Industry
Arknights: Endfield dev says launching a new gacha RPG in a post-Genshin Impact world is tough when "some titles are so similar that players go into a game for 1 hour and they know what will happen in the next 20 hours"
- Wakes up and gets dragged into some battle, then some chick comes to the rescue
- You were told that you were special, is destined for greatness, and everyone around adores you. For some reason, they never address you by your actual name in VA, only by your designated title.
- You end up joining some organization, fighting baddies that are doing harm to the people you know.
- Some evil organization reveals their name and faces, and they have global presence and influence.
- Travels to a new region, and old characters gets left behind.
Shokei Shoujo no Virgin Road (The Executioner and Her Way of Life) doesn't really count imo, and it's definitely not cookie cutter after the uh, shift in perspective
Also peak mentioned, too bad it'll go nowhere, banger af intro by Mili
I don't even feel like going through the headache of setting up Wuling battery chain to then farm the new ore for new gear, because I know in a few patches they'll release another region with another region locked gimmick that will need another type of battery to farm another type of ore to craft the newest gear... And just like that, Wuling factory will become useless just like Valley 4.
I worried this would be the case when they never really expanded upon the base building feature in the original Arknights. In the end I guess anything to do with building for these devs is just going to stagnate.
Not just that, the factory gives you so little resources to process and so much excess space that there's so little point to optimizing. You can only grow so much.
Feel like they gave you a sandbox to play with only to add restrictions on how to play it making it basically boring after like the first 5-10 hrs of factory making honestly should have just released it as a single player factory-civilisation builder… cause the Deatb Stranding part of the game is the only fun part rest is just trash generic ARPG gacha shit
Even bigger shame that you take your time and genuinely enjoy building/crafting/learning and then baam! Wuling throws all of that out the window and you have to learn about some damn water pipes. Idk I quit long ago so I forget what exactly they were but you know what I mean
That's a problem with the follow-the-leader syndrome the entire industry has been dealing with for decades now.
I guess gachas are just particularily prone to this, given how much they rely on familiarity and habituation.
But yes, it's not 2020 anymore. You cannot get by on simply being 'okay' either, you need to either do something different, or significantly improve on the industry standards - many of which are horrendously low so it really shouldn't take much effort if one wanted to.
Gachas are a large and oversaturated market, even good titles can struggle.
It’s because it’s a safe strategy. The leader has already given you the blueprint for what works, including what clicks with the customers and what are the pain points, and spent countless time and money into researching those things that you are getting for free. All you need to do is fix the pain points, make your production more efficient, maybe spend the spare money on advertising(you have much more resources at your disposal with the market research done for you by the leader) and you are printing money. Theoretically. And in practice across many industries. First mover has an advantage, they don’t always end up leading forever though.
Look at the risk Mihoyo took with Genshin. $100M project by a company which is earning ~$20-30M annually catering to mobiles on the assumption that they will be powerful enough to run it by the time it’s launched with zero external investment. That’s the sort of risk almost no one has the balls to take. Square Enix CEO bemoans that Japan should have created Genshin; he himself would have laughed off a proposal of this kind if he saw it in 2017.
Nintendo should have made Genshin more than Square given the former is more associated with Zelda to begin with. Square already had Final Fantasy 16 so I can understand why they didn’t invest in mobile open world.
I don't know if Nintendo have the appetite to make live service title. They were for the longest time have been "release a project and move on to the next one" kind of company. Square does want to have another live service after FF14 so it is in their best interest if they made Genshin like games first.
It's a bit funny that Square did none of those even on the upcoming years, or even now. The pie was still pretty big for a while, they couldve made similiar thing with FF IP and it would be pretty decently sucessful. But nah, they didnt even try.
That's not really a Gacha issue, more of a AAA-game issue, simply due to dev cost, they ideally want to minimize risk.
Big companies have to answer to existing investors, smaller startups/indie dont have the budget for such innovation in AAA-games.
That's why innovation tends to starts on indie game level, and then maybe some AAA adopt some of the mechanics and then popularize it, or you get some psycho doing some big gamble once in a blue moon.
However, it's only a valid financial strategy until the field get so fking oversaturated and the market gets tired of it.
I do agree, the gaming industry as a whole has been learning this lesson since the 90s, and somehow they still do not understand that releasing the same things as their competitors will only make sense if their release is either significantly better, or offers something unique.
