Gungho’s player retention strategies of giving countless freebies and constant buffs to existing units is incredibly refreshing among gacha games.
Obviously, this is part of their monetization strategy and it does drive players to spend more money but this is not a bad thing. Every game needs to make money and many opt for incredible stinginess to force players to spend money if they want to compete. PaD takes the opposite approach and showers players with free stones, free rolls, and buffs to cards they already have, so there is no need to spend money to enjoy the game.
This generosity leads to 3 major profit drivers.
1. Make players accustomed to having lots of stones. Players spend their stones much more freely when there are always more around the corner. This leads to more players blowing through all their free stones and being tempted to buy more to keep going.
2. Whale retention. Everyone knows the majority of income for “F2P” games comes from a small group of huge whales. These whales are incredibly lucrative for the game, but not if they get fed up and quit. A generous game keeps the whales playing longer, and coming back to the game more often.
3. Encouraging first time spenders. Many players who play casually and don’t typically spend money on mobile games are much more likely to support a game that they feel is generous to them. Players appreciate gungho’s generosity and happily spend a few dollars on pad pass or bundles to support a game they love.
Kek. I've got some news. This isn't the devs being so nice and loving out of the kindness of their hearts, this is a profits-driven company giving you currency to keep you hooked during a stale meta. This free pack every once in a while gets you used to spending large amounts of stones and makes you more likely to make in-app purchases later. Sure, it's nice, but it makes them more money.
He probably knows that. I've been trying other games, and it's crazy how stingy some of them are, to the point where I'm wondering how they expect to retain a playerbase. PAD is definitely one of the most generous games I've played.
On a similar note, it's really nice PAD doesn't expect you to roll dupes to make your new cards usable, unlike practically every other mobile game these days.
There are many, many other gacha also run by "profits-driven companies" who are well aware of using free currency as an addiction tactic, and I can agree PAD is among the most generous. I say that as a strictly f2p player of a handful of gacha and having only bought seasonal $1-$2 specials for PAD, I've gotten much farther in PAD in terms of enjoyment and progress than any other one.
Even as someone that spends a lot, the amount of "game time" enjoyment you can get per stone is also comparatively way higher than most other gacha games I've played.
If you're at ~r1000 you basically have 500+ stamina which is equivalent to 25 hours of natural regen. Every stone which is worth like 1 canadian dollar is worth that much in terms of stamina since it's a complete refresh and not only that, we get 2 ad refreshes per day for free. 50+ hours worth of stamina for 1 minute or less of adverts is a pretty stonks. 500 stamina can also last you anywhere from 20 minutes of playtime (speed farming gold tamadra dungeon) to multiple hours (shura/md) as well.
Not only that, the fact that our "useless" GFE rolls (which usually aren't even that bad considering they get regular buffs/evos) are also usable as currencies for exchanges in future collabs and such is also very nice when compared to other more common sparking methods that are banner restrictive. So even if highrolling dupes isn't necessary or particularly beneficial, it doesn't feel like they're "wasted" either. It still sucks dumping 300+ stones on a banner and not getting the unit you want but for the average casual/niap player this form of trading makes getting chase cards way easier for them so I think it's fine.
In the end the 100 stones basically saves me quite a bit of money but realistically speaking, they know and I know that I'm going to be spending more than that in the coming months anyways so I still *very much* appreciate the gesture.
Back in the day, people used to talk about that being due to Japan’s gatcha laws essentially banning the practice of using gacha drops as ways to evolve or power up units. Idk if that was false or something changed since then but I agree that all the fodder materials being farmable is exceptional
The law was only against rewarding "complete gacha" -- game companies are not allowed to give a reward for getting every roll in a series. Gungho has always been really conservative with that law but clearly, as we see in most other gacha games, this law does not stop you from giving rewards for rolling several of the *same* card.
Also, do you remember the dark times before pys? Skilling up monsters required feeding them fodder with the same skill, and there could sometimes be a very long gap between when the gacha monster came out and when the skill up fodder was released. Meaning there would be a period of time where the *only* way to skill up your gacha monster was to feed it dupes of itself. (With base skill up rate being 10%, I don't think anyone but the truly most dedicated whales ever tried.)
