Eula's Paradox: How Hoyoverse Perfected the FOMO Formula

foreign [Music] Lawrence is one of my favorite characters in ganshin impact and judging how normal I am about my favorites you can imagine I have a lot I want to say about her she's a descendant of monstat's tyrannical Lawrence Clan which was overthrown for their atrocities many years ago even though they still exist now and don't have as much power as they used to monstat's Citizens still view the Lawrence clan in a negative light you'll let herself cut ties with her family and decided to walk her own path she then opted to join the Knights of evonius to make a difference Yule is now captain of its reconnaissance company and courageously fights against evil Yule is criminally misunderstood due to her family's dark history but she's got a heart of gold I'm especially weak to pretty ladies holding great swords but doubly so for kudarius with outrageous Gap Moe her Kit's really fun and flashy she hits like a freight train and I don't have this character I've gotten to know her through her story Quest and the rare chances I get to test her out though I've missed out on her unfortunately and Eula was only available in limited time event wishes for two specific periods of time she hasn't been seen since though so if you didn't wish for her then chances are we're both in the same boat the big cheese at hoyovers are extremely good at tapping into fomo or the fear of missing out in fact I think they've perfected the fomo formula with all the tricks they employ going as far as to make it into their game design I want to take a look at just how hoyoverse does this by taking a closer look at genshin and how these gacha games sink their hooks into you I realize I'm dating this video because Eula is due for another rerun any patch now but the problem she presents is not unique to her it's a paradox that will play genshin until it goes the way of the dinosaur Yule is just the face of this problem at this moment in time out of all the limited resources in genshin the most precious one is time and I don't mean the time in game I mean the real world passage of Time gentian impact's game design is linked to the player's relationship with time and how much of that time they decide to dedicate to it this is because everything in genshin related to The Player's account progression is gated by real world time players can log in and freely explore the massive open world at their own Leisure but to strengthen their characters and get their resources required to do so players need to commit to grinding the game out for example characters need specific local Specialties that spawn in the environment with a set amount on the map when you pick these up some of them take two to three real world days to respond you need a ton of these to max out one character at least you can somewhat bypass this by calling a friend and forming those Specialties in their world but the same rules apply to them too you better not hope that they're also pulling for the same character that's not all though as every character needs materials from bosses Talent books to raise their skills accessories to boost stats and so on not to mention weapons that also take specific drops to level up on top of all of this some of these materials like character specific Talent books can only be claimed on certain days of the week meaning that you can only get them on that day character materials can be claimed using a premium currency called Original resin with a set amount being available every day with things such as boss drops and talent books the cost of claiming these mats vary also bosses and newer patches are tied to new areas in some cases so you actually have to get over there and unlock it before you can get to farming again if a friend has it available you're able to get some help there and two heads are most certainly better than one once you're out of resin you'll have to wait until it refills which can take up to 21 Real World hours that means that the act of gaining specific resources is dictated by the game intentionally bottlenecking progress players can usually finish content faster than it's pumped out so the devs have to stagger things out to keep players logging in and playing consistently thankfully gentian isn't difficult by any means and the only form of end game content isn't required to finish the game there are a handful of very strong easier to get characters that form the backbone of most teams and can be used to clear most of the in-game content but as more enemies that counter certain characters or play Styles get introduced investing in different characters and changing your approach is really important to standing a Fighting Chance daily commissions and a battle pass also mean that players can finish tasks tied to the day and ultimately the patch cycle for extra rewards missing a login isn't the end of the world and neither is missing a week but to be away for months at a time which is very likely given that burnout can happen this means that you'll have missed out on something Sisyphus wishes he had this Boulder to push uphill the cherry on top is that limited time events are a staple for this game these events not only give you extra resources but also limited time items that you can only get from that event some events are rerun every year but never in the same exact way characters cut scenes items and the events themselves all change and at the time of this recording there's no a way to view these in the game some of the most important lore drops have happened during these limited time events to play gunshon even casually means you need to be at peace with the idea of missing something these factors working together means that genshin wants you to be playing for as long as possible as frequently as you can in talking about this I realize it's a cry for help well it is I'm someone who really likes routine logging into gunshin and doing my silly little tasks every day is part of my nightly ritual I would consider myself a very diligent person and I like to build characters and make plans for how I'll use my resin each day the time I put in hopefully reflects on my