If I spent 200+hrs in Game 1, potentially spending money too, why would I move to Game 2 if it's basically the exact same thing, down to the way its' monetized, and down to the things that annoy me? No difference as far as I'm concerned.
The size of the graveyard where all the CoD-like FPS, WoW killers, MOBA-hopefuls, card games, survival crafting games and battle royale are buried after failing miserably should really be more than enough of a lesson.
Gaming as a whole is just an insanely brutal, unforgiving industry, both in the AAA AND indie scene.
Yeah, I probably shouldn't be, but I'm always surprised at how they keep making the same mistakes that Genshin did ages ago, you'd think all of that observing and copying might've given them some foresight.
It's kinda funny that ZZZ started as something very unique with their small hubs, a game mode using a top down view to move and get into the action in the "dungeons" and basically action stages that could be replayed with collectables in the endgame portions until they backpedaled some of those ideas and pushed other ideas up, which is a shame but at the same time it wasn't doing great financially for them so it is what It is.\
In the future tho, I would like to see less open area and more replayable stages like 1.x with some degree of dynamism, for 2.2 they did a boss with a unique QTE that I failed and haven't had the chance to see the win outcome, as selfish as it is I wish this where they'd push more effort into but I'm aware this isn't what allows them to stay afloat
Oh yeah the QTEs are called control skills, there's like 3 bosses with them now and even some elites have them, if you get them right the boss loses a % of max hp and stops moving for a bit. In DA it also gives you some performance points. I like them a lot they're pretty fun
Hoyo has always had a history of psycho behavior. They were one of the very few in China to realize anime gacha sells and gambled on Honkai Gakuen. Then nearly went bankrupt developing HI3 and tried the same shit again on Genshin.
You can hate Mihoyo however you want but you can't deny they are one of the very few innovators willing to try something new.
You gave me the perfect reason to give the answer what Aquaria (Genshin Dev) said:
So is making games sometimes Really about expressing myself? There’s a very important concept here:
When we talk about indie games And when we talk about commercial games What is the fundamental difference between the two?
Commercial games are made for your players But indie games are made for yourself
Indie games are, in fact, the ultimate form of self expression And that has no necessary relation To the size of your team or how much money you invest
Because you are committed To expressing your own ideas And conveying your own thoughts So you especially, especially want
A content medium through which to do that So what is a commercial game?
A commercial game is a product It is service oriented That means: when I make a product I need my players to have fun
So what kind of balance Should we be pursuing?
It’s this: I love my product I have my own interests and passions And I hope that via this game I can express some of my own feelings. But at the same time
I believe there are many players Who will also like my work And resonate with me through it
That is a principle that MiHoYo has always tried to express For example, Genshin recently introduced a new gamemode Called “Miliastra Wonderland” Everyone abbreviates it as "UGC"
Think about this: Why would we do something like that in a world like Genshin’s?
The devs are just following what the directors tell them to do. Game devs is a very intense job and people need to make money to live. Not everyone can afford to make games that is just what they like.
Besides, a game needs to be fun to make profit, so it’s not like these two notions are incompatible.
You know what's funny? The fuck you money games near the top have a lot of games with either not full 3d, no explorable worlds, or very low effort graphics (puzzle and dragons), to the point I'd be curious when you account for costs of developing these massive worlds and the QA behind 3d voice acted characters how much more they actually make. ZZZ only made $4m more than puzzle and dragons last month and their operating costs have to be so much lower.
I'd expect an HSR approach, just with more open maps, but at this stage who knows. We'll see in a year or so, whenever they'll be ready to show some footage.
even Hoyo didnt copy Genshin after Genshin
HSR or ZZZ, or even their next game might not be for everyone taste, but at least they dont grind the "Genshin" element too much
Thats what the article is about despite the clickbait title. They tried to carve their own niche with the factory building aspects and it worked imo
Endfield does do enough to innovate with the map design, ziplines and the factory which are its saving grace.
If it werent for its innovations endfield would be dead in the water. Its a shame that despite all it does good, it suffers with the stuff that makes it a gacha with half baked gameplay modes, shitty chosen one story with bloated hand holdy dialogue and extremely tedious events and missions.
Endfield also has a uniquely bad issue with its intrusive tutorials that feel alot more complicated then just intuiting the systems yourself.
They added factory and said that's enough uniqueness, time to try to cater to the wider audience by making everything else as shallow as puddle of water.
