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PC Gamer: Genshin Impact grosses over $100m, recoups development costs in two weeks

What dictates its success?


  • Total voters
    98

Esteldan

Member
Seen a lot of people talk about this being better than Breath of the Wild.

The truth is BOTW was never that good, people got caught up in the hype and now a carbon copy that fixes some of the more tedious elements is taking advantage of that with F2P + monetisation schemes (unpopular opinion).
 

LordOfChaos

Member
COVID, it's an ok game, plus it's free, winning combo in these times.

I do think there's enough interesting lore in here that I wish I could see it de-Gacha'ed and just as a solid pay once single player experience.
 

reptilex

Banned
It was fixed within 3 hours, fool. Do your due diligence and follow up on your claims before you make an ass out of yourself further

Also, this "cheap clone" does most things better than BotW did, looks better, and even runs better on a damn phone lol
QKj1C8U.png


The only things that BotW does better are having an option to use a shield and chopping down trees lol

Better in Genshin:
Secrets that result in actual rewards, not just Korok turds
Elemental combat
Character variety
NO WEAPON DURABILITY
Weather doesn't fuck up your climbing
An actual storyline, not pre-rendered cinematics that you occasionally unlock from memories

I can go on but I have a feeling that this is falling on deaf ears, considering your avatar lol

Actual secrets in BOTW have rewards, you just didn't play it
BOTW has elemental combat, you just didn't play it
BOTW has character AND boss variety, you didn't play it
In fact BOTW has weapon VARIETY but you didn't play it
Oh that's right, BOTW HAS weather
On that last point you're right, since BOTW did something with open-world that you probably wouldn't get.
 

reptilex

Banned
Genshin Inpact looks good, but has no appeal to me: mtx combined with another fucking copycat from CCP because it seems besides the same 1000 years old myths they can't create anything original.

However I would outsource production there over eastern europe because they're killers at production and getting really good at game crafting which not all western or japanese can pretend to anymore.
 
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SLoWMoTIoN

Unconfirmed Member
Actual secrets in BOTW have rewards, you just didn't play it
BOTW has elemental combat, you just didn't play it
BOTW has character AND boss variety, you didn't play it
In fact BOTW has weapon VARIETY but you didn't play it
Oh that's right, BOTW HAS weather
You've never played Genshin have you?

Just played 15 minutes.
Do you have ADHD? I didn't even like BoTW and I gave it a fair chance to see if I missed something. (over 20 hours)
 
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Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
You've never played Genshin have you?


Do you have ADHD? I didn't even like BoTW and I gave it a fair chance to see if I missed something. (over 20 hours)

I'm not saying it's a bad game, I just know what those 15 minutes are going to lead to. A slightly inferior version of BotW...a game I suffered through at the end to finish.

Bring on the PS5 baby!
 

Esteldan

Member
You've never played Genshin have you?


Do you have ADHD? I didn't even like BoTW and I gave it a fair chance to see if I missed something. (over 20 hours)

I've given it 40+ hours and it didn't improve for me. It's not a BAD game, it's better then most Ubisoft Open World titles but not by a massive amount. The hype it got plus all the talk of it completely reinventing the wheel was seriously overblown and it's comfortably the worst 3D Zelda for me.
 
S

SLoWMoTIoN

Unconfirmed Member
I've given it 40+ hours and it didn't improve for me. It's not a BAD game, it's better then most Ubisoft Open World titles but not by a massive amount. The hype it got plus all the talk of it completely reinventing the wheel was seriously overblown and it's comfortably the worst 3D Zelda for me.
It is sorta empty and the fact you have to avoid combat for the most part hurt my enjoyment quite a bit. That and rain not letting you climb (Genshin has weather without these cons) or equipping weapons without getting shocked. The shrine puzzles were also very meh and tiny. I felt like if they had worked on bigger more complex shrines over the little ones it would have felt more like a proper Zelda. I liked that you could also equip different clothes and the physics the game had were nice though.
 

Esteldan

Member
It is sorta empty and the fact you have to avoid combat for the most part hurt my enjoyment quite a bit. That and rain not letting you climb (Genshin has weather without these cons) or equipping weapons without getting shocked. The shrine puzzles were also very meh and tiny. I felt like if they had worked on bigger more complex shrines over the little ones it would have felt more like a proper Zelda. I liked that you could also equip different clothes and the physics the game had were nice though.

Yeah the lack of variety really hurts.

The problem for me is the only important progression system is tied to Shrines which makes exploring the world feel like a big waste of time. I understand what they were trying to do with the weapon durability system but as it isn't an RPG and doesn't have XP, fighting enemies felt pointless.

