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How Mihoyo's monetization works

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Re: How Mihoyo's monetization works

#31

Post by nottorp »

bakugo wrote: post #19
nottorp wrote: post #4

Read this and try to explain to me again how going free to play does not corrupt a game's design :)

It's easy to say "F2P bad" or "live service bad", and I'm usually inclined to agree, but in this case, the entire game was carefully designed around the monetization model from the very start of development, to the point that it probably wouldn't work very well without it. I've thought about what a non-live service, $60 one-time purchase version of Genshin Impact would look like, and I've come to the conclusion that…

Yes, every game based on a multiplayer grinding treadmill would be a shitty game if you made it single player.

> the large and diverse roster of characters goes a long way in avoiding the feeling of repetitiveness and tedium

It's just the same tedium but you change the combos every 10000 repeats?

> that plagues most large open world games nowadays

Open world games have grown too large for their own good, but that's a different discussion. The worst is when some title is succesful and they get money and they make a sequel that's thrice as big.

Horizon Zero Dawn: perfect length if you ask me. Horizon Forbidden West: could have been 50% smaller for the same enjoyment.

Even Witcher 3 and Elden Ring, which are great non repetitive open world games, could have been smaller for the same effect if you ask me.

Re: How Mihoyo's monetization works

#32

Post by _lvbh »

bakugo wrote: post #19
nottorp wrote: post #4

Read this and try to explain to me again how going free to play does not corrupt a game's design :)

It's easy to say "F2P bad" or "live service bad", and I'm usually inclined to agree, but in this case, the entire game was carefully designed around the monetization model from the very start of development, to the point that it probably wouldn't work very well without it. I've thought about what a non-live service, $60 one-time purchase version of Genshin Impact would look like, and I've come to the conclusion that…

Even if “live service bad”, Genshin Impact has been reverse engineered to death; you can run your own server, mod the game to get all the cosmetics, and do just about whatever you want.

Re: How Mihoyo's monetization works

#33

Post by mbb70 »

diabeetusman wrote: post #10

Why'd you disable right clicking and highlighting? Edit: If you're not the author of the post, feel free to ignore :)

oncontextmenu and ondragstart are preventDefault'ed _unless_ you are in a input/textarea e.g. leaving a reply. Truly bizarre and pointless. I've done something similar in a nonsense corporate context to stop people copying certain sensitive date, but at least I knew it was pointless.

Re: How Mihoyo's monetization works

#34

Post by mappu »

nottorp wrote: post #4

Read this and try to explain to me again how going free to play does not corrupt a game's design :)

What do you think the game's design is? Because I think it's a gorgeous open world single player ARPG. The story, character cast, literary inspiration, gameplay mechanics, and music, are all just incredible.

There are a thousand great things to say about Genshin before you even get anywhere near talking about the nonintrusive and ignorable monetization model. I think people hear "Gacha" and mentally lump it in with spammy 2d animated gif idle clicker games. But it's a better BOTW, and anything else misses the forest for the trees.

Re: How Mihoyo's monetization works

#35

Post by shados »

minimaxir wrote: post #6

The funny thing about Mihoyo's games is that they are one of the most profitable developers, but they could definitely pull more levers to incentivise people to spend even more money. Most gacha games have some sort of pay-to-win PvP and/or leaderboards built in their games, but in Mihoyo's games, having a top-tier team just means you have to oppertunity to get slightly more premium currency.

Honkai Impact 3rd does have pay2win ladder. It's pretty hardcore too, even as a whale it can be quite rough to get to the top. There's a LOT of top tier whales in that game and you need some pixel perfect timings to utilize it at the top level.

Re: How Mihoyo's monetization works

#36

Post by jabbany »

diabeetusman wrote: post #10

Why'd you disable right clicking and highlighting? Edit: If you're not the author of the post, feel free to ignore :)

Very perplexed about this too. The only reason I can come up with is to prevent people from copying the content?

But that doesn't make much sense either TBH. The page's content is not obfuscated, so this does nothing to stop a content scraper script. Plus, even a not particularly technical user can just turn on reading mode and get at the text anyways...

Re: How Mihoyo's monetization works

#37

Post by hooverd »

user_7832 wrote: post #22
hooverd wrote: post #7

I can second the part about Genshin Impact being harder to monetize because you can "git gud".

Any suggestions? I've been a mobile player for the longest so never (could) use i-frames/animation cancelling etc. Do you have any suggestions on what to do or learn from? TIA!

Hmm, I'm a PC player, but for me it was mostly getting the animation timings down so I could consistently dodge.

Re: How Mihoyo's monetization works

#39

Post by jabbany »

minimaxir wrote: post #6

The funny thing about Mihoyo's games is that they are one of the most profitable developers, but they could definitely pull more levers to incentivise people to spend even more money. Most gacha games have some sort of pay-to-win PvP and/or leaderboards built in their games, but in Mihoyo's games, having a top-tier team just means you have to oppertunity to get slightly more premium currency.

PVP and leaderboards attract a different audience than normal gacha players which is why it tends to be rare-ish in gacha games. (Almost none of the popular ones focus on it).

Most of the time, the social aspect of gacha is to show off your "collection" rather than to show off your "skills", so adding PvP and leaderboards doesn't do much for most players. Instead, gacha games tend to have "social" features that do let you show off your "collection" in some way, like profile cards with character showcases, "supports" mechanisms that let friends and strangers borrow your characters, or sometimes just blatantly a score for your gallery completion %.

Also FWIW, Genshin actually has PvP, it's just that it's only present in the card battle mini-game. And my impression (could be inaccurate though) of that is most players are not particularly "into" that mode.

Re: How Mihoyo's monetization works

#40

Post by sweeter »

mappu wrote: post #34
nottorp wrote: post #4

Read this and try to explain to me again how going free to play does not corrupt a game's design :)

What do you think the game's design is? Because I think it's a gorgeous open world single player ARPG. The story, character cast, literary inspiration, gameplay mechanics, and music, are all just incredible. There are a thousand great things to say about Genshin before you even get anywhere near talking about the nonintrusive and ignorable monetization model. I think people hear "Gacha" and mentally lump it in with s…

but in this case Genshin is heavily hindered by its gacha mechanics and its need to meter out content to keep people coming back. Some good examples of this are how the dialogue can be endless and pointless. You are often running from one place to the next to go through 20 minute un-skippable dialogues that have no real relevance to the story. On top of that, everything "fun" is time gated and restricted arbitrarily by a currency. The game is very much structured around pushing the user to log in for 15-20 minutes every day and anything more or less than that is painful
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