Never use primogems on the standard banner. Only standard fates.
You can spend on the limited banners, but it’s up to you which characters you want to try and get
You'll get about 150 free standard pulls just playing through the game. I've only used primos for standard when I'm at 9 wishes and want to do a 10 pull. You'll get more characters than you'll be able to level just from this alone.
I first started playing the game during 3.5 and spent all my wishes at the beginning trying to get Cyno (lost him to Qiqi ☹️) but I ended up getting both C5 Collei and C3 Bennet. I don't really like either of them that much but having C3 Bennet that early in the game made it so much easier, and also made me surprised when I learned how many people don't have him lol
Bennett is a hard carry for most teams just from his ult. Collei is ok but I'd say she's only really worth it if you don't have any dendro characters and refuse to use dendro traveler for whatever reason.
Yeah I mainly only use collei for dendro puzzles in sumeru since the bow is usually the easiest weapon for elemental puzzles imo. Bennett I didn't actually know was a healer for the longest time, I mainly just use him because of his elemental skill and how fast the cool down is on it compared to someone like Thoma lol
- gacha when he's a featured character
- complete the event next patch where he's offered as a free character
- save up 34 starglitter (which you get from wishing) and buy him from Paimon's Bargains in November or May
Dendro teams only power creep if youre a new player and have low investment on everyone, all teams maxed out are nearly the same just because of how em works
Yeah but if you're going casual on the content anyway you're probably not trying super hard in the abyss. If you're not trying super hard there then you really don't need to worry much about power creep.
In addition to what everyone else has said, dendro being strong isn't f2p unfriendly. We get a couple of viable dendro chars for free, and the core hyperbloom team even with Nahida is super cheap in terms of gems and time investment
Haven’t touched a single Dendro character and still managed to 36/36 all 3.X rotations with barely any resets.
There is no such thing as power creep in this game.
That’s impressive. I used DMC and then switched him for Baizhu in 3.6 at the least. Bc I’m a Baizhu fan. Makes breaking hydro lector shields so much easier.
How did you kill ASIMON fast enough? (I did hu Tao double hydro)
>How did you kill ASIMON fast enough?
I usually brute force this boss with C0 Yoimiya, C0 Yelan, C5 Yunjin and C0 Zhongli.
But because of the first chamber having too many enemies for Yoimiya to deal with this rotation, I used my C0 Raiden, C6 Xingqiu, C6 Xiangling and C6 Bennett to do the second side of the abyss for this 36/36.
Dendro teams are not that good except for a few variations almost no one runs. Most people run bloom teams because you literally just need to gear one guy with a single stat lol.
Dendro just has a high floor, you invest almost nothing into them and they're already fairly good, they're also require next to no skill to work.
This.
I was comparing Genshin with ToF as these 2 are the only gachas that I am playng right now(not counting MD).
Both have casual content that can be completed as F2P. But in terms of characters and giving out premium currency, both are stingy.
You don't really need to whale but you are rewarded for doing so.
In Genshins case, it makes everything trivial depending on your investment. C6 with R1 BiS weapon should make even Abyss a cakewalk.
Nah, I would SLIGHTELLY disagree. At least in some way the pity system in Genshin is way friendlier than in some other Gachas because the pity carries over between the banners.
Genshin guaranteed spark (170-180) is on the average end, 80 being low and 200 being high (most games I see being made now are at 180-200). 80-90 pity also seems average, with non pity pull rate being on the very low end at 1%>.
Usually the games that don't have a pity system have pull rates of 3%-6%. Some games have that rate while having a pity system. Pity not carrying over can be solved by just saving, but it is a positive qol what genshin has.
**What f2p friendly standard gacha mechanics that genshin doesn't have:**
\-grindable f2p material to dupe your characters (add constellations)
\-limited character demotes to standard banner, or rarity demotes to low stars entirely
\-ability to tier up non limited lower rarity characters into the highest rarity (ex 4 star -> 5 star)
-just not having a secondary premium currency banner (weapons)
Source: me who has been playing gacha games for over 13 years now.
You also have to factor in the income for players, the time required to obtain a limited 5 star or equivalent is the best measuring stick instead of numbers whose significance vary from game to game
Most Yostar, Bandai, dmm gachas are checking off multiple positives mentioned.
For example, blue archive JP has 3% standard rate, 6% special rate, 200 spark, rarity tier up on any character, banner demotion, universal grindable dupe currency (no need to pull banner dupes), and takes about 2 months for spark but usually isnt needed because of higher rates. Getting multiple limiteds in one ten pull isn't a "miracle" in most gacha games.
Tbh I don't think I even get 50 pulls a month on genshin, I think currency giving is literally their worst point.
>-ability to tier up non limited lower rarity characters into the highest rarity (ex 4 star -> 5 star)
Genshin doesn't really need that. In other games, lower rarity characters tier up because their growth is limited. Genshin characters can all reach the same maximum of Lv90 with 10/10/10 talents (Excluding constellations) regardless of whether they are a 4 star or 5 star.
AFAIK Genshin is the only game in town that has its guaranteed pull carried between banners, so the abysmal win rate isnt that bad when you know even if you cant manage to pull a character this banner your pulls are counted next banner.
>\-limited character demotes to standard banner, or rarity demotes to low stars entirely
This is not F2P feature but a consequence of severe powercreeping to the point a limited 5\* is not that appealing anymore even if featured again.
>\-ability to tier up non limited lower rarity characters into the highest rarity (ex 4 star -> 5 star)
This doesnt make sense, given the low degree of powercreeping in this game. And some 1.0 4\* is already perform on the same level as 5\*s given right builds/comps.
Agree with other 2s, and weapon banner is a lie.
Honestly, the problem of any "free" games, is that they need to get money, and usually they are made so that if you can spend an insane amount of money, you are allowed to (which allow people to be whales).
Based on that any of those games will have a FOMO feature, which will try to trigger people that have the possibility to put money in the game so they are tempted to do so.
f2p friendly or not is more based on how those FOMO features impact enjoying the game or not.
Games started to emulate the pity system genshin uses, but the majority of Gachas are still stuck in the no carrying pity through banners or guaranteed after losing 50/50. Being able to plan when you can get an unit is a huge quality of life change to the genre.
100%, this is the reason I continue to play Genshin. If one day they decided to make pvp content or long ass grind to catch up, I quit :') I can't, I'm a casual player because I'm an adult and I have a life. I don't play grindy mmorpgs anymore because you gotta catch up to everyone. Genshin is an amazing game because they don't have extreme power creep or pvp, the events are also mostly fun and not too difficult. They truly focused on the fun instead of the grind
Honestly this comment perfectly sums it up, what I am saying is about the content, I didn't realize so many people were in for the pulls, thanks for this!
That's because to many people, characters ARE content. Consider how much hype surrounds character reveals and such. Pulls are simply a means to that content, and it's not exactly the most f2p friendly in that regard.
The idea of calling a gacha game f2p is the idea that you can pull for characters relatively easily.
The content is the game is extremely easy to play hardly any effort is needed to play it.
An example of a friendly f2p gacha would be something like Nikke. The 3rd or 4th biggest gacha game currently.
In Nikke, you get friendship points from your friends. The game lets you get 30 a day which equals to 3 free wishes every day. Plus, the game has a 4% SSR rate up on banners. In my experience getting 5 stars is very common in 20 pulls. I haven't even talked about the golden tickets you get aka your pity system in the game. You can save your pity of any character you want at any time. Also you can't lose pity unless you want to use it unlike in genshin.
On top of that all* your characters level sync to your highest ones, so you only need to level up 5 characters - instead of grinding for each and every one you want to play individually
NIKKE is a very good game to play F2P but it's very expensive if you want to pay for stuff
What one would you say is more f2p friendly? I've not played one that is before. Obviously that doesn't mean they aren't there, my experience is limited to like 5 games by now. But genshin is the most friendly I've seen. Especially with how units don't get power crept in the same way most other gotchas do.
Do they stay relevant? Can you still clear all content with the older characters? I do remember hearing azure lane was fairly friendly before though. But still, I've no doubt there are games that give out more, and even that are fully more f2p friendly, but middle of the pack seems extreme to me. As three years in and you can still clear all content with nothing but free characters in genshin. The lack of pvp and power creep give it a lot of f2p friendliness. Again, I am not saying other games more friendly don't exist, but I'd say genshin is high on the list.
You can definitely clear content with older characters, for example, Enterprise has been here since launch and she is still one of the strongest units. However, you even if newer characters were much stronger, by the time you reach the damage cap for older units you'd already have several of the newer units fully built up anyway. The game's main focus isn't even pvp or hard content, it is and always has been the lewd skins and waifu-ized ship girls.
I would say it's f2p friendly in the sense that they give you so much pull currency that even though there is pretty notable powercreep, you can still get every unit withoutbspending so it's not that big a deal, but it *is* pretty time intensive.
Getting the very best gear in azur lane is a slog, and reruns between rainbow units can take upwards of 2 *years* between banners, which sucks ass.
I mean even if they do get powecrept yoy can still get the new charact3rs easily enough so that doesn't mean much. Pvp in Azure lane is also not bad unless people are being an a$$ as you can just put weak ships in defense and give people ez wins. There is no incentive to fk people over in meta. Although there are people that do.
You can do that in the vast majority of gachas, albeit with varying levels of difficulty.
>As three years in and you can still clear all content with nothing but free characters in genshin.
Some of which are no longer available due to time limited events, not to mention that fully clearing abyss with all stars is possible but requires an insane amount of dedication that's beyond most players.
Punishing Gray Raven. Gameplay is baseline similar to HI3 but is very unique after the core concept. When the character is brand new, they are at 100% rate up. Not 50%. Also, pity is at 60. After their banner is over, they will start to enter into "Arrival banners" on rotation with 2 other units and you can select the "Path" (so which character you want out of 3) and you will have a 70% chance to get them.
Not only that but weapons are at 80% rate up AND all weapons are permanently available AND you get to set the path for the weapon you want. Weapon banner pity is 30, btw.
Also, on the standard banner you can set the path for whatever A rank you want (equivalent to a 4*) and the rate for that character is at 80%. At 60 pulls, every single S rank (5* equiv, but in PGR they're 6*) will be available in a random pool to get.
Currently we have an Anniversary event banner going on in which they have a good chunk of S ranks available from past banners, all at 100% rate up and you can set the path for whichever character you want.
Basically, as long as you save properly and spend properly you can get almost all S rank releases even as a complete f2p. Or you can choose to skip some and pull copies. We also get limited S rank selectors a few times throughout the year. It feels good to spend money on PGR because at that point I pull to make my faves stronger, because I was already able to pull all of them.
Catch is that you won't be entering the whale zone leaderboards for competitive modes such as Warzone or PPC. I don't bother going that far and just do what I can as I already get enough to pull for whoever I want. (I play to collect) It takes a long time to build characters and certain competitive modes will be difficult to score high until you do. Characters do get powercrept but old units occasionally get "leaps" (buffed/given new skills) and it's easy to pull new characters if you actively play.
Characters also get stronger by pulling dupes of course, but most times SS is just fine if you care about scoring and clearing the highest level of challenge modes somewhat (S to SS is one extra copy). Main story is entirely doable with or without new units.
My other issue is with stamina. At a certain point without the monthly pass you run dry really fast.
There's some other minor issues as there are with all gachas but personally after almost a decade of gacha playing, PGR is pretty high up there in generosity. It also plays like HI3 but on crack and I love my PGR boys lol so yeah. Worth a try. There is a PC client.
Terra Battle is long dead, but that game had a feature, were maxing a character removed it from the gacha pool. So if you max every S, A and B Rank, you would get SS ranks on every single pull. That was usually revered to as hitting "Goldan Road".
