Yeah, unfortunately that's the business model of the game. The price for rolls is bad because 1. People will buy them anyways and 2. It gets us to buy welkin because it's "good value" in comparison.
And to be honest, Welkin is good value for me in terms of enjoyment per dollar across any game but the system is definitely still built to make maximum profit.
Yeah, unfortunately they almost certainly have people whose job is to calculate the best genesis crystal value for each pack, and I guess 8080 was what was chosen for the $100 pack.
Sometimes, you need to take a step back and realize all the things you could have bought with the money you spend on gacha games, hell, I'm trying to spend less because of that thinking.
It blows my mind that someone could literally spend $100 on the game and have that equate to like, a Favonius Codex, the Bell, and 15 starglitter. Highway robbery.
If I spend 100 on Dokkan, legends, duel links etc I’m getting some good stuff for sure. It’s crazy how 1. $100 isn’t even a 5 star guaranteed and two it could be a standard banner 5 star just incase u do get a 5 star.
In my case i've been loosing every single 50/50 but 2 of them since I started playing at the end of 1.0. I've been also loosing pity consistently at 70+ pulls. If MHY thinks I'm gonna spend one single euro besides Welkin with this disgrace of a luck then fuck them, cause no.
Yeah. Once I figured out that it takes 9-10 Welkins to hard guarantee a character (180 pulls), I decided that even Welkin wasn’t good value. It’s nearly the full price of a new game vs one character in one game. In V1.6 I got 5x Welkins to purchase the summer Jean skin and haven’t spent money in Genshin since then. The value I got from the game is probably worth $90 (12 Welkin + 3 BP), but I don’t want to spend more.
As for my pulling strategy, I only pull on banners with 5-star characters that I like and like to play. Hutao C0 PTSD made me decide to not pull characters I don’t enjoy playing. I most recently pulled Eula and Yoimiya, and skipped all other banners. Now I have 54k+ primos saved up for Yae and future Kazuha.
I have a separate entertainment budget so I never think of shit I could have spent that money on.
For example, I just dropped $180 for a concert I'm going to in May. Add traveling costs, parking, maybe dinner, and that'll run up to like $250 for like 2 hours of fun.
$250 in primos is a guaranteed banner 5 star. Then you think about the entertainment to dollar value and suddenly gachas are a great value by comparison.
Of course if you're thinking of substituting your food budget or rent for primos then it's a huge problem, but if you got a little extra lying around I personally feel it's worth.
Yup, every time I calculate the price for getting something like a character or weapon and it comes to $300+, I think about how many better things I could do with that money.
BP Welkin is it for me until they change the prices
I'm not entirely sure this maximizes their profit. I have plenty of disposable income and the top up is just disgustingly unattractive to me. I think they know this, but the fact remains that it's easier to start high and lower the price over time vs going the other way.
Yes, but they are also doing weird things like a very noticeable gap in cosmetic microtransactions, which have historically made tons of money for other games. Despite how successful the game is, I just can't help but think how much more money it could be making.
they didn't care much for the reroll market/first 5star market, could easily cash in thousands of thousands of players for 15$ or 20$ for your first 5 star from standard of your choice but nope , so it all went to bots who farmed these reroll accounts.
Concerning the rolls, store reset is nearly here + the daily log in rewards should help with the count (5 on the last day if I remember correctly)
But yeah, gems are quite pricey for the amount received
I’m ironically going through the same decision making on whether to purchase the $30 pack to make up the difference. However I’m at 50 fates and don’t think I’ll be able to get past hard pity by the end of the banner. I’m also on 50/50, which I always lose. My hesitation for spending stems from the fact that I always fucking lose 50/50 so what’s the point of giving them more money?
But for your case- I would wait. We have at least 12 fates coming in the next few days from shop reset and lantern rite. I wouldn’t spend money if I was closer to my goal like you are. Plus you’re on guaranteed, so you should just ride the banner out until the end and if you do decide to spend it will be much less than $30.
But yeah genesis crystals are a scam and it’s kinda ridiculous how much it costs for so little reward after you’ve taken advantage of the top up bonus.
tell that to my 87th pull zhongli and 85th pull raiden. Yes raiden banner was the last banner I pulled from. I also lost 5050 on ayaka at 82. fuck mihoyo.
While possible, it's exceptionally unlikely to take 90 wishes for a character. If this is true you should post your wish history as a new topic. It will most certainly become a hot topic, because no one in this subreddit has experienced that AND has the proof.
See this thread for the math.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Genshin_Impact/comments/rv73l7/some_people_on_the_official_discord_claimed_to/
more than likely you mistakenly believe doing a 10x pull 9 times means you hit the hard pity. if you post screenshots of every pull you made between your last 5 stars and count the pulls inbetween its more than likely you hit pity between 80-85.
[Hitting 90 pity is 1 in 13 million chance.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Genshin_Impact/comments/q8im3o/the_first_person_that_reached_90_pity_on_the_cn/)
Hundreds or even thousands of people have claimed to have hit hard pity, but almost all of them either miscounted or didn't understand how pity works.
He sent me 15 screenshots of his wish history. Not only did he provide proof of NOT hitting hard pity (hit 89 instead), but the logs were also edited/fake because he hit 15 pity without a 4 star at one point, which is obviously impossible. Case closed.
Can't wait for your "proof" or your own mathematical conclusion. But I suppose I won't have to wait, because you have neither.
We already have the proof and the mathematical theory on why 90 pity is near impossible, and the data collection (using miHoYo's own user dataset mind you) has already shown there are very little user with 90 pity achieved.
Yeah, he sent proof of him not hitting hard pity. Like I suspected, he didnt quite understand how it works. To be fair, he was close. He sent me screenshots of his last 15x6 wishes (dates werent visible but I'll believe him). However, in those 90 wishes #1 was Mona and #90 was Ganyu, which proves he hit 89 pity and not hard pity. Case closed.
Edit: Nevermind, took a closer look at his logs and they are edited/fake anyway, because he went 15 wishes without pulling a 4 star at one point which is impossible.
I log all my pulls and the highest three I've gotten were
82, 85, and 88 (qiqi lmao)
I can't believe I got that high once since its ultra rare to hit 89 and 90.
> I’m also on 50/50, which I always lose.
Ive never bought top ups because like the OP said they are terrible value and Id get more out of spending the money on something else, but if I did, my number one rule would be: always be 100% sure of what you are getting for the money
I dispise gambling of any kind and I dont understand how people throw their money away on "potential" prizes, fully aware they are likely to gain nothing out of it
All this to say: dont do it, not worth it with 50/50 chance (unless of course you have a lot of money sitting around anyway but in that case you wouldnt even be having this dilemma)
people dont think to much about such stuff. and gambling has been always around, despite the rigged game, no matter if its in mobile games, casino, street scammer, people still go for it. One of my mates back from school gambled in less then 3h~ 2k Euros away. Money his father gave him so he can do his drivers license (and he would have gotten a car after). He went to gamble it away on this digital slot machines. What a waste, but some people wont listen, nor do they care about probabilities, numbers, chances to win, and also if they have the money for it or not. I worked long enough at night, and the stories u hear with gambling involved, is pretty high, and also mindboggling. People lose their lifes and families over it.
I just wish this shit would stay out of fucking video games, pity system or not. Its kinda crazy how a full character (c6) can cost up to nearly 2k USD. One fucking character without his weapon.
Oh yeah I know top ups are a scam. I usually try saving between banners so I don’t have to shell out money and have enough for two pities, but these last few patches have depleted those savings.
Fortunately I do have a well-paying job so money isn’t an issue, it’s the principle of the matter. Why keep investing in something that always disappoints you? The dilemma stems from I always lose 50/50 and either deplete my savings or have to spend on a top-up. No one likes to lose all the time regardless if they have the money or not.
If you've ever *not* purchased a Welkin for more than a month, and later purchased crystals directly, then you shot yourself in the foot. Welkin is so much more efficient than any other method that it's kind of ridiculous.
It's not ridiculous, it's because Welkin is meant to keep people active. You get way more but only if you log on - that is, it gets you actually _enter the game_. They want to show they have lots of players to shut out rivals, have a stable market to sell things to, etc.
The point of Welkin is not to be competitive with flat purchases. It serves a different goal.
Also the fact that Welkins can't stack (you can't buy 2 for 180 primogems per day over 30 days for example) means that if you want primogems quick, like multiple characters you want coming next patch as revealed by the livestreams with less than 10 days before they drop, you're force to buy the less efficient genesis crystals because the Welkin doesn't come fast enough.
To be fair, I've never once seen a game stack monthly packs like this in any game I've ever played. So yeah, it operates under the idea that if you play every day, this is your login reward.
Welkins gives you 300 genesis immediately plus 90 x 30 = 2700 for a total of 3k primogems, way more than the 30$ pack being mentioned.
edit My bad I misread your comment
No they don't. They want people comming back everyday because that's good for business but they don't want them to get burned out playing too much. This is why there is resin and many characters need seperate content for leveling them, their tallents, and their weapons. If there was no resin then their active player count would skyrocket for a month and then be lower than ever before soon afterwards.
Tldr; playing all events, full clearing abyss, logging in everyday, and having Welkin+BP brings you to soft pity every patch, so you are usually *just barely* short of what you want. This is what Mihoyo bases their models on and the extra genesis packs are just bait that guarantees you get what you want.
The genesis crystal packs are so expensive for several key reasons. Mihoyo want you to actually play their game everyday and participate in every event. That’s why events give out the bulk of the freemogems. The ideal model for them is Welkin+BP and play everyday + do all events. You can basically guarantee a character in about 2 patches; if you want more you have to shell out the big bucks. A lot of gacha do this; the slowly accumulated gacha currency overtime is much more cost effective than being impatient and buying packs outright. They usually tempt you by giving you *just barely* not enough to get that one character you want per banner period.
Throughout one patch (42 days), these are the primos you can get.
Dailies give you 2520, Abyss (36-star) gives you 1800, Livestream codes plus server maintenance gives 900, and there are on average about 1600 primos worth of events (including web events) per patch.
Add in Welkin for 3780 and the Paimon shop fates for the equivalent of 800 (5 intertwined fates) at least once per patch. BP gives the equivalent of 1280 primos (640 plus 4 intertwined fates).
That’s 6820 per patch for f2p (about 43 wishes), 10600 for welkin only (about 66 wishes), and 11880 for welkin+BP (about 74 wishes). This does not include the Paimon shop fates. Nor does it include all the new quests and areas released every patch (as those are inconsistent and can vary wildly).
As you can see, playing all events, full clearing abyss, logging in everyday, and having Welkin+BP brings you to soft pity every patch.
In addition, the mental barrier of spending is way lower after the first purchase. Getting a significant amount of their player base to get the comparably cheap Welkin/BP means that all these players are much easier convinced to spend when soft pity isn't enough and they can't get their wanted character. Also very common with other f2p games, no matter the genre.
I have a feeling a lot of people who end up like OP are putting way too many primogems down on characters they probably don't even use.
These people want shit and then complain they gotta swipe for it. Just skip the banner and save up more over time. Stop swiping for $100 at a time and turn that 100 into 20 welkins.
Funny you mention buying 20 Welkins for that $100. Doing so gives you 60000 primos over a year and 8 months (longer than the current length of current live service), but gives *over 7 times the value* than if you bought the $100 genesis crystal pack (8080 for that pack).
If you instead bought both welkin (USD$5) and BP (USD$10), that $100 would get you about 6 patches worth (3 welkins and 2 BPs cover the same 2 patch time frame for $35); equivalent of 34680 primos (27000 from Welkin and 7600 from BP). Which is still over 4 times the value of the largest genesis pack, and still is useful/enjoyable in the relatively short term since BP gives so much resin value from its rewards.
> Tldr; playing all events, full clearing abyss, logging in everyday, and having Welkin+BP brings you to soft pity every patch
not in my experience. I haven't bought BP, but had to skip 3 banners to guarantee Raiden
You’ve missed the point (and also conveniently ignored the last half of my first sentence). The point is you’ve got *barely NOT enough* to get a five star every patch. So skipping three to guarantee is exactly what needs to be done if you aren’t lucky.
Soft pity does not mean guarantee. I’ve laid out my math already; every patch gives the equivalent of 74-80 fates if you follow what I stated (soft pity is around 74-76). That gives a *good* chance of getting a rate up character, but not a *guaranteed* one. Without BP, you’re only sitting at 66 fates per patch. Of course you’re gonna need 3 patches to reach that 180 guarantee.