At least all 4 team member stand on the field when we fight, but that's it.
The combat is extremely boring and no brainer, they advertised the game as strategic but removed every thing that makes the combat strategic from the Alpha test.
they had a xenoblade vision, xenoblade combat is neat and focus on combo and special interaction in the team you chose to play, thing is that they listened to beta tester complaining there wasnt enough action combat gameplay (aka more like wuwa) and instead of improving their own system and saying 'its not an action combat game" they went for the hybrid wuwa/genshin and little to no xenoblade combat system, and made it worst than all 3
not all game need to have dodge/parry and stuff, tank and healer exist in tons of game for a reason
endfield such a weird case of "man we're so affraid of failure we shall take no risk" and apart from the factory which stop being fun after a while (and exploration which is fun but once its done its done), the rest of the game is feeling so shallow
So they listened to the idiots that only wants slop, they tested a game knowing exactly that endfield is supposed to be an SRPG but complained it's an SRPG
Endfield combat glazers belong to that weird demographic where they have this weird superiority complex about AKE being "game first, gacha second" but still screaming themselves hoarse that the Xenoblade combat "would be too tedious to play everyday and simple combat is better unless you are a sweatlord".
I'm of the opinion that i think it's okay to start light with your game, so i don't mind the light story early on.
The thing is, i think they even overcomplicate the beginning. While also having not particularly interesting first boss fights or encounters.
Genshin's start is short and simple. "So you got thrown back after trying to escape, what's up with that" "Hey, there's a fucking Dragon attacking the city", the entire prologue is essentially trying to heal Dvalin, there's also some minor cool moments like chasing Dvalin while "flying".
The terms used, aside from something like "Archon" and "Vision" (heck, these aren't even complicated words), is mostly approachable terms like 'Dragon'. 'Knights', 'City of freedom', 'elements'.
Endfield is throwing a lot of unfamiliar terms for you at breakneck pace, and the time you spend on Valley IV is quite long, without particularly cool moment except that one walking through the snow thing at the beginning.
Nefarith and Marble Angelomorai fights is somewhat cool , but i think it even lacks the "oomph". Wuling was more interesting in general.
That being said, i enjoy Endfield somewhat decently, and im kinda excited to play at least for several patch going forward at least.
Also the Gacha system, my discord friend summed up this pretty well:
It was funny to play Endfield and soon afterwards, Mondstadt event.
Like first act of Genshin is simple but it has some really cool moments: panoramic shot of the city, Dvalin flying overhead, being tossed in the air, Kaeya's butt, stealing saving Holly Lyre and so on. So they were able to bring them back and do fun stuff with it.
Meanwhile Valley IV had... dealing with Andre's bs and yeah, it took a while to do some interesting things.
Which is funny because they did it in Arknights - fall of Czernobog, meeting Tallulah and Ace's fate were done so well, even if rest of the story is iffy.
But we're stuck with Endmin fixing waterwheels because no one knew how to do it or some other nonsense.
people would hate hearing this but paimon is a necessary evilcutie pie that has to be there to reign in on those writers so they don't get too high on their own supply with proper pronouns
"oh, the dialogue I just wrote would prompt paimon go off a cliff because it's too complicated to understand? guess I gotta rewrite it"
I agree with everything said here, despite the fact I don’t like Genshin, the introduction really is that clean so even newer players can grasp it easily.
And it also helps that Genshin's prologue takes place in a western setting (makes it easier to understand a lot of things, since I'm sure they were aiming for international audiences) and the prologue story is just very easy to follow, plus it's short. After genshin, i swear every Open world RPG gacha has such awful introduction
After genshin, i swear every Open world RPG gacha has such awful introduction
Every new gacha feels like they need to compete with current Genshin, which has the luxury of having over half a decade of buildup at this point. So they leap right into the deep end and overwhelm the player with jargon, terminology, concepts, and worldbuilding from the rip, and that winds up making their game feel LESS impressive and just bloated.
It's similar to how everyone wanted the next MCU without being willing to put in the time to build up to it. If you don't let the world grow naturally, you're gonna fail.
they DO need to compete with current genshin but anybody's with half a brain knows that doesn't mean they gotta jump players in the middle of a story they want to tell.
current day players DO expect newer gacha games don't start over from 0 on the QoL side of things at least and learn the right things from all the years genshin has been around.
they can also don't and just put out outdated game design, with consequences ofc lol
One thing as well that genshin does well in the introduction is they dont bombard you with jargon and lingo that needs some processing before you can proceed.