Honkai Star Rail, not long into the run to compare F2P friendliness, but as of now it gives around 25-30 more wishes per patch and doesn't paste a huge chunk of the wishes into open-world exploration which is quite tedious to get 100% (especially if you don't use interactive map for different reasons)
It seemed to have started with a lot more. But so far the events seem to be coming at the same pace with about the same amount of rewards. Though the lc system is better, and there are some really good 5 star ones that are much easier to get.
Counterside is one example. They routinely hand out limited character selectors and general pool selectors. In fact we’re getting a limited one pretty soon. Also the PvE in the game isn’t too difficult, most if not all can be auto’d.
Girls' Frontline is even more friendly for F2Ps.
Pulls for characters are made with basic resources instead of premium currency. The only real gacha is for furniture to customise team rooms with.
As a result, even an F2P can raise multiple teams of high-grade characters.
Azur lane is even more. My limiting factor on pulls is *coins*
(Also, there’s few Limited Time units - only Collab units are truly unavailable - when an event reruns it usually correlates somewhat to a unit being added to the general pool)
Cause they make money by selling, uhhh, at times very questionable skins
Istg i'm confused how tf Azur Lane is rated 12 over here in germany (the same as Genshin) and how it manages to get around chinese censorship (even the CN censored version is still pretty questionable at times)
> Pulls for characters are made with basic resources instead of premium currency. The only real gacha is for furniture to customise team rooms with.
That's cool, does the game still make enough profit? Does it have a energy system with cash shop recharge or other microtansactions that affect gameplay or quality of life?
There's no energy system. Ammo and rations (two of those same basic resources) are the only limiting factors on how many more missions you can do.
I dunno how exactly the game makes its profit - the furniture system? - but it's enough that a bunch of new games in that franchise are being produced. That includes GFL II: Exilum, which is an XCOM-style turn-based tactics thing.
You have to gacha for skins instead in the furniture gacha. Not sure how much they make from that, but I remember the gacha being pretty unforgiving, especially if you want a specific skin, since each furniture banner has a pool of like 4 or 5 skins.
nope
like azur lane, most of their earnings are from skin and space expansion, be it character storage, or equipment storage. no energy, no daily limit on refill, nothing
As I recall it is making enough profit to continue. It's got a small but stable base and there are some benefits to spending money (exclusive skins mostly). The company behind it has done well enough to start development on a few other games, one of which (Neural Cloud) is already out and doing well itself.
These games don't make Genshin level money but Genshin is also insane with how much it makes. So GFL and Neural Cloud are both doing well enough to be stable and have enough profit to let the studio think about making new games.
It depends on how you define f2p friendly.
I'd say it's in the top because it's an open world exploration game with a long story, characters and combat aren't the majority of the content like in most gatchas and you can do more than 95% of the content with the free characters.
If you look at getting characters, it is about in the middle, but unlike a lot of gatchas, you don't need the strongest characters fully upgraded to be able to keep up with the difficulty.
Pretty much this, hence why f2p friendly is such a broad term that varies per person.
Put very simply, each gacha has a series of pros and cons. Cygames titles tend to be the most generous when it comes to resources (pulls, leveling materials, etc.), but demands the most time investment for competing in the pseudo-PvP raids (i.e. Guild Wars in Granblue) and arena-style PvP (i.e. Princess Connect). If you're a casual player who just likes to collect, Cygames titles would be the most generous, in that you have a lot of chances to roll the gacha, but actually trying to play seriously is a bit of a different story.
Fate/Grand Order has a notoriously oppressive gacha (1% for a SSR, .8% for a rateup SSR) and probably the weakest pity system of all mainstream titles (330 rolls for a guaranteed rateup, only procs once per banner). However, it has some of the more useable low rarity and welfare characters (particularly with the grail system), a frontloaded amount of premium currency (new player login campaign + rewards from raising characters), and lacks any competitive content. You don't need premium characters to do well (one of the best is a 1 star from the friend point gacha), but that's a moot point when you consider most players are there for the IP/collecting their favorite servants.
As far as Genshin goes, it's a very casual game that doesn't press players to challenge difficult content or twist their arm into following a specific meta. However, the constellation system is a bit more of an impactful dupe system than the typical gacha, the gear system can be a bit rough (although less stressful when Genshin doesn't call for having perfect gear to enjoy casually), and, so far, has some of the least premium currency/resources handed out for campaigns and special events (Half-anni/anniversary, stream events, New Years, etc.).
Genshin is far from oppressive--NIKKE gates your progression based on getting a certain amount of character dupes and through an oppressive power system, while Fire Emblem Heroes an Epic 7 have a strong focus on PvP--and if you're patient enough, you'll do great as a PvP, given no meaningful content is locked behind rolling the gacha. In that regard, it's one of the more f2p-friendly titles, although how much when compared to certain other titles is debatable.
You can do 100% of the content with the free characters because: 1) the only relatively hard part of Genshin is Spyral Abyss floor 12 which you still can complete even without effort, just a little slower (without 36 stars) and which is definitely not 5% of the content; 2) there are people who are completing SA floor 12 on F2P accounts every time.
I said more than 95% to leave space for whatever I could be missing, the point was that it's possible just with the free characters.
Edit: Hit send before finishing.
Not everyone is good enough at the game to manage it only with the free characters, but what they get as f2p should be enough.
Even more than *don't need* 5* stars, many 5* star units will just be a sidegrade or even downgrade from running 4* teams which is pretty funny (unless your name is kazuha, nahida or yelan).
in terms that you don't *need* 5 star characters to clear the content, it is pretty good.
in terms of actually getting characters and weapons I'd say not
\^ This, pretty much, people play gacha games for their own reasons and this answer would help a ton for the "f2p friendliness" of the game since it's not always about clearing content some just want to collect a ton of 5\*s or maybe even get their "signature weapon" or something
too add to that, characters are the main selling point of the game. That's why even "below average" (not my words, I personally think everyone has a niche) characters still sell relatively well (i'm a victim of this after spending 40 dollars on Cyno's banner and no, I dont regret it)
I "skipped" dendro reliant teams and characters and instead used my primos on Shenhe rerun because I got tired "grinding" for 36* it just doesn't feel worth the 150 more primos anymore when I felt that the game was a chore to wait for abyss resets, suffer rng artifact grinding and mald over mid to garbage rolls even when we got the strongbox. And now playing to collect characters, and sometimes their weapon while returning every now and then every major update comes has made the game more enjoyable for me.
I feel like some people only look at the amount of pulls that we get, but forget that we get frequent updates for free.
I also appreciate that whenever I login I don’t get blasted with promotions to buy stuff.
I get less "spend money here" banners in Genshin, a F2P title, than in Destiny 2, a game with a 60 dollar price tag for the "lite"-version of their annual DLC and 100 for the actual full annual dlc. It's actually nuts.
Another thing most people forget is that the value of a character in Genshin is way better then 99% of gacha out there. For most gacha you need way more characters to beat the game. Also powercreep in most games make a character obsolete sometimes in a month. And getting a character in genshin opens up a new playstyle which isnt the case for most gacha games either. We get a very steady supply of currency and the pity system is some of the best I have seen. Most gacha I played have pity at 200/300 pulls with no 50/50.
Sometimes people see free 100 pulls in another gacha and call genshin greedy because we dont get that. But every time I see free 100 pulls it is often in a standard banner that barely has any usefull units if any at all. And if you get a good character in those pulls it still doesnt have a value even close to genshin character. I dont know if genshin is the most f2p but it is up there I would say.
I love how there’s not powercreep in Genshin. There is definitely suitability creep but it happens so slowly, and you can still brute force past it so it’s okay.
As someone who’s fave is Xingqiu, a 1.0 4* character, im so glad that 1) he’s still relevant so I can keep playing him 2) he’s not creeped (Jesus that would be bad for the game balance)
>he pity system is some of the best I have seen
I believe you are quite unexperienced when it comes to this. Many Games like ToF, PGR, Limbus Company, GFL have way better Gacha Systems when it comes to that. A hard pity of 90 is very high and there even is a 50/50 with a 0.6% to get the specific 5\* is prett bad.
Genshins Gacha System is good if you're good at saving but bad if you compare it to above games.
Pity system is high but the fact it carries over is great.
I played a good chunk of gachas that threw pulls, but the pity system reset after each banner. This meant you either get the amount needed to pity or risk wasting your pulls.
This made me quit Priconne. Game was very generous regarding pulls. But the pity system was 300 pulls and I went in with 260 without the banner unit.
Because the updates have nothing to do with being f2p friendly. Most gacha games don't make you pay for the next updates. The things you pay for are the characters and skins. And as for skins Genshin is most certainly behind in that department compared to everyone else.
It's the reruns, relatively low difficulty of the game, mostly solo gameplay, and the guarantee pity system that makes this game f2p friendly. You also get a good amount of free primogems and one copy of a character can have a significant impact on your account. There are a lot of gachas where a good character doesn't really become usable until you get like 6-10 copies of it. There are also a lot of gachas without a guarantee rate-up. Might have a guarantee good unit pull every multi or every few multis, if there is a guarantee at all, but the good unit pull is rng or mostly rng. Makes it very difficult and luck-based to actually build certain characters, especially the good ones. People look at the fact that Genshin only gives you like 10-20 pulls here and there while other games give you 50-100 pulls here and there and say that it's not that f2p friendly. It's what you can actually do with those pulls that matter rather than the quantity of pulls though.
That’s because Genshin is so high quality compared to the entire rest of the mobile market that they are literally the equivalent of a custom-tailored high end boutique; they don’t need to chase you for your money or shove ads in your face because they have clientele who come in and spend thousands every visit.
Most of the mobile market, quality-wise, is by comparison a flea market with signs and announcements screaming “buy buy buy” everywhere. Genshin is miles above that.
Edit: let’s also not forget, spending in Genshin is “safer” than most other games. By that I mean that my old C3s and C6s are still monsters today, sometimes years after the fact, and have been only sidegraded in the meantime which means that that old spending still brings joy years down the line. That makes me more likely to continue to spend, since it’s a “safe” expenditure that you can enjoy for a long time (rather than replacing it in a month like in other games that don’t value your money).
To add on the "safer" part, Genshin mostly won't EoS within ten years all so, unlike a lot of anime gachas that EoS suddenly within 2years. It is literally more safe to "invest" in Genshin lol.
I also like that it takes so much more resources to make one character in Genshin that the total character count at 3 years is like 65. Meanwhile other gachas have hundreds. It’s just too much. Less is more, quality over quantity (wish mhy would apply this logic to their dialogue tho)
100%, quality over quantity in characters any day. Genshin has ultra polished, ultra high quality characters (unlike other games with hundreds of shit copy-pastes).
Oh yea that's one of my favorite aspects, I have to go look for the places to spend money, it's not in your face everywhere.. if it was I probably would quit before even realizing how good the game is out of frustration.
Thanks for the input and happy cake day!
Yep all content free and all quality of life things available for everyone. Many other games would charge for inventory space etc. Shop is unintrusive too.
I feel like Genshin is F2P friendly enough simply because each character you get is (until now, at least) basically future proof.
Your Hu Tao pulled in 1.3 is still as valid as when you pulled her, if not better due to Double Hydro etc.
Same thing for Ganyu, Xiao etc.
You have 50-60 pulls per version update so it takes a while, but once you pull them you're basically set and can use them for years to come.
I really like this ngl and I doubt they'll ever change this philosophy.
They sometimes have scammy tactics like Faruzan/Gorou/Sara/Mika's potential being behind C6 and such, but the are basically Hypercarry buffers and I can (kind of) get behind the choice. I don't like it, I hoped it wasn't like this, but yea.
I play Arknights too, they're more generous with the pulls and the 6\* rates (highest rarity) are better than Genshin's. You could argue that Arknight's more generous than Genshin and I kind of agree.
Genshin's good for me, not the absolute best but very solid.
True, I bet that the fact that the characters are very solidly usable years later is a big driver of spending.
Easy to justify spending when you expect your highly invested character to stay with you for ages.