account I'm close to Max Adventure rank at this point in the game and I have a healthy amount of characters I've invested my time into I also get the games of Elkin Moon which gives me extra Primo jams every day on login and I usually snag the cheapest here of the game's battle pass to maximize the amount of rewards I get it's basically like paying a subscription service and I like to feel like I get my money's worth but because of this dedication I feel like I can't really miss a day of gentian I am a little guilty of logging in and doing my dailies on my phone while on vacations or away from home but the game's ballooning storage size means I can't really do that anymore as you can imagine this diligent cuts into my ever increasing backlog which I'm making a conscious effort to cut down on this year and I don't know about you guys but I'm playing some phenomenal games right now Hi-Fi Rush has just Rewritten my DNA permanently valhalla's cyberpunk bartending action has me gripped and the re4 Remake has just proved that Capcom still at the top of their game also a sequel to the game that inspired genshin has just come out and what was I doing on tears of the Kingdom launch day the parade of Providence event because I kept putting it off this makes it hard to make time to play genshin missing a couple days weeks or months feels really rough this is because the most fiendish thing that's time gated is [Music] so those uninitiated gentian impact is a free-to-play live service gotcha game you can download the game for free and experience everything it has to offer but it does have Micro transactions the player can spend real money in the game to gain resources used to roll in this gotcha these games are called gotcha games because they're modeled after gosh upon machines or small vending machines you put money into for prizes these prizes are in capsules and they're all randomized if you've played OverWatch or any game with a loot box system you've basically been rolling gotcha as you complete tasks in gentian you get a currency called Primo gems which you can think of as coins you put in the gosh upon machine you get Primos by doing daily commissions exploring new areas opening chests and finishing quests accumulating these Primos is a slow process but they slowly add up over time you then use these Primos to wish Scout roll or summon for the characters on their featured banners all these terms mean the same thing they're interchangeable these Banners are only in rotation for a couple weeks at a time with almost every new 5 Star being limit meaning that once their time is gone their banished to hoyo versus basement for a little while now you may be thinking if it's just 160 of these do hickeys to Wish isn't getting your baby girl as easy as wishing once oh you sweet summer child characters are split into different Rarities denoted by stars four star characters being more common and 5 Stars being the opposite the rates are also skewed meaning that it's much more difficult to get something of a higher Rarity there are also equippable weapons for the characters in the summoning pool to dilute your chances of getting what you want as you can see here the rate to get a 5 Star character is abysmally low you may also notice that there are multiple 5 Stars listed here despite there being only one character featured on the banner we'll get there soon so because of all of these roadblocks the chances of you bringing your baby girl home are pretty low so how do you get a 5 Star then lucky for you dear viewer I've created a very easy to understand flowchart for the cycle of suffering in this game moving on to the actual flow chart though we can see that things are a little bit more complicated in this theoretical we're going to assume that the player has a fresh wish a fresh wish history say that three times fast this means that they haven't pulled at all they have no guarantee and they have nothing stored in their account we're going to want to begin Wishing every time you wish in this game it's cataloged by the system 10 pulls will get you a guaranteed four-star character or a weapon if you're lucky you might even get a five star but it's very rare for you to get something like that in just 110 pull so you're gonna have to keep going up until the game decides to slowly raise the rates at 70 pulls the community calls this soft pity which is when the game starts to feel bad for you and begins to increase those odds of you getting your desired drop there is a catch though once we're finally here at this 50 50 phase or the coin toss phase it is a 50 50 shot as to whether or not you're going to get a permanent 5 Star meaning a character off the Wanderlust invocation Banner or the featured five star you're looking for this no nerve shredding phase of wishing is so difficult because you could potentially spend all of your Primo gems and not get the character that you're looking for hahaha [Music] so most seasoned players will prepare to go all the way and save as much as they can so that if they lose the 50 50 they can keep going and get the featured 5 Star this is because when you pull a permanent character the next five star you get will be your featured five star regardless of whether or not you went to soft pity or not which is pretty cool I'd say and I think the really cool thing about this is that this guarantee gives you a lot of power as a player it can transfer across limited event wishes if there's too active and it can transfer onto the next limited event wish so you can really catch that guarantee in for whoever you're looking for if you so choose to now if you pulled a five star period your pity will be reset that means you have to go all the way back up to soft pity potentially to get your featured five star which is so tough and if you did have your guarantee and you get your featured five star you will no longer hold on to it and the next five star you get will be dictated by the 50 50 you are literally at the mercy of the gotcha so what does genshin's brutal got tell us wishing in this game is a massive commitment and you can't expect to come out on top against several layers of RNG the rate