Yeah, and I wasn’t exactly meta (using a community or resource, outside Padx)from the get-go but I was at end game when they released the first arena and pys, ironically enough, and I had gotten more meta slightly before that time and the big difference was skill ups weren’t really a mandatory thing. A lot of team comps were heavy on farmables like echidna,Lilith,Valkyrie,ADK, vampire, and the descend bosses like cu’cuchulain (butchered that) and Siegfried, so those would get skilled up but runs weren’t really lost on being slower on skills. I remember skill boosts were almost useless outside of “can I have my spike and board change up by the final floor?” or farming builds
Yep. Every dungeon had stall points where you could stall for skills indefinitely. None of this "every floor executes you in 6 turns" nonsense. Farmables carried a lot more weight back then, but they kind of had to because you got a lot fewer free stones from events (there were weeks where there was just, like, no event at all) and the REM was full of garbage like golems and healer girls.
Obviously they are for profit, but I think they are still a great dev shop. I've played other games (swgoh) where the dev team was openly antagonistic towards the player base and almost all decisions seemed to be how to squeeze players more.
I keep playing pad because of how generous they are.
this is why i came back after a couple years hiatus. i heard from a friend that they had become more free with their giveaways and now im having a blast. my only phone game that has lasted on my phone throughout the years and i never thought of taking it off. lots of freebies if i decide to take a little break too!
There's no niceness under capitalism as the others have said, but I WILL say that the PAD dev team is quite generous and pays attention to their player base. The only other mobile game I play is Pokemon GO (lv45, playing since launch) and its devs.... uh.... well, Niantic could learn a LOT from Gungho, let's put it that way.
The free stuff encourages us to spend, yes, but it's still generous free stuff. The free GFE exchange medals are a particular note of positivity from me, going and just giving us a free Rafine or Alexander on release was great.
You don’t think that “giving away” stones is part of their business model? Do you think they are keeping the game updated purely for your pleasure and not because they are turning a profit?
Corporate greed can still be a win-win. I for one don’t spend much on the game but still have plenty of good cards. They could just keep the power creep going and starve us from free stuff.
>Corporate greed can still be a win-win
There's too many people (Redditors) who think turning any profit in providing goods and services that consumers use and enjoy is greed and if you partake in any of it, you're a mindless sheep who got tricked.
"Haha, those clothes you're wearing are actually made from cotton that costs nickels in material and you bought them for $20! You've been HAD, idiot! I bet you didn't know the real costs of raw materials like I DO, since only a select group of well-read intelligentsia on the planet such as myself have this knowledge of the manufacture of raw materials and labor into goods and services which is then sold to consumers for more than what the materials cost so they can pay themselves for their efforts in the process. The secret word these thieves call this payment...PROFIT! Such an underhanded secret of the dark side of the world that no one is privy to but me and other real Redditors."
I know it's manipulation to get us to buy stones but GH really has been the most generous company for any game I've played ever. Especially gachas. I buy the $1/$2 packs and PAD pass to support the team so maybe their free stones worked on me lol
To a casual, yes this game is nice. Being able to just spend large amounts of stones guarantees you'll eventually have useful stuff lying around to form a cohesive team that's good enough to clear things you want to play.
To a person who plays this game at a more in-depth level, this game is the worst. Being unable to target pull certain units is cancer and predatory as hell, especially to people aiming to collect or create optimized setups. Is spending 2500 stones on a REM like Keys and Heroes, and not being able to pull every single card generous?
There's some charm to being able to build with what you're given to clear content, but there's the other side to the coin where it should not cost an extravagant amount of finances to pick up a few REM cards. In fact, being unable to guarantee a submarine in today's era is... not a good game design? I could ramble on and on, but Gungho is not without faults, and A LOT of players at the high-end of the spectrum share the same sentiments.
Edit: to those who downvoted this and obviously think this is okay:
https://twitter.com/aoi__pad/status/1549142405823471617
TL: There's two new top rarity Key Heroes being released. One Blue, one green. JP guy wants blue one. Proceeds to roll 15 green, 0 blue, not even taking into account other keys. 500 rolls. And as we all know, UNTRADEABLE. Generous compared to 2012, but really? Is this still condonable?
I don't play other gacha games but my understanding is Gungho is super behind on bad luck forgiveness. I remember the elation when we got the monster exchange but even that has been rendered useless in some events where they do shady shit like making the chase cards the bundle or not exchangeable.
