Source
r/DragaliaLost•
SmithPoint

Future system overhauls in the context of the gacha rates

To start, I have really enjoyed playing DL since launch. I think Cygames has done a great job with it, and despite some of the repetitiveness of the events thus far, I actually trust them to address that.

Regardless, I decided to download and play around with GBF today since I know that it’s their predecessor to DL in many ways. Wow, I was overwhelmed almost instantly by the complexity of their systems (though maybe that’s not warranted). It got me thinking about the future of the systems that we have in place, and how those could potentially change over the long term .

The biggest problem that I foresee is actually tied to gacha itself. We all know that the rates are 1:1:2 as far as Characters, Dragons, and WPs go.

CHARACTERS: For each element, your incentive for pulling significantly drops after you have 8 5 star characters, two teams of 4 for each status resist. It’s also important to keep in mind that you can promote here, so it’s not all about pulling. Once you reach those 40 characters, you aren’t incentivized to keep pulling for characters outside of things such as waifus/husbandos or powercreep.

DRAGON: For each element, your incentive for pulling significantly drops after 20 MUB dragons. Once you reach those 100 dragons/unbinds, your incentive to pull drops significantly outside waifus/husbandos or powercreep.

WYRMPRINTS: This is a mixed bag, and maybe a non-issue because the community attitude loves to hate WP pulls but seems to acknowledge them as part of gacha life. All of us, including Cygames, knows that 1 WP slot is a big problem, especially when the gacha rates push them to us at over twice the rate of characters (because we get free 5* event WP or have required WPs like high dragons). Since WPs are for the most part generic (I realize there are exceptions like the new Lance Skill Damage WP), it means that you can probably get by with currently having 4-5 MUB prints. I’m not exactly sure that an extra slot effectively solves the problem. Let’s say your incentive to pull drops after 10 MUB prints?

So why am I even talking about this?

I realize that what I am talking about is a very far way off, particularly for F2P players, but I think the game runs the very real danger of disincentivizing whales from continuing to pull on banners after they have slotted up a full team of 5 star characters and dragons for each element.

How will Cygames maintain longevity so that DL still exists in 2-3 years? For the people who have played GBF and other Cygames’ games before, how did those games evolve to fix these kinds of issues? What do people generally want to see?

Thanks!

Posted Jan 17, 2019, 8:34 PM UTC · edited

2036
FrostyPotpourri•

I think you significantly underestimate the power of powercreep.

I don't care if I have 5 full teams of 4 maxed out adventurers with MUB dragons. If a new character comes out that's even cooler and stronger, I'm pulling.

37
Andarctica•

This. Pulling incentive is all about powercreep and/or shiny new things. Often even when you're easily clearing content.

11
Lazerz05•

This is complete true. When word got out about Ieyusa with his bleed. Everyone I knew threw everything they had to pull him. If it’s strong people spend money and gems to pull.

2
icameforbelial•

they release more waifus and harder content, cygames has been in the gacha market for a while i have literally no doubt they have years worth of plans for DL

15
SmithPointOP•

Any guesses or predictions on what those plans maybe?

2
icameforbelial•

i have predictions but its just mostly what i want, the void battle system is already something i predicted personally and the new master difficulty we got today is also a sneak peak into harder regular content

new abilities and classes might play a more important role in new harder content where having the right builds can make the fights easier ( just like it does now ) but it’ll just get more variety

im not too worried about DL’s future i just kick back and enjoy the ride while i work on my fav units

10
SmithPointOP•

An example of what I am talking about:

I think a mission system could work for this game.

Let’s say we get a Mission Board for our Halidom. When you check it, there are a handful of missions that you can send adventurers out on. Rewards range from orbs to scales to rarely key/sunlight/damascus fragments. You select adventurers to send out and equip them with weapons, dragons, and WPs. The length of time away is commensurate with the reward. While that adventurer is out, their character, weapon, dragon, and wyrmprints are unavailable for normal play. The level, weapon type, and element of the adventurer and equipped items affects the success rates, and it can go over 100% for bonus loot chance. Similar to the mission boards in the recent WoW expansions, but I think it would fit this game extremely well because it provides players a reason to train extra adventurers/dragons/WPs outside of their completed teams.