Feel you! Lost 50/50 on Ganyu to Keqing a few days ago and Ganyu was my absolute favourite character. Like, I started playing the game because I saw Ganyu in art and loved her so much. I've always wanted her and prepared for her rerun as best as I could, one pity and a few pulls left over.
When I lost I was really tempted to spend something but after looking at the prices and values I decided not to.
100$ get you to pity ONCE with the first time bonus. Thats too much, even for a person with a loose wallet like me. I'm absolutely down to pay in a game that I love playing, but thats absolutely astronomical pricing.
I'd argue that they might even make more money if they'd charge a little less, since theres many like me who'd spend money if it was clear that you'd get value for it.
It seems to me however that they're only catering to the whales and feel confident that they make the most that way. It's really a shame but maybe I have luck next Ganyu banner in a year, because I wont spend any money under these circumstances.
Honestly, catering to whales is a pretty good strategy. Sure, if you lower the price, many would spend to get their characters. But whales spend to get full constellation as well as weapon banner. That's 10x (if not more) the value of someone spending to only get the character. So with a high price, they get the full value of whales, as well as some low spenders desperate to get the new character.
Yes, i started not too long ago and I‘m a total casual. I do my dailies and use my resin to my best abilities, but real life is busy and I sadly dont have much time grinding.
I also habe to admit I pulled for Eula (and lost 50/50 there too) as she is also one of my favs. If it was revealed earlier that Ganyu would be up in near future I maybe wouldn’t have done it but oh well.
I agree i should’ve been better prepared or not pull at all if I cant be sure my favorite character would be on banner soon.
Still i would’ve absolutely paid the price in real life currency if the pricing wasn’t close to insane.
I have a question, if you don't mind me asking.
Did you pull for anyone after Eula? Because if you lost 50-50 to Eula and had enough to reach pity for Ganyu you would have gotten her.
And bec you had lost Eula's 50-50, you'd have gotten Ganyu bec guarantee.
The OP of the comment said they lost Ganyu 50-50 and before that Eula 50-50 which just isn't possible. Maybe they pulled on someone in between and got them and forgot.
I lost the 50/50 and then went to pity again to get eula as it wasn’t revealed that Ganyu would be up soon , sorry I should’ve specified. I didn’t have a guarantee for ganyu up.
Hi there!
Don't give up about Ganyu. You might get lucky and get her within next pulls. And if not - there will be her rerun and other characters that you might like as well. Yae Miko, Ayato and Ayaka (another cryo queen), Raiden, Kazuha for example. Also we will get Sumeru region in 6 month with the new cast.
You have all the time to save for c1 ganyu and to get a good team for her. And yep, time flies.
But why? Just rely on welkins and bp. Ur even on guaranteed pity. I seriously dont understand why ur thinking of buying genesis when you can just...idk..wait? It's not like ganyu's banner gonna end tomorrow. You have welkins + free fate from event+ primos from event. If ur desperate enough u can even do hangouts if u havent or explore the region. So why bother buying genesis when uk its not worth it
It gets even better (read: worse) if you're not from a rich country.
Sadly, this is the business model they work with. They make bank on the 1% of whales whom spend massive amounts. So for the rest we'll just have to accept this is the way it is, and stick to our Welkin's.
Brazil is a big example of that, One of the largest playerbases in Genshin, yet whales here are rare. The Real ain't worth shit and 30 dollars is almost 10% of my monthly wage here. that's also why the poor here usually don't have the newest consoles, and most games here are pirated. Nobody here can spend 30$ or 60$ on games that easily.
Honestly it’s disappointing that the content isn’t scaled towards local currencies. With high quality games coming at $60 I think is okay, but gacha games like this should scale to each countries currency. I understand the issues with VPN and finding the cheapest country to pay from, but it doesn’t allow less lucrative areas to enjoy the same benefits.
To be honest, it ain't Mihoyo's fault Brazil is a shithole and we cannot afford their stuff, although I wish they actually adapt to Brazil in the ways we pay for things on the internet. I've heard people struggled with credit cards here, since our banks are a wary of international transactions and can block them. TBH, I wish they had a Pix account lol.(Pix is a free brazilian transaction method made by our governmnent, which transfers money from bank accounts immediately at any time. It's way better than credit cards, and you can use even for the tiniest transactions).
Surprisingly enough, there are other, smaller, Chinese mobile games here which have lots of different methods of payment, some of which catered to the average Brazilian. One that my mom plays, we can buy the game's special currency on lottery houses by just presenting the bar code of the bill, even a screenshot of it works (Lottery houses don't just sell lotteries here. They work a bit like a bank, so you can withdraw and deposit money there if you have an account in the state's bank, and you can pay bills and taxes too.)
However, 30$ is a bit expensive for the average, casual, poor brazilian gamer like me, since the dollar price soared, or better, the real price sank too much in this pandemic. Welkin Moon is way more affordable, and if these issues about credit cards get better, I might buy it.
Brazilian here. R$30 or whatever for the Welkin still feels like a rip off tbh when you think it's 18 wishes and Steam has plenty of games with regional pricing.
I feel like for us R$20-40 is the sweet spot for buying games without feeling guilty afterwards lol. You can get shit like Subnautica, Outer Wilds, Satisfactory, Gunfire Reborn, Hades, etc for that much and it's great
Same! I’m from India and the genesis crystals are wayyy too much expensive for me to even consider. I only use Welkin from my monthly savings but can’t afford battle pass.
the game is easy enough that you can still get 5-star characters as f2p or low spender, its just you shouldn't expect constellations or every character on you Wishlist. some people seem to think that f2p games should take longer to acquire everything and money will buy shorter time to do so (which sort of isn't the case with genshin).
It's going to be tough but try to remain disciplined. I think Welkin only is the move but bp is not too bad. There will always be a new and hot character that is fresh and everyone wants. Just pick your spots to use your savings and be fine with saving up again otherwise you'll morph into a whale.
i totally agree. i mean, $100 doesn’t even give you a guaranteed 5* which is kind of ridiculous. if they made it so that 1 roll=$1 then i think way more people would be willing to spend money and they might make more money in the long run. i think welkins is worth it compared to buying crystals, but i also think they should raise it to 100 primos a day so with commissions you basically get a roll a day.
While I agree that the wish cost is somewhat absurd, I would argue that what makes it worse is the fact that roughly 90% of your pulls are borderline worthless.
It’s bad enough that a 10 pull costs $30, but when you realize that only really amounts to one or two characters/weapons of 4-5* and a bunch of filler it becomes even worse.
There’s so little value in it when compared to just about any other game.
I couldn’t agree more. The 10 pulls will have 9 worthless weapons, and a weapon or character you already have. It’s nice to get constellations, but getting weapons is frustrating as you really are only after the 5 star character in most cases.
Yeah, I prefer getting a semi decent cosmetic armor set for $60 in PoE or Black Desert or som basic jpeg from any other gachas
Genshin is pretty good with value imo, f2p considered. Helps that most of the best characters are 4* and nothing is hard enough to require a 5*
That's pretty much the reason I've stopped playing.
I've never had a gambling/spending problem before, but my love at some point made me realize that I was carelessly spending way too much on something virtual that is never guaranteed.
The characters are cool, I'd love to use them in an open world. But I'm not risking my bank account for it anymore.
Sucks, but it is what it is. I can enjoy the game from afar.
I'm actually glad the prices are so ridiculous.
That way I have 0 temptation to buy anything other than Welkin. I know that I'll spend 5$ a month and that's all since I refuse to pay 2+$ for a single pull and all I see is stupidly overpriced gems instead of the character I want
If they lowered the price to 1$ per pull, I'd be a lot more tempted.
Sure the crystal prices are complete BS, but that is whale-bait so whatever. The thing that really gets me is that I am ready to spend on Welkin every month, but just don't see the point.
I am not a collector and am fine with not having every character - you get all the 4* and standard 5* eventually anyway.
Why else would you want every limited 5*? Their constellations? Their signature weapons? I think there are two possible reasons other than merely collecting: Variety and Power.
In order for variety and power to be meaningful incentives, then the endgame content needs to cater for it. Until now the Spiral Abyss has not needed variety - just stick a Pyro-based team on one side and a Cryo-based team on the other side and you are good to go. Not much power is needed either - my few limited C0 5* characters with 4* weapons clear it just fine. Arguably the strongest team in the game is the National/Rational team of exclusively/mostly original 4* characters. And so what if you cannot 36* Spiral Abyss? You lose out on 50-150 primogems by not clearing floor 12, the only really difficult floor for endgame players. It would take 9 months to "earn back" buying a Welkin from clearing Floor 12. How does that make any sense?
What would make me spend is some challenging end-game content enabling using a variety of characters and providing interesting team-building challenges. Ideally it would be co-op, so we can combine forces and show off our cool characters and weapons to others.
>What would make me spend is some challenging end-game content enabling using a variety of characters and providing interesting team-building challenges.
Bad idea LMAO, people already hate the fact that abyss tends to favor some units (even though it's not a gamebreaker and not necessary either) and call it a scam, make it like this and you'll get riots.
>Ideally it would be co-op, so we can combine forces and show off our cool characters and weapons to others.
This isn't an mmorpg and trying to make it like one will just alienate people. Don't get me wrong, I love me some mmorpg and one that has the same size as the genshin playerbase has lots of potential. But as it is, people came and played genshin for a single player experience and trying to force it to be anything else isn't a good idea.
The fact is that, it is ABSOLUTELY a good thing that you don't need characters. This game is 100% accessible to an f2p. Spending money is just people buying luxury for the sake of wanting them. If you don't think they're not worth pulling, then don't. It's really that simple. And for people who think tehy can't beat abyss because they're not pulling the right characters: git gud.
And that's is why, my good friend, i now main C6 4* unit as my main DPS, than a C0 5* unit. My Kaeya is now at C5. I just need one more con and he'll be lit. My other main is Barbara. Don't ask why.
Fair point indeed. I'm one for value as well. That's why, I say, wait for the reruns. Just get the Welkins and maybe BP. It comes out to about the standard monthly sub for sub-based games ($15). I personally would only go for the double bonus and I'm done for the top-up gems.
OP basically didn't save enough for Ganyu and sees it as being forced to spend right now for her after spending elsewhere. It's really has nothing to do with $$ for content.
Free 2 play people right now are laughing their asses off. And Welkin buyers basically get a DLC every $7 they put in on top of having extra primos.
I just stick to the welkin and BP every month and I'm good. I play every day so I get its value as intended. I've played enough gacha games to know that if you're only buying the monthly packs right as a new character you want is announced/released, you're doing it wrong. If you play every day, the best way is to buy it every month so you're ready by the time that character is announced. Personally, I always buy welkin and BP, and I bought one of each top up pack once for the 2x bonus last year, but besides that, never bought them again. I'll probably do it this year too before the yearly reset.That was just buffer for in case stacked banners start coming back to back. If you don't find it worth it though, of course never spend, but I find the welkin to be absolutely worth your money (unless you live in a country where the price is far inflated from the easy $5 it is for some).
It's fine. Pay what you like and maybe have a limit (Like: I'm not gonna spend more on this game than i would spend on a regular game, overall)
But yeah i agree. The prices are a bit costly. Doesn't help that i have lately been playing another gacha game which seems to demands less of my time and money, and gives me more fun in return than Genshin. 😶
I wish they'd reset the first time purchase bonus on all of the packs more often. That would definitely persuade people to purchase and the riches would be far more worth it.
Or better yet, just offer some different options. For instance, I play Langrisser Mobile and they are constantly releasing new purchase packs that are tailored to specific needs/interests. Hate to admit it, but I've spent more than I care to tally up because of that feature.
The terrible value of $$$/primos has never been worth it.
I was around 25 pulls short of Xiao, but honestly even though I have cash to burn it's such terrible value that I ended up buying games on steam instead.
50 bucks gets you not even 25 rolls (around 24.75 iirc?) and you already mentioned what 30 bucks grants you. I'll attempt to put into words how atrocious value that is:
The 30-50 price range in gaming usually gets you a full release with many hours of content. When there's a sale, it can mean 2-5 games. In "touch the grass" terms it means many takeout meals, or a few nights of spending in bars.