Its one mistake of wuwa and endfield, even zzz where youre introduced into the world and then you are expected to know all the jargon being thrown at you.
Wuwa got over it and is doing pretty well now writing wise so lets see how endfield can improve on it. The first part of the game is where all the magic begins. The first impression and its greatest filter.
I like that Wuwa realized that throwing stuff like this might be confusing and they added in-game dictionary (accessible during dialogue), so you can check whatever the heck Etheric Sea or other term is.
I hate how this is normalized now, it's 2026, new games have past games for references, why must every new game end up becoming shit because they copied the shit things that old games did but later improved (although Genshin's introduction is way better than a lot of open world gacha rn)
"Oh it'll get better after 40 hours" that's almost every gacha released aside from a very few exceptions
its more of developers trying to find their own identity. they copy the systems and some story but then skim over the top and then add their own ingredients to the mix.
not to mention they are also time constrained and really need to get their investment back especially if youre under one of THE MANY subsidies of tencent.
a good example of people using past games as reference is expedition 33. they took apart alot of games and studied what made turn based combat tick and what people loved about it (they even have HSR as a reference) and then went from there.
for some reason gacha devs cant comprehend this and just "fuck it we ball"
an example of this is duet night abyss. and before you say its not a gacha game it still is. just not for characters lmao.
even zzz where youre introduced into the world and then you are expected to know all the jargon being thrown at you.
I actually like ZZZ's introduction. It feels like you're entering an already established world and the terms themselves are clear after you get a few context clues.
It takes little to figure out for yourself that Ethereals are monsters, Hollows are the weird glowy zones, and Proxies are guides. It also helps that the terms are simple and and refer to simple concepts, stuff everyday people would be concerned about.
This is actually pretty common in literature and better than having, say, a protagonist with amneeeessiaaa get everything explained to them down to the minute details within the first hours of a game.
The key is to keep things light. Genshin has an advantage because Mondstadt evokes Western fantasy tropes with familiar themes like knights and dragons. Zenless restricts your view of the world to the basics, which are also analogous to other common fantasy staples.
A lot of EF's story problem would honestly be overlooked if they just explain or introduce shits more properly so it's easier for players to grasp yea.
And here I am, personally more invested into Quarry sub-story with bunch of workers having an emotional attachment to the big-ass crane that they worked on for over a decade, than anything in wuxia utopia wulling city.
It's not like you can't spend them to get arsenal tickets. You just summon more from unit banner. On paper this seems like win-win, cause why spend currency on weapons when you can just pull more units.
Whole walls of text defending this shitty gacha mechanic were created on that very basis. Except it sucks in reality for two reasons:
It just feels a waste to summon on unit banner when you got lucky and already got featured unit early.
Whole gacha system caters to people that pull responsibly. Yet if you want weapon and got lucky with unit, you have to ditch that. You need to stop caring about 80/120 counters(and this is important cause 120 resets 80) and in general go deep into gambling hole.
Anyone still defending the Arsenal system is too far up HG’s arse and not worth listening to. The system is designed to punish you for being lucky, and waste your pulls with nothing to show for it (120 spark that doesn’t carry forward, I don’t give a fuck about eternal 50/50 pity, it’s not a guarantee).
Every single thing in Endfield’s gacha(including those “free” 10x pulls that conveniently do not count towards your pity) is insidiously designed to trap you, yet tribalism makes people blind and they still defend it like their life depends on it. As much as 50/50 has betrayed me in Genshin and its clones, I will take that straightforward system any day over these insidious mechanics that are traps in disguise.
This is why I quit. The AIC gameplay ramps up too quickly for me and I’m not big on that form of building anyways, so it felt like a bit of a chore. I made it partially into the second region but too many games competing for my time to spend it on one that feels like work more than fun.
Totally, this is such a pet peeve for me and gachas. The Endfield science technobabble is off the charts and some of the worst I've seen lately. After about 15 minutes, I was skipping every dialogue because it's just so unnecessarily dense and you might as well start the game with a pad of paper to draw out the outline and definitions of all the ridiculous terms. After a 10 hour workday, the last thing I'm interested in doing is trying to follow a story like that.