15
dukklees•

i kinda like this

2
mythe00•

It actually doesn't take that much to get to the point that you've described. I've pretty much only ever bought weekly packs or special deals and typically only do the daily special pull. After all of the recent New Years bonuses, I definitely feel like I'm at the place where I definitely don't feel incentive to spend money for pulls anymore. Especially after my 4th duplicate Hawk, the risk to reward is definitely below the threshold I'm willing to spend money on.

9
VeroxKinaltor•

Honestly, I got into Dragalia after I found out Cygames was behind it because I used to play one of their older games that they put out with Mobage, Rage of Bahamut, which is now Japan only (rip).

RoB had a lot of problems in that the power creep was REAL. Even if you had the RoB equivalent of a full team of MUB everything's, it seemed that the next month saw that same team almost become T2, or at least low T1.

Now part of the reason was because that game was very heavily PvP, which this is not. But also that’s what allowed it to have longevity. There was a clear sense of competition, you had to beat other players teams in order to do well, which meant if you wanted to continue to perform at a high level, you had to throw money at the game.

Of course, there was f2p options. I definitely did for about 2 years, but the Freebie units that you could get were almost always solidly T3. So while f2p players could play and maintain average rankings, there was a sharp difference between f2p players and people who even spent just 10 bucks a week (as I ended up doing until the game was killed, all told I probably spent about 200 bucks on the game).

So, how does Cygames give DL some longevity? They need to branch out, and really flesh out co-oping IMO. This event has shown one potential idea that they need to explore in splitting objectives, allowing teams to truly divide and conquer. One thing they should not do? Introduce a PvP mode. All that would do is start them down the path that they were on with RoB, where f2p players start dropping off in droves and barely play.

I also agree with icameforbelial in that they’ve been doing this for a long, long time. They’ve learned what works and what doesn’t. I’m excited to see what happens moving forward, this game has a lot of promise. I think this little lull I’ve seen people on here start bemoaning is simply due to the fact that we had 3 huge events back to back to back and that the game is only a few months old.

6
SmithPointOP•

I share your excitement, and I definitely hope that I don’t come off as bemoaning the lull. I’m just curious about where other people see this thing going.

3
VeroxKinaltor•

Oh no that wasn’t directed at you haha it was just a general comment of the state of the subreddit since pretty much halfway through the New Year event

3
Tsubuki•

RoB being one of their oldest games I feel like they realized PvP is unhealthy for a gacha game and they stopped doing it. Their other biggest success was GBF that emphasized some insane grinding but it doesn’t have PvP. Unless you count guild wars as PvP but it only shows up every few months and it is also, again, emphasizing how much you grind.

3
IronPheasant•

how did those games evolve to fix these kinds of issues?

Power creep. Loads and loads of power creep.

Granblue Fantasy. This is what a top tier healer looked like circa 2015: https://gbf.wiki/Lilele

This is what a similar type character looks like now: https://gbf.wiki/Anila

Lilele makes your team do 13% more damage. Anila, ~100% more damage. While contributing more to defense.

Currently they're beginning to introduce characters that have passive triggers so we don't have to press buttons as much. (Pressing buttons being the kryptonite of GBF players. If it isn't at least as strong as hitting the "Attack" button, it usually doesn't get pressed.) Athena and Kumbhira being the examples.

In a few years I imagine they'll have to introduce new ways to go past the existing cap, with a new tier of weapons to grind forever for. It can't be a treadmill if there's ever an end to it.

Otherwise, they'd just sell a finite game. In a box.

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SmithPointOP•

I appreciate you giving a GBF perspective and explaining.

Can you elaborate on how the weapon and summon systems have changed?

Thanks!

1
IronPheasant•

Just the normal power creep on the weapon grids - better stuff gets added periodically that needs to either be grinded or gacha'd for. The latest on that is Fallen Sword's final uncap: ( https://gbf.wiki/Fallen_Sword ) The Hollowsky series is also pretty recent.

Less recent are things like the Xeno weapons - these EX multiplier weapons tend to be high quality mainhand weapons. Which require someone to wait an entire year to be able to collect'em all. It's an insidious retention scheme.