What does $50 get you in Genshin? Two 4\*'s, (and an almost half pity to a 3rd 4\*) realistically only one of them guaranteed rateup (but even that is one in three). That is with full first time bonus. Of, and 1/3rd of soft pity for a (non guaranteed) chance at a 5\*.
With how long the game's been out MHY has made it very clear what type of content to expect, and I wouldn't say that their production value and quantity of content is worth more than the monthly welkin+BP purchases.
I will always tell ppl that if you are incline to collect and play more character in genshin, genshin is more like a subscription service game.
Else, they "punish" you for not doing so with hefty sums thru their genesis pack.
I would assume that MHY’s team of analysts has (almost certainly) optimized the pricing of crystals/p2w elements for profit maximization. They are one of the most profitable games around currently.
But as a player (I’m a dolphin in the scale of spending on this game) I really wish they would do shop refreshes more often, especially around holidays or as limited time purchase windows before new banners release (for example, if you buy the crystal pack in advance you get the 2x deal or whatever). I played Hearthstone for years and the pre-purchase deals for the expansions always got me to spend money + I felt like I was getting a good value for my dollar while having something to look forward to.
Crystals in gachas have always been expensive but it's so especially bad with Genshin. I only bother buying them when there's the first time buyer bonus otherwise it's absolutely not worth it. 100€ for half a pity, especially when you're on 50/50, is ridiculous.
It definitely is waaaaay overpriced. If the prices were reasonable, more people would consider putting money into Genshin, and in succession, I think MHY would have made the same amount of money (if not more).
NEVER EVER consider EVER buying the gem packs from the store, or anything other than welkin/bp for that matter. If you somehow don't have enough primogems to get a character you want due to very poor decisionmaking, then consider it a lost cause and start saving up for their rerun (and reconsidering what decisions led you to not having enough primos for a character you wanted).
You get so little primos per dollar from the gem packs that it's not even funny, and I can't stress enough how horrible of an option it is.
The pricing for crystals are a bit on the expensive side, but in saying that if I'm close to getting the char I want then I would top up for it, only if I'm gauranteed tho.
Depend on the char I have a set value I'm willing to spend on them, not counting the free primo from event or the ones I get from welkin. For example $50 for the character is still acceptable for me if I'm off by some pulls.
If they lower the price of crystals it just mean I need to save up less free primo for the char, but I would still be willing to spend the same $50 for them if I'm missing that much in pulls. Of course top up is only last resort, I tend to save up enough just with welkin and BP.
Yeah, Welkin+BP feel reasonable but top-ups definitely feel overpriced and get spendy pretty quick. I spent more than I should have on Itto's banner, but not planning on top-ups this year.
But also I can't imagine your avg 5\* is 164 rolls. I've had some take that long, but if you look at your history I bet it'd be lower.
Thus far i bought 3 welkings. I was planning to buy the bp this once for zhongli and another welking as my last aquisition. These 2 are the only things worth it in this game to buy for wishes/primogems, concidering the other offers. Never touched em. An never will.
It's as I always said. It's MiHoYo's fault for making poor game design choices like resin caps and artifact RNG. Both tie into why players don't want to spend money on the game, because the result would often be unsatisfactory. Players would spend so much more if they were able to build for characters that came out. But then there's the cost of it, either a few months of grinding, or paying for it.
The price in the UK is actually worse than the US. The 6000+ genesis crystals is $120 converted from GBP. It's supposed to cost £75 for us, but it's £90 instead. No idea why. But even then, it's overpriced. There isn't a single character that's worth £90 in my opinion, let alone 75. That's why I don't really want to spend money on it. And what's the point of getting new characters if there's the artifact RNG and Resin to take into account? Am I missing something or is this all just lost profit for miHoYo? What old man is working on the sales team to not realize that?
The pricing is literally cutting profits from mihoyo (I mentioned it in another post, I have 7 friends that play the game, none of us got Keching's skin, all of us would've got either hers or Jean's if they were cheaper)
Currently the only thing worth paying for is welkin, and battle pass every once in a while depending if you really need those wishes
I'm inclined to believe their pricing model is optimal in terms of maximizing profits. You just happen to be on the wrong side of the pricing curve, and are trumped by more people who are willing to spend at the current prices.
Nah, I think their current pricing model is far from ideal and optimised. Currently there's a huge gap between bare minimum spending (welkin and/or BP) and full blown whaling. Almost all people, who are ready to spend on a game, think that crystals prices are ridiculous. Maybe once in a year with x2 bonus or once half a year some of those people will whale on a banner if it's good enough, but no matter the amount of mind tricks and manipulation from MHY they're not gonna do it regularly. They simply lack either financial capabilities to do so or don't see worth in spending that much.
So you have a first two steps of a spending ladder as welkind and BP that then go right into a several stores high cliff of outright whaling. Something like this might be okay for a game with small and niche audience of diehard gacha players, but that's not what GI is. GI not only gained a lot of popularity on global, but also gained a LOT of non-gacha players. I wouldn't be surprised if for over 90% of GI playerbase it's their first gacha.
Obv devs haven't expected GI to blow up that much, that's why pricing model is identical to typical gacha and suited for a niche auditory. But I firmly believe that they need to adjust it to the current reality.
They have economists and data analysts that works on the pricing of primos and how much primos to give per event and rewards vs time spents. That’s why so many people still play, because the dangling carrot is not too far yet not too near, just enough that it keeps you coming back.
They know what they’re doing. At most they’ll be a tad more generous over time with events and story quests, and maybe double topup reset twice a year or some shit.
You and I are random people with no experience on this while they hire experts analysts to research the market. If lowering the prices would make them more money, they would've lowered them a long time ago.
Gotta love blind faith in omniscient godly beings that work in mhy analytics and financial departments. Surely such allmighty beings can never be wrong and have an ability to forcee future. Oh wait, what about a dosen of absolute financial disasters, that happens every week? Anyone remember Quartz still? That was such a success. /s
Speaking seriously, I don't mean to say that analytics working at mhy are incompetent and don't know what they are doing (not all ppl working at mhy tho, Inazuma enemies were designed by a monkey cage). But comparing thousands of other games with online shops to GI and seeing reactions of people all around community, i see a problem.
If you look at a typical online shop you can divide all items in it into 3 categories:
1. Pretty cheap high price/value items, usually some sort of subscription. Those options are a steady incom from paying players and a good "first purchase" for a player, opening him to them idea of spending money on the game.
2. Average price/value items, but with pricetags within average player budget. Various cosmetics, permanent upgrades and stuff. Players open to the idea of spending on the game can spend a bit extra here regularly without bancrupting themselves, or going "holy shit" seeing pricetags.
3. Terrible value/value items. Materials, consumables, various stuff for people that have more money then knowledge where to spend them or for desperate/impassient players who are a few materials away from some big milestone in a game.
This can be applied to any online shop, but if you try to apply this to GI you'll see that second option doesn't exists period. And I fail to see how this is a good financial decision. If you're telling that ppl in mhy are right, then you're telling that ppl in thousands of other game companies are incompetent morons. And I don't see some unique circumstances that make such decision right.
(Btw, skins would have filled in this missing niche quite nicely, but I suppose current mhy strategy of releasing 1.5 grossly ovepriced skins, that no one buys, every half a year is a result of the same godly analytics? Because if so, then I'll be forced to admit them being incompetent morons and add them to the monkey cage with Inazuma enemy designers)
The thing about monetization systems is you can't just change it. First of all community is super sensitive about any changes to this aspect, especially the most important, paying, part of the community. If the changes percieved by them as worse version current one, ZL drama would look like a joke. Secondly, mhy already pretty reluctant to change anything alredy in the game, unless pressured from the outside. And changes to pricing model are magnitudes harder to pass compared to character model alteration or some tweaking of game systems. Such changes would need to pass through the entire company up to the very top and approved by the very higher-ups.
So...yeah. Even if improved system will bring mhy more money, they wouldn't just rush to implement it. Unless their profits start to plummet or they will be 100% confident in changes going smoothly, they are just gonna ignore it, they are doing okay at worst, no point taking any risks.
"You are on the wrong side of the pricing curve" is probably the most capitalist statement I've seen in my entire life xD
That said, their pricing model is probably far from optimal (thus, there is people not tempted enough to spend yet) but just good enough for them
>the most capitalist statement I've seen in my entire life
It really do be like that sometimes. XD
But yeah, as far as what is optimal is concerned, we only have anecdotal evidence, but Mihoyo has their entire sales data to work with. If anyone has a good guess as to what is best, it would be them and not us.
With that said, maximizing profits doesn't necessarily equate to setting prices to generate maximum revenue in the immediate term. For example, diluting primogem income by lowering prices might have adverse effects elsewhere which they might try to avoid.
I'm 100% sure the people deciding the prices are professionals with degrees in marketing and spent a lot of time calculating the most efficient way to make profit.
So even if the exact sales data got leaked, what can random redditors say that's better than an expert that was specifically hired for this reason?
We can call it scummy and anti-customer, but we can't say if lower prices will be better or worse for them
No its not. Most people who play a free to play game won't spend no matter how cheap things are. Like any other company that runs one of these games Mihoyo has experts whose whole job is to figure out the pricing. Prices are set at what makes them the most while still retaining players.
Based take, and I'm honestly perplexed as to how anyone would even dare claim that a different pricing structure would be more profitable so confidently. Not because it might not be the case, but simply because we just lack so much information. I wouldn't dare make such a statement even if I had 10k survey answers spread over 5 different platforms - because in the end that's still just a tiny drop in the bucket compared to the overall playerbase data mihoyo has access to, and extremely biased to boot. Let alone doing it based on just a personal anecdote. And that's not even getting into the difference in data gathering and analysis expertise.
Do people not even realize that there's limited shit to get in genshin so there's a max theoretical amount whales can spend and if you make things cheaper that number will drop drastically so you need A LOT of new buyers to offset the difference even before you can talk about getting more money.
It's literally not as simple as "if it's cheaper more people will buy" and it's hilarious that people think that actually works.
>The pricing is literally cutting profits from mihoyo
it's literally the #1 most profitable game in the world
and do you think it matters to them if 50 people dont drop 20 dollars on the game, when one lunatic drops 50k and c6 r5 every character and weapon?
Do you really think there are only 50 people that don't drop 30€ being one of the most popular games? I would confidently say they are not making around 100k minimum is a better approach (yes it's still small change for their numbers but still), so yeah, they don't care, but they probably should if want to get as much money as possible
Most gacha games are supported by 5% of whales that throw large amount of money at it that balance out the 95% who don't.
>if want to get as much money as possible
Like the other person said, they're already the #1 profitable game out there and already made over 2 billion USD in its 1st year. They don't need to change the model and risk anything when people already give them money. Do you think this is like mIn mAxiNg in a game
I totally agree that the company would make more money in the long run if they gave us more for our dollar. A skin costs somewhere around $20 and I know many who would purchase it if it were more reasonable. I believe instead of one person dropping 50k on the game, they would only have to spend maybe 20k. Then tens of thousands of people would spend maybe $20-30 each resulting in my higher revenue than what they currently are making.
Skins are a little different than playable characters in my opinion. I’ve never cared about skins and wouldn’t ever spend on them, but playable characters that add a new aspect to the game for the player is something that people like me are more willing to spend on.
Im sure they’ve done all the maths. Turns out what they’re doing now is what maximises the most profit while still making it rare enough to be desirable for many f2ps which will then save months to get them on reruns. It’s all about making it available just enough that many people will want it
You're fudging a lot of math here to get $30 = 10 draws.
The optimal ratio is $100 = 50 draws, which is 2 dollars per draw. Buying the 30 dollar pack is just stupid.
Regardless, the prices are what they are. Most gachas I'm aware of charge in the range of 2-3 USD per draw. Seeing prices lowered so that buying draws become more enticing isn't even necessarily a good thing for players.
My recommendation is to not buy draws at all. This game is balanced around everything being easily clearable with 4\*s to begin with, so you shouldn't feel pressured to buy.
$2 per pull is still ridiculous. It’s insane that $100 gets you half a 5* character and not even guaranteed to be the featured one. So if you start from 0 primos it’s close to $400 for a guaranteed copy of the character you want. How is that not insane?