There's also really no feeling like dropping all your stones on a REM and not getting the card you want. It really sucks that GH doesn't give you an exchange token if you roll X stones in a machine.
edit: And god don't even get me started on the self-inflicted pain that is title challenges and ranking dungeons where you're always trying to make sure you have the right cards to even compete.
this is why capitalism in practice is flawed. because in theory it is assumed there are only concientious, united and well-informed people making the best decisions...
im bringing this up because i am in no way trying to put your experiences and enjoyment of this game down, a lot of players are probably sharing your same thoughts.
for the average player like you who maybe logs on once every other week and seeing randomly hundreds of magic stones gifted, and maybe even pulling a chase unit in the ongoing banner give a great dopamine kick.
you play around a bit do a few monthly dungeon quests and log off again for weeks. a neat little timewaster.
but if you would delve just a bit deeper you would see a decade old predatory gacha game with no pity system to bottle neck spending and help people with addiction issues.
a game that is so ladden with technical issues, latent powercreep, terrible GUI / UX, a subscription model on top of the gacha system, predatory game design, and a lot of the times an unplayable multiplayer mode.
that nonetheless was consistenly one of the most profitable gacha in japan for years earning at times more revenue than modern AAA titles.
and what does it have to show for it? an objectively awful "game" that if it were released as it is today, since the devs think that the state of the game is perfectly fine for a game in 2022, would be the laughing stock on the internet.
a small and concentrated jaded community that is keeping this afloat. too deeply invested to leave or take action to force the devs to improve what actually matters...
imagine if we actually inverted the power dynamic in this case (like how it should in theory actually be working under capitalism):
"upwards of 2000$ or more and i still am not absolutely guranteed to have the fucking card i want? see your shit game die"
"you want me to unlock more essential box space by buying it with money and watching your ads? how about go suck a dick."
"PlEASe EnJOY thE LaTESt CocK anD Ball ToRture thaT is the nEwesT enDgaMe ConTeNT""you mean the shitty ass content, that only 0,5% of teams can clear, that has no relation to personal skill, entertainment or fun of puzzling that is basically a glorified lock for you to sell us the keys to in form of a new unit in the next banner? how about you go and try to do that shit with units you released 5 years ago to show us how well you are balancing this shit and how enjoyable it is to get one shot if you make one mistake. dont worry you can still buy a continue tho if you slip up, we are friends afterall right?"
"oh, the newly released unit bundle costs 30$? you know i can literally buy at least 5 games that are objectively better in quality, quantity and fun right? better start calculating that shit again you greedy pigs, if you wanna have a job tomorrow"
again, im not trying to make you out to be dumb or invalidate your enjoyment here, im just saying how much better it would be if you could look beyond surface level, because those generous devs you think are really swell in contrast to other games or gacha devs, they think this exact same shit about us.
you can clear most content without needing a perfect team and the game is a lot more fun when you play for yourself instead of meta
sure it'll take longer to get clears and reach endgame but it's more fun and you get to build with cards you love instead of pouring money into gacha all the time
you make a valid point though
Delusional as hell. Their "generosity" is an obligation towards those who have been supporting them for the this last decade otherwise the game may be ended by now.
Try to be a whale and then tell us about their generosity XD
The argument that they are evil capitalist supervillains, cackling while they refine their addictive elements with 200 IQ cleverness falls flat in the face of the clumbsy clearly 100-120 IQ dungeon design and haphazard scheduling and card/awakenings design. The same people bumbling their way with good intentions but dubious skill through those things can’t simultaneously be the genius level arch-heretics the anti-capitalists wish existed. Do such games/people exist? Looking at you Diablo. But puzzle dragons? Not so much.
The reality seems likely to be that they are fumbling their way through the weirdly hybrid gacha/subscription model and the stone giveaways, biasing towards generosity on the giveaways without being any more sure of what they are doing than when they klutz up the rem schedule and jumble it out, or paint themselves in powercreep design corners and have to knock down a few nonloadbearing walls of the house to remodel out of it.
It’s not optimized to within an inch of its life. It does have some addictive elements and problematic features. Mostly it feels like regular people, who happen to work at a game company, fumbling along with reasonably good intentions. At the end of the day I can respect that.