The vast majority of side quests are a waste of time (fetch quests with generic rewards) and so 90% of my time in the world was just looking for Shrines which becomes tedious when most of your gameplay is just pointless wandering with maybe 10% inside shrines doing something interesting.

I know there's some fun quests like building the town and there's a few puzzles in the overworld but it doesn't justify the amount of pointless wandering.
 
The F2P gacha business model works. That's why they are using it. Complaining about it and saying you won't play it unless it conforms to a business model you prefer just means you won't play it. 20 million people already have, so the studio and developers won't miss you in the slightest.

It's genuinely a good game, made by people who seem to have put heart and soul into it. I haven't run into any towers to capture or procedurally generated side quests like Ubisoft or Bethesda open worlds. Everything has been hand-placed in the world instead of copy-pasted and the 2 large areas available at launch are completely unique and there's shit to find everywhere. I've only done a few side quests but they are all multi-step, relatively long chains with special areas placed just for the quests and unique puzzles, mechanics, and boss fights. This is what open world really should be like in terms of exploration and questing.

The fact that the game has already made back it's reported $100 million budget in the first two weeks just means Mihoyo doesn't need to worry about if the game is going to succeed or not and they are free to finish the rest of the game's planned content. Right now we only have 2 of 6-8 zones in the complete game and only 2 of 7 elements, so there's probably another 80% of game still left to release. This is going to be one big goddamned world when they're done with it.
 
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Lethal01

Member
It was fixed within 3 hours, fool. Do your due diligence and follow up on your claims before you make an ass out of yourself further

Also, this "cheap clone" does most things better than BotW did, looks better, and even runs better on a damn phone lol
QKj1C8U.png


The only things that BotW does better are having an option to use a shield and chopping down trees lol

Better in Genshin:
Secrets that result in actual rewards, not just Korok turds
Elemental combat
Character variety
NO WEAPON DURABILITY
Weather doesn't fuck up your climbing
An actual storyline, not pre-rendered cinematics that you occasionally unlock from memories

I can go on but I have a feeling that this is falling on deaf ears, considering your avatar lol

Nah, BoTW has way better characters, races, environments.
The animal race in this game is literally just (add cat ears), Botw runs laps around it when it comes to the characters looking unique.
The dialouge writing is far better in BoTW so the story that is there actually makes you want more and you actually care about the characters who give you side quests. In this you just wanna skip through most of what's said.

better atmosphere in general, Climbing and exploring feels more fun.
Weapon durability and constant switching is great actually.

I do love that this game limits how much food you can eat.
 
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MagnesG

Banned
It was fixed within 3 hours, fool. Do your due diligence and follow up on your claims before you make an ass out of yourself further

Also, this "cheap clone" does most things better than BotW did, looks better, and even runs better on a damn phone lol
QKj1C8U.png


The only things that BotW does better are having an option to use a shield and chopping down trees lol

Better in Genshin:
Secrets that result in actual rewards, not just Korok turds
Elemental combat
Character variety
NO WEAPON DURABILITY
Weather doesn't fuck up your climbing
An actual storyline, not pre-rendered cinematics that you occasionally unlock from memories

I can go on but I have a feeling that this is falling on deaf ears, considering your avatar lol
Genshin has gated progress (resins) though. Something a F2P game would always have.
 
What's the catch? What are the microtransactions like?

Imagine playing Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat, but only having access to four of the characters. Suddenly, all those other characters seem pretty appealing. Now let's arbitrarily assign some of those locked characters a four star ranking, and give others a five star ranking. Well those five star characters are looking REALLY cool now, except those have the lowest chance of being unlocked. After a while you've unlocked several more four characters by playing the character unlock slot machine with the free tokens that the game has given you, but still no five star. E-Honda and Dhalsim are fun and all, but Guile and Chun-Li look awesome!

Aside from that, you've already pulled that slot machine lever so much that you just know you've got to be getting close to the 50/50 chance of a guaranteed five star character payout. You could just keep playing and slowly earn more tokens for the slot machine, but that five dollar login reward bonus would make things go a lot faster, or you could even buy more tokens right now.

And that's how they get you. Or you could just play the hands that you're dealt, and be happy with the characters you get. It's still Street Fighter, and it's still a fun game. There's also the fact that paying for a free game kind of defeats the point of one of the best things about it.
 