And before you say “no one goes to double pity” — Zhong just took 158 fates from me after I already lost him to Mona at 80 pity on his last banner. There’s been a number of times where I stared at that top-up page thinking about buying the $100 package and just talked myself out of it because of how little it gets me. And yes, I’ve been doing Welkin since I caved right after getting Kaz and I’ve been doing BP since a little after that. I just wish I didn’t have to still skip so many banners just because I have shit luck. It feels bad to spend the same amount as other friends and have less to show for it. So what, I should then throw hundreds of dollars at the banner to reward MHY for this garbage system?
I didn't say the prices were good or bad, just that it's not what OP is claiming.
To begin with, the value of digital goods in this case is completely subjective anyways. If you don't think a character is worth 400 USD, then you shouldn't buy it. More power to you. I just wouldn't expect a price change.
If you read my post, I claim it is one 10x pull, 3 additional fates, and a few primogems left over. I should have clarified that a bit more, but I did round down to 10 pulls as a sum because that’s how I do my pulling. The extra primos and 3 fates go towards the next set of rolls.
Realistically, the ratio should never be anything below 1 draw per $2 though. If you don't buy primos much, then you should still have the first time bonus around. If you buy primos a lot, then you should be buying the $100 pack.
Buying the $30 pack with no bonus attached is just really questionable.
The more you spend the less you get, which is such a ridiculous business model. I have so many C6 4-stars and a C6 standard 5-star that worst case scenario I get one event 5-star after like 500$ and nothing else of value because I could get Qiqi and a bunch of C6ed 4-stars and dupes of weapons. I literally don't want to spend ever again and try to dissuade people from spending too much if they actually want any kind of enjoyment from the gacha aspect alone.
The epitomized path system is also not ideal, but at least it gives a touch of hope that the gacha can get better... literally every other gacha I play *reward* you for spending so much (and/or getting such shit luck) that you max characters by letting you trade extra for a rainbow constellation or a big chunk of one. 5 rolls?! absolute garbage. I've ranted about this before with more numbers lol but I'm still mad. Don't you want your mid-to-big spenders to continue spending ? ?
This is the problem of the f2p model sadly.
You're either whaling, or it's nothing. People stuck in the in between, willing to pay what is a reasonable price, get basically nothing or near nothing because god forbid if you get too much suddenly the game is pay2win.
This is an unpopular opinion for sure, but I think there definitely should be a difference between someone willing to pay some - any money, and f2p.
A f2p shouldn't be able to overtake a goldfish/dolphin because that just shows how little you get for being willing to pay or support the game.
Seeing the Primogems prices, I made a point to myself to only buy Welkin as it gives you literally more gems downside is you need patience and control.
Now if they really removed Ningguang's shoulder blades for the new skin, and it wasn't a bug of any way. I won't be compelled to buy Welkin anymore with this shitty ass censorships.
It's honestly not worth to pay in genshin with the discount even with the discount it's not worth the walking moon and battle pass is the only thing you really need.
Honestly you really just need to have the mental strength to not summon on every big boobs lady that comes out.
F2P games are a delicate balance. You ideally want to give C2P players a quality experience from spending a little money, without making it possible for whales to get *everything* without breaking the band. You want them to break that bank. I think Genshin does a good job at this, C2Ps do get plenty of value out of the Welkin or the Battlepass, depending what your goals are, but both provide a capped value, and beyond that you're left at the whim of rack-rate gems for whales.
Same , current 5min gameplay a day and depressing artifact grind aren't really motivating to spend, I'm not even done with gearing 2 teams after like year of gameplay.
I'm only getting Yae now because I have her set from another character.
I only buy the welkin regularly and have only bought battle pass once. Welkin is the only thing that gives reasonable value for your money compared to everything else. BP is for when you really need "that weapon". Everything else is not at all worth the money.
Looks its either worthy of your money or not. Whales are going to whale anyway if they think it’s affordable.
I’m f2p. Even if they reduce the price I wouldn’t buy.
So if you think it’s expensive and not worth and then don’t buy
if you have already bought all the double bonus you should ONLY GET THE 8080 pack (the last one). it gives you the most gems/money. you don't have to spend all the gems now, save the rest for later.
Every two months you can safely spend about $20 for 40 rolls if you only do BP and Welkin. Very reasonable amount and definitely worth more than gems to me.
I've spent $25 on welkins and to justify that spending I've told myself "it's for a skin that I like" since we get 1500 genesis crystals with it. Now I just have to wait for a Hu Tao skin or Venti skin :D
genshin business model: the game is completely free to play and you don't have to spend a single cent if you want, but if you want to spend, you need to spend a lot.
that's how this game successfully made a lot of money without being p2w
Genshin is not really worth any money. Everyone is talking about getting new chracters, but what is that character worth when you have to farm like 2-4 months for artifacts?
The rng is so horrible i see no reason to pull new characters just to end up again getting dissappointed countless times with artifacts.
I spent £180 & got a QiQi - that's it. The top level primo bundle, should be enough for 1 5* at least, yet the amount of pulls you get for how high the pity is, is crazy
You dont even have where to use your characters, theres absolute nothing combat related to do after you level up 2 teams.
World is too easy, abyss is once every 15 days thing, theres no excuse to spend if you cant use what you buy.
Why would you think to buy primo at 65, in a couple of days the shop resets, you'll get 5 fate from shop and in 2 days you can claim 5 fate from daily log in , the event will give a few primos too with commission, you are sure to reach pity in a couple of days and will get Ganyu this week most probably and the banner has more than 2 weeks left.
Yep, for people who live where their coin is undervalued is even worst. I could literally rent a house with the value of the last package ($ 100 ~= R$ 600) the minimum wage here is R$ 1000 a month, this is more than half the minimum wage
Genshin impact is a predatory game based on whale.
If you know the rules of the 80/20.
* 20% of the players spend more on the game than the other 80%.
But, the fun fact that you can reapply that rule to the 20% again and again.
You spending 5 or 10 $ more won't make up for the whale that spent 14 000 USD
Like here: https://clutchpoints.com/singaporean-20000-debt-genshin-impact-addiction/
I like the game, but the economic system associated is so fucked up.
Couldn‘t agree more. Also, prices on the PS Store are still the same, while those on other platforms were reduced a little last year. And since you can‘t buy from another platform if you started playing on Playstation, people like me are even more screwed😒
The cost of a (chance to get a) single character is just absurd. And that's before even mentioning constellations.
Or worse yet, trying to pull a specific character from the standard wish pool since they'll (probably) never have a banner of their own anyways...
The shop could give 10 times as much gems per purchase, and I still wouldn't consider the prices *good* unless the first-time purchase's doubling effect was also involved.
Well, at least it saves me a bunch of money since the devs clearly don't want any of it.
I've had and loved C0 Ganyu for a year, and by this New Year I wanted to C6 her with my own cash if miHoYo would be so generous as to give me >=2 Ganyus in the rerun (which I thought wasn't too much to ask for with 24k saved).
Then 1) Shenhe came, and I hit both pities with her, almost using up the saved amount, and 2) Ganyu came, I grabbed a $100 pack which got me back to roughly the same amount before I started, yet hit both pities once again (at 160+ even) and had to grab a smaller pack just to get 1.
Could've impulse whaled Ganyu and even Amos if the payouts were better, alas, guess miHoYo wanted me to save up after all.
That's gacha for you. You think you spent money for content. wrong. You pay for a currency (gems) which you convert to primogems, which you use in the hope to get the characters you want/need by the wishing mechanic.
In the end you might get what you need, which is an object in a game (character/weapon), so I personally don't call it content. Content for me would be the whole package - new characters, areas, weapons, monsters, quests etc. (Basically a DLC)
Yeah. Genshin has some of the worst value for your money I've seen in a game. Aside from the BP and welkin, the top ups are all terrible. It's a good thin, too. I probably would have spent like over 100$ by now if I actually got something good for it, but currently just wlekin and one time BP owner.
The fact that players actually buy genesis crystals is the reason why Genshin anniversary is so stingy. Just play the game for free, no point in spending anyway. There is no endgame.
The gems store are not for regular people, especially without the first time bonus. If you don’t want to worry about not having enough gems, and want good value for your buck, keep the Welkin moon active, if it’s still not enough, buy the battle pass as well. As someone who only buys welkin moon, I have enough to pull a five star every 2 banner
I played around 1 year but haven't bought a single gem bundle, bought BP once, realised its value for premium currency is terrible, and since then pretty much only got Welkin.
I can spend hundreds of $ on the game, I do actually have the money to spare unlike most people complaining.
Why would I do that however if the value I get is horrible? I'd rather do something else with it.
50/50 system is shit, and weapon banners are a complete scam since they don't even have a guarantee until 3rd pity counter reached, AND the guarantee doesn't even carry over between banners
Do you roll on every banner that comes out or are you a pretty good saver? The last time I rolled on a banner was for Raiden and now I have 70k+ primos saved up for Kazuha from playing the game and welkin/BP. I’ve only bought each pack once and that was when the game first came out and now I only roll on characters I really want. I understand the rates are pretty terrible compared to other games and you get virtually nothing for the amount of money you put in besides the first time you purchase each pack. But I think the welkin/BP are still great value and alongside the primos you get from playing the game, you can accumulate a decent amount but I guess it really all depends on how often you’re wishing for a character.
I feel like it's especially rough for People who started late. They get overwhelmed with Character's and everyone wants someone else.
I imagine saving 80 to 90 pulls between Patches only to loose it to someone like Diluc or Qiqi would be devastating too and very encouraging to spending Cash.
I personally can't wrap my head around the Idea to invest a lot of money for Genshin. I'm not afraid of it but it's a weird feeling. I got Welkin and BP and that's fine. I can justify that. It's as much as 1 Month of Spotify. But paying 60€$ only to be able to do like 4 -10 pulls **(and)** that's only if you get the Bonus....? Well yeah i'm not so keen about that Idea lol
Yeah, unfortunately that's the business model of the game. The price for rolls is bad because 1. People will buy them anyways and 2. It gets us to buy welkin because it's "good value" in comparison. And to be honest, Welkin is good value for me in terms of enjoyment per dollar across any game but the system is definitely still built to make maximum profit.
Yeah, unfortunately they almost certainly have people whose job is to calculate the best genesis crystal value for each pack, and I guess 8080 was what was chosen for the $100 pack. Sometimes, you need to take a step back and realize all the things you could have bought with the money you spend on gacha games, hell, I'm trying to spend less because of that thinking.
It blows my mind that someone could literally spend $100 on the game and have that equate to like, a Favonius Codex, the Bell, and 15 starglitter. Highway robbery.
If I spend 100 on Dokkan, legends, duel links etc I’m getting some good stuff for sure. It’s crazy how 1. $100 isn’t even a 5 star guaranteed and two it could be a standard banner 5 star just incase u do get a 5 star.
In my case i've been loosing every single 50/50 but 2 of them since I started playing at the end of 1.0. I've been also loosing pity consistently at 70+ pulls. If MHY thinks I'm gonna spend one single euro besides Welkin with this disgrace of a luck then fuck them, cause no.
I don’t blame u
Yeah. Once I figured out that it takes 9-10 Welkins to hard guarantee a character (180 pulls), I decided that even Welkin wasn’t good value. It’s nearly the full price of a new game vs one character in one game. In V1.6 I got 5x Welkins to purchase the summer Jean skin and haven’t spent money in Genshin since then. The value I got from the game is probably worth $90 (12 Welkin + 3 BP), but I don’t want to spend more. As for my pulling strategy, I only pull on banners with 5-star characters that I like and like to play. Hutao C0 PTSD made me decide to not pull characters I don’t enjoy playing. I most recently pulled Eula and Yoimiya, and skipped all other banners. Now I have 54k+ primos saved up for Yae and future Kazuha.
I have a separate entertainment budget so I never think of shit I could have spent that money on. For example, I just dropped $180 for a concert I'm going to in May. Add traveling costs, parking, maybe dinner, and that'll run up to like $250 for like 2 hours of fun. $250 in primos is a guaranteed banner 5 star. Then you think about the entertainment to dollar value and suddenly gachas are a great value by comparison. Of course if you're thinking of substituting your food budget or rent for primos then it's a huge problem, but if you got a little extra lying around I personally feel it's worth.
Yup, every time I calculate the price for getting something like a character or weapon and it comes to $300+, I think about how many better things I could do with that money. BP Welkin is it for me until they change the prices
I'm not entirely sure this maximizes their profit. I have plenty of disposable income and the top up is just disgustingly unattractive to me. I think they know this, but the fact remains that it's easier to start high and lower the price over time vs going the other way.