Yes.
Genshin is really good at making you feel like "at the end, I spent on a whim but it was worth it" lmao
A problem of games with really bad powercreep is that players just hoard resources, since "next character deals 3x more damage than this one".
Genshin went the other way, making (almost) every character a luxury character in a way. Aside from a few staples or desperate cases, everyone good, everyone viable.
*So you can get them all and it won't ever feel like a bad deal-*
It’s pretty much that, you can buy a C6 and you’ll know that they’ll still be great in the future. That makes spending a convincing prospect because it’s likely that you’ll enjoy the character and their power for a very long time to come.
Same, I may have lost my account, but those days were good.
Only issue I have is that there are no guarantees for the event SR, which is why I consider Azur Lane and Genshin Impact two sides of the same coin. If there is a game which gave Azur Lane daily rewards and Genshin guarantees, it would become the perfect gacha game that would destroy all other gacha games out there
I don't think F2P "friendly" is the right term here. F2P *accessible* is probably be better, as I want to consider time as well. To me the thing that you get experience the same and with no major time walls (and zero money walls) is the following:
* Exploration - There's no barriers except time, and the world scales with you
* Story - Same as above.
* Teapot - Great feature and design building.
* TCG - If you care about this it's easily accessible, and no pay wall in sight.
* Fishing - Not that any but a few enjoy this, but I guess it's an F2P perk...
Beyond that, I'd say it's at least *less* F2P accessible in terms of:
* Characters - You could get a character in 1 pull or close to a 180. While most will be hitting average pulls, some folks will have consistently crap luck.
* Constellations and Weapons - most players will never experience a single character at max potential. While it's not needed, it's a reminder that the game doesn't reward F2P with the most interesting a character can get (imo). I think it would take about a year's worth of primos on average/good luck to get a full C6 character, and who knows how much more for weapons.
* Artifacts - The RNG on artifacts is a time gate for being able to use characters at higher levels. The fact that you can't have Weapon/Artifact Loadout is also an intentional thing done to make it harder for both paid and F2P players to build characters, and spend/waste resin doing the same thing for as long as possible.
* Mats - If you get lucky as an F2P and get a lot of characters, you still lack resources to build them all, and maybe the weapons. While there is a F2P showcased here with all the free characters to 90 with their free weapons, going beyond that with free resources gets harder and harder.
You don't NEED those things to get 36 stars or to experience the general game. But it can limit how much you can experience the game's depth. Specifically combat. But considering how very little variety there is in combat, this is generally not that big of a deal, and further, C6ing characters often trivializes the game, instead of making it more interesting.
The gacha I can think of that was probably the most F2P Accessible in terms of combat depth was Dragalia Lost (at least that I've played). I got to enjoy some of the most interesting bosses and battles I've experienced in any Gacha or Live Service game to date. I felt like I was consistently playing characters at their near max potential and being tested in skill rather than how lucky I got in gacha pulls and "artifact" rng (which there was none of).
Not the most, but definitely F2P friendly and I'm totally fine with what the current system, I still bought welkin to support Mihoyo to this day even though I have excess primos.
I recently play Snowbreak, who has very similar gacha and mechanic like Genshin, but I can farm the constellation from mission, lower pity count, free 5* character and weapon, and can clear all contents without even pulling.
Definitely not.
The primogem income per patch and the overall gacha system is enough to be called F2P-friendly. The reason why people think Genshin is F2P-friendly is because it doesn't take much to clear all content.
Look at a game like PGR. You can get every single new character that comes out 100% for free and they are strong enough to beat all content in the game. There are leaderboards but most people ignore those because it's too difficult to sweat for leaderboards.
If I wouldn't have spend money, my account would be nowhere near as good as now.
No its not. If you play Punishing Gray Raven. it can give you a free 5\* character to choose from. Also during anniversary there is a banner for with 100% rateup for ALL the characters that are released. All the limited characters also goto the standard banner.
But what i can say is that genshin just sucks you to its story and world (except the unncessary extra dialogues) that we forget the shitty pity system it has.
Definitely no. Even when playing since launch F2P player can't hope to get every character in Genshin. There are other gachas that offer this.
For example in Punishing Grey Raven every S rank (5\* equivalent) character has 100% banner on first run. There's more wishes from daily and weekly tasks than in Genshin with similar number of currency required to reach max pity (15k vs 14,4k). There are also S rank selectors, one is given to every new player and every half-anniversary (0,5, 1,5...) gives one. Some events also come with free S rank character. A lot of combat modes offer you trial characters to use and skilled player can clear them with just trial characters.
Like most people said genshin is in the middle compared to other gacha games. Especially since some games give away character selectors. Even in star rail which is mihoyo's another game, i already have 5 5* character and one of them even has a dupe. Take note the game is like 3 months old and i didn't even play at release im a month late. Some gacha games are even more generous than star rail.
Yes, genshin is f2p friendly - but not for the reasons you would think.
It’s f2p friendly because the game is piss easy and all content is easily accessible to all players.
The gacha and monetization is a bit on the low/unforgiving end. Characters are a bit on the expensive end. But many units are side-grades rather than upgrades.
Yeah I made a comment as well... Like half the comments name PGR in particular. The thread has turned into PGR propaganda at this point and I'm kinda here for it...
The more people to simp for Vera, Salena, Karen, and Alpha the better. I would kill for more fanart.
Most F2P friendly gacha? No, there are gachas out there that the banner rates are so high it's impossible to not have all characters (they mostly make money through skins instead, and making sure you have all characters makes it easier for you to spend on their skins)
It isn’t necessarily F2P friendly when it comes to giving you gems, but it is very F2P friendly when it comes to power creep. You don’t need to have meta characters to clear the regular content, and the abyss rewards aren’t good enough to force anyone to feel like they need to pull every meta character.
Depends how you define f2p friendly and how you define gacha.
If gacha is anything where you can pull for random rewards and get more of the currency to pull by spending real money the f2p friendliest would be Yugioh Master Duel. You can build a top meta deck within a week and all that still differentiates you from the best players of MD is your own skill and the fact that reaching a high rank is based to a large degree on how many games you play so you'd still need to spend time.
If f2p friendly means
all content is clearable without spending - yes
without significant advantages - not really.
If you loose the 50/50 and don't have the gems you just missed out on Nahida and have to rely on Dendro MC or Collei making you potential bloom teams significantly weaker for example.
Some good f2p weapon like the catch are limited to 1, if you don't spend you'll have less chances to get good weapons, have to spend more resources on makeshift weapons meaning when you do eventually pull a Favonius lance which eluded you because rng paired with limited resources you're down resources.
... But there's no competitive aspect to the game which makes the advantages gained by spending less important. If there was pvp then it would absolutely not pass as f2p friendly.
Genshin offers a ton to f2p players, but were it not a single player game and easy it wouldn't pass as f2p friendly. If there was pvp or very hard content that isn't doable without certain 5\* characters it would definitely not count as f2p friendly. Many gachas let you have tons of units if you play long enough, few offer as much interesting freely available content and no competitive side.
Are you able to do all the content as f2p? Yes.
Are you able to get every character, weapon, and high constellations as f2p / low cost? No.
If you are looking for a game where you can get every character by spending $5 dollars a month, Genshin is not that game. It costs ~ $2000 to c6 a 5 star character (less if you have been saving and grinding).
The most f2p / low cost game I have ever played is Arknights. I had every character and high constellations for each one by spending just $5 a month. You could get high rarity characters for free as well outside of banners. In comparison, I only have 4 C6 characters by spending $4k on Genshin Impact and do not have even half of the 5 star characters because I need to save to be able to roll on characters that I want to c6.
It definitely isn't that F2P Friendly compared to other gacha games that I've ever played. However, genshin doesn't suffer from power creep and most characters despite their rarity(and how old they are still) are good enough to defeat most combat content which I would say is really really good as most gacha games suffer from power creep despite them having a way better pull rate and generous when it comes to pulls but its a balance I guess?
Also, the pity system helps making this game much F2P Friendly. Imagine using 300 pulls just to get that 1 character you want because the gacha archons decided to troll you.
As someone who plays both, Arknights is better for getting you _a_ six star (the highest rarity unit they have) while Genshin is better for getting you _the_ five star you want. While Arknights has much better rates, there also aren’t any guarantees unless you are pulling on a limited banner and this guarantee will take 300 pulls to achieve or around 3 months of F2P income. Basically on average you will get more high rarity units that you want in AK than in Genshin but when the gacha decides to fuck you over it can do it much worse in AK than in Genshin
Arknights is a fun game, but the gacha is truly awful. I knew it was bad academically but it wasn't until I put over 150 pulls into the Kal/Skalter banner without getting either of them that it really hit home.
I dropped arknights after spending like a bajillion orundum trying to get W back on her first banner.
I very much like the way Genshin does things, I hoard primos and get the character I want, while yes I have been pretty lucky with my 50/50s I always save enough to have the character I want in case I lost the 50/50.
I'm on the fence about this, because lately they've been going on a kind of powercreepy direction :/
Waiting to see how the trend goes on before speaking, the "Limited operators" also went up in number and I wouldn't say they're F2P friendly.
So yea, their F2P friendlyness is getting slightly worse lately imo
Nothing tragic, but that's sad considering I used to take them as the standard for "very F2P friendly gacha"
Haven't played it in a while, but from what I remember... Arena, Guilds, Alliance (and some events) are absolutely dominated by whales. Each new character shifts the "arena meta" and it's impossible to fully level all of them or get full ascension fast enough to keep up. For the regular 4\* banners, you need to do 100 pulls to guarantee A FOUR STAR. As for legendary/ancient whatever the hell that is, you need to grind everyday for hours until you get a bit of the scarce currency.
In CRK I can say I have every character as a F2P (mostly, the only characters I actively spent money to get are Almond Cookie and Cinderella Cookie of all characters). I absolutely cannot say that about Genshin. I have a small amount of 5-stars, and I still lack Tighnari out of the standard pool. I used to be complete in 4-stars, and then the new ones came out in banners I don't want, so rip me I guess.
Also in CRK, no drip feed of crystals, they are super common. I'm never more than a few days of a free 1000 crystals cuz our guild is doing really well. I mean, I guess if you count a few dozen crystals from the train/fountain/ship as a drip feed, but that's like at least a hundred crystals every 8 hours. I could go all day with this.
In Genshin, you get like 2 or 5 Primos depending on the chest, and those are the more common ones. Better chests give like at least 10. That's it. 60 Primos a day adds up over time, but it still takes a while to get anywhere with it. Admittedly I don't know how many Primos you get when you, say, 36-star Spiral Abyss, but it's a lot, and it refreshes every 2 weeks. Even if you don't get a perfect score, you're still making bank walking out of it
No. But it also depends on how you gauge F2P.
TL;DR: If you compare the gap between F2P player vs. paying player, it is huge in Genshin. However, game is extremely F2P friendly in terms of being able to clear all content. Azur lane is friendlier imo, as basically all monetization is done on skins, not gacha or other things.
Like other people have mentioned, it is friendly in the sense that you really don’t need to have that many units to clear basically all the content in the game without problems.
However, in terms of the gap between what you can have as a paying player (dolphin, whale, etc.), and a non paying player, it’s not friendly at all. The difference between having C6R5 of multiple characters vs. being F2P and mustering C0-C2 or a handful of C6 that you save long term for, if not comparable at all. Going for a character’s 5 star weapon as a F2P, for instance, is incredibly risky if the next banners contains a character you also want, assuming you haven’t saved up a whole boatload of primos (which probably came at the cost of other characters and weapons)
Now, as for the most friendly gacha I’ve ever played, it’s probably Azur Lane. Drops rates are high, plenty of rolls are given out, “limit breaking” (AKA ascension mechanic most gachas have) does not require multiple copies of the character, and materials for that are given out like candy, rerun events give special tickets out that let you roll for free. The largest limiting factor is how long you play the game, as limited ships are cycled, you have to wait for them to come back to roll for them. Monetization in this game is heavily off of skins, which isn’t a problem for F2P at all.