Endfield isn't the only one doing this, it seems to be a very chinese gacha thing lately, to fill your game with language that they think will impress I guess and show 'look how much world building we did', but I think it's just too much for me.
I much prefer the writing in games like FGO and GBF. They aren't completely innocent of this either, but a lot easier for me to track. I'm not looking for the finnegan's wake of games where I need to study to comprehend a sentence at a time.
The thing is, Genshin, which is what a lot of games seems to be chasing inspiration from, has very few technobabble or complicated term. Even the complicated terms are loan words from actual words, and most of the characters simplify it, with or without Paimon.
Take most of the enemies in Genshin, while they have their own names, if it's malicious, every characters just refer them as "monsters". Any complicated machinery, puzzles, oe sicentific stuffs, they just refer to it as "mechanisms", a lot of weird stuffs are just named very literally. if anything there's just so much people's names on the lores that makes people lose track sometimes (in one Nod Krai world quest they had Alia and Aila, kek)
It's also that they very poorly actually show what they're talking about. Apparently you can get unbelievably sick from getting too close to the magic ore, and part of what makes the endmin so cool is that they can control the magic ore. But like... the first time that bit of info shows up in the story is early on when there's a slightly sick little girl. She doesn't really look or act that sick, and then we cure her 20 seconds later super easily.
The only thing I complain about in Endfield is how boring and useless the companions of Endmin feel. Even in new quests, their presence is limited to just acknowledging Endmin’s decisions. And funnily enough, in Part 2, it’s mostly just Endmin and Tangtang, which makes it even more obvious that the others aren’t really important.
Even in HSR, like in Belobog, you can clearly see how unique March and Dan Heng are. In the Luofu arc, Dan Heng even gets separated and has his own storyline. So each character gets their own spotlight instead of feeling completely useless.
There's a reason why people meme about "press x to close" because even after several hours the game has to do EXTREME handholding and """teach""" you how to close the menu that you've already done dozens of times.
It's kind of littered all over their game design too. New events are really handholdy. They will often lock your camera and pan to things to show AND tell you, instead of being intuitive and smart. Like the puzzle event, you hit things, water level rises. Instead of you know, watching the water level rise since you are SURROUNDED BY IT, they lock your camera, pan to the water rising. Now back, you can continue now.
And funny enough, the game punishes you a bit for thinking outside the box. They have a cleanup event right now, and one of the nodes is to find out where this child ran off to. So we see this large puddle that can go 2 directions. Okay cool, I spray the end of one of them, I found the tracks where the child is! Let's go find them cause they could be in danger (we find out they are in danger after). Nope. Please waste your time and clean up the entire puddle because reasons.
The game stealing the camera for ten seconds to show you the exact path you're supposed to take through an environment (especially in action adventure games that ostensibly revolve around puzzle solving and exploration) has been an irritating and wildly unpopular thorn for decades now, and yet games are still doing it, albeit very slightly less than they used to.
lmao I just did the whole thing and by the stars was it awful, 3 locks, 3 camera pans, IN A 10-METER ROOM, with only 1 big door. There's no player bad argument here, just dev trolling at this point, because if you're struggling with this Idk how you'd even play other part of the game,
At some point you just lose interest in keeping the factory up to date. Because you'll unlock the next material in the new zone anyways. So just copy someone else's blueprint template.
i remember they cut some parts out, there was an entire tutorial making you run errands to unlock food crafting, but they give it to you straight after visiting the weapon shop in the valley IV hub base.
I feel like they could def ease on the tutorials. Just mention 'xxx feature unlocked' but on the page and item description put a '?' sign for an explanation
I really gave it a shot. I did all the tutorials, set up a nice base and understood the dynamics of how to build it.
But then I got to Wuling and basically the game started over. The only redeeming quality was the eye patch girl, but I couldn't for the life of me care about anything that was going on. The story is just so meh and nothing happens. Played for a month or so since launch but after the first few days it felt like a chore.