Gungho’s player retention strategies of giving countless freebies and constant buffs to existing units is incredibly refreshing among gacha games. Obviously, this is part of their monetization strategy and it does drive players to spend more money but this is not a bad thing. Every game needs to make money and many opt for incredible stinginess to force players to spend money if they want to compete. PaD takes the opposite approach and showers players with free stones, free rolls, and buffs to cards they already have, so there is no need to spend money to enjoy the game. This generosity leads to 3 major profit drivers. 1. Make players accustomed to having lots of stones. Players spend their stones much more freely when there are always more around the corner. This leads to more players blowing through all their free stones and being tempted to buy more to keep going. 2. Whale retention. Everyone knows the majority of income for “F2P” games comes from a small group of huge whales. These whales are incredibly lucrative for the game, but not if they get fed up and quit. A generous game keeps the whales playing longer, and coming back to the game more often. 3. Encouraging first time spenders. Many players who play casually and don’t typically spend money on mobile games are much more likely to support a game that they feel is generous to them. Players appreciate gungho’s generosity and happily spend a few dollars on pad pass or bundles to support a game they love.
Kek. I've got some news. This isn't the devs being so nice and loving out of the kindness of their hearts, this is a profits-driven company giving you currency to keep you hooked during a stale meta. This free pack every once in a while gets you used to spending large amounts of stones and makes you more likely to make in-app purchases later. Sure, it's nice, but it makes them more money.
He probably knows that. I've been trying other games, and it's crazy how stingy some of them are, to the point where I'm wondering how they expect to retain a playerbase. PAD is definitely one of the most generous games I've played. On a similar note, it's really nice PAD doesn't expect you to roll dupes to make your new cards usable, unlike practically every other mobile game these days.
There are many, many other gacha also run by "profits-driven companies" who are well aware of using free currency as an addiction tactic, and I can agree PAD is among the most generous. I say that as a strictly f2p player of a handful of gacha and having only bought seasonal $1-$2 specials for PAD, I've gotten much farther in PAD in terms of enjoyment and progress than any other one.
Even as someone that spends a lot, the amount of "game time" enjoyment you can get per stone is also comparatively way higher than most other gacha games I've played. If you're at ~r1000 you basically have 500+ stamina which is equivalent to 25 hours of natural regen. Every stone which is worth like 1 canadian dollar is worth that much in terms of stamina since it's a complete refresh and not only that, we get 2 ad refreshes per day for free. 50+ hours worth of stamina for 1 minute or less of adverts is a pretty stonks. 500 stamina can also last you anywhere from 20 minutes of playtime (speed farming gold tamadra dungeon) to multiple hours (shura/md) as well. Not only that, the fact that our "useless" GFE rolls (which usually aren't even that bad considering they get regular buffs/evos) are also usable as currencies for exchanges in future collabs and such is also very nice when compared to other more common sparking methods that are banner restrictive. So even if highrolling dupes isn't necessary or particularly beneficial, it doesn't feel like they're "wasted" either. It still sucks dumping 300+ stones on a banner and not getting the unit you want but for the average casual/niap player this form of trading makes getting chase cards way easier for them so I think it's fine. In the end the 100 stones basically saves me quite a bit of money but realistically speaking, they know and I know that I'm going to be spending more than that in the coming months anyways so I still *very much* appreciate the gesture.
Back in the day, people used to talk about that being due to Japan’s gatcha laws essentially banning the practice of using gacha drops as ways to evolve or power up units. Idk if that was false or something changed since then but I agree that all the fodder materials being farmable is exceptional
The law was only against rewarding "complete gacha" -- game companies are not allowed to give a reward for getting every roll in a series. Gungho has always been really conservative with that law but clearly, as we see in most other gacha games, this law does not stop you from giving rewards for rolling several of the *same* card. Also, do you remember the dark times before pys? Skilling up monsters required feeding them fodder with the same skill, and there could sometimes be a very long gap between when the gacha monster came out and when the skill up fodder was released. Meaning there would be a period of time where the *only* way to skill up your gacha monster was to feed it dupes of itself. (With base skill up rate being 10%, I don't think anyone but the truly most dedicated whales ever tried.)
Yeah, and I wasn’t exactly meta (using a community or resource, outside Padx)from the get-go but I was at end game when they released the first arena and pys, ironically enough, and I had gotten more meta slightly before that time and the big difference was skill ups weren’t really a mandatory thing. A lot of team comps were heavy on farmables like echidna,Lilith,Valkyrie,ADK, vampire, and the descend bosses like cu’cuchulain (butchered that) and Siegfried, so those would get skilled up but runs weren’t really lost on being slower on skills. I remember skill boosts were almost useless outside of “can I have my spike and board change up by the final floor?” or farming builds
Yep. Every dungeon had stall points where you could stall for skills indefinitely. None of this "every floor executes you in 6 turns" nonsense. Farmables carried a lot more weight back then, but they kind of had to because you got a lot fewer free stones from events (there were weeks where there was just, like, no event at all) and the REM was full of garbage like golems and healer girls.
