How Wuthering Waves Sidesteps A Major Gacha Game Problem

gotcha games it seems like more and more are being released every year and as each game continues to evolve the character and their kits naturally have to follow these kids over the years continue to grow more and more intricate and often times as a result these kids start to become longer and longer until they eventually become full paragraphs for example in one piece treasure Cruise the very first six-star character had this as a captain ability pretty simple and concise now skip forward about 9 years and you have characters whose kits look like this granted there was about 9 years of steady power creep in between this unit and this unit but this is a lot even for veteran players you have to not only read this entire paragraph but also understand every part of it just so you can start using the character so how much more daunting is it going to be for new players who have just installed the game probably one of the biggest offenders of this is the ever popular genin impact genin impact's character kits are notorious for being incredibly verbos and having different terminologies specifically for each character kit to better understand this issue let's have a look at one of the most recent characters arcino if a new player is to fully utilize arino to her fullest potential these are the list of words that they need to know and of these phrases these are the ones that are only used in aro's kit and nowhere else this would be fine if the kits were just foros and just had their own unique terminology but these kits cross reference each other by name so now to fully utilize arcino you need to read and understand paragraphs of text learn the terminology which is only used in her kit and then memorize that terminology so that when it's cross reference by a different part of her kit you can fully understand how they interact with each other more often than not these new players will just resort to watching a YouTube video guide to understand the kit better which can be upwards of up to 30 minutes so then the question now is how does one convey all of this information to the player in a concise and easy to understand manner enter weing waves developed by kural games as a direct competitor to gench and impact weing wave shows a lot of similarities to genin from the open world design to the extremely long and verbose character kits even down to the progression system in the game however weing waves has one system that makes learning character kits much easier than reading a wall of text for circuit that's right one simple bar above the character's HP somehow communicates nearly all of this information without having to open the character menu once but how how can one single UI element communicate all of this information without any text before we can answer that we must first learn what a forte circuit is in weing waves every single character's main passive is tied to the Forte circuit it doesn't matter if the character Is A Healer or a sub DPS or a tank all of their main passives are tied to this bar this standardizes all character kits to one UI element much like how HP is standardized to the HP bar for all characters typically the bar is filled by hitting the enemy or using the character's skill a pretty standard Affair especially for those who have already played genin but then what do players do when that bar is filled the devs thankfully already had a solution for this and placed a little indicator telling you which button to use to activate your Forte skill Forte skills are skills that as the name suggests uses the Forte circuit in some way each character utilizes forte in radically different ways for example the main character switches their quick dash for a sword throw that circles around them dealing continuous damage yangyang gets an enhanced plunge attack that deals multiple hits and chisha chisha shoots a lot probably one of the most creative usages of the Forte circuit mechanic is in San's kit sanwa doesn't fill her forte circuit at all but instead there's a small blue portion towards the middle the blue portion could be made larger by using her skill and or her Al if she holds her charge attack her forte circuit becomes a mini rhythm game rewarding players for releasing the charge attack in the blue portion of the bar San's creative usage of the Forte circuit opened my eyes to just how versatile of a mechanic it could be I was so impressed with its usage in her kit that I immediately began scripting this video after all I also needed to justify sinking over 30 hours into this game in just 3 days so now that we've talked at length about the Forte circuit how does this solve the gacha game problem of having kits that are the length of entire novels the answer is that it doesn't weing wave still has character kits that are incredibly verbose and much like genin also has unique terminology to those specific kits instead of solving the issue it gives a different alternative route to circumnavigate having to read the kit entirely by having the Forte circuit build up while in battle it helps create a positive feedback loop ensuring players that they are playing the character correctly additionally by Simply Having the button prompt for the Forte scale on screen it communicates how to use the Forte circuit without ever having to open the character menu at all all of this information is silently conveyed to the player all while players can continue to enjoy the game uninterrupted in a word it's intuitive now this is not a perfect solution as a lot of intricacies and specific values of the kit cannot be communicated with the Forte circuit UI alone but for those players who want these values they can always open the character menu and sit down to read the skills in its entirety however for those who just want to try their characters as quickly as possible this helps streamline the process as now players only have to level up the character equip good gear Farm up Echoes with the correct substats Farm their Ascension material okay maybe this didn't streamline the process that much for existing players but for new players who have just started the game this UI in tandem with the tutorials will not only teach them how to play new characters but also provides a solid base off of which the other systems of the game can be layered on top of and at the end of the day the new player experience for gacha games is one of the most important parts of the entire experience as the first impression will more often than not determine whether the players will stick with the gacha game long term or not ultimately the Forte circuit is a wonderful step in the right direction to addressing the issues of overly long kits and gacha games but it's not a perfect fix I'm curious to see how gacha games handle the situation in the future maybe there will be more UI features to help communicate to the players non-verbally maybe unique terminology will be thrown out in favor of standardizing kits even further ultimately the only time we'll tell and who knows maybe I'll make another video like this in the future [Music]

Channel: Gachadokuro

Views: 73,463

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Id: ylyBE16U4Q0

Length: 6min 17sec (377 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 08 2024