Summons are much more rigid and less prone to being creeped. Still, even they got new stuff with Sub Aura effects added. And a long, long grind in the Arcarum.

1
SuperbiaImperiumM2UR Pls Give me my Harvin Harem Here•

Weapons can be factored into two: Magna (for F2P) and Primal (for P2W; I'll stick with explaining Magna since it has more changes though personally I have a transition F2P -> P2W Agni grid in the works). Magna weapons used per weapon grid used to be dependent on whether the weapons had a +ATK skill. (tbf there's also Elemental, but this'll be too long to explain briefly, so I'll restrain myself from explaining that)

For Wind, this used to be the case until the Tiamat Bolt Magna was introduced (I started playing after this was implemented, so I don't remember much about the period before this).

Fire Magna had a transition from Colossus Canes (+ATK fire magna weapon, but had the lowest ATK, so it was a transition from Canes to Ancient Ecke Sachs, which you have to farm from a different Raid Boss).

Earth Magna used Swords with the vanilla +ATK boost, same case with Water Magna's Leviathan Dagger (there's also a weapon called "Ancient Auberon", but that's another story). Light had two weapons for Magna: Guns (initial), then transition to FUB (using Dragalia's Terminology - the specific term used in GBF here is FLB, basically MUB with a few extra steps) Swords (though the skill offers a +ATK/+HP boost instead ), while Dark had Axes (the Vanilla +ATK boost) and Claws (Enmity (Atk boost with decreasing HP - See Summer Zooey for more Details))

All that was said before is referred to as "Magna I". "Magna II", introduced last year with new High-Level raids, makes variable changes to grids, depending on the type of element. It also marks the introduction of the 120% upgrade to Magna Summons (The main summon is the one which makes your grid more powerful depending on effect), as well as 120% (140 when MUB) Elemental summons.

Fire Grid -> Minimal/No Change from AES, just upgrade Colo

Water Grid -> Additional Harp that Boosts Damage Cap

Earth Grid -> Replace Everything Magna I with Alexiel Katana and Axe (this changes damage modifier from no mod -> Stamina modifier (Higher damage with High HP)). Also, Magna I starting weapon preference changed from Yggdrasil Sword -> Ygg Staff

Wind Grid -> Grimnir Harp introduces Stamina modifier from Gun grid

Light -> Magna II Stamina modifier added with Metatron Bow Dark -> (Not completely sure since I'm not very used to Dark meta)

Other weapons also changed, from the standard Bahamut weapons -> Ultima Weapons -> the new Hollowsky Weapons, aside from Meta changing from "Use Non-elemental (namely Dark) at all situations" to "You need to have a grid for every element" Meta.

Not the guy who originally commented, but hopefully this gives you a view of the transition of grids over time from Magna I and II. As for Summons, Magna 100% -> 120% was the main change. Elemental summons went from +80%ATK/+30%HP (FUB)-> 140% (or 120->130% for Light/Dark, but this uses the same summons unlike the previously mentioned).

1
Xacrifar•

Like all other gacha games, they release more husbando/waifu units. Part of the allure in gacha games is the collection of new units.

In addition, power creep is inevitable especially with the recent gala unit who has dual 100% resistance. My only concern is how Cy Games intend to address original units who suffers from poor kits such as Hawk.

3
SmithPointOP•

To me, the dual resist isn’t real power creep until there is content that requires both. At that point. Dual resist characters have a significant advantage. In the mean time, dual resist is really a QOL benefit which means you need to field one less 5star to round out your roster for each of those resists. What this actually does is accelerates the owner to the point where they don’t need to pull (outside of seasonal, waifus, power creep, etc).

What I am really interested in is hearing how people think the current systems are going to change? We know a second WP slot is coming, but what else needs to or should happen over the long haul?

2
red_graydient•

A few ideas to expand the design space to allow a higher roster count:

  • Boss/raid mechanics that place more emphasis on roles other than dps and healer. e.g. Defense type adventurers exist, but nothing in the game currently necessitates a super built Julietta, Berserker, etc. for example
  • Dragons that emphasize support roles. e.g. A dragon that provides a pure party buff or enemy debuff that is significant, but you would want a mix of these in party compositions as opposed to everyone using the