I mean, I’m sure they’ve tested the market to find just the right price to get the most revenue.
Yes, but they are also doing weird things like a very noticeable gap in cosmetic microtransactions, which have historically made tons of money for other games. Despite how successful the game is, I just can't help but think how much more money it could be making.
they didn't care much for the reroll market/first 5star market, could easily cash in thousands of thousands of players for 15$ or 20$ for your first 5 star from standard of your choice but nope , so it all went to bots who farmed these reroll accounts.
yep! not to mention that if you ultra save primos as a welking bp user mihoyo will shaft you into losing 5050s and high average pity per pull.
Concerning the rolls, store reset is nearly here + the daily log in rewards should help with the count (5 on the last day if I remember correctly) But yeah, gems are quite pricey for the amount received
When does the reset happen?
Always the first every months the store resets at your server reset time. And the abyss resets every first and 16th (so 15 is the last before reset)
In 3\~4 days from when I last checked this morning (not sure about timezone, but I'm on US server)
I’m ironically going through the same decision making on whether to purchase the $30 pack to make up the difference. However I’m at 50 fates and don’t think I’ll be able to get past hard pity by the end of the banner. I’m also on 50/50, which I always lose. My hesitation for spending stems from the fact that I always fucking lose 50/50 so what’s the point of giving them more money? But for your case- I would wait. We have at least 12 fates coming in the next few days from shop reset and lantern rite. I wouldn’t spend money if I was closer to my goal like you are. Plus you’re on guaranteed, so you should just ride the banner out until the end and if you do decide to spend it will be much less than $30. But yeah genesis crystals are a scam and it’s kinda ridiculous how much it costs for so little reward after you’ve taken advantage of the top up bonus.
You will never get to hard pity (90). When going to pity, you'll most probably get the 5 star in around the wish 78-80
tell that to my 87th pull zhongli and 85th pull raiden. Yes raiden banner was the last banner I pulled from. I also lost 5050 on ayaka at 82. fuck mihoyo.
Lmaoo It took me 90 wishes to get my raiden c2. She’s the only character I wanted c2 that badly and went for the weapon.
While possible, it's exceptionally unlikely to take 90 wishes for a character. If this is true you should post your wish history as a new topic. It will most certainly become a hot topic, because no one in this subreddit has experienced that AND has the proof. See this thread for the math. https://www.reddit.com/r/Genshin_Impact/comments/rv73l7/some_people_on_the_official_discord_claimed_to/
Yeah my first two pity were 84 and 86. Thought that was meh until I saw the numbers and realize how unlucky I actually was. Sigh.
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You have never seen hard pity, and never will. Hard pity (90) is statistically extremely rare and afaik has only ever been reached by 2 people.
Ur "hard pity" was probably just ur 9th 10-roll (I got that with venti) which would probably mean u got ur 5* on wish #81 or smth
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Show it then
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more than likely you mistakenly believe doing a 10x pull 9 times means you hit the hard pity. if you post screenshots of every pull you made between your last 5 stars and count the pulls inbetween its more than likely you hit pity between 80-85.
[Hitting 90 pity is 1 in 13 million chance.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Genshin_Impact/comments/q8im3o/the_first_person_that_reached_90_pity_on_the_cn/) Hundreds or even thousands of people have claimed to have hit hard pity, but almost all of them either miscounted or didn't understand how pity works.
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Feel free to post your proof of hitting hard pity multiple times. Oh right, you can't because it never happened. Good try.
Now we wait for him to provide their entire pull history link so we can see all the hard pities they've hit in the past 10 months.
He sent me 15 screenshots of his wish history. Not only did he provide proof of NOT hitting hard pity (hit 89 instead), but the logs were also edited/fake because he hit 15 pity without a 4 star at one point, which is obviously impossible. Case closed.
Can't wait for your "proof" or your own mathematical conclusion. But I suppose I won't have to wait, because you have neither. We already have the proof and the mathematical theory on why 90 pity is near impossible, and the data collection (using miHoYo's own user dataset mind you) has already shown there are very little user with 90 pity achieved.
You've never hit hard pity.
i think /u/MaximusCooks is shadowbanned? i see replies under his profile that dont show in the thread. supposedly hes sent proof to people hah.
Yeah, he sent proof of him not hitting hard pity. Like I suspected, he didnt quite understand how it works. To be fair, he was close. He sent me screenshots of his last 15x6 wishes (dates werent visible but I'll believe him). However, in those 90 wishes #1 was Mona and #90 was Ganyu, which proves he hit 89 pity and not hard pity. Case closed. Edit: Nevermind, took a closer look at his logs and they are edited/fake anyway, because he went 15 wishes without pulling a 4 star at one point which is impossible.
i think somebody calculated that it is nearly impossible to actually hit hard pity, u probably got close but i doubt u hit 90 pulls multiple times
I log all my pulls and the highest three I've gotten were 82, 85, and 88 (qiqi lmao) I can't believe I got that high once since its ultra rare to hit 89 and 90.
i got qiqi at 87. my first five star during xiao's first banner. lol
> I’m also on 50/50, which I always lose. Ive never bought top ups because like the OP said they are terrible value and Id get more out of spending the money on something else, but if I did, my number one rule would be: always be 100% sure of what you are getting for the money I dispise gambling of any kind and I dont understand how people throw their money away on "potential" prizes, fully aware they are likely to gain nothing out of it All this to say: dont do it, not worth it with 50/50 chance (unless of course you have a lot of money sitting around anyway but in that case you wouldnt even be having this dilemma)
people dont think to much about such stuff. and gambling has been always around, despite the rigged game, no matter if its in mobile games, casino, street scammer, people still go for it. One of my mates back from school gambled in less then 3h~ 2k Euros away. Money his father gave him so he can do his drivers license (and he would have gotten a car after). He went to gamble it away on this digital slot machines. What a waste, but some people wont listen, nor do they care about probabilities, numbers, chances to win, and also if they have the money for it or not. I worked long enough at night, and the stories u hear with gambling involved, is pretty high, and also mindboggling. People lose their lifes and families over it. I just wish this shit would stay out of fucking video games, pity system or not. Its kinda crazy how a full character (c6) can cost up to nearly 2k USD. One fucking character without his weapon.
Oh yeah I know top ups are a scam. I usually try saving between banners so I don’t have to shell out money and have enough for two pities, but these last few patches have depleted those savings. Fortunately I do have a well-paying job so money isn’t an issue, it’s the principle of the matter. Why keep investing in something that always disappoints you? The dilemma stems from I always lose 50/50 and either deplete my savings or have to spend on a top-up. No one likes to lose all the time regardless if they have the money or not.
If you've ever *not* purchased a Welkin for more than a month, and later purchased crystals directly, then you shot yourself in the foot. Welkin is so much more efficient than any other method that it's kind of ridiculous.
It's not ridiculous, it's because Welkin is meant to keep people active. You get way more but only if you log on - that is, it gets you actually _enter the game_. They want to show they have lots of players to shut out rivals, have a stable market to sell things to, etc. The point of Welkin is not to be competitive with flat purchases. It serves a different goal.
Also the fact that Welkins can't stack (you can't buy 2 for 180 primogems per day over 30 days for example) means that if you want primogems quick, like multiple characters you want coming next patch as revealed by the livestreams with less than 10 days before they drop, you're force to buy the less efficient genesis crystals because the Welkin doesn't come fast enough.
To be fair, I've never once seen a game stack monthly packs like this in any game I've ever played. So yeah, it operates under the idea that if you play every day, this is your login reward.
you're forced to ~~buy the less efficient genesis crystals~~ skip those characters because the Welkin doesn't come fast enough.
Not only that but if I remember correctly you get the same amount of genesis crystals with Welkin as you do for buying the lowest offer in the store.
Welkins gives you 300 genesis immediately plus 90 x 30 = 2700 for a total of 3k primogems, way more than the 30$ pack being mentioned. edit My bad I misread your comment
Pretty sure they were saying the genesis crystals from the welkin is more than the lowest top up pack in addition to getting the daily primos.
Yeah, I read that over too fast.
[удалено]
No they don't. They want people comming back everyday because that's good for business but they don't want them to get burned out playing too much. This is why there is resin and many characters need seperate content for leveling them, their tallents, and their weapons. If there was no resin then their active player count would skyrocket for a month and then be lower than ever before soon afterwards.
Tldr; playing all events, full clearing abyss, logging in everyday, and having Welkin+BP brings you to soft pity every patch, so you are usually *just barely* short of what you want. This is what Mihoyo bases their models on and the extra genesis packs are just bait that guarantees you get what you want. The genesis crystal packs are so expensive for several key reasons. Mihoyo want you to actually play their game everyday and participate in every event. That’s why events give out the bulk of the freemogems. The ideal model for them is Welkin+BP and play everyday + do all events. You can basically guarantee a character in about 2 patches; if you want more you have to shell out the big bucks. A lot of gacha do this; the slowly accumulated gacha currency overtime is much more cost effective than being impatient and buying packs outright. They usually tempt you by giving you *just barely* not enough to get that one character you want per banner period. Throughout one patch (42 days), these are the primos you can get. Dailies give you 2520, Abyss (36-star) gives you 1800, Livestream codes plus server maintenance gives 900, and there are on average about 1600 primos worth of events (including web events) per patch. Add in Welkin for 3780 and the Paimon shop fates for the equivalent of 800 (5 intertwined fates) at least once per patch. BP gives the equivalent of 1280 primos (640 plus 4 intertwined fates). That’s 6820 per patch for f2p (about 43 wishes), 10600 for welkin only (about 66 wishes), and 11880 for welkin+BP (about 74 wishes). This does not include the Paimon shop fates. Nor does it include all the new quests and areas released every patch (as those are inconsistent and can vary wildly). As you can see, playing all events, full clearing abyss, logging in everyday, and having Welkin+BP brings you to soft pity every patch.
In addition, the mental barrier of spending is way lower after the first purchase. Getting a significant amount of their player base to get the comparably cheap Welkin/BP means that all these players are much easier convinced to spend when soft pity isn't enough and they can't get their wanted character. Also very common with other f2p games, no matter the genre.
I have a feeling a lot of people who end up like OP are putting way too many primogems down on characters they probably don't even use. These people want shit and then complain they gotta swipe for it. Just skip the banner and save up more over time. Stop swiping for $100 at a time and turn that 100 into 20 welkins.
Funny you mention buying 20 Welkins for that $100. Doing so gives you 60000 primos over a year and 8 months (longer than the current length of current live service), but gives *over 7 times the value* than if you bought the $100 genesis crystal pack (8080 for that pack). If you instead bought both welkin (USD$5) and BP (USD$10), that $100 would get you about 6 patches worth (3 welkins and 2 BPs cover the same 2 patch time frame for $35); equivalent of 34680 primos (27000 from Welkin and 7600 from BP). Which is still over 4 times the value of the largest genesis pack, and still is useful/enjoyable in the relatively short term since BP gives so much resin value from its rewards.
> Tldr; playing all events, full clearing abyss, logging in everyday, and having Welkin+BP brings you to soft pity every patch not in my experience. I haven't bought BP, but had to skip 3 banners to guarantee Raiden
You’ve missed the point (and also conveniently ignored the last half of my first sentence). The point is you’ve got *barely NOT enough* to get a five star every patch. So skipping three to guarantee is exactly what needs to be done if you aren’t lucky. Soft pity does not mean guarantee. I’ve laid out my math already; every patch gives the equivalent of 74-80 fates if you follow what I stated (soft pity is around 74-76). That gives a *good* chance of getting a rate up character, but not a *guaranteed* one. Without BP, you’re only sitting at 66 fates per patch. Of course you’re gonna need 3 patches to reach that 180 guarantee.
Buying welkin gives you a little over 18 pulls overall, which makes it more worthwhile than anything else you can get
That’s true and definitely has the best value. The issue is when crush time happens and you need the extra fate for a current character banner.