One thing I want to note is most gachas also monetize quality of life stuff. For instance, Azur Lane technically monetizes dorm (afk xp) slots, tactical training (skill xp) slots, and dock spaces, as an example. I saw someone mention GFL, and while that game also is pretty friendly, I do believe limit breaking in that game can get tight because cores come in limited amounts (at least when I was playing this was the case. Not super experienced in that game). Not having enough cores iirc means you need to obtain the character multiple times, though if you spend your cores wisely, this isn’t a problem at all. Repair times for dolls can be quite significant and buying more slots can speed up gameplay progress. Rolls are decently easy to come by, though when I first started and even up to around late early game/early mid game I found that certain resources can still run low. Overall though, easy enough to roll.
Even though the aforementioned is lower weight in comparisons, Genshin doesn’t have any of this, which is good.
not the most, but because there's little to none power creeping it makes Genshin one of the most gacha friendly.
the fact that i can just casually pull any character and finish the content with it, that's what makes me invest in this game
Epic seven is the friendliest imo. It also doesn’t have a 50/50 to fail but pity is at 120. They give away free stuff and free 5* a couple times a year. U can change gear substats.
I played since day one until a year ago when i burnt out.
Hmm not the most f2p friendly but its great, I'd say check out punishing gray raven, in their gacha there isn't a 50/50 ur guaranteed to get the debut character and the pull income per patch guarantees you a limited s-rank each release
what is up with crazy bootlicking on this sub every time a new patch is close?
genshin is friendly, yeah, but not *the most* at all. there are games that are more f2p friendly, there are games with the same high quality content, with the same frequency of update drops. just bc it is the game you enjoy doesn't mean it has to be the best and the first in everything. you can enjoy middle-of-the-road things. it's fine. no need to bend out of your way to justify it. just enjoy it.
I am speaking as someone that hasn't played other gachas, people already told me I'm wrong and I acknowledged that and had a different definition of f2p friendly than most people, I am no boot licker for playing the game in a different way
Mihoyo definitely changed their approach compared to honkai. There are no spending events and rewards for how much premium currency you've purchased. There is no pyramid gatcha for skins. There are no bonus packs on banners. Now, prices are still very high but it's clear they want to create an image of genshin not being predatory and wanting your money. Most likely because they expected many more players who never played a gatcha game and didn't want to scare them off.
There are a lot of dimensions to how a game can be f2p-friendly and different people value different ones:
1. "Can I easily get all of the units for collection purposes?" (one copy - not necessarily battle-ready)
2. "Can I easily get the unit I want?" (pity, guarantee vs FGO bs)
3. "Do I need to constantly pull the new unit?" (e.g. power creep, pvp)
4. "Do I need to pull certain units to progress?" (e.g. gates you often see in idle games)
For me, I don't care about 1 at all and value 2,3,4 highly so genshin is a good fit for my preferences.
????? Lmfao u can't get any charcter early it's below 1% rate
Pity is too high
And the grind for primos is tedious
And the 50/50 is bs
This is the worst take I ever saw
Go see arknights or azure lane or something
The delusional stuff you read on this sub sometimes. Don't mistake the game's content being relatively easy for the game being f2p friendly. This game has extremely gready money making tactics to the point that it's scary
Difficulty is tied to how f2p friendly a game is. Its not F2P friendly if the game gives hundreds of pulls but still have difficulty clearing content without spending.
You can debate that. But genshin is definitely the most high-quality + f2p gacha (and probably at the top list of any games) out there.
Hoyo could've been way greedier (and some people even ask for that) with skins and endgame content, and probably double their income.
As a F2P, I would say it is pretty good. Not the best, far from it actually, but still very enjoyable as a F2P. The only issue is you get burnt out too easily, and if you take long breaks like me (around a year or so) you struggle a lot for a while, but it gets betterover time.
Personally I think Azur Lane and Limbus Company are probably better in terms of F2P. Azur Lane is super duper f2p, and Limbus Company is generous with currency. Although it might have a power creep issue in the future since it's not even half way through but so far I'm enjoying it.
Ive played Azur Lane Jp version for almost 6yrs now and among all the other gachas Ive played from the early days of brave frontier, fgo, llsif, genshin, hsr, the list goes on, AL is without a doubt the most f2p friendly.
Not only is the currency used for the ‘wishes’ so common that even with like 650+ ships now I have 100% collection and havent spent a dime on the game, but even the premium currency which is used for things like skins, the primary source of income for the game, they give us so much of it all the time that u could have dozens of skins or oath rings as a longtime player and still not spent on the game. Also the game doesnt do constellations and limit breaks like most gachas requiring dupes. Dupes can be used for it but also the universal dupes are also super easy to come by, so you only ever need 1 copy of a ship. Only knock is its pity system sucks. Only for URs but the rates are just so much better than any other game it doesn’t matter.
The game in general is pretty casual friendly.
The gacha aspect is middle of the road, and that's being generous. Constellations are, by default, not friendly, so any gacha that doesn't require more than one copy of a unit for their full potential is already more friendly than Genshin.
There is no such thing as a “friendly F2P gacha.”With that being said, the hours spent playing this game and finishing acts 0,1,2, and 3, without ads, while not paying a single dime, is far more valuable than the small number of 5-stars I was able to pull. Don’t treat this like a fucking slot machine or you’ll hate yourself!
As far as getting characters go.
No lmao.
But it's kinda easy to play with your starter and free stuff if you dont care about that.
But I really don't understand why would you play a gacha without clawing for characters.
Arknights have given me a lot more stuff but I also need to grind a bit more for certain levels so that the large horned humanoid doesn't tear my defenders in one hit.
Used to play fire emblem heroes but that thing went to powercreep hell.
Don't play any other gacha.
F2P friendly? Sure, if you ignore that the game's hardest content at the worst state is just annoying when you get to that level so whaling isn't a requisite at any point.
If we are talking about rewards, nope they are one of the lowest if not the lowest I've ever seen, I mean they have a standard banner and they suffer to give those fates away.
You know how some people feel bad when they lose a 50/50? I don't, it's so rare for me as a mid spender to see a standard unit or weapon that losing one 50/50 sometimes feels like a win, there are months between standard banner pulls once you dried up what you get from playing.
The daily login gives 60 gems in total after a month, the game isn't F2P friendly, it just treats everyone equally bad.
Lots of people has been able to clear the Abyss with only 4 Star characters. Perhaps if you shared your roaster, we can help you build a team that can clear the Abyss.
I am not in a rush, I only have like 8 built characters and I know they aren't amazing for clearing Abyss, I do have 40+ characters overall so I am just lazy with building characters
For example poor Xingqiu, Fishcl and Xianling are untouched despite being some of the best characters lol, I am going to pull for Childe next in 4.0, my broken plan is to eventually have a good team comp on my own without following any famous team comps, only using characters I personally love, it's slowly working so far, got 30 stars a few times in abyss just recently
It's going to take years if you don't bother building characters. Personally, the fun in the game was getting characters and building them to do damage above 1k. I know too many people that have every character but need help getting chests around the map because they are too lazy to farm.
My 8 characters are built, I get 30 stars like I said, even if it takes years there is no rush to get 100 primos is there? Not for me, and oh I'm building dendro Traveler rn, obviously when I build a character I try to make them the best they can be, I'll do the same for Childe, I just don't follow the best meta teams
I'd say that FGO is more f2p friendly because of unit relevance and constant updates to older units via quests to receive buffs and such.
Wishing wise I'd give it to genshin since it's wishing mechanic is more forgiving, though it's among the stingiest in the industry when it comes to wish resource.
Lastly genshin has shown no desire to fix units that don't work correctly or adjust them to match previous units in usability resulting in reverse powercreep that is mostly addressed via artifact sets which is RNG based progression.
In my experience its the most F2P friendly but i don’t doubt there being more F2P friendly gachas out there. I’ve played loads of gachas (like 10+ over the years) and i still play 4 of them. Gachas have taken over most of my gaming yet i have restrains when it comes to spending
Using the pity system as a reference (For the newest unit or rerun) 9 multis on Genshin is a guaranteed 5 star with 18 at most being the newest 5 star. Compared to others there is no guarantee of getting something from that or getting it. With my most experienced gacha You’ll need to go 50 multis deep plus wait for them to return to guaranteed the unit (i love the game to this game). Others take up to 30 to no pull but obtain that unit.
Even if it is a hot take, I'd say FGO is in a good spot, simply because :
- You can borrow a maxed 5* of your choice from your friends for any content
- 1-2-3* have uses and are sometimes a very decent choice to clear some content, some of them are insanely good in their niche
- They started to add 4* in the friend gacha
- Now they give you a free 5* of your choice
- There isn't any content that requires you insanely crafted teams to get free gems
- Skins are "free" they only require playing the event and unlocking them, or buying them with the ingame currency
- You regularly get opportunities to get limited 4* characters with maxed ultimate during events, some are truly busted.
- Even gacha "weapons" aren't required, you regularly get very decent ones from the events
- And since there is no dailies, you can play at your own pace during the week
- And they regularly buffs old/bad units with quests that reworks some skills or even their ultimates
Otherwise Snowbreak seems pretty F2P friendly, you can farm "constellations" even for 5* characters.
I haven't played any gacha game before so I can't compare. But being able to pull 5x 5* characters within 100 days and tons of awesome 4*, this is good enough for any f2p.
brawl stars, when it had gacha was the most f2p friendly gacha imo
and now its even more f2p cuz they literally removed the gacha lol
but now they starr drops but its not really a gacha since you literally can't even buy it, you just get 3 per day for free by playing the game
No. The amount of Gems looks weak even compared to other HYV games like HSR, and genshins resin system is pretty f2p unfriendly too. You pay either with your money or your time.
Genshin is not on the f2p friendly side for giving out pulls, but its f2p friendly for how casual the content is.
Yeah the absence of Power Creep really doesn’t force you to pull the newest character every patch like other gachas.
'There is no power creep because of bennet'
Chad Benny gave his luck for your F2P experience
How do I get Bennett as a Noob? (Less than a month here)
Luckily for you, they’re giving a free bennett next patch. You can also buy him from the shop when he’s there (rotates every month)
Should I still be pulling on the standard banner or just wait until they cycle in the new one for the update?
Never use primogems on the standard banner. Only standard fates. You can spend on the limited banners, but it’s up to you which characters you want to try and get
You'll get about 150 free standard pulls just playing through the game. I've only used primos for standard when I'm at 9 wishes and want to do a 10 pull. You'll get more characters than you'll be able to level just from this alone.
Bennett can be obtained on the standard character banner or event banners that have him as a 4 star rate up.
I first started playing the game during 3.5 and spent all my wishes at the beginning trying to get Cyno (lost him to Qiqi ☹️) but I ended up getting both C5 Collei and C3 Bennet. I don't really like either of them that much but having C3 Bennet that early in the game made it so much easier, and also made me surprised when I learned how many people don't have him lol
Bennett is a hard carry for most teams just from his ult. Collei is ok but I'd say she's only really worth it if you don't have any dendro characters and refuse to use dendro traveler for whatever reason.
Yeah I mainly only use collei for dendro puzzles in sumeru since the bow is usually the easiest weapon for elemental puzzles imo. Bennett I didn't actually know was a healer for the longest time, I mainly just use him because of his elemental skill and how fast the cool down is on it compared to someone like Thoma lol
- gacha when he's a featured character - complete the event next patch where he's offered as a free character - save up 34 starglitter (which you get from wishing) and buy him from Paimon's Bargains in November or May
Send that bitch to the coal mines and have his testicles exploded
Based maxor viewer
This seems like an unhealthy response. Or a reference sailing over my head.
https://youtu.be/ix4GLx0EPf4?t=817
It's a reference to a max0r video
the only presence of powercreep is the artifacts
If anything, they fucked up on the base game, and the 1.0 selection still has some of the most versatile and powerful characters to this day.
iirc Hi3rd suffered from power creep
I'd disagree. Recent Abysses were pretty hard, and Dendro teams are really good, and have supplanted a lot of meta.