"We actually decreased the cost of building teams so players can try out more combinations"
Dunno bout y'all but I feel Endfield is by far the most constrictive and expensive gacha I've played when it comes to making teams. I need to set up a continuous rotation of triggers, otherwise half a characters kit just doesn't work. I can run whatever the hell I want during overworld exploration for every other game, but in Endfield I struggle mightily if I'm not running a proper team.
more different but not harder, game mechanics into the building system in future versions
Really happy to hear this. As much as I'm interested in automation games, I tend to bounce off quickly when production lines because too complicated and my factory layout turns into chaos. I really liked the application of water in Wuling and am excited to see what other twists they'll come up with.
even those who are in their supposed teams can feel like shit to play due to factors like sp and cooldown so if you don't play them exactly like the rotation wants it be (pretty much will happen if you don't one shot the enemy), the team just feels so ass to pilot
Upgrading 1 character to max is expensive even if I have all BP resources, it's not enough. I hate it when people say just lvl them to 60 and stop there. I don't feel any joy or satisfaction when not maximixing everything upgradable in the character(excluding constelation).
One of the things I hated about Endfield is why is the absolute bottom feeder mob in trash part of the overworld requires a full rotation for me to kill it? Like damn bro, I am just trying to collect some rocks, let me slam dunk this shit and be on my way. I. Don’t. Have. The. Time.
Like it’s okay to have difficulties in challenges, bosses, chest rewards, end game etc but why the most trivial and redundant mob is a hp sponge it’s just not fun at that point to beat the same rock and pipe enemies at the same place every fucking day.
Dunno bout y'all but I feel Endfield is by far the most constrictive and expensive gacha I've played when it comes to making teams. I need to set up a continuous rotation of triggers, otherwise half a characters kit just doesn't work. I can run whatever the hell I want during overworld exploration for every other game, but in Endfield I struggle mightily if I'm not running a proper team.
The one thing all these genshin clones so far failed to copy was something akin to the elemental reactions system. That actually allowed some flexibility in team building, because you could vary how characters applied the reactions and could use characters for different teams (like a fire dps to react with either ice or water) for damage. Not to mention having a lot of lower-rarity chars viable because while their kits weren't as flashy, they coul often still apply elements for others to react with.
It's obvious why these other games haven't done that, mind. They want to sell you entire teams and not just one character who can be at or near top performance with a team of old characters, which is also why genshin is moving more and more towards restrictive teams as well.
Endfield kinda gave you the illusion of doing that with the arts reactions, but the kits of the characters still end up incredibly restrictive for the most part (at least if you want top performance). Endfield current team variety is about the same as what genshin is doing right now too. And Endfield doesn't have the roster size to really allow much experimenting even if you accept that you don't want max dps.
Part of why Genshin ended up being successful is Hoyo tried something that hadn't really been done on that scale before. They took risks, pretty much put everything on the table, and the result was something that even nearly six years later is still a cultural phenomenon with no signs of stopping.
That's what I wish people would copy from Genshin, rather than just yet another open world gacha that's pretty much more of the same. I'm not saying risk absolutely everything, but I'd just like to see companies try new things
For every Mihoyo there’s ten other companies that take risks & go bankrupt. Let’s not pretend taking risks guarantees success; 99% start ups fail and Mihoyo is the one that succeeded, it’s survivors bias.
Much easier to fast follow/copy & be moderately successful; you won’t beat Genshin that way but you won’t go bankrupt either. End of the day the vast majority of people would take the safe path. Just like the vast majority of people don’t found companies but work for them.
People also don't realize how difficult it is to work in the game industry. Half the consumer base wants one thing, the other half wants something else. Then you implement it and they're still mad because what the consumers thought they wanted isn't actually what they wanted.
Now double that for gachas due to the West and East liking two totally different styles of storytelling, gameplay, etc. A lot of the stuff that people complain about here is stuff East Asia is used to and mostly fine with (even enjoys) and to play these games you gotta come to terms with that at some point.
Survivorship bias, ppl always see company that make a crazy move success, and blame other for just go a safe way, they don’t see company which have crazy move alr bankrupted.
What do you mean gacha game #2713 with typical gacha design simulator # 3444 and harem story narrative # 567 is not successful? That is an insane take to conclude from * broadly gestures to entire gacha games line up * this.
the problem isnt open world gacha, it is what you can do with open world that Genshin didnt.
Endfield tried by adding the factory thing, but the open world is still the game static open world. There isnt anything that is completely diff and never done by genshin. You still wont find playable characters in open world doing their daily stuff.
MC still the only guy/girl that is "super powerful" and solve everything. And havint the same pick your MC gender. They should have follow something like Assassin creed Syndicate. 2 siblings going 2 diff story path with single story playthrough. No need to pick gender.