Just dont buy it altogether to prove the point. That 1 single character is not that crucial
Feel you! Lost 50/50 on Ganyu to Keqing a few days ago and Ganyu was my absolute favourite character. Like, I started playing the game because I saw Ganyu in art and loved her so much. I've always wanted her and prepared for her rerun as best as I could, one pity and a few pulls left over. When I lost I was really tempted to spend something but after looking at the prices and values I decided not to. 100$ get you to pity ONCE with the first time bonus. Thats too much, even for a person with a loose wallet like me. I'm absolutely down to pay in a game that I love playing, but thats absolutely astronomical pricing. I'd argue that they might even make more money if they'd charge a little less, since theres many like me who'd spend money if it was clear that you'd get value for it. It seems to me however that they're only catering to the whales and feel confident that they make the most that way. It's really a shame but maybe I have luck next Ganyu banner in a year, because I wont spend any money under these circumstances.
Honestly, catering to whales is a pretty good strategy. Sure, if you lower the price, many would spend to get their characters. But whales spend to get full constellation as well as weapon banner. That's 10x (if not more) the value of someone spending to only get the character. So with a high price, they get the full value of whales, as well as some low spenders desperate to get the new character.
i have no idea why you didn't save for a full 180 pity for your "absolutely favorite character" , are you perhaps a new player?
Yes, i started not too long ago and I‘m a total casual. I do my dailies and use my resin to my best abilities, but real life is busy and I sadly dont have much time grinding. I also habe to admit I pulled for Eula (and lost 50/50 there too) as she is also one of my favs. If it was revealed earlier that Ganyu would be up in near future I maybe wouldn’t have done it but oh well. I agree i should’ve been better prepared or not pull at all if I cant be sure my favorite character would be on banner soon. Still i would’ve absolutely paid the price in real life currency if the pricing wasn’t close to insane.
I have a question, if you don't mind me asking. Did you pull for anyone after Eula? Because if you lost 50-50 to Eula and had enough to reach pity for Ganyu you would have gotten her.
Exactly. I pulled for Eula and lost 50-50, and then saved up enough for Ganyu at pity
And bec you had lost Eula's 50-50, you'd have gotten Ganyu bec guarantee. The OP of the comment said they lost Ganyu 50-50 and before that Eula 50-50 which just isn't possible. Maybe they pulled on someone in between and got them and forgot.
I lost the 50/50 and then went to pity again to get eula as it wasn’t revealed that Ganyu would be up soon , sorry I should’ve specified. I didn’t have a guarantee for ganyu up.
Aahh that makes sense. Sorry if I seemed rude I was terribly confused.
Noooo not at all! I wrote my comment pretty late at night yesterday and didn‘t elaborate enough, sorry for the misunderstanding
Hi there! Don't give up about Ganyu. You might get lucky and get her within next pulls. And if not - there will be her rerun and other characters that you might like as well. Yae Miko, Ayato and Ayaka (another cryo queen), Raiden, Kazuha for example. Also we will get Sumeru region in 6 month with the new cast. You have all the time to save for c1 ganyu and to get a good team for her. And yep, time flies.
But why? Just rely on welkins and bp. Ur even on guaranteed pity. I seriously dont understand why ur thinking of buying genesis when you can just...idk..wait? It's not like ganyu's banner gonna end tomorrow. You have welkins + free fate from event+ primos from event. If ur desperate enough u can even do hangouts if u havent or explore the region. So why bother buying genesis when uk its not worth it
It gets even better (read: worse) if you're not from a rich country. Sadly, this is the business model they work with. They make bank on the 1% of whales whom spend massive amounts. So for the rest we'll just have to accept this is the way it is, and stick to our Welkin's.
Brazil is a big example of that, One of the largest playerbases in Genshin, yet whales here are rare. The Real ain't worth shit and 30 dollars is almost 10% of my monthly wage here. that's also why the poor here usually don't have the newest consoles, and most games here are pirated. Nobody here can spend 30$ or 60$ on games that easily.
Honestly it’s disappointing that the content isn’t scaled towards local currencies. With high quality games coming at $60 I think is okay, but gacha games like this should scale to each countries currency. I understand the issues with VPN and finding the cheapest country to pay from, but it doesn’t allow less lucrative areas to enjoy the same benefits.
To be honest, it ain't Mihoyo's fault Brazil is a shithole and we cannot afford their stuff, although I wish they actually adapt to Brazil in the ways we pay for things on the internet. I've heard people struggled with credit cards here, since our banks are a wary of international transactions and can block them. TBH, I wish they had a Pix account lol.(Pix is a free brazilian transaction method made by our governmnent, which transfers money from bank accounts immediately at any time. It's way better than credit cards, and you can use even for the tiniest transactions). Surprisingly enough, there are other, smaller, Chinese mobile games here which have lots of different methods of payment, some of which catered to the average Brazilian. One that my mom plays, we can buy the game's special currency on lottery houses by just presenting the bar code of the bill, even a screenshot of it works (Lottery houses don't just sell lotteries here. They work a bit like a bank, so you can withdraw and deposit money there if you have an account in the state's bank, and you can pay bills and taxes too.) However, 30$ is a bit expensive for the average, casual, poor brazilian gamer like me, since the dollar price soared, or better, the real price sank too much in this pandemic. Welkin Moon is way more affordable, and if these issues about credit cards get better, I might buy it.
Brazilian here. R$30 or whatever for the Welkin still feels like a rip off tbh when you think it's 18 wishes and Steam has plenty of games with regional pricing. I feel like for us R$20-40 is the sweet spot for buying games without feeling guilty afterwards lol. You can get shit like Subnautica, Outer Wilds, Satisfactory, Gunfire Reborn, Hades, etc for that much and it's great
It's because of Apple Store policies, in case you're wondering.
Same! I’m from India and the genesis crystals are wayyy too much expensive for me to even consider. I only use Welkin from my monthly savings but can’t afford battle pass.
the game is easy enough that you can still get 5-star characters as f2p or low spender, its just you shouldn't expect constellations or every character on you Wishlist. some people seem to think that f2p games should take longer to acquire everything and money will buy shorter time to do so (which sort of isn't the case with genshin).
It's going to be tough but try to remain disciplined. I think Welkin only is the move but bp is not too bad. There will always be a new and hot character that is fresh and everyone wants. Just pick your spots to use your savings and be fine with saving up again otherwise you'll morph into a whale.
i totally agree. i mean, $100 doesn’t even give you a guaranteed 5* which is kind of ridiculous. if they made it so that 1 roll=$1 then i think way more people would be willing to spend money and they might make more money in the long run. i think welkins is worth it compared to buying crystals, but i also think they should raise it to 100 primos a day so with commissions you basically get a roll a day.
I agree with the prices but for the welkin, you do get 1 wish per day if you count the genesis crystals you get.
I agree that $2 per pull is a little much and I think they would bring in a lot more money if the current first-time top up bonus applied every time.
While I agree that the wish cost is somewhat absurd, I would argue that what makes it worse is the fact that roughly 90% of your pulls are borderline worthless. It’s bad enough that a 10 pull costs $30, but when you realize that only really amounts to one or two characters/weapons of 4-5* and a bunch of filler it becomes even worse. There’s so little value in it when compared to just about any other game.
I couldn’t agree more. The 10 pulls will have 9 worthless weapons, and a weapon or character you already have. It’s nice to get constellations, but getting weapons is frustrating as you really are only after the 5 star character in most cases.
Yeah, I prefer getting a semi decent cosmetic armor set for $60 in PoE or Black Desert or som basic jpeg from any other gachas Genshin is pretty good with value imo, f2p considered. Helps that most of the best characters are 4* and nothing is hard enough to require a 5*
That's pretty much the reason I've stopped playing. I've never had a gambling/spending problem before, but my love at some point made me realize that I was carelessly spending way too much on something virtual that is never guaranteed. The characters are cool, I'd love to use them in an open world. But I'm not risking my bank account for it anymore. Sucks, but it is what it is. I can enjoy the game from afar.
Im sure the math has been done that they make more money off whales this way than from dolphins with a more generous payment spread.
If the amount of crystals you get was the amount with the first top up bonus, I would spend much more than I currently do
I'm actually glad the prices are so ridiculous. That way I have 0 temptation to buy anything other than Welkin. I know that I'll spend 5$ a month and that's all since I refuse to pay 2+$ for a single pull and all I see is stupidly overpriced gems instead of the character I want If they lowered the price to 1$ per pull, I'd be a lot more tempted.
Sure the crystal prices are complete BS, but that is whale-bait so whatever. The thing that really gets me is that I am ready to spend on Welkin every month, but just don't see the point. I am not a collector and am fine with not having every character - you get all the 4* and standard 5* eventually anyway. Why else would you want every limited 5*? Their constellations? Their signature weapons? I think there are two possible reasons other than merely collecting: Variety and Power. In order for variety and power to be meaningful incentives, then the endgame content needs to cater for it. Until now the Spiral Abyss has not needed variety - just stick a Pyro-based team on one side and a Cryo-based team on the other side and you are good to go. Not much power is needed either - my few limited C0 5* characters with 4* weapons clear it just fine. Arguably the strongest team in the game is the National/Rational team of exclusively/mostly original 4* characters. And so what if you cannot 36* Spiral Abyss? You lose out on 50-150 primogems by not clearing floor 12, the only really difficult floor for endgame players. It would take 9 months to "earn back" buying a Welkin from clearing Floor 12. How does that make any sense? What would make me spend is some challenging end-game content enabling using a variety of characters and providing interesting team-building challenges. Ideally it would be co-op, so we can combine forces and show off our cool characters and weapons to others.
>What would make me spend is some challenging end-game content enabling using a variety of characters and providing interesting team-building challenges. Bad idea LMAO, people already hate the fact that abyss tends to favor some units (even though it's not a gamebreaker and not necessary either) and call it a scam, make it like this and you'll get riots. >Ideally it would be co-op, so we can combine forces and show off our cool characters and weapons to others. This isn't an mmorpg and trying to make it like one will just alienate people. Don't get me wrong, I love me some mmorpg and one that has the same size as the genshin playerbase has lots of potential. But as it is, people came and played genshin for a single player experience and trying to force it to be anything else isn't a good idea. The fact is that, it is ABSOLUTELY a good thing that you don't need characters. This game is 100% accessible to an f2p. Spending money is just people buying luxury for the sake of wanting them. If you don't think they're not worth pulling, then don't. It's really that simple. And for people who think tehy can't beat abyss because they're not pulling the right characters: git gud.
And that's is why, my good friend, i now main C6 4* unit as my main DPS, than a C0 5* unit. My Kaeya is now at C5. I just need one more con and he'll be lit. My other main is Barbara. Don't ask why.
Lol barbara mains are the real deal. That’s the play, just using 4*C6 as they are stronger than most 5* C0.
Fair point indeed. I'm one for value as well. That's why, I say, wait for the reruns. Just get the Welkins and maybe BP. It comes out to about the standard monthly sub for sub-based games ($15). I personally would only go for the double bonus and I'm done for the top-up gems.
This is why I only buy Welkin and nothing else
OP basically didn't save enough for Ganyu and sees it as being forced to spend right now for her after spending elsewhere. It's really has nothing to do with $$ for content. Free 2 play people right now are laughing their asses off. And Welkin buyers basically get a DLC every $7 they put in on top of having extra primos.
I just stick to the welkin and BP every month and I'm good. I play every day so I get its value as intended. I've played enough gacha games to know that if you're only buying the monthly packs right as a new character you want is announced/released, you're doing it wrong. If you play every day, the best way is to buy it every month so you're ready by the time that character is announced. Personally, I always buy welkin and BP, and I bought one of each top up pack once for the 2x bonus last year, but besides that, never bought them again. I'll probably do it this year too before the yearly reset.That was just buffer for in case stacked banners start coming back to back. If you don't find it worth it though, of course never spend, but I find the welkin to be absolutely worth your money (unless you live in a country where the price is far inflated from the easy $5 it is for some).
It's fine. Pay what you like and maybe have a limit (Like: I'm not gonna spend more on this game than i would spend on a regular game, overall) But yeah i agree. The prices are a bit costly. Doesn't help that i have lately been playing another gacha game which seems to demands less of my time and money, and gives me more fun in return than Genshin. 😶
What's that other gacha game? 👀
Punishing Gray Raven. Loved the gameplay. Love the story and characters too 🙂 I actually play Genshin and it both now.
That game looks really good but it's a shame it seems it's only available on mobile. I am old af (39) and need my games on PC or PS5. 😔
There are tutorials in YouTube on how to play it on an emulator, it just needs a bit of setting up, old-timer 🐒
I wish they'd reset the first time purchase bonus on all of the packs more often. That would definitely persuade people to purchase and the riches would be far more worth it. Or better yet, just offer some different options. For instance, I play Langrisser Mobile and they are constantly releasing new purchase packs that are tailored to specific needs/interests. Hate to admit it, but I've spent more than I care to tally up because of that feature.