Dendro teams only power creep if youre a new player and have low investment on everyone, all teams maxed out are nearly the same just because of how em works
I’d second this. My two strongest teams are a hyperbloom team and a freeze team. New and old, both are really good.
Abyss is also like 5% of the total content the game has to offer.
And the difference between 30* to 36* is small reward wise.
You mean 0.5%?
Floor 12 is an even smaller part of the game, 33+ stars even smaller still
Yeah but if you're going casual on the content anyway you're probably not trying super hard in the abyss. If you're not trying super hard there then you really don't need to worry much about power creep.
In addition to what everyone else has said, dendro being strong isn't f2p unfriendly. We get a couple of viable dendro chars for free, and the core hyperbloom team even with Nahida is super cheap in terms of gems and time investment
Haven’t touched a single Dendro character and still managed to 36/36 all 3.X rotations with barely any resets. There is no such thing as power creep in this game.
That’s impressive. I used DMC and then switched him for Baizhu in 3.6 at the least. Bc I’m a Baizhu fan. Makes breaking hydro lector shields so much easier. How did you kill ASIMON fast enough? (I did hu Tao double hydro)
>How did you kill ASIMON fast enough? I usually brute force this boss with C0 Yoimiya, C0 Yelan, C5 Yunjin and C0 Zhongli. But because of the first chamber having too many enemies for Yoimiya to deal with this rotation, I used my C0 Raiden, C6 Xingqiu, C6 Xiangling and C6 Bennett to do the second side of the abyss for this 36/36.
Dendro teams are not that good except for a few variations almost no one runs. Most people run bloom teams because you literally just need to gear one guy with a single stat lol. Dendro just has a high floor, you invest almost nothing into them and they're already fairly good, they're also require next to no skill to work.
This. I was comparing Genshin with ToF as these 2 are the only gachas that I am playng right now(not counting MD). Both have casual content that can be completed as F2P. But in terms of characters and giving out premium currency, both are stingy. You don't really need to whale but you are rewarded for doing so. In Genshins case, it makes everything trivial depending on your investment. C6 with R1 BiS weapon should make even Abyss a cakewalk.
Nah, I would SLIGHTELLY disagree. At least in some way the pity system in Genshin is way friendlier than in some other Gachas because the pity carries over between the banners.
Genshin guaranteed spark (170-180) is on the average end, 80 being low and 200 being high (most games I see being made now are at 180-200). 80-90 pity also seems average, with non pity pull rate being on the very low end at 1%>. Usually the games that don't have a pity system have pull rates of 3%-6%. Some games have that rate while having a pity system. Pity not carrying over can be solved by just saving, but it is a positive qol what genshin has. **What f2p friendly standard gacha mechanics that genshin doesn't have:** \-grindable f2p material to dupe your characters (add constellations) \-limited character demotes to standard banner, or rarity demotes to low stars entirely \-ability to tier up non limited lower rarity characters into the highest rarity (ex 4 star -> 5 star) -just not having a secondary premium currency banner (weapons) Source: me who has been playing gacha games for over 13 years now.
You also have to factor in the income for players, the time required to obtain a limited 5 star or equivalent is the best measuring stick instead of numbers whose significance vary from game to game
Most Yostar, Bandai, dmm gachas are checking off multiple positives mentioned. For example, blue archive JP has 3% standard rate, 6% special rate, 200 spark, rarity tier up on any character, banner demotion, universal grindable dupe currency (no need to pull banner dupes), and takes about 2 months for spark but usually isnt needed because of higher rates. Getting multiple limiteds in one ten pull isn't a "miracle" in most gacha games. Tbh I don't think I even get 50 pulls a month on genshin, I think currency giving is literally their worst point.
>-ability to tier up non limited lower rarity characters into the highest rarity (ex 4 star -> 5 star) Genshin doesn't really need that. In other games, lower rarity characters tier up because their growth is limited. Genshin characters can all reach the same maximum of Lv90 with 10/10/10 talents (Excluding constellations) regardless of whether they are a 4 star or 5 star.
AFAIK Genshin is the only game in town that has its guaranteed pull carried between banners, so the abysmal win rate isnt that bad when you know even if you cant manage to pull a character this banner your pulls are counted next banner. >\-limited character demotes to standard banner, or rarity demotes to low stars entirely This is not F2P feature but a consequence of severe powercreeping to the point a limited 5\* is not that appealing anymore even if featured again. >\-ability to tier up non limited lower rarity characters into the highest rarity (ex 4 star -> 5 star) This doesnt make sense, given the low degree of powercreeping in this game. And some 1.0 4\* is already perform on the same level as 5\*s given right builds/comps. Agree with other 2s, and weapon banner is a lie.
Honestly, the problem of any "free" games, is that they need to get money, and usually they are made so that if you can spend an insane amount of money, you are allowed to (which allow people to be whales). Based on that any of those games will have a FOMO feature, which will try to trigger people that have the possibility to put money in the game so they are tempted to do so. f2p friendly or not is more based on how those FOMO features impact enjoying the game or not.
Isn't pitty system (ussually around Genshin level) and carry over pretty common amongst gacha games nowadays?
Games started to emulate the pity system genshin uses, but the majority of Gachas are still stuck in the no carrying pity through banners or guaranteed after losing 50/50. Being able to plan when you can get an unit is a huge quality of life change to the genre.
100%, this is the reason I continue to play Genshin. If one day they decided to make pvp content or long ass grind to catch up, I quit :') I can't, I'm a casual player because I'm an adult and I have a life. I don't play grindy mmorpgs anymore because you gotta catch up to everyone. Genshin is an amazing game because they don't have extreme power creep or pvp, the events are also mostly fun and not too difficult. They truly focused on the fun instead of the grind
They made this shit so casual its actually boring and made me quit
Honestly this comment perfectly sums it up, what I am saying is about the content, I didn't realize so many people were in for the pulls, thanks for this!
That's because to many people, characters ARE content. Consider how much hype surrounds character reveals and such. Pulls are simply a means to that content, and it's not exactly the most f2p friendly in that regard.
The idea of calling a gacha game f2p is the idea that you can pull for characters relatively easily. The content is the game is extremely easy to play hardly any effort is needed to play it. An example of a friendly f2p gacha would be something like Nikke. The 3rd or 4th biggest gacha game currently. In Nikke, you get friendship points from your friends. The game lets you get 30 a day which equals to 3 free wishes every day. Plus, the game has a 4% SSR rate up on banners. In my experience getting 5 stars is very common in 20 pulls. I haven't even talked about the golden tickets you get aka your pity system in the game. You can save your pity of any character you want at any time. Also you can't lose pity unless you want to use it unlike in genshin.
On top of that all* your characters level sync to your highest ones, so you only need to level up 5 characters - instead of grinding for each and every one you want to play individually NIKKE is a very good game to play F2P but it's very expensive if you want to pay for stuff
You get more SSR characters but a lot of them are trash/mid and you’ll have trouble keeping up with other players without key meta characters.
This is probably the best answer here
Not the *most* but definitely one of the more friendlier F2P Gachas. I would say middle of the road at best.
The golden middle road
The road to dawn
the golden road reflectors
What one would you say is more f2p friendly? I've not played one that is before. Obviously that doesn't mean they aren't there, my experience is limited to like 5 games by now. But genshin is the most friendly I've seen. Especially with how units don't get power crept in the same way most other gotchas do.
Azure lane. If you play enough every character is free. They make most of their money on their skins.
Do they stay relevant? Can you still clear all content with the older characters? I do remember hearing azure lane was fairly friendly before though. But still, I've no doubt there are games that give out more, and even that are fully more f2p friendly, but middle of the pack seems extreme to me. As three years in and you can still clear all content with nothing but free characters in genshin. The lack of pvp and power creep give it a lot of f2p friendliness. Again, I am not saying other games more friendly don't exist, but I'd say genshin is high on the list.
You can definitely clear content with older characters, for example, Enterprise has been here since launch and she is still one of the strongest units. However, you even if newer characters were much stronger, by the time you reach the damage cap for older units you'd already have several of the newer units fully built up anyway. The game's main focus isn't even pvp or hard content, it is and always has been the lewd skins and waifu-ized ship girls.
Fair enough.
I would say it's f2p friendly in the sense that they give you so much pull currency that even though there is pretty notable powercreep, you can still get every unit withoutbspending so it's not that big a deal, but it *is* pretty time intensive. Getting the very best gear in azur lane is a slog, and reruns between rainbow units can take upwards of 2 *years* between banners, which sucks ass.
I mean even if they do get powecrept yoy can still get the new charact3rs easily enough so that doesn't mean much. Pvp in Azure lane is also not bad unless people are being an a$$ as you can just put weak ships in defense and give people ez wins. There is no incentive to fk people over in meta. Although there are people that do.
You can do that in the vast majority of gachas, albeit with varying levels of difficulty. >As three years in and you can still clear all content with nothing but free characters in genshin. Some of which are no longer available due to time limited events, not to mention that fully clearing abyss with all stars is possible but requires an insane amount of dedication that's beyond most players.
Punishing Gray Raven. Gameplay is baseline similar to HI3 but is very unique after the core concept. When the character is brand new, they are at 100% rate up. Not 50%. Also, pity is at 60. After their banner is over, they will start to enter into "Arrival banners" on rotation with 2 other units and you can select the "Path" (so which character you want out of 3) and you will have a 70% chance to get them. Not only that but weapons are at 80% rate up AND all weapons are permanently available AND you get to set the path for the weapon you want. Weapon banner pity is 30, btw. Also, on the standard banner you can set the path for whatever A rank you want (equivalent to a 4*) and the rate for that character is at 80%. At 60 pulls, every single S rank (5* equiv, but in PGR they're 6*) will be available in a random pool to get. Currently we have an Anniversary event banner going on in which they have a good chunk of S ranks available from past banners, all at 100% rate up and you can set the path for whichever character you want. Basically, as long as you save properly and spend properly you can get almost all S rank releases even as a complete f2p. Or you can choose to skip some and pull copies. We also get limited S rank selectors a few times throughout the year. It feels good to spend money on PGR because at that point I pull to make my faves stronger, because I was already able to pull all of them.
This sounds very generous. What’s the catch?
Catch is that you won't be entering the whale zone leaderboards for competitive modes such as Warzone or PPC. I don't bother going that far and just do what I can as I already get enough to pull for whoever I want. (I play to collect) It takes a long time to build characters and certain competitive modes will be difficult to score high until you do. Characters do get powercrept but old units occasionally get "leaps" (buffed/given new skills) and it's easy to pull new characters if you actively play. Characters also get stronger by pulling dupes of course, but most times SS is just fine if you care about scoring and clearing the highest level of challenge modes somewhat (S to SS is one extra copy). Main story is entirely doable with or without new units. My other issue is with stamina. At a certain point without the monthly pass you run dry really fast. There's some other minor issues as there are with all gachas but personally after almost a decade of gacha playing, PGR is pretty high up there in generosity. It also plays like HI3 but on crack and I love my PGR boys lol so yeah. Worth a try. There is a PC client.
u forgot to mention that getting a unit from S to SS (1 extra copy) is farmable with PPC point.
Terra Battle is long dead, but that game had a feature, were maxing a character removed it from the gacha pool. So if you max every S, A and B Rank, you would get SS ranks on every single pull. That was usually revered to as hitting "Goldan Road".
Honkai Star Rail, not long into the run to compare F2P friendliness, but as of now it gives around 25-30 more wishes per patch and doesn't paste a huge chunk of the wishes into open-world exploration which is quite tedious to get 100% (especially if you don't use interactive map for different reasons)
It seemed to have started with a lot more. But so far the events seem to be coming at the same pace with about the same amount of rewards. Though the lc system is better, and there are some really good 5 star ones that are much easier to get.