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Compsiox

Banned
Imagine playing Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat, but only having access to four of the characters. Suddenly, all those other characters seem pretty appealing. Now let's arbitrarily assign some of those locked characters a four star ranking, and give others a five star ranking. Well those five star characters are looking REALLY cool now, accept those have the lowest chance of being unlocked. After a while you've unlocked several more four characters by playing the character unlock slot machine with the free tokens that the game has given you, but still no five star. E-Honda and Dhalsim are fun an all, but Guile and Chun-Li look awesome!

Aside from that, you've already pulled that slot machine lever so much that you just know you've got to be getting close to the 50/50 chance of a guaranteed five star character payout. You could just keep playing and slowly earn more tokens for the slot machine, but that five dollar login reward bonus would make things go a lot faster, or you could even buy more tokens right now.

And that's how they get you. Or you could just play the hands that you're dealt, and be happy with the characters you get. It's still Street Fighter. and it's still a fun game. There's also the fact that paying for a free game kind of defeats the point of one of the best things about it.
As long as there are no areas that are impossible without a 5 star character, that doesn't sound too bad.
 
As long as there are no areas that are impossible without a 5 star character, that doesn't sound too bad.

It really isn't. Just also know that you're going to hit a wall on character progress, but as long as you don't spend resources poorly, that shouldn't in any way affect your ability to play the main story campaign. It's largely the optional content that you'll be gated from due to power level, such as a mutli-floor arena that isn't needed to progress. I'd recommend reading up on the game a little before starting, though, or at least before using your resources. The OT I wrote should be helpful, but is by no means exhaustive.
 
People wondring why this game made 100 million $ in 2 weeks seem to be out of touch with both the Japanese/Chinese market and F2P games in general.

One quick look at the most profitable IPs in Japan should tell you all you need to know, Fate Grand Order a F2P RPG/Visual novel/gacha mobile game that's made with Unity and released in 2015 (and a Sony Music Entertainment owned IP cause they own Aniplex the puplisher) is more profitable than all of PlayStation's IPs combined, Granblue Fantasy (2013) another similar mobile game to FGO, which was made by an upstart Japanese company (Cygames was founded in 2011) and they maybe worth more than the legendary developer Capcom!

Let that sink in, and then you'll understand that 100 million dollars is a drop in the ocean for these games.
 
I've enjoyed reading through all the posts in the thread even if some got a bit heated..... all good. In just 2 pages we got commentary on gameplay (good and bad), the business side, the industry aspect in Asia, culture, politics. Thank you all.
 

kurisu_1974

is on perm warning for being a low level troll
It just looks like BotW becasue of the cellshading. And only the world, not even the characters. If anything, the game feels more like a Tales game or a Falcom title.

BotW fanboys are delusional.
 

MagnesG

Banned
It just looks like BotW becasue of the cellshading. And only the world, not even the characters. If anything, the game feels more like a Tales game or a Falcom title.

BotW fanboys are delusional.
Elemental slimes, korok puzzles, stamina dependent climb, bite sized shrines, emphasis on visual hints in exploration.

Delusional much?
 

kurisu_1974

is on perm warning for being a low level troll
Elemental slimes, korok puzzles, stamina dependent climb, bite sized shrines, emphasis on visual hints in exploration.

Delusional much?

To me it actually feels more like an action rpg version of DQ... Anyways I'm enjoying this more than I did BotW (yes I finished it on WiiU) so no harm done.
 

Mossybrew

Member
Unless you become obsessive about getting certain characters, you literally never need to spend money in this game. Easily one of if not the best FTP game I've ever played.
 

reptilex

Banned
You've never played Genshin have you?

Do you have ADHD? I didn't even like BoTW and I gave it a fair chance to see if I missed something. (over 20 hours)

I will give it a go, not saying it's a bad game, but clearly it has nothing on BoTW be it for the fact that it copied it without bringing anything creative, but it does seem like it's very well produced so I'll try.
 

anothertech

Member
100,000x better than botw.

And I loved botw, but better music, better story, better weapons, better combat variety, better rpg mechanics, no breaking weapons, no bs weather mechanics, and it's multiplayer.

I mean, the sound fx and climbing animations and cooking and such are straight up botw rips, but it improves on the game in every way. If you love botw there's no reason you wouldn't love this besides silly fanboyism.
 

Neil Young

Member
Put about 5 hours into it so far...surprisingly good. Seems like exploration is rewarded unlike BOTW. I DO hate, with all of my heart, that little girl companion fairy. Why do these games insist on having the annoying little girl character? Do people like this shit? I get the big titty, ass hanging out characters....but this thing...SHUT UP!!!

Also, I'm collecting a ton of currencies I dont know what the hell to do with. I "bought" two characters with some but dont know what the stars you find in every chest are used for. Fun game though!!
 
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