that any player can earn Primo gems for free is very slow and gets even slower the more you complete new content the well eventually runs dry until there's new stuff to do I mentioned earlier that the game is free to play and that anyone can play gentian and enjoy what it has to offer when it comes to the gotcha though things get a little muddier because every new 5 star is limited and come out frequently interesting characters are always around the corner but rolling in every single banner isn't feasible for people who want to remain free to play meaning not spending any money for people who do spend money isn't feasible either as getting up to a guarantee can be quite costly as well on a single banner this means that free to play players or low Spenders need to pick their battles because you can't wish on every banner and expect to get everything you want seasoned Travelers will usually weigh their options before they roll and even choose to skip banners if necessary characters eventually come back but there's no telling when that'll be on top of that a character character's potential isn't completely known until after they're already gone in some cases and in some really rare cases they only continue to get better as they're buffed by new features I think the roughest part about this limited event schedule is that there's almost no telling what lies ahead we are preview to new information at most a patch ahead and news is slowly drip fed to US unless of course you get your banner information from the guy in the trench coat at the Waffle House parking lot he usually gets the lineup pretty spot on the biggest issue that the gotcha presents is one of time you can earn your Primo gems the slow way like I do opting to log in every day and do your dailies or you can do it the fast way and pay for Genesis crystals which can be converted into Primo gems this greatly speeds up the wishing process but it adds up just as fast in genshin you either pay with real money or your time whatever you can afford most is usually what you'd opt for and I can't imagine many people have that much money to throw around on the gotcha game so of course this feeds back into the game's design to farm for these characters and make sure you can get them off the gotcha you need to put the time in to farm the Primos with the gotcha system this predatory it's hard to imagine anyone spending this much money and not regretting it but somehow hoyovers gets players to spend and I think the key to their fomo formula lies in their characters and the need to collect that they tap into the mark of a top-selling gotcha game is how well they're able to lure you in with their characters and settings and get you invested enough to well invest a learning character designs might entice players into rolling the gotcha and the notion of owning a character on your account is what opens up the purse strings these are all tactics that popular gotcha employ but I think hoyovers has it boil down to a science one of the most effective tricks is the way that Kenshin markets its characters both in game and out upcoming characters are shown off on social media accounts and in official live streams with their kits and designs on display this way you can get to know the character without even downloading the game My Favorite bit of marketing is the character demo these are insanely slick presentations of new characters paired with their own unique theme songs they're basically fan cams the more popular ones rake in millions of views inside the game though I think hoyo vs equally as skilled in hooking you every current playable character in this game shows up in one way shape or form in the game's Story characters with a bigger role in the story usually leave a huge impact on players and I touched on on this on the writing Shogun video I made she's one of those characters that had everything going for her excellent build up in game and out great marketing and a killer design right it's got great staying power and remains memorable I think her burst has a lot to do with that too even characters with much more minor roles get their time in the Sun and are generally loved by the fan base I think this is where limited events come into play as they tend to show a large variety of characters in fun situations yes that means of each episode take cave for example who's a four star that I initially wrote off I got to learn more about him in the parade of Providence event I mentioned earlier in this event we learned that he's an empathetic genius who's really down on his luck but continues to help people even if it's to his detriment he's got an insane amount of integrity and I agree to respect him kafe's struggles kind of resonated with me in a way unfortunately because he's on a banner with a featured five star I shouldn't roll on I can't have him just yet four stars like cave are permanent characters as well but if you don't roll for them on the banner that they're featured on it gets a lot harder to get them once they're added to the general wish pool you're essentially at the mercy of RNG kave will be the only four star I don't have as a collector this is going to drive me up the wall this problem is even worse for limited 5 Star characters because it's impossible to get them if their event Wish isn't up five star characters usually come with their own story quest which really put them in the spotlight and in some cases you even get to test drive them like with Eula getting that little taste really does it for a lot of people myself included seeing ayaka do a judgment cut was more than enough for me gentian isn't the only game to use these tricks and they're applicable to most gotcha games even you honkai star rail I'm seeing you I see you this example might be cheating a little bit because it's also made by hoyoverse but you can definitely see all of their ploys at play in the first hour of the game starting the game you play as Kafka a beautiful but deadly woman who's laying waste to the space station the game lets you try her out in a couple battles see how flashy her kid is and you're in chances are based on how large you're barking You're Gonna