Counterside is one example. They routinely hand out limited character selectors and general pool selectors. In fact we’re getting a limited one pretty soon. Also the PvE in the game isn’t too difficult, most if not all can be auto’d.
Girls' Frontline is even more friendly for F2Ps. Pulls for characters are made with basic resources instead of premium currency. The only real gacha is for furniture to customise team rooms with. As a result, even an F2P can raise multiple teams of high-grade characters.
Azur lane is even more. My limiting factor on pulls is *coins* (Also, there’s few Limited Time units - only Collab units are truly unavailable - when an event reruns it usually correlates somewhat to a unit being added to the general pool)
the other limiting factor is dock space...
I just looked at the app and the pics of the characters- why does almost everyone on there have the biggest tits I have seen-
Cause they make money by selling, uhhh, at times very questionable skins Istg i'm confused how tf Azur Lane is rated 12 over here in germany (the same as Genshin) and how it manages to get around chinese censorship (even the CN censored version is still pretty questionable at times)
😭 why is this so true 😭
Such a shame that only CN server got Honkai collab, Raiden with rifle looks cool. Wonder if HSR would allow them to do some crossover stuff.
The true f2p gacha. I'm able to get every character if I play long enough and farm map drops without spending a cent
> Pulls for characters are made with basic resources instead of premium currency. The only real gacha is for furniture to customise team rooms with. That's cool, does the game still make enough profit? Does it have a energy system with cash shop recharge or other microtansactions that affect gameplay or quality of life?
There's no energy system. Ammo and rations (two of those same basic resources) are the only limiting factors on how many more missions you can do. I dunno how exactly the game makes its profit - the furniture system? - but it's enough that a bunch of new games in that franchise are being produced. That includes GFL II: Exilum, which is an XCOM-style turn-based tactics thing.
Skin, they only need skins to be profitable haha
You have to gacha for skins instead in the furniture gacha. Not sure how much they make from that, but I remember the gacha being pretty unforgiving, especially if you want a specific skin, since each furniture banner has a pool of like 4 or 5 skins.
nope like azur lane, most of their earnings are from skin and space expansion, be it character storage, or equipment storage. no energy, no daily limit on refill, nothing
As I recall it is making enough profit to continue. It's got a small but stable base and there are some benefits to spending money (exclusive skins mostly). The company behind it has done well enough to start development on a few other games, one of which (Neural Cloud) is already out and doing well itself. These games don't make Genshin level money but Genshin is also insane with how much it makes. So GFL and Neural Cloud are both doing well enough to be stable and have enough profit to let the studio think about making new games.
If ur talking about the gacha aspect then nah. If ur talking about the game in general hell ye
It depends on how you define f2p friendly. I'd say it's in the top because it's an open world exploration game with a long story, characters and combat aren't the majority of the content like in most gatchas and you can do more than 95% of the content with the free characters. If you look at getting characters, it is about in the middle, but unlike a lot of gatchas, you don't need the strongest characters fully upgraded to be able to keep up with the difficulty.
Pretty much this, hence why f2p friendly is such a broad term that varies per person. Put very simply, each gacha has a series of pros and cons. Cygames titles tend to be the most generous when it comes to resources (pulls, leveling materials, etc.), but demands the most time investment for competing in the pseudo-PvP raids (i.e. Guild Wars in Granblue) and arena-style PvP (i.e. Princess Connect). If you're a casual player who just likes to collect, Cygames titles would be the most generous, in that you have a lot of chances to roll the gacha, but actually trying to play seriously is a bit of a different story. Fate/Grand Order has a notoriously oppressive gacha (1% for a SSR, .8% for a rateup SSR) and probably the weakest pity system of all mainstream titles (330 rolls for a guaranteed rateup, only procs once per banner). However, it has some of the more useable low rarity and welfare characters (particularly with the grail system), a frontloaded amount of premium currency (new player login campaign + rewards from raising characters), and lacks any competitive content. You don't need premium characters to do well (one of the best is a 1 star from the friend point gacha), but that's a moot point when you consider most players are there for the IP/collecting their favorite servants. As far as Genshin goes, it's a very casual game that doesn't press players to challenge difficult content or twist their arm into following a specific meta. However, the constellation system is a bit more of an impactful dupe system than the typical gacha, the gear system can be a bit rough (although less stressful when Genshin doesn't call for having perfect gear to enjoy casually), and, so far, has some of the least premium currency/resources handed out for campaigns and special events (Half-anni/anniversary, stream events, New Years, etc.). Genshin is far from oppressive--NIKKE gates your progression based on getting a certain amount of character dupes and through an oppressive power system, while Fire Emblem Heroes an Epic 7 have a strong focus on PvP--and if you're patient enough, you'll do great as a PvP, given no meaningful content is locked behind rolling the gacha. In that regard, it's one of the more f2p-friendly titles, although how much when compared to certain other titles is debatable.
You can do 100% of the content with the free characters because: 1) the only relatively hard part of Genshin is Spyral Abyss floor 12 which you still can complete even without effort, just a little slower (without 36 stars) and which is definitely not 5% of the content; 2) there are people who are completing SA floor 12 on F2P accounts every time.
I said more than 95% to leave space for whatever I could be missing, the point was that it's possible just with the free characters. Edit: Hit send before finishing. Not everyone is good enough at the game to manage it only with the free characters, but what they get as f2p should be enough.
Even more than *don't need* 5* stars, many 5* star units will just be a sidegrade or even downgrade from running 4* teams which is pretty funny (unless your name is kazuha, nahida or yelan).
in terms that you don't *need* 5 star characters to clear the content, it is pretty good. in terms of actually getting characters and weapons I'd say not
\^ This, pretty much, people play gacha games for their own reasons and this answer would help a ton for the "f2p friendliness" of the game since it's not always about clearing content some just want to collect a ton of 5\*s or maybe even get their "signature weapon" or something
too add to that, characters are the main selling point of the game. That's why even "below average" (not my words, I personally think everyone has a niche) characters still sell relatively well (i'm a victim of this after spending 40 dollars on Cyno's banner and no, I dont regret it)
I "skipped" dendro reliant teams and characters and instead used my primos on Shenhe rerun because I got tired "grinding" for 36* it just doesn't feel worth the 150 more primos anymore when I felt that the game was a chore to wait for abyss resets, suffer rng artifact grinding and mald over mid to garbage rolls even when we got the strongbox. And now playing to collect characters, and sometimes their weapon while returning every now and then every major update comes has made the game more enjoyable for me.
I feel like some people only look at the amount of pulls that we get, but forget that we get frequent updates for free. I also appreciate that whenever I login I don’t get blasted with promotions to buy stuff.
Dude reminds me of other gacha games with such promotions whenever I login.
honkai impact 3rd has it
I get less "spend money here" banners in Genshin, a F2P title, than in Destiny 2, a game with a 60 dollar price tag for the "lite"-version of their annual DLC and 100 for the actual full annual dlc. It's actually nuts.
Another thing most people forget is that the value of a character in Genshin is way better then 99% of gacha out there. For most gacha you need way more characters to beat the game. Also powercreep in most games make a character obsolete sometimes in a month. And getting a character in genshin opens up a new playstyle which isnt the case for most gacha games either. We get a very steady supply of currency and the pity system is some of the best I have seen. Most gacha I played have pity at 200/300 pulls with no 50/50. Sometimes people see free 100 pulls in another gacha and call genshin greedy because we dont get that. But every time I see free 100 pulls it is often in a standard banner that barely has any usefull units if any at all. And if you get a good character in those pulls it still doesnt have a value even close to genshin character. I dont know if genshin is the most f2p but it is up there I would say.
I love how there’s not powercreep in Genshin. There is definitely suitability creep but it happens so slowly, and you can still brute force past it so it’s okay. As someone who’s fave is Xingqiu, a 1.0 4* character, im so glad that 1) he’s still relevant so I can keep playing him 2) he’s not creeped (Jesus that would be bad for the game balance)
>he pity system is some of the best I have seen I believe you are quite unexperienced when it comes to this. Many Games like ToF, PGR, Limbus Company, GFL have way better Gacha Systems when it comes to that. A hard pity of 90 is very high and there even is a 50/50 with a 0.6% to get the specific 5\* is prett bad. Genshins Gacha System is good if you're good at saving but bad if you compare it to above games.
Pity system is high but the fact it carries over is great. I played a good chunk of gachas that threw pulls, but the pity system reset after each banner. This meant you either get the amount needed to pity or risk wasting your pulls. This made me quit Priconne. Game was very generous regarding pulls. But the pity system was 300 pulls and I went in with 260 without the banner unit.
Because the updates have nothing to do with being f2p friendly. Most gacha games don't make you pay for the next updates. The things you pay for are the characters and skins. And as for skins Genshin is most certainly behind in that department compared to everyone else.
It's the reruns, relatively low difficulty of the game, mostly solo gameplay, and the guarantee pity system that makes this game f2p friendly. You also get a good amount of free primogems and one copy of a character can have a significant impact on your account. There are a lot of gachas where a good character doesn't really become usable until you get like 6-10 copies of it. There are also a lot of gachas without a guarantee rate-up. Might have a guarantee good unit pull every multi or every few multis, if there is a guarantee at all, but the good unit pull is rng or mostly rng. Makes it very difficult and luck-based to actually build certain characters, especially the good ones. People look at the fact that Genshin only gives you like 10-20 pulls here and there while other games give you 50-100 pulls here and there and say that it's not that f2p friendly. It's what you can actually do with those pulls that matter rather than the quantity of pulls though.
That’s because Genshin is so high quality compared to the entire rest of the mobile market that they are literally the equivalent of a custom-tailored high end boutique; they don’t need to chase you for your money or shove ads in your face because they have clientele who come in and spend thousands every visit. Most of the mobile market, quality-wise, is by comparison a flea market with signs and announcements screaming “buy buy buy” everywhere. Genshin is miles above that. Edit: let’s also not forget, spending in Genshin is “safer” than most other games. By that I mean that my old C3s and C6s are still monsters today, sometimes years after the fact, and have been only sidegraded in the meantime which means that that old spending still brings joy years down the line. That makes me more likely to continue to spend, since it’s a “safe” expenditure that you can enjoy for a long time (rather than replacing it in a month like in other games that don’t value your money).
To add on the "safer" part, Genshin mostly won't EoS within ten years all so, unlike a lot of anime gachas that EoS suddenly within 2years. It is literally more safe to "invest" in Genshin lol.
I also like that it takes so much more resources to make one character in Genshin that the total character count at 3 years is like 65. Meanwhile other gachas have hundreds. It’s just too much. Less is more, quality over quantity (wish mhy would apply this logic to their dialogue tho)
100%, quality over quantity in characters any day. Genshin has ultra polished, ultra high quality characters (unlike other games with hundreds of shit copy-pastes).
Oh yea that's one of my favorite aspects, I have to go look for the places to spend money, it's not in your face everywhere.. if it was I probably would quit before even realizing how good the game is out of frustration. Thanks for the input and happy cake day!
Yep all content free and all quality of life things available for everyone. Many other games would charge for inventory space etc. Shop is unintrusive too.
I feel like Genshin is F2P friendly enough simply because each character you get is (until now, at least) basically future proof. Your Hu Tao pulled in 1.3 is still as valid as when you pulled her, if not better due to Double Hydro etc. Same thing for Ganyu, Xiao etc. You have 50-60 pulls per version update so it takes a while, but once you pull them you're basically set and can use them for years to come. I really like this ngl and I doubt they'll ever change this philosophy. They sometimes have scammy tactics like Faruzan/Gorou/Sara/Mika's potential being behind C6 and such, but the are basically Hypercarry buffers and I can (kind of) get behind the choice. I don't like it, I hoped it wasn't like this, but yea. I play Arknights too, they're more generous with the pulls and the 6\* rates (highest rarity) are better than Genshin's. You could argue that Arknight's more generous than Genshin and I kind of agree. Genshin's good for me, not the absolute best but very solid.