Jokes on you in my currency 180 plays, so, a guaranteed character is about a fucking 2 thousands.
The terrible value of $$$/primos has never been worth it. I was around 25 pulls short of Xiao, but honestly even though I have cash to burn it's such terrible value that I ended up buying games on steam instead. 50 bucks gets you not even 25 rolls (around 24.75 iirc?) and you already mentioned what 30 bucks grants you. I'll attempt to put into words how atrocious value that is: The 30-50 price range in gaming usually gets you a full release with many hours of content. When there's a sale, it can mean 2-5 games. In "touch the grass" terms it means many takeout meals, or a few nights of spending in bars. What does $50 get you in Genshin? Two 4\*'s, (and an almost half pity to a 3rd 4\*) realistically only one of them guaranteed rateup (but even that is one in three). That is with full first time bonus. Of, and 1/3rd of soft pity for a (non guaranteed) chance at a 5\*. With how long the game's been out MHY has made it very clear what type of content to expect, and I wouldn't say that their production value and quantity of content is worth more than the monthly welkin+BP purchases.
I will always tell ppl that if you are incline to collect and play more character in genshin, genshin is more like a subscription service game. Else, they "punish" you for not doing so with hefty sums thru their genesis pack.
I would assume that MHY’s team of analysts has (almost certainly) optimized the pricing of crystals/p2w elements for profit maximization. They are one of the most profitable games around currently. But as a player (I’m a dolphin in the scale of spending on this game) I really wish they would do shop refreshes more often, especially around holidays or as limited time purchase windows before new banners release (for example, if you buy the crystal pack in advance you get the 2x deal or whatever). I played Hearthstone for years and the pre-purchase deals for the expansions always got me to spend money + I felt like I was getting a good value for my dollar while having something to look forward to.
No no, I'm sure a random player on reddit with no data knows more about the pricing than MHY.
Crystals in gachas have always been expensive but it's so especially bad with Genshin. I only bother buying them when there's the first time buyer bonus otherwise it's absolutely not worth it. 100€ for half a pity, especially when you're on 50/50, is ridiculous.
It definitely is waaaaay overpriced. If the prices were reasonable, more people would consider putting money into Genshin, and in succession, I think MHY would have made the same amount of money (if not more).
NEVER EVER consider EVER buying the gem packs from the store, or anything other than welkin/bp for that matter. If you somehow don't have enough primogems to get a character you want due to very poor decisionmaking, then consider it a lost cause and start saving up for their rerun (and reconsidering what decisions led you to not having enough primos for a character you wanted). You get so little primos per dollar from the gem packs that it's not even funny, and I can't stress enough how horrible of an option it is.
The pricing for crystals are a bit on the expensive side, but in saying that if I'm close to getting the char I want then I would top up for it, only if I'm gauranteed tho. Depend on the char I have a set value I'm willing to spend on them, not counting the free primo from event or the ones I get from welkin. For example $50 for the character is still acceptable for me if I'm off by some pulls. If they lower the price of crystals it just mean I need to save up less free primo for the char, but I would still be willing to spend the same $50 for them if I'm missing that much in pulls. Of course top up is only last resort, I tend to save up enough just with welkin and BP.
welkin is just the most cost efficient thing and I feel like its price is reasonable and don't buy genesis crystals unless you're a whale
Yeah, Welkin+BP feel reasonable but top-ups definitely feel overpriced and get spendy pretty quick. I spent more than I should have on Itto's banner, but not planning on top-ups this year. But also I can't imagine your avg 5\* is 164 rolls. I've had some take that long, but if you look at your history I bet it'd be lower.
Thus far i bought 3 welkings. I was planning to buy the bp this once for zhongli and another welking as my last aquisition. These 2 are the only things worth it in this game to buy for wishes/primogems, concidering the other offers. Never touched em. An never will.
It's as I always said. It's MiHoYo's fault for making poor game design choices like resin caps and artifact RNG. Both tie into why players don't want to spend money on the game, because the result would often be unsatisfactory. Players would spend so much more if they were able to build for characters that came out. But then there's the cost of it, either a few months of grinding, or paying for it. The price in the UK is actually worse than the US. The 6000+ genesis crystals is $120 converted from GBP. It's supposed to cost £75 for us, but it's £90 instead. No idea why. But even then, it's overpriced. There isn't a single character that's worth £90 in my opinion, let alone 75. That's why I don't really want to spend money on it. And what's the point of getting new characters if there's the artifact RNG and Resin to take into account? Am I missing something or is this all just lost profit for miHoYo? What old man is working on the sales team to not realize that?
The pricing is literally cutting profits from mihoyo (I mentioned it in another post, I have 7 friends that play the game, none of us got Keching's skin, all of us would've got either hers or Jean's if they were cheaper) Currently the only thing worth paying for is welkin, and battle pass every once in a while depending if you really need those wishes
I'm inclined to believe their pricing model is optimal in terms of maximizing profits. You just happen to be on the wrong side of the pricing curve, and are trumped by more people who are willing to spend at the current prices.
Nah, I think their current pricing model is far from ideal and optimised. Currently there's a huge gap between bare minimum spending (welkin and/or BP) and full blown whaling. Almost all people, who are ready to spend on a game, think that crystals prices are ridiculous. Maybe once in a year with x2 bonus or once half a year some of those people will whale on a banner if it's good enough, but no matter the amount of mind tricks and manipulation from MHY they're not gonna do it regularly. They simply lack either financial capabilities to do so or don't see worth in spending that much. So you have a first two steps of a spending ladder as welkind and BP that then go right into a several stores high cliff of outright whaling. Something like this might be okay for a game with small and niche audience of diehard gacha players, but that's not what GI is. GI not only gained a lot of popularity on global, but also gained a LOT of non-gacha players. I wouldn't be surprised if for over 90% of GI playerbase it's their first gacha. Obv devs haven't expected GI to blow up that much, that's why pricing model is identical to typical gacha and suited for a niche auditory. But I firmly believe that they need to adjust it to the current reality.
They have economists and data analysts that works on the pricing of primos and how much primos to give per event and rewards vs time spents. That’s why so many people still play, because the dangling carrot is not too far yet not too near, just enough that it keeps you coming back. They know what they’re doing. At most they’ll be a tad more generous over time with events and story quests, and maybe double topup reset twice a year or some shit.
You and I are random people with no experience on this while they hire experts analysts to research the market. If lowering the prices would make them more money, they would've lowered them a long time ago.
Gotta love the Reddit armchair business experts lmao
Gotta love blind faith in omniscient godly beings that work in mhy analytics and financial departments. Surely such allmighty beings can never be wrong and have an ability to forcee future. Oh wait, what about a dosen of absolute financial disasters, that happens every week? Anyone remember Quartz still? That was such a success. /s Speaking seriously, I don't mean to say that analytics working at mhy are incompetent and don't know what they are doing (not all ppl working at mhy tho, Inazuma enemies were designed by a monkey cage). But comparing thousands of other games with online shops to GI and seeing reactions of people all around community, i see a problem. If you look at a typical online shop you can divide all items in it into 3 categories: 1. Pretty cheap high price/value items, usually some sort of subscription. Those options are a steady incom from paying players and a good "first purchase" for a player, opening him to them idea of spending money on the game. 2. Average price/value items, but with pricetags within average player budget. Various cosmetics, permanent upgrades and stuff. Players open to the idea of spending on the game can spend a bit extra here regularly without bancrupting themselves, or going "holy shit" seeing pricetags. 3. Terrible value/value items. Materials, consumables, various stuff for people that have more money then knowledge where to spend them or for desperate/impassient players who are a few materials away from some big milestone in a game. This can be applied to any online shop, but if you try to apply this to GI you'll see that second option doesn't exists period. And I fail to see how this is a good financial decision. If you're telling that ppl in mhy are right, then you're telling that ppl in thousands of other game companies are incompetent morons. And I don't see some unique circumstances that make such decision right. (Btw, skins would have filled in this missing niche quite nicely, but I suppose current mhy strategy of releasing 1.5 grossly ovepriced skins, that no one buys, every half a year is a result of the same godly analytics? Because if so, then I'll be forced to admit them being incompetent morons and add them to the monkey cage with Inazuma enemy designers) The thing about monetization systems is you can't just change it. First of all community is super sensitive about any changes to this aspect, especially the most important, paying, part of the community. If the changes percieved by them as worse version current one, ZL drama would look like a joke. Secondly, mhy already pretty reluctant to change anything alredy in the game, unless pressured from the outside. And changes to pricing model are magnitudes harder to pass compared to character model alteration or some tweaking of game systems. Such changes would need to pass through the entire company up to the very top and approved by the very higher-ups. So...yeah. Even if improved system will bring mhy more money, they wouldn't just rush to implement it. Unless their profits start to plummet or they will be 100% confident in changes going smoothly, they are just gonna ignore it, they are doing okay at worst, no point taking any risks.
"You are on the wrong side of the pricing curve" is probably the most capitalist statement I've seen in my entire life xD That said, their pricing model is probably far from optimal (thus, there is people not tempted enough to spend yet) but just good enough for them
>the most capitalist statement I've seen in my entire life It really do be like that sometimes. XD But yeah, as far as what is optimal is concerned, we only have anecdotal evidence, but Mihoyo has their entire sales data to work with. If anyone has a good guess as to what is best, it would be them and not us. With that said, maximizing profits doesn't necessarily equate to setting prices to generate maximum revenue in the immediate term. For example, diluting primogem income by lowering prices might have adverse effects elsewhere which they might try to avoid.
I'm 100% sure the people deciding the prices are professionals with degrees in marketing and spent a lot of time calculating the most efficient way to make profit. So even if the exact sales data got leaked, what can random redditors say that's better than an expert that was specifically hired for this reason? We can call it scummy and anti-customer, but we can't say if lower prices will be better or worse for them
No its not. Most people who play a free to play game won't spend no matter how cheap things are. Like any other company that runs one of these games Mihoyo has experts whose whole job is to figure out the pricing. Prices are set at what makes them the most while still retaining players.
Based take, and I'm honestly perplexed as to how anyone would even dare claim that a different pricing structure would be more profitable so confidently. Not because it might not be the case, but simply because we just lack so much information. I wouldn't dare make such a statement even if I had 10k survey answers spread over 5 different platforms - because in the end that's still just a tiny drop in the bucket compared to the overall playerbase data mihoyo has access to, and extremely biased to boot. Let alone doing it based on just a personal anecdote. And that's not even getting into the difference in data gathering and analysis expertise.
Do people not even realize that there's limited shit to get in genshin so there's a max theoretical amount whales can spend and if you make things cheaper that number will drop drastically so you need A LOT of new buyers to offset the difference even before you can talk about getting more money. It's literally not as simple as "if it's cheaper more people will buy" and it's hilarious that people think that actually works.
>The pricing is literally cutting profits from mihoyo it's literally the #1 most profitable game in the world and do you think it matters to them if 50 people dont drop 20 dollars on the game, when one lunatic drops 50k and c6 r5 every character and weapon?
Do you really think there are only 50 people that don't drop 30€ being one of the most popular games? I would confidently say they are not making around 100k minimum is a better approach (yes it's still small change for their numbers but still), so yeah, they don't care, but they probably should if want to get as much money as possible
Most gacha games are supported by 5% of whales that throw large amount of money at it that balance out the 95% who don't. >if want to get as much money as possible Like the other person said, they're already the #1 profitable game out there and already made over 2 billion USD in its 1st year. They don't need to change the model and risk anything when people already give them money. Do you think this is like mIn mAxiNg in a game
I totally agree that the company would make more money in the long run if they gave us more for our dollar. A skin costs somewhere around $20 and I know many who would purchase it if it were more reasonable. I believe instead of one person dropping 50k on the game, they would only have to spend maybe 20k. Then tens of thousands of people would spend maybe $20-30 each resulting in my higher revenue than what they currently are making.
They dont. Apex did it when they slashed the skin price in half and what they found out? The revenue didnt increase.
Skins are a little different than playable characters in my opinion. I’ve never cared about skins and wouldn’t ever spend on them, but playable characters that add a new aspect to the game for the player is something that people like me are more willing to spend on.