Want to save for her the funny thing about Miss Kafka though is that at the time of this recording you cannot pull for her because her a warp event isn't up yet we also don't know when this is going to happen so if you're committed to saving for Kafka you're going to skip zela who is considered to be one of the strongest characters in the game Zeal is also limited and I'm betting that Kafka will be too you could also miss out on other potentially strong characters like Jin Yuen by continuing to skip these banners this cycle feels never ending it's driving me crazy genshen has popularized the format of gotcha where the characters you pull let you experience and interact with the world through their eyes this extra step in ownership is really effective Back in the Day card based gotcha were pretty popular and they still are with games like project set guy leading the charge take love life school idol Festival make God arrested Saul the main appeal was collecting cute cards of characters you love in various outfits because banners came out frequently it felt like a better idea to focus all of your resources on your favorite character and while getting an ultra rare card of your best girl was really exciting it didn't fundamentally change the way that you played the game these cards were basically pngs with their own attributes attached to them and they filled out a digital card album this gotcha format is fun and it tickles The Collector brain but in genshen and other gotcha similar to it it's a lot different playable characters have their own unique abilities voice lines and lore tied to the game's World some characters even have exploration abilities that change the way you Traverse the environments because of this it feels like getting a new character even a 4 star is adding something tangibly new to your experience in genshin on the topic of characters character loyalty is another method of getting you invested enough to stick around for people who love a specific character it's possible to fully invest into them you can max out their level talents and friendship gauge and once you max out this friendship gauge players can get name cards tied to that character display on their profile unit builds can also be displayed there too investing into these characters is also AI to the gotcha and there are two things that you can do to increase their abilities even more the first one being constellations pulling a dupe of a character regardless of Rarity will give you an item called the Stella Fortuna you can use this item to unlock a star on their constellation board these constellations give you new passives and in some cases completely change how characters played but most importantly having constellations especially on a 5 star is a big Flex point this however can cost you up to four figures the second thing you can do to show off that character loyalty is to get their signature weapon new 5 Star characters come with their own signature weapons which are on a separate much more evil gotcha I don't want to talk about it most if not all of these new weapons are limited and also go away when the characters do constellations and 5 star weapons aren't required to progress in genshin or even finish the game's hardest content you can get by perfectly fine without these things because they're Flex pieces at the end of the day what's neat though is that the player gets to prioritize what they want to roll for some play players value constellations to boost up their favorites fighting potential or getting their signature weapon way more than getting a new 5 Star I think these feelings of ownership and the connections that these players share with these characters are what drive them to spend of course the biggest factor in spending is time-based pressure and instant gratification but I think it's also important to acknowledge that the characters and how players feel about them is a big factor too and to talk about this I'd like to talk about yoemia again I downloaded genshin impact for joemia and decided that I would roll for her when she came around I played the game very casually and I had a modest amount of free Primo stashed away what I didn't know is that her Banner would drop while I was out on vacation Disney was very nice though when I came back from my vacation I had just about a week left in her banner before she went away for God knows how long I then spent that week very diligently farming the game for nearly five or more hours a day once I finally hit the five star at soft pity I lost my 50 50 to Gene she's very dreamy but she's not you Anya I had a guarantee but only a couple more days left to get yomiya I got desperate and I spent a lot of money trying to get her I did eventually roll her but I didn't feel like it was particularly worth it to go that hard on one character especially since I was just starting out uamia would then continue this trend in her weapon Banner a year later where she had finally decimated me for good foreign I'm not exactly proud of this Reckless spending but you can understand how this would happen based on what I talked about earlier I rarely if ever spend much money in gentian Impact because I can't really afford to I Farm Very diligently every day because of this and if I'm gonna spend money I want to make sure it's as little as possible I'm thankful to be able to count the amount of times I've bought Genesis crystals on one hand and how much that was but the buyers were more stings all the same this brings us all the way back to Eula though I was at work one day staring out into space when I had decided that I wanted to roll for Eula I liked her character design and her kit and honestly that was more than enough for me as if I was told to put my money where my mouth is Euler was revealed to be up at bat not a day after I said that I thought to myself damn that's that's kind of sudden you know what that Ito guy looks kind of cool maybe I'll just skip eula's banner and roll for him instead confident in this choice I decided to skip the banner and began to wait for eula's rerun and then I waited and waited I didn't know that this would be the last time we'd see her