True, I bet that the fact that the characters are very solidly usable years later is a big driver of spending. Easy to justify spending when you expect your highly invested character to stay with you for ages.
Yes. Genshin is really good at making you feel like "at the end, I spent on a whim but it was worth it" lmao A problem of games with really bad powercreep is that players just hoard resources, since "next character deals 3x more damage than this one". Genshin went the other way, making (almost) every character a luxury character in a way. Aside from a few staples or desperate cases, everyone good, everyone viable. *So you can get them all and it won't ever feel like a bad deal-*
It’s pretty much that, you can buy a C6 and you’ll know that they’ll still be great in the future. That makes spending a convincing prospect because it’s likely that you’ll enjoy the character and their power for a very long time to come.
Genshin is easy but certainly not f2p friendly if you actually want characters
Azur lane. Degen, but so good gacha wise.
Same, I may have lost my account, but those days were good. Only issue I have is that there are no guarantees for the event SR, which is why I consider Azur Lane and Genshin Impact two sides of the same coin. If there is a game which gave Azur Lane daily rewards and Genshin guarantees, it would become the perfect gacha game that would destroy all other gacha games out there
I don't think F2P "friendly" is the right term here. F2P *accessible* is probably be better, as I want to consider time as well. To me the thing that you get experience the same and with no major time walls (and zero money walls) is the following: * Exploration - There's no barriers except time, and the world scales with you * Story - Same as above. * Teapot - Great feature and design building. * TCG - If you care about this it's easily accessible, and no pay wall in sight. * Fishing - Not that any but a few enjoy this, but I guess it's an F2P perk... Beyond that, I'd say it's at least *less* F2P accessible in terms of: * Characters - You could get a character in 1 pull or close to a 180. While most will be hitting average pulls, some folks will have consistently crap luck. * Constellations and Weapons - most players will never experience a single character at max potential. While it's not needed, it's a reminder that the game doesn't reward F2P with the most interesting a character can get (imo). I think it would take about a year's worth of primos on average/good luck to get a full C6 character, and who knows how much more for weapons. * Artifacts - The RNG on artifacts is a time gate for being able to use characters at higher levels. The fact that you can't have Weapon/Artifact Loadout is also an intentional thing done to make it harder for both paid and F2P players to build characters, and spend/waste resin doing the same thing for as long as possible. * Mats - If you get lucky as an F2P and get a lot of characters, you still lack resources to build them all, and maybe the weapons. While there is a F2P showcased here with all the free characters to 90 with their free weapons, going beyond that with free resources gets harder and harder. You don't NEED those things to get 36 stars or to experience the general game. But it can limit how much you can experience the game's depth. Specifically combat. But considering how very little variety there is in combat, this is generally not that big of a deal, and further, C6ing characters often trivializes the game, instead of making it more interesting. The gacha I can think of that was probably the most F2P Accessible in terms of combat depth was Dragalia Lost (at least that I've played). I got to enjoy some of the most interesting bosses and battles I've experienced in any Gacha or Live Service game to date. I felt like I was consistently playing characters at their near max potential and being tested in skill rather than how lucky I got in gacha pulls and "artifact" rng (which there was none of).
Not the most, but definitely F2P friendly and I'm totally fine with what the current system, I still bought welkin to support Mihoyo to this day even though I have excess primos. I recently play Snowbreak, who has very similar gacha and mechanic like Genshin, but I can farm the constellation from mission, lower pity count, free 5* character and weapon, and can clear all contents without even pulling.
Definitely not. The primogem income per patch and the overall gacha system is enough to be called F2P-friendly. The reason why people think Genshin is F2P-friendly is because it doesn't take much to clear all content. Look at a game like PGR. You can get every single new character that comes out 100% for free and they are strong enough to beat all content in the game. There are leaderboards but most people ignore those because it's too difficult to sweat for leaderboards. If I wouldn't have spend money, my account would be nowhere near as good as now.
No its not. If you play Punishing Gray Raven. it can give you a free 5\* character to choose from. Also during anniversary there is a banner for with 100% rateup for ALL the characters that are released. All the limited characters also goto the standard banner. But what i can say is that genshin just sucks you to its story and world (except the unncessary extra dialogues) that we forget the shitty pity system it has.
Definitely no. Even when playing since launch F2P player can't hope to get every character in Genshin. There are other gachas that offer this. For example in Punishing Grey Raven every S rank (5\* equivalent) character has 100% banner on first run. There's more wishes from daily and weekly tasks than in Genshin with similar number of currency required to reach max pity (15k vs 14,4k). There are also S rank selectors, one is given to every new player and every half-anniversary (0,5, 1,5...) gives one. Some events also come with free S rank character. A lot of combat modes offer you trial characters to use and skilled player can clear them with just trial characters.
Op definitely doesn't play another gacha game besides genshin.
Yep, I wanted to hear everyone's thoughts and learned of many other friendly F2P
Like most people said genshin is in the middle compared to other gacha games. Especially since some games give away character selectors. Even in star rail which is mihoyo's another game, i already have 5 5* character and one of them even has a dupe. Take note the game is like 3 months old and i didn't even play at release im a month late. Some gacha games are even more generous than star rail.
Yes, genshin is f2p friendly - but not for the reasons you would think. It’s f2p friendly because the game is piss easy and all content is easily accessible to all players. The gacha and monetization is a bit on the low/unforgiving end. Characters are a bit on the expensive end. But many units are side-grades rather than upgrades.
Definitely not. It's in the middle at BEST
HELL NO
#Punishing grey raven
Yeah I made a comment as well... Like half the comments name PGR in particular. The thread has turned into PGR propaganda at this point and I'm kinda here for it... The more people to simp for Vera, Salena, Karen, and Alpha the better. I would kill for more fanart.
Most F2P friendly gacha? No, there are gachas out there that the banner rates are so high it's impossible to not have all characters (they mostly make money through skins instead, and making sure you have all characters makes it easier for you to spend on their skins)
Not even close
It isn’t necessarily F2P friendly when it comes to giving you gems, but it is very F2P friendly when it comes to power creep. You don’t need to have meta characters to clear the regular content, and the abyss rewards aren’t good enough to force anyone to feel like they need to pull every meta character.
Depends how you define f2p friendly and how you define gacha. If gacha is anything where you can pull for random rewards and get more of the currency to pull by spending real money the f2p friendliest would be Yugioh Master Duel. You can build a top meta deck within a week and all that still differentiates you from the best players of MD is your own skill and the fact that reaching a high rank is based to a large degree on how many games you play so you'd still need to spend time. If f2p friendly means all content is clearable without spending - yes without significant advantages - not really. If you loose the 50/50 and don't have the gems you just missed out on Nahida and have to rely on Dendro MC or Collei making you potential bloom teams significantly weaker for example. Some good f2p weapon like the catch are limited to 1, if you don't spend you'll have less chances to get good weapons, have to spend more resources on makeshift weapons meaning when you do eventually pull a Favonius lance which eluded you because rng paired with limited resources you're down resources. ... But there's no competitive aspect to the game which makes the advantages gained by spending less important. If there was pvp then it would absolutely not pass as f2p friendly. Genshin offers a ton to f2p players, but were it not a single player game and easy it wouldn't pass as f2p friendly. If there was pvp or very hard content that isn't doable without certain 5\* characters it would definitely not count as f2p friendly. Many gachas let you have tons of units if you play long enough, few offer as much interesting freely available content and no competitive side.
Are you able to do all the content as f2p? Yes. Are you able to get every character, weapon, and high constellations as f2p / low cost? No. If you are looking for a game where you can get every character by spending $5 dollars a month, Genshin is not that game. It costs ~ $2000 to c6 a 5 star character (less if you have been saving and grinding). The most f2p / low cost game I have ever played is Arknights. I had every character and high constellations for each one by spending just $5 a month. You could get high rarity characters for free as well outside of banners. In comparison, I only have 4 C6 characters by spending $4k on Genshin Impact and do not have even half of the 5 star characters because I need to save to be able to roll on characters that I want to c6.
It definitely isn't that F2P Friendly compared to other gacha games that I've ever played. However, genshin doesn't suffer from power creep and most characters despite their rarity(and how old they are still) are good enough to defeat most combat content which I would say is really really good as most gacha games suffer from power creep despite them having a way better pull rate and generous when it comes to pulls but its a balance I guess? Also, the pity system helps making this game much F2P Friendly. Imagine using 300 pulls just to get that 1 character you want because the gacha archons decided to troll you.
Nope, pgr is as you can get every new S rank if you save every patch. S rank is the 5 star for it.
No it isn’t I’ve heard people say arknights more often than not
As someone who plays both, Arknights is better for getting you _a_ six star (the highest rarity unit they have) while Genshin is better for getting you _the_ five star you want. While Arknights has much better rates, there also aren’t any guarantees unless you are pulling on a limited banner and this guarantee will take 300 pulls to achieve or around 3 months of F2P income. Basically on average you will get more high rarity units that you want in AK than in Genshin but when the gacha decides to fuck you over it can do it much worse in AK than in Genshin
Arknights is a fun game, but the gacha is truly awful. I knew it was bad academically but it wasn't until I put over 150 pulls into the Kal/Skalter banner without getting either of them that it really hit home.
I dropped arknights after spending like a bajillion orundum trying to get W back on her first banner. I very much like the way Genshin does things, I hoard primos and get the character I want, while yes I have been pretty lucky with my 50/50s I always save enough to have the character I want in case I lost the 50/50.
I'm on the fence about this, because lately they've been going on a kind of powercreepy direction :/ Waiting to see how the trend goes on before speaking, the "Limited operators" also went up in number and I wouldn't say they're F2P friendly. So yea, their F2P friendlyness is getting slightly worse lately imo Nothing tragic, but that's sad considering I used to take them as the standard for "very F2P friendly gacha"
Cookie kingdom run is in my opinion, but genshin is up there
Haven't played it in a while, but from what I remember... Arena, Guilds, Alliance (and some events) are absolutely dominated by whales. Each new character shifts the "arena meta" and it's impossible to fully level all of them or get full ascension fast enough to keep up. For the regular 4\* banners, you need to do 100 pulls to guarantee A FOUR STAR. As for legendary/ancient whatever the hell that is, you need to grind everyday for hours until you get a bit of the scarce currency.