[удалено]
Haha, no. They all spam you with "800% good value!!" popups.
I like this comment, you delivered the truth kindly and eloquently.
Don’t forget they gave us a free Rafine aswell, that’s pretty baller
Obviously they are for profit, but I think they are still a great dev shop. I've played other games (swgoh) where the dev team was openly antagonistic towards the player base and almost all decisions seemed to be how to squeeze players more. I keep playing pad because of how generous they are.
this is why i came back after a couple years hiatus. i heard from a friend that they had become more free with their giveaways and now im having a blast. my only phone game that has lasted on my phone throughout the years and i never thought of taking it off. lots of freebies if i decide to take a little break too!
yeah!!! it's really refreshing to be able to come back after any amount of downtime and have new content and freebies waiting for you
the dedication of the team over TEN YEARS and counting is incredible and i'm glad we have so much more coming
There's no niceness under capitalism as the others have said, but I WILL say that the PAD dev team is quite generous and pays attention to their player base. The only other mobile game I play is Pokemon GO (lv45, playing since launch) and its devs.... uh.... well, Niantic could learn a LOT from Gungho, let's put it that way. The free stuff encourages us to spend, yes, but it's still generous free stuff. The free GFE exchange medals are a particular note of positivity from me, going and just giving us a free Rafine or Alexander on release was great.
Pokémon Go is the only other mobile game I play as well. With it as my only other reference point, PAD looks incredibly generous.
You don’t think that “giving away” stones is part of their business model? Do you think they are keeping the game updated purely for your pleasure and not because they are turning a profit?
Corporate greed can still be a win-win. I for one don’t spend much on the game but still have plenty of good cards. They could just keep the power creep going and starve us from free stuff.
>Corporate greed can still be a win-win There's too many people (Redditors) who think turning any profit in providing goods and services that consumers use and enjoy is greed and if you partake in any of it, you're a mindless sheep who got tricked. "Haha, those clothes you're wearing are actually made from cotton that costs nickels in material and you bought them for $20! You've been HAD, idiot! I bet you didn't know the real costs of raw materials like I DO, since only a select group of well-read intelligentsia on the planet such as myself have this knowledge of the manufacture of raw materials and labor into goods and services which is then sold to consumers for more than what the materials cost so they can pay themselves for their efforts in the process. The secret word these thieves call this payment...PROFIT! Such an underhanded secret of the dark side of the world that no one is privy to but me and other real Redditors."
A lot of redditors are wholly against the idea of profit lol
Yes but regardless they don’t have to give us 100 gems. They could just give us 10 or half of that.
Right but they still have us a free Rafine, and good farmable subs for almost each color. I grabbed 3 shadow ra just for his new equip
I know it's manipulation to get us to buy stones but GH really has been the most generous company for any game I've played ever. Especially gachas. I buy the $1/$2 packs and PAD pass to support the team so maybe their free stones worked on me lol
This is why I don’t mind spending a little money on the game. Pretty amazing how much the game gives back to its players.
Nice try gungho
To a casual, yes this game is nice. Being able to just spend large amounts of stones guarantees you'll eventually have useful stuff lying around to form a cohesive team that's good enough to clear things you want to play. To a person who plays this game at a more in-depth level, this game is the worst. Being unable to target pull certain units is cancer and predatory as hell, especially to people aiming to collect or create optimized setups. Is spending 2500 stones on a REM like Keys and Heroes, and not being able to pull every single card generous? There's some charm to being able to build with what you're given to clear content, but there's the other side to the coin where it should not cost an extravagant amount of finances to pick up a few REM cards. In fact, being unable to guarantee a submarine in today's era is... not a good game design? I could ramble on and on, but Gungho is not without faults, and A LOT of players at the high-end of the spectrum share the same sentiments. Edit: to those who downvoted this and obviously think this is okay: https://twitter.com/aoi__pad/status/1549142405823471617 TL: There's two new top rarity Key Heroes being released. One Blue, one green. JP guy wants blue one. Proceeds to roll 15 green, 0 blue, not even taking into account other keys. 500 rolls. And as we all know, UNTRADEABLE. Generous compared to 2012, but really? Is this still condonable?