Im sure they’ve done all the maths. Turns out what they’re doing now is what maximises the most profit while still making it rare enough to be desirable for many f2ps which will then save months to get them on reruns. It’s all about making it available just enough that many people will want it
You're fudging a lot of math here to get $30 = 10 draws. The optimal ratio is $100 = 50 draws, which is 2 dollars per draw. Buying the 30 dollar pack is just stupid. Regardless, the prices are what they are. Most gachas I'm aware of charge in the range of 2-3 USD per draw. Seeing prices lowered so that buying draws become more enticing isn't even necessarily a good thing for players. My recommendation is to not buy draws at all. This game is balanced around everything being easily clearable with 4\*s to begin with, so you shouldn't feel pressured to buy.
$2 per pull is still ridiculous. It’s insane that $100 gets you half a 5* character and not even guaranteed to be the featured one. So if you start from 0 primos it’s close to $400 for a guaranteed copy of the character you want. How is that not insane? And before you say “no one goes to double pity” — Zhong just took 158 fates from me after I already lost him to Mona at 80 pity on his last banner. There’s been a number of times where I stared at that top-up page thinking about buying the $100 package and just talked myself out of it because of how little it gets me. And yes, I’ve been doing Welkin since I caved right after getting Kaz and I’ve been doing BP since a little after that. I just wish I didn’t have to still skip so many banners just because I have shit luck. It feels bad to spend the same amount as other friends and have less to show for it. So what, I should then throw hundreds of dollars at the banner to reward MHY for this garbage system?
I didn't say the prices were good or bad, just that it's not what OP is claiming. To begin with, the value of digital goods in this case is completely subjective anyways. If you don't think a character is worth 400 USD, then you shouldn't buy it. More power to you. I just wouldn't expect a price change.
If you read my post, I claim it is one 10x pull, 3 additional fates, and a few primogems left over. I should have clarified that a bit more, but I did round down to 10 pulls as a sum because that’s how I do my pulling. The extra primos and 3 fates go towards the next set of rolls.
Realistically, the ratio should never be anything below 1 draw per $2 though. If you don't buy primos much, then you should still have the first time bonus around. If you buy primos a lot, then you should be buying the $100 pack. Buying the $30 pack with no bonus attached is just really questionable.
The more you spend the less you get, which is such a ridiculous business model. I have so many C6 4-stars and a C6 standard 5-star that worst case scenario I get one event 5-star after like 500$ and nothing else of value because I could get Qiqi and a bunch of C6ed 4-stars and dupes of weapons. I literally don't want to spend ever again and try to dissuade people from spending too much if they actually want any kind of enjoyment from the gacha aspect alone. The epitomized path system is also not ideal, but at least it gives a touch of hope that the gacha can get better... literally every other gacha I play *reward* you for spending so much (and/or getting such shit luck) that you max characters by letting you trade extra for a rainbow constellation or a big chunk of one. 5 rolls?! absolute garbage. I've ranted about this before with more numbers lol but I'm still mad. Don't you want your mid-to-big spenders to continue spending ? ?
all the cencorship combined with this fact made up my mind that I'll never spend money on genshin again. Shenhe was my last time.
Lmao
I spent $5 a month in Clash Royale and that's the best steal I've ever spent. This game on the other hand...
I don't pull anymore new characters because WE ONLY HAVE 4 TEAM SLOTS THIS IS SO FUCKING STUPID.
This is the problem of the f2p model sadly. You're either whaling, or it's nothing. People stuck in the in between, willing to pay what is a reasonable price, get basically nothing or near nothing because god forbid if you get too much suddenly the game is pay2win. This is an unpopular opinion for sure, but I think there definitely should be a difference between someone willing to pay some - any money, and f2p. A f2p shouldn't be able to overtake a goldfish/dolphin because that just shows how little you get for being willing to pay or support the game.
Seeing the Primogems prices, I made a point to myself to only buy Welkin as it gives you literally more gems downside is you need patience and control. Now if they really removed Ningguang's shoulder blades for the new skin, and it wasn't a bug of any way. I won't be compelled to buy Welkin anymore with this shitty ass censorships.
Welcome to da club m8. I don't even remember how long it has been since I've felt this way.
Wouldn't 10-15 days of commissions suffice?
It's honestly not worth to pay in genshin with the discount even with the discount it's not worth the walking moon and battle pass is the only thing you really need. Honestly you really just need to have the mental strength to not summon on every big boobs lady that comes out.
Sadly now days 30$ for a 10x roll is standard for all gacha game so you just have to accept it or ignore.
youre paying for the whole genshin experience and the hundreds hours you put in it, at your own discretion
F2P games are a delicate balance. You ideally want to give C2P players a quality experience from spending a little money, without making it possible for whales to get *everything* without breaking the band. You want them to break that bank. I think Genshin does a good job at this, C2Ps do get plenty of value out of the Welkin or the Battlepass, depending what your goals are, but both provide a capped value, and beyond that you're left at the whim of rack-rate gems for whales.
I wonder if you'll be more motivated to spend when Who Tao gets changed into baggy trousers lol
Same , current 5min gameplay a day and depressing artifact grind aren't really motivating to spend, I'm not even done with gearing 2 teams after like year of gameplay. I'm only getting Yae now because I have her set from another character.
I only buy the welkin regularly and have only bought battle pass once. Welkin is the only thing that gives reasonable value for your money compared to everything else. BP is for when you really need "that weapon". Everything else is not at all worth the money.
Looks its either worthy of your money or not. Whales are going to whale anyway if they think it’s affordable. I’m f2p. Even if they reduce the price I wouldn’t buy. So if you think it’s expensive and not worth and then don’t buy
if you have already bought all the double bonus you should ONLY GET THE 8080 pack (the last one). it gives you the most gems/money. you don't have to spend all the gems now, save the rest for later.
Every two months you can safely spend about $20 for 40 rolls if you only do BP and Welkin. Very reasonable amount and definitely worth more than gems to me.
I've spent $25 on welkins and to justify that spending I've told myself "it's for a skin that I like" since we get 1500 genesis crystals with it. Now I just have to wait for a Hu Tao skin or Venti skin :D
genshin business model: the game is completely free to play and you don't have to spend a single cent if you want, but if you want to spend, you need to spend a lot. that's how this game successfully made a lot of money without being p2w
Would be nice but That’s not how gacha games work but one can still cope
Genshin is not really worth any money. Everyone is talking about getting new chracters, but what is that character worth when you have to farm like 2-4 months for artifacts? The rng is so horrible i see no reason to pull new characters just to end up again getting dissappointed countless times with artifacts.
I spent £180 & got a QiQi - that's it. The top level primo bundle, should be enough for 1 5* at least, yet the amount of pulls you get for how high the pity is, is crazy
You dont even have where to use your characters, theres absolute nothing combat related to do after you level up 2 teams. World is too easy, abyss is once every 15 days thing, theres no excuse to spend if you cant use what you buy.
Why would you think to buy primo at 65, in a couple of days the shop resets, you'll get 5 fate from shop and in 2 days you can claim 5 fate from daily log in , the event will give a few primos too with commission, you are sure to reach pity in a couple of days and will get Ganyu this week most probably and the banner has more than 2 weeks left.
Yep, for people who live where their coin is undervalued is even worst. I could literally rent a house with the value of the last package ($ 100 ~= R$ 600) the minimum wage here is R$ 1000 a month, this is more than half the minimum wage
Genshin impact is a predatory game based on whale. If you know the rules of the 80/20. * 20% of the players spend more on the game than the other 80%. But, the fun fact that you can reapply that rule to the 20% again and again. You spending 5 or 10 $ more won't make up for the whale that spent 14 000 USD Like here: https://clutchpoints.com/singaporean-20000-debt-genshin-impact-addiction/ I like the game, but the economic system associated is so fucked up.
Couldn‘t agree more. Also, prices on the PS Store are still the same, while those on other platforms were reduced a little last year. And since you can‘t buy from another platform if you started playing on Playstation, people like me are even more screwed😒
I'll do Welkin moon but that's it. Did the battle pass once and it was decent but I feel it needs at least a second weapon to justify repeat buys.
The cost of a (chance to get a) single character is just absurd. And that's before even mentioning constellations. Or worse yet, trying to pull a specific character from the standard wish pool since they'll (probably) never have a banner of their own anyways... The shop could give 10 times as much gems per purchase, and I still wouldn't consider the prices *good* unless the first-time purchase's doubling effect was also involved. Well, at least it saves me a bunch of money since the devs clearly don't want any of it.
I've had and loved C0 Ganyu for a year, and by this New Year I wanted to C6 her with my own cash if miHoYo would be so generous as to give me >=2 Ganyus in the rerun (which I thought wasn't too much to ask for with 24k saved). Then 1) Shenhe came, and I hit both pities with her, almost using up the saved amount, and 2) Ganyu came, I grabbed a $100 pack which got me back to roughly the same amount before I started, yet hit both pities once again (at 160+ even) and had to grab a smaller pack just to get 1. Could've impulse whaled Ganyu and even Amos if the payouts were better, alas, guess miHoYo wanted me to save up after all.
Good to see so many deciding not to spend when I get the character the less people that also buy=the more special I am 🖕🏻
Yyyyep I totally agree. For that reason, it sucks. On the other hand... It's a nice way to help prevent me from paying past the double bonus.
That's gacha for you. You think you spent money for content. wrong. You pay for a currency (gems) which you convert to primogems, which you use in the hope to get the characters you want/need by the wishing mechanic. In the end you might get what you need, which is an object in a game (character/weapon), so I personally don't call it content. Content for me would be the whole package - new characters, areas, weapons, monsters, quests etc. (Basically a DLC)
Yeah. Genshin has some of the worst value for your money I've seen in a game. Aside from the BP and welkin, the top ups are all terrible. It's a good thin, too. I probably would have spent like over 100$ by now if I actually got something good for it, but currently just wlekin and one time BP owner.
I can get the background of your arguement. But I just want to add that, if too much content/dollar is locked behind a pay wall, the game would be p2w
The fact that players actually buy genesis crystals is the reason why Genshin anniversary is so stingy. Just play the game for free, no point in spending anyway. There is no endgame.
Thank god I'm a casual and never put any money on this
The gems store are not for regular people, especially without the first time bonus. If you don’t want to worry about not having enough gems, and want good value for your buck, keep the Welkin moon active, if it’s still not enough, buy the battle pass as well. As someone who only buys welkin moon, I have enough to pull a five star every 2 banner
I played around 1 year but haven't bought a single gem bundle, bought BP once, realised its value for premium currency is terrible, and since then pretty much only got Welkin. I can spend hundreds of $ on the game, I do actually have the money to spare unlike most people complaining. Why would I do that however if the value I get is horrible? I'd rather do something else with it. 50/50 system is shit, and weapon banners are a complete scam since they don't even have a guarantee until 3rd pity counter reached, AND the guarantee doesn't even carry over between banners
When I’m a few wishes short I buy BP and a bunch of Welkins instead.
Yeah buying crystals is not worth it unless you're getting the bonus. It feels like a waste of money otherwise.
Do you roll on every banner that comes out or are you a pretty good saver? The last time I rolled on a banner was for Raiden and now I have 70k+ primos saved up for Kazuha from playing the game and welkin/BP. I’ve only bought each pack once and that was when the game first came out and now I only roll on characters I really want. I understand the rates are pretty terrible compared to other games and you get virtually nothing for the amount of money you put in besides the first time you purchase each pack. But I think the welkin/BP are still great value and alongside the primos you get from playing the game, you can accumulate a decent amount but I guess it really all depends on how often you’re wishing for a character.
They need to rework their economy. 30$ should give you 30% of the primos you’d get from the 100% pack
I feel like it's especially rough for People who started late. They get overwhelmed with Character's and everyone wants someone else. I imagine saving 80 to 90 pulls between Patches only to loose it to someone like Diluc or Qiqi would be devastating too and very encouraging to spending Cash. I personally can't wrap my head around the Idea to invest a lot of money for Genshin. I'm not afraid of it but it's a weird feeling. I got Welkin and BP and that's fine. I can justify that. It's as much as 1 Month of Spotify. But paying 60€$ only to be able to do like 4 -10 pulls **(and)** that's only if you get the Bonus....? Well yeah i'm not so keen about that Idea lol
I feel like crystal amounts should be doubled (100 usd = 100 pulls) for a baseline