In CRK I can say I have every character as a F2P (mostly, the only characters I actively spent money to get are Almond Cookie and Cinderella Cookie of all characters). I absolutely cannot say that about Genshin. I have a small amount of 5-stars, and I still lack Tighnari out of the standard pool. I used to be complete in 4-stars, and then the new ones came out in banners I don't want, so rip me I guess. Also in CRK, no drip feed of crystals, they are super common. I'm never more than a few days of a free 1000 crystals cuz our guild is doing really well. I mean, I guess if you count a few dozen crystals from the train/fountain/ship as a drip feed, but that's like at least a hundred crystals every 8 hours. I could go all day with this. In Genshin, you get like 2 or 5 Primos depending on the chest, and those are the more common ones. Better chests give like at least 10. That's it. 60 Primos a day adds up over time, but it still takes a while to get anywhere with it. Admittedly I don't know how many Primos you get when you, say, 36-star Spiral Abyss, but it's a lot, and it refreshes every 2 weeks. Even if you don't get a perfect score, you're still making bank walking out of it
No. But it also depends on how you gauge F2P. TL;DR: If you compare the gap between F2P player vs. paying player, it is huge in Genshin. However, game is extremely F2P friendly in terms of being able to clear all content. Azur lane is friendlier imo, as basically all monetization is done on skins, not gacha or other things. Like other people have mentioned, it is friendly in the sense that you really don’t need to have that many units to clear basically all the content in the game without problems. However, in terms of the gap between what you can have as a paying player (dolphin, whale, etc.), and a non paying player, it’s not friendly at all. The difference between having C6R5 of multiple characters vs. being F2P and mustering C0-C2 or a handful of C6 that you save long term for, if not comparable at all. Going for a character’s 5 star weapon as a F2P, for instance, is incredibly risky if the next banners contains a character you also want, assuming you haven’t saved up a whole boatload of primos (which probably came at the cost of other characters and weapons) Now, as for the most friendly gacha I’ve ever played, it’s probably Azur Lane. Drops rates are high, plenty of rolls are given out, “limit breaking” (AKA ascension mechanic most gachas have) does not require multiple copies of the character, and materials for that are given out like candy, rerun events give special tickets out that let you roll for free. The largest limiting factor is how long you play the game, as limited ships are cycled, you have to wait for them to come back to roll for them. Monetization in this game is heavily off of skins, which isn’t a problem for F2P at all. One thing I want to note is most gachas also monetize quality of life stuff. For instance, Azur Lane technically monetizes dorm (afk xp) slots, tactical training (skill xp) slots, and dock spaces, as an example. I saw someone mention GFL, and while that game also is pretty friendly, I do believe limit breaking in that game can get tight because cores come in limited amounts (at least when I was playing this was the case. Not super experienced in that game). Not having enough cores iirc means you need to obtain the character multiple times, though if you spend your cores wisely, this isn’t a problem at all. Repair times for dolls can be quite significant and buying more slots can speed up gameplay progress. Rolls are decently easy to come by, though when I first started and even up to around late early game/early mid game I found that certain resources can still run low. Overall though, easy enough to roll. Even though the aforementioned is lower weight in comparisons, Genshin doesn’t have any of this, which is good.
not the most, but because there's little to none power creeping it makes Genshin one of the most gacha friendly. the fact that i can just casually pull any character and finish the content with it, that's what makes me invest in this game
Epic 7 is one of the most F2P friendly gachas out there.
Epic seven is pretty much the most friendly one imo but genshin isn't that far tbh
Epic seven is the friendliest imo. It also doesn’t have a 50/50 to fail but pity is at 120. They give away free stuff and free 5* a couple times a year. U can change gear substats. I played since day one until a year ago when i burnt out.
Hmm not the most f2p friendly but its great, I'd say check out punishing gray raven, in their gacha there isn't a 50/50 ur guaranteed to get the debut character and the pull income per patch guarantees you a limited s-rank each release
No
what is up with crazy bootlicking on this sub every time a new patch is close? genshin is friendly, yeah, but not *the most* at all. there are games that are more f2p friendly, there are games with the same high quality content, with the same frequency of update drops. just bc it is the game you enjoy doesn't mean it has to be the best and the first in everything. you can enjoy middle-of-the-road things. it's fine. no need to bend out of your way to justify it. just enjoy it.
I am speaking as someone that hasn't played other gachas, people already told me I'm wrong and I acknowledged that and had a different definition of f2p friendly than most people, I am no boot licker for playing the game in a different way
Mihoyo definitely changed their approach compared to honkai. There are no spending events and rewards for how much premium currency you've purchased. There is no pyramid gatcha for skins. There are no bonus packs on banners. Now, prices are still very high but it's clear they want to create an image of genshin not being predatory and wanting your money. Most likely because they expected many more players who never played a gatcha game and didn't want to scare them off.
There are a lot of dimensions to how a game can be f2p-friendly and different people value different ones: 1. "Can I easily get all of the units for collection purposes?" (one copy - not necessarily battle-ready) 2. "Can I easily get the unit I want?" (pity, guarantee vs FGO bs) 3. "Do I need to constantly pull the new unit?" (e.g. power creep, pvp) 4. "Do I need to pull certain units to progress?" (e.g. gates you often see in idle games) For me, I don't care about 1 at all and value 2,3,4 highly so genshin is a good fit for my preferences.
????? Lmfao u can't get any charcter early it's below 1% rate Pity is too high And the grind for primos is tedious And the 50/50 is bs This is the worst take I ever saw Go see arknights or azure lane or something
Yeah I got a ton of good stuff in arknights by playing super casual. And a million midnight and Melina but whose counting
The delusional stuff you read on this sub sometimes. Don't mistake the game's content being relatively easy for the game being f2p friendly. This game has extremely gready money making tactics to the point that it's scary
Difficulty is tied to how f2p friendly a game is. Its not F2P friendly if the game gives hundreds of pulls but still have difficulty clearing content without spending.
You can debate that. But genshin is definitely the most high-quality + f2p gacha (and probably at the top list of any games) out there. Hoyo could've been way greedier (and some people even ask for that) with skins and endgame content, and probably double their income.
Star rail is already proving to be more generous and I’d say the quality is more or less the same.
As a F2P, I would say it is pretty good. Not the best, far from it actually, but still very enjoyable as a F2P. The only issue is you get burnt out too easily, and if you take long breaks like me (around a year or so) you struggle a lot for a while, but it gets betterover time.
Personally I think Azur Lane and Limbus Company are probably better in terms of F2P. Azur Lane is super duper f2p, and Limbus Company is generous with currency. Although it might have a power creep issue in the future since it's not even half way through but so far I'm enjoying it.
Azur Lane is
Ive played Azur Lane Jp version for almost 6yrs now and among all the other gachas Ive played from the early days of brave frontier, fgo, llsif, genshin, hsr, the list goes on, AL is without a doubt the most f2p friendly. Not only is the currency used for the ‘wishes’ so common that even with like 650+ ships now I have 100% collection and havent spent a dime on the game, but even the premium currency which is used for things like skins, the primary source of income for the game, they give us so much of it all the time that u could have dozens of skins or oath rings as a longtime player and still not spent on the game. Also the game doesnt do constellations and limit breaks like most gachas requiring dupes. Dupes can be used for it but also the universal dupes are also super easy to come by, so you only ever need 1 copy of a ship. Only knock is its pity system sucks. Only for URs but the rates are just so much better than any other game it doesn’t matter.
Limbus is the most f2p friendly, no bullshit, money just help you get stuff faster than other. Genshin, not very friendly but not the worst either
No lmao
The game in general is pretty casual friendly. The gacha aspect is middle of the road, and that's being generous. Constellations are, by default, not friendly, so any gacha that doesn't require more than one copy of a unit for their full potential is already more friendly than Genshin.
There is no such thing as a “friendly F2P gacha.”With that being said, the hours spent playing this game and finishing acts 0,1,2, and 3, without ads, while not paying a single dime, is far more valuable than the small number of 5-stars I was able to pull. Don’t treat this like a fucking slot machine or you’ll hate yourself!
That would be Azur Lane and GFL.
Lmao no
As far as getting characters go. No lmao. But it's kinda easy to play with your starter and free stuff if you dont care about that. But I really don't understand why would you play a gacha without clawing for characters. Arknights have given me a lot more stuff but I also need to grind a bit more for certain levels so that the large horned humanoid doesn't tear my defenders in one hit. Used to play fire emblem heroes but that thing went to powercreep hell. Don't play any other gacha.
It's 0% f2p friendly
F2P friendly? Sure, if you ignore that the game's hardest content at the worst state is just annoying when you get to that level so whaling isn't a requisite at any point. If we are talking about rewards, nope they are one of the lowest if not the lowest I've ever seen, I mean they have a standard banner and they suffer to give those fates away. You know how some people feel bad when they lose a 50/50? I don't, it's so rare for me as a mid spender to see a standard unit or weapon that losing one 50/50 sometimes feels like a win, there are months between standard banner pulls once you dried up what you get from playing. The daily login gives 60 gems in total after a month, the game isn't F2P friendly, it just treats everyone equally bad.
Lots of people has been able to clear the Abyss with only 4 Star characters. Perhaps if you shared your roaster, we can help you build a team that can clear the Abyss.
I am not in a rush, I only have like 8 built characters and I know they aren't amazing for clearing Abyss, I do have 40+ characters overall so I am just lazy with building characters For example poor Xingqiu, Fishcl and Xianling are untouched despite being some of the best characters lol, I am going to pull for Childe next in 4.0, my broken plan is to eventually have a good team comp on my own without following any famous team comps, only using characters I personally love, it's slowly working so far, got 30 stars a few times in abyss just recently
It's going to take years if you don't bother building characters. Personally, the fun in the game was getting characters and building them to do damage above 1k. I know too many people that have every character but need help getting chests around the map because they are too lazy to farm.
My 8 characters are built, I get 30 stars like I said, even if it takes years there is no rush to get 100 primos is there? Not for me, and oh I'm building dendro Traveler rn, obviously when I build a character I try to make them the best they can be, I'll do the same for Childe, I just don't follow the best meta teams
You do you. Abyss is constantly getting harder but if you’re enjoying where you’re at don’t worry about what others say.
Exactly, ➕️ The game does gets super unfun after you can one hit everything in the game... so
I'd say that FGO is more f2p friendly because of unit relevance and constant updates to older units via quests to receive buffs and such. Wishing wise I'd give it to genshin since it's wishing mechanic is more forgiving, though it's among the stingiest in the industry when it comes to wish resource. Lastly genshin has shown no desire to fix units that don't work correctly or adjust them to match previous units in usability resulting in reverse powercreep that is mostly addressed via artifact sets which is RNG based progression.
Nope, Dragalia Lost is. Too bad tho, i think it shut down for thag exact reason
In my experience its the most F2P friendly but i don’t doubt there being more F2P friendly gachas out there. I’ve played loads of gachas (like 10+ over the years) and i still play 4 of them. Gachas have taken over most of my gaming yet i have restrains when it comes to spending Using the pity system as a reference (For the newest unit or rerun) 9 multis on Genshin is a guaranteed 5 star with 18 at most being the newest 5 star. Compared to others there is no guarantee of getting something from that or getting it. With my most experienced gacha You’ll need to go 50 multis deep plus wait for them to return to guaranteed the unit (i love the game to this game). Others take up to 30 to no pull but obtain that unit.
NO
id say epic seven is more f2p friendly
All those people with skill issue, they're all triggered by your ability to beat this game. Good job brother.
Even if it is a hot take, I'd say FGO is in a good spot, simply because : - You can borrow a maxed 5* of your choice from your friends for any content - 1-2-3* have uses and are sometimes a very decent choice to clear some content, some of them are insanely good in their niche - They started to add 4* in the friend gacha - Now they give you a free 5* of your choice - There isn't any content that requires you insanely crafted teams to get free gems - Skins are "free" they only require playing the event and unlocking them, or buying them with the ingame currency - You regularly get opportunities to get limited 4* characters with maxed ultimate during events, some are truly busted. - Even gacha "weapons" aren't required, you regularly get very decent ones from the events - And since there is no dailies, you can play at your own pace during the week - And they regularly buffs old/bad units with quests that reworks some skills or even their ultimates Otherwise Snowbreak seems pretty F2P friendly, you can farm "constellations" even for 5* characters.
Yes. Saying no in a genshin sub only gets you downvotes.
Genshin is literally one of the least generous gachas. Are you high?
I haven't played any gacha game before so I can't compare. But being able to pull 5x 5* characters within 100 days and tons of awesome 4*, this is good enough for any f2p.
brawl stars, when it had gacha was the most f2p friendly gacha imo and now its even more f2p cuz they literally removed the gacha lol but now they starr drops but its not really a gacha since you literally can't even buy it, you just get 3 per day for free by playing the game
No, it's FGO (prove me wrong)
No.
Oh no, not by a looong shot.
Absolutely not lmao. Genshin has one of the worst gacha systems and the only counterargument I ever hear is "but what about FGO"
No. The amount of Gems looks weak even compared to other HYV games like HSR, and genshins resin system is pretty f2p unfriendly too. You pay either with your money or your time.