* at pity 11.
• in WuWa and ZZZ, getting a 5* resets 4* pity. You could go 19 consecutive pulls without a 4*/A-rank as long as there's a 5* in between.

It is objectively correct that

• the former is better for the players than the latter (more 4*s, duh)
• using the same concise wording for both is misleading, even when the detailed explanation shows the difference, and especially when it's the same company using the same wording to mean two different things.

Unfortunately it is also objectively correct that the ZZZ/WuWa implementation is closer to a strict interpretation of the terms, and thus absolutely a feature and not a bug. This sucks but there is a 0% chance of it getting "fixed" because it works exactly as intended.

you don't see Apple and Samsung going out of business.

Samsung is damn near the point of going bankrupt. Samsung saw a 95% drop in profits for a second consecutive quarter 2023

Gameplay is still more important than game resolution

In your opinion*. You forgot that part. For lots of people, graphics are way more important because they want a beautiful and immersive experience. They are not wrong to want that. I respect that you feel the way you do, but I respect others who care more about graphics. I'll even go so far as to say that I am of the same mind as you, I don't care about the graphics much at all but there are some games where the graphics have truly wowed me, or the visual effects. For example two that come to mind, Ori and the will of the wisps, or No Man's sky. Two very different games but absolutely crazy visual effects and graphics on high-end computers. Another game that I play a lot is World of Warcraft, gameplay is so damn fun but it's hard to get any of my friends to play it because it's so ugly, looks like a poorly rendered PS3 game. That horrible quality of graphics prevents people from even trying it

Most gamers don't even have hardware that would allow that type of resolution.

This is because they refuse to innovate. Think of the DVD player. You think a DVD player costs a lot today? Of course not, there's a million of them and no one wants them anymore. If they actually innovated and created drastic leaps and technology, then older technology would be cheaper. It's not expensive to go out and get an RTX 2080, which is the graphics card I currently have. Is about 250 or $300 now, pretty damn solid card. If they actually innovated and kept pushing the limits, technology would accelerate faster. Instead they want the inverse of that. They want as slow growth in technology as feasibly possible, maximum amount of time to innovate, maximum amount of revenue, and maximized impact on the environment. All those carbon emissions and waste of graphics cards being thrown out

Shows that You are in the UK. Just want to clarify I'm talking specifically about the USA but I agree with everything you said. Tech stocks became so inflated! Don't know if people are seeing it in Europe, but here in the USA, there is this really toxic and very cringe behavior from these tech companies to get people back to office, they can force people to return to office across the country, basically you have to relocate and upend your entire life which could cost you $50,000 and they're not paying for that, if you don't do that you get fired. Easy way to start laying off people without having to pay them anything because you can call it insubordination, since they refuse to return to office. Now they supposedly have cause to get rid of people or deny them promotions for more money. IBM for example is doing this right now, Cisco was doing it as well. One of the most major networking software companies in the market. Scumbag behavior

I wouldn't say the movie industry is struggling, I would say that people that work for a living are struggling. Actors are still getting paid huge sums of money, so are directors and producers. They are getting their pound of flesh one way or another. They are just not producing anything that people want to watch. For example all this marvel post-infinity War bullshit, no one wants to see that. No one cares about marvel Disney anything right now, it's low quality drivel. But Beetlejuice, Barbie, oppenheimer... These are proof that people do still want to see movies, they just don't want to produce anything meaningful.

The people struggling that I'm talking about, however, are the supporting roles. People doing the filming, set dressing, makeup, special effects. Lots of these lower levels supporting roles get almost nothing compared to their cost of living in California, while some of the main actors can get tens of millions

We both know that legitimizing the RMT system increased the number of gold buyers and normalized the process

Really? Where is your data to back that up? Games like old school RuneScape and World of Warcraft still have people who buy gold and get banned for it all the time. You're also conveniently disregarding lots of the benefits of this system. People can now earn currency fully in game to pay for their subscription. Completely for free, and other players are making a choice the purchase the tokens. There's virtually no pressure in game whatsoever in World of Warcraft that prompts you to purchase them. There's no pop-ups, no advertisements for tokens at all. This is the least predatory form of microtransaction I have ever seen. Compare this to Destiny, in which you are constantly given currency for free to use in the eververse, and repeatedly going there back and forth being flashed with bullshit items that you'll never have enough currency to afford.

Also sounds like you haven't played in a while.

No, I'm a current member of World of Warcraft.

The addition of real currency to gold trading creates an even more direct pipeline from one's wallet to in-game gear dice rolls. Guilds selling raid gear is even more common now, and with crafting orders, a whale can spend to reroll secondary stats on crafted gear.

It has literally always been like this. Where have you been? People were selling power leveling runs through stockades back when the game first started. They were selling BOE gear for gold, and that gold was obtained with a credit card through gold selling websites. The introduction of wow tokens just changed the recipient of the money from Gold farmers to Blizzard entertainment. I assure you that most people who are active players of the game are not buying tons of gear with gold that has been obtained through their credit card, and even if they were, it doesn't affect you at all. The guilds that sell runs through challenging content, they have always been doing that, since the very beginning. I remember back in burning crusade people spamming chat that they would carry you through black temple near the end of the expansion. So there's not like some new shift towards that. It's always happens like that. The only thing that has shifted is that now, more than ever, you can play the game on your own and get your own gear. The introduction of solo delves has made it possible to gear up your character completely on your own without any additional help from others

With the way Warcraft is throwing currencies at players now, it's clear Blizzard has taken more than a few cues from how gacha and other live-service outfits are doing things these days. Plenty of opportunities for ruinous, addictive behavior.