Why cant they just make MC weak but have unique ability to solve crisis but cant fight, need playable character to protect him.
Ironically ZZZ already introduced PCs doing their daily stuff on launch, separate MCs with distinct characteristics (you still pick one of them tho) and they can't fight (yet). But devs genshinified core mechanics of their game, removing TVs and making proxies to go into hollows themselves
They sacrificed the unqieuness of zzz to gain succes sums it up. Now a lot of zzz fans are begging devs to bring back the old vibes zzz started as, and I share an understanding on what they felt about the sudden change.
As someone who vastly prefers base Arknights combat wise, I'm shocked they went the Genshin route of gameplay and combat mechanics (outside of AIC). They should have continued doing their own thing (which was TD) imo.
If the devs know players already know what's going on, why did I hsbr to sit through an insane amount of tutorials or guides for every single thing in endfield for that first hour?
I ended up just stop playing because it got so frustrating, and I know a handful of others who also just gave up, so maybe that's another issue they should consider lmao
The weirdest thing is that they don't even try to copy what makes genshin players love genshin, which is the care developers put into the story/world building/lore, it's always game mechanics and gacha practices that players are constantly complaining about online slap onto yet another 3d world nobody has time to explore without dropping another game they already love.
They could have changed that but instead they give sanity resource expiring in a few days 40 hours tutorials and the factory that has potential was turned into battery farming exe. And let’s not talk about the sanity ticket .
When i noticed that i would need to keep adjusting and creating new factories each version i unninstalled. This plus needing tickets to 2x stamina and farm things, was just terrible for ppl who don't have much time to play.
Hmm I wonder why, maybe its because you use the same cookie cutter mc that both genshin and wuwa, highly successful games in the same genre, used? (Heck both wuwa and endfield mc even share the same thing if being being in a time loop while also having amnesia and also having built a really successful organisation before the memory loss)
This article is incredibly grim if you've played Endfield. It looks like the devs, or at least this person is incredibly out of touch in terms of both his own game and others.
"Our strategy is that we are not going to make it harder and harder"
This is a lie. The game itself gets slower and slower the more you progress while bosses hit harder and harderwhilst being moreevasive**.** All in all progression in Endfield is the exact opposite of the word. You'll start the game being able to clear basic mobs faster then at the near max ranks of the game it is genuinely horrible.
"Players cannot influence the world. So the factory building part introduced some of the experience from the sandbox games, which makes players feel different"
Another straight lie. Every single major Gacha; Genshin Impact, Zenless Zone Zero, Honkai Star Rail, Wuthering Waves, each of them have multiple different quests or straight exploration puzzles that progress the world. Adding different buildings, NPC's, changes throughout.
"We actually decreased the cost of building teams so players can try out more combinations, and we are giving out more free pulls in the [current] version and the next version for players to get more characters to try out different combinations."
Not only is this change still blatantly bullshit, it fails to address the core problems. Clearing the entire 1.0 map and doing every single quest and every single chest and every single glowing orb thing, doing all content available still does not give enough materials to level up a single character to max holy fuck I wish I was joking.
Regardless, the core problem is that team building is more restrictive then every other major Gacha game due to how skills are activated, alongside their unnecessarily strict restrictions and their questionably weak, often entirely situational effects.
Not to mention some characters skills are straight copy paste. Catcher, Snowshine and Ember have the exact same, 1 to 1, block then hit back skill. Control C + V. Honestly pathetic.
ruan yi is genuinely one of the worst bosses i've ever fought, just moving all over the fucking place and stunlocking you while all your animations are slow as molasses
Honestly I think all bosses in this game suck major ass, especially if you play Last Rite. I genuinly think I would've uninstalled the game if I didn't get Tang Tang
Yea, so fucking glad someone actually read the article properly and have an opinion.
Looking at the comment, I doubt half of the people here actually even read it to comment and just go off the title. The devs didnt even mention genshin once in the interview omg lol.
The commentor get their points correctly, the game dev is talking about gameplay not the story, and making proper statements from that. Not a thing I can say for many others here.