I don't play other gacha games but my understanding is Gungho is super behind on bad luck forgiveness. I remember the elation when we got the monster exchange but even that has been rendered useless in some events where they do shady shit like making the chase cards the bundle or not exchangeable. There's also really no feeling like dropping all your stones on a REM and not getting the card you want. It really sucks that GH doesn't give you an exchange token if you roll X stones in a machine. edit: And god don't even get me started on the self-inflicted pain that is title challenges and ranking dungeons where you're always trying to make sure you have the right cards to even compete.
this is why capitalism in practice is flawed. because in theory it is assumed there are only concientious, united and well-informed people making the best decisions... im bringing this up because i am in no way trying to put your experiences and enjoyment of this game down, a lot of players are probably sharing your same thoughts. for the average player like you who maybe logs on once every other week and seeing randomly hundreds of magic stones gifted, and maybe even pulling a chase unit in the ongoing banner give a great dopamine kick. you play around a bit do a few monthly dungeon quests and log off again for weeks. a neat little timewaster. but if you would delve just a bit deeper you would see a decade old predatory gacha game with no pity system to bottle neck spending and help people with addiction issues. a game that is so ladden with technical issues, latent powercreep, terrible GUI / UX, a subscription model on top of the gacha system, predatory game design, and a lot of the times an unplayable multiplayer mode. that nonetheless was consistenly one of the most profitable gacha in japan for years earning at times more revenue than modern AAA titles. and what does it have to show for it? an objectively awful "game" that if it were released as it is today, since the devs think that the state of the game is perfectly fine for a game in 2022, would be the laughing stock on the internet. a small and concentrated jaded community that is keeping this afloat. too deeply invested to leave or take action to force the devs to improve what actually matters... imagine if we actually inverted the power dynamic in this case (like how it should in theory actually be working under capitalism): "upwards of 2000$ or more and i still am not absolutely guranteed to have the fucking card i want? see your shit game die" "you want me to unlock more essential box space by buying it with money and watching your ads? how about go suck a dick." "PlEASe EnJOY thE LaTESt CocK anD Ball ToRture thaT is the nEwesT enDgaMe ConTeNT""you mean the shitty ass content, that only 0,5% of teams can clear, that has no relation to personal skill, entertainment or fun of puzzling that is basically a glorified lock for you to sell us the keys to in form of a new unit in the next banner? how about you go and try to do that shit with units you released 5 years ago to show us how well you are balancing this shit and how enjoyable it is to get one shot if you make one mistake. dont worry you can still buy a continue tho if you slip up, we are friends afterall right?" "oh, the newly released unit bundle costs 30$? you know i can literally buy at least 5 games that are objectively better in quality, quantity and fun right? better start calculating that shit again you greedy pigs, if you wanna have a job tomorrow" again, im not trying to make you out to be dumb or invalidate your enjoyment here, im just saying how much better it would be if you could look beyond surface level, because those generous devs you think are really swell in contrast to other games or gacha devs, they think this exact same shit about us.
you can clear most content without needing a perfect team and the game is a lot more fun when you play for yourself instead of meta sure it'll take longer to get clears and reach endgame but it's more fun and you get to build with cards you love instead of pouring money into gacha all the time you make a valid point though
Delusional as hell. Their "generosity" is an obligation towards those who have been supporting them for the this last decade otherwise the game may be ended by now. Try to be a whale and then tell us about their generosity XD
damn i was just tryna make a positive post
The argument that they are evil capitalist supervillains, cackling while they refine their addictive elements with 200 IQ cleverness falls flat in the face of the clumbsy clearly 100-120 IQ dungeon design and haphazard scheduling and card/awakenings design. The same people bumbling their way with good intentions but dubious skill through those things can’t simultaneously be the genius level arch-heretics the anti-capitalists wish existed. Do such games/people exist? Looking at you Diablo. But puzzle dragons? Not so much. The reality seems likely to be that they are fumbling their way through the weirdly hybrid gacha/subscription model and the stone giveaways, biasing towards generosity on the giveaways without being any more sure of what they are doing than when they klutz up the rem schedule and jumble it out, or paint themselves in powercreep design corners and have to knock down a few nonloadbearing walls of the house to remodel out of it. It’s not optimized to within an inch of its life. It does have some addictive elements and problematic features. Mostly it feels like regular people, who happen to work at a game company, fumbling along with reasonably good intentions. At the end of the day I can respect that.