on an event wish it's been over 500 days I have skipped nearly every sumero Banner waiting for my chance to wish for her there are sumaru characters that have become my next Eula the cycle never ends Eula is the first character to set a precedent like this creating a very unique situation it's a direct result of genshin's fomo-based game design and it creates a paradox her re-run Banner with Albedo was the debut of the double rerun schedule in theory this meant that when a 5 star is gone they have a chance of returning in a couple months this helps players pick and choose what to wish on and feel much better about missing out on a character their first time around if you skipped a character Banner the first time and then they were discovered to be much better than you thought you now have the benefit of hindsight while you wish generally this meant that the double rerun banners were a unanimous win but the catch as always is that this rerun schedule isn't really dictated by how long it's been since we last Saw character there are characters that have made their debut after eula's first banner and her rerun that have come back several times while she was away characters can be featured in an event wish after being away for a year and then be rerun months later I don't think it makes a lick of sense in some cases especially with Eula the most common reason that a character would come back is if they're featured in a limited event shenha appeared in Lantern right 2023 so it only made sense she was away for a while and that seems like a good time to do it but Eula was featured in winbloom 2023 and didn't appear in the event Wishes the real kick in the dong is that a character meant to support her in every single way was specifically released during the shenho rerun so it didn't make a whole lot of sense for her not to show up there's been a lot of speculation for why she's been gone for so long but unless there's something crazy planned for her it's anyone's gas with every new version update livestream Eula gets clowned on for not getting a rerun it's basically a running joke at this point but again she said sets a precedent that the game can follow through on the EULA Paradox is emblematic of genshin's fomo-based game design the figurative carrot on the stick that keeps players coming back play gunchen consistently and regularly but don't play so much that you get burned out take a break if you want go play our other gotcha games but but you should use your resin and play this event or or you'll miss out on it there's there's so much to farm for put the time in now to farm or you'll be bottlenecked later by the way your baby girl is back you see a character you like and have the choice to save spend or skip if you save your Primos for that special someone you commit to not rolling at all until they're available again this goes hand in hand with skipping if you spend your Primos and roll right now you might have just ruined your odds of getting another 5 star in the future and this is common because you don't know what's in store for this character you might not even see them for another year spending money might also be required at this point especially if you've already depleted your Primo gem reserves because we also don't know know what to expect in the patch Cycles the other characters you skipped while saving could come back a new character could also pique your interest so that means that skipping banners and choosing what you should roll on should be the play right theoretically yes but The Disappearance of Eula Lawrence has proven this both correct and incorrect it's such a unique situation with so many moving parts and I don't think it'll be the last time we see something like this this is a cycle that feeds into itself creating the perfect fomo formula and that's going to bring us to the end of this video If you stuck around for this long thank you so much for your time and patience today I have a very bad habit of letting these projects kind of balloon out of the scale that they were originally intended to so if you enjoyed what you saw and you want to support the channel feel free to do the funny YouTube engagement things I will probably stream myself pulling for you at some point I haven't streamed in a while but if you want to go ahead and follow the twitch feel free to and also follow my Twitter if you'd like I post here and there sometimes now for today's special thanks I would love to thank polis for her amazing work again with the artwork for this thumbnail it's of the channel mascot himawari and a second outfit initiating operation super smart with her little red reading glasses attempting to look very smart but is in fact quite stupid I love all of the little details in this one I know I say that for every piece I get but the rendering and the coloring and the little hatching and the final details so cool I love polis's artwork very much so so if you would like to follow her her socials are going to be on screen big recommend love her artwork secondly I'd like to thank sedora for the little Mika Chibis you'll see every time a new song comes on screen I always appreciate her and all the work that she does for the channel so though her socials will also be on screen for you to follow lastly I'd like to thank fire estia for providing the thumbnail for this video very cooked very cool thumbnail piece has a great eye for this stuff I really appreciate all her work as well so if you want to give her a follow her socials are on screen in the description as well and I would love to celebrate this Milestone that I've just hit for the channel so if you're interested in a q a video I will have a form up shortly for that and I will hope to get that done soon but feel free to ask me any questions once it's up but I would love to just put myself out there just a little bit more but that's going to do it for this video as always take care of yourselves Stay Gold and I'll see you next time

Channel: Dragon Hustle

Views: 77,497

Keywords: Genshin Impact, Honkai: Star Rail, Eula, Kafka

Id: 1WaIy3ptv9w

Length: 27min 17sec (1637 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 07 2023