I fully agree with this and they have been ignoring player feedback about it for a while now, it's completely bullshit how many stupid currencies we have and it almost feels like they are AI generating the game design at this point. Like they are going to chat GPT and asking, "what's a good way to create an addictive loop of currencies for players?" Because some of them are in your bags, some of them are in the currency pane, some of them are bind on character, bind on account, some of them can be traded and some can't. It's utter insanity. Truly ass game design. This is the first time they finally made a shift back to using a single currency for PVE though, the flight stones and valor stones. Kind of like marks of valor back in wrath.

It's funny that you mentioned Genshin because it's probably one of the most predatory of all. Star rail isn't really that bad, has much more generous pity. The new game that Hoyo just put out, however, zenless, is fucking terrifyingly predatory. They removed the pity reset or modified it entirely to make it even more disheartening and impossible for a regular players because they weren't spending enough. In Genshin, your pity will not reset If you get a lower rank character, for the higher rank that you're trying to get. In zenless, If you get a higher rank character, it will entirely reset your pity on everything. Lower rank and higher rank. This is designed so that if you're trying to get a lower rank character specifically, to make it even more impossible. Add to that the fact that you get some sort of pity currency that can be used in several ways, all of them that look like some store or shop for you to spend money on. It's crazy, these games are more elaborate than an actual casino where you just pull lever and spin something. Star rail even has slot machines in the divergent universe! It gives you three free spins, you can get negative effects, very rarely you'll actually get something from the slot machine. That affects your entire gameplay experience for the rest of the divergent universe encounter.

In terms of kids versus adults, I would say that the distinction between them became much less clear after COVID, since some kids didn't even get to finish high school in person. They went right into the adult world and started doing online learning. It was as if two entire years of their childhood was stripped from them and those learning experiences taken from them. Plus, hitting the age of 18 doesn't magically make you wiser, or less susceptible to a bunch of things that can completely destroy your life. Like, that's not how it works. It's not like you turn 18 and magically you go "oh okay now I'm an adult, now I can mess up my life entirely, people are allowed to prey on me now since I'm no longer a kid anymore!" Young people are still so inexperienced in life and don't understand that every decision that they make teaches them how the rest of their life is going to go. You spend 3 years playing these gachas, Now you're much more likely to play another one that comes out like wuthering waves. Completely reset the cycle and start gambling again on something brand new.

From a completely humanitarian perspective, I think there should be strict limitations on what kind of predatory tactics you can include in these games for that reason alone. If you have such heavy monetization gambling, shouldn't be considered a game anymore. Should literally have the word gambling in it. Just because these companies desire infinite amounts of money does not mean they should be able to muck up society and mess people up psychologically in my opinion

I agree with you, to an extent. I would say it's a lot more complicated than that with World of Warcraft, which is an MMO, and does not revolve on gambling except in the aspect of random number generated loot. This is probably the majority of looter shooters out there today as well and a large number of other games. Pure chance in just the loot and rewards. Personally, World of Warcraft did not affect me adversely, because I have very strong self-control, and was able to develop very strict limitations for my own personal life which was important in college.

But I think there's something you're definitely missing. Sure, while World of Warcraft can be blamed by some people flunking out of college or high school due to its addictive and fun nature, Have you considered the fact that the world we live in is simply so boring that they don't want to pay attention to those things? Over a 20-year time span since I have graduated, high school and college has not evolved. It's the same boring ass mess that it was when I went to school. Unnecessary classes, study only for the test and never use that information ever again, very rarely are their projects and when there are, they are silly group projects in which two out of the four members of your group are lazy and don't want to do a damn thing. You also are faced with constant demoralizing facts thrown at you from the media and the outside world that your college degree won't help you get a job, you won't see any student loan relief, the wealthy elites are in positions of power and rising faster in companies than you ever will be... Reality is so disappointing. So I can understand why these people have trouble paying attention in school and want to turn to stuff like World of Warcraft, theme park MMO that has so much fun and enjoyment in it

But when we're talking about a gacha, This feels so much more insidious. Every aspect of the entire game, not just the loot, is gambling, and you're gambling with real money. Not your time. In World of Warcraft you don't get a drop, oh well, try again next time. You still paid $15 for that entire month, so you can try as many times as you want on as many characters as you want. But when you pay 50 bucks for Genshin impact and you get nothing, you know what that money goes towards? Absolutely nothing. You lose that money forever. Now you are mentally afflicted with that, and you're already considering whether or not you should pay another 50 bucks to try and get it again with the gamblers fallacy in the back of your mind that if I pay another $50 I'm already $50 in, so I have a much better chance of getting it now. It's sickening

Black mirror is getting closer everyday

I worked at GameStop a long, long time ago. Lots of old console games that couldn't be sold went right to the landfill. Xbox 360 for example. So many niche small games that no one wanted even when marked down to a dollar each. We're talking tens of thousands of them just in one small city alone. I've also been to a lot of thrift and antique specialty stores in my area, and there are so many plastic case games there people are trying to get rid of. Hundreds of them. No one wants them anymore. Eventually all this plastic is just going to be thrown into a landfill. Those who actually keep this stuff long-term, maybe they don't have a lot of games or they have the space for it. But consumerism is a major issue across the world that we are struggling to keep up with.