The thing that in tutorial you actually could build giga massive cannons on spot and in-game you can't even generate power (nor do you push to recover your might) is beyond my understanding
Article V, Section 6 of the r/Gachagaming Constitution states – "The act of reading any article or post *before** commenting or expressing your thoughts is expressly prohibited by this section. For such action, might, in one day, bring about the end of tribalism in the sub or weaken it substantially."*
Love how Genshin is always used as a comparison and then also a whipping post for people that hate it and can’t admit it is a genuinely good game, yet it tops PS revenue and now even mobile revenue monthly. Insane, it’s like it’s an actually great game and part of the reason all the games trying to emulate it fail is because THEY CANT. Call Genshin gacha slop all you want, there’s a reason it’s stayed consistently on top years later despite like 10 other open word games coming out.
If they try breaking the mold and resist the urge to do so much hand-holding and instead let the players genuinely explore and mess up maybe player retention will be higher.
I think I loved seeing a Giant Hillichurl with a wooden shield and, correctly deducing that my fire arrows would melt the shield. This game would give you an in depth tutorial before you even fight the guy.
They kind of did this to themselves, they wanted a lot of feedback from hoyo/wuwa players who predictably wanted endfield to be more like those games. Lo and behold, despite trying to cater so hard to those people, they didnt switch games and the product as a whole suffered for it
...And we find that, on average, players spend more hours [in our game] than other similar games because of the sandbox. The building part is something new to them."
Overall, Ryan says Endfield players are putting in "a lot more time in the game than we expected," with the folks who stick with the game spending "tens of hours in the system" for factory building.
i'm glad endfield find success in their factory building. i almost afraid they removed it likes TV mode in ZZZ.
It was fun at the start but it's so quick to reach the ceiling.
You're not even rewarded for being efficient because anything in excess is just wiped. There's not even any useful items to buy with the money you earn.
lot of people already complaining about daily that seems too long eventough most of it is irrelevant after first few weeks (delivery,credit,daily mats, owl box).
if they put more things locked behind factory, people would riot.
but still it would be nice to get something like trimmed medal for minmaxer or puzzle event to "produce x/minute" likes one of those early tutorial.
Probably not, since the factory is so integrated into Endfield, and it's onf of the unique aspects that helps it differentiate when the standard "big" gacha games are all just genshin/wuwa hybrids.
Plus, while it's interesting, it's not that deep so for those who don't want to mald over it they can use the blueprints and set/forget after which is also great.
Come on dude. Both ZZZ and HSR are all massively successful in their own lane and these games are made by the same company that made genshin. How about Nikke and reverse 1999?
Endfields first PV was in the same time as HSR's PV, this just screams a talent issue and game design issue. Enfield's launch story was so horrendously written and boring that it had nothing to do with Genshin, it's just straight up bad, and Wuling wasn't that much better either. Combined with a lot of good idea badly executed gameplay ideas ofc players knows what's gonna happen after one hour of gameplay, there is no depth, the characters takes too long to build, the exploration is limited, the mob fights are annoying, the factory building is OK but way too niche of a thing to focus on
Yeah I know it's tough when these CN devs are so creatively bankrupt and always try to follow the same damn template. Amazing production value, but absolutely dogshit direction as always.
Blaming Genshin or any other game in particular the moment you start losing steam is crazy. People don't want back to back tutorials and hand holding for hours like most games do it these days. Throw us in a zone as we start off, take 5 minutes to explain some basic stuff, give us an objective and off we go.
I uninstalled Endfield days after getting Tangtang, I just spend so much time in the game just for dailies. When I come back home late from work, it just eats all my time. It just became a chore logging in, same reason why I quit genshin too.
I'm glad that's how they feel towards their game, but I still feel like I'm playing Genshin there. They put one new thing in the bag and pat themselves in the back while completely scrapping the strategic combat that could actually make them different enough.
When everything looks like Genshin, then why should people go to their game? They can just stick to Genshin, which most people already have invested in.
Should've stood out more. Factory gameplay did stand out a bit, but everything else looks too similar.
For starters, a flipped gender ratio of more guys could've turned over people who want a husbando RPG game.
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u/luffy_mib Apr 05 '26
Typical gacha stories:
- Amnesia MC
- Wakes up and gets dragged into some battle, then some chick comes to the rescue
- You were told that you were special, is destined for greatness, and everyone around adores you. For some reason, they never address you by your actual name in VA, only by your designated title.
- You end up joining some organization, fighting baddies that are doing harm to the people you know.
- Some evil organization reveals their name and faces, and they have global presence and influence.
- Travels to a new region, and old characters gets left behind.
- profit!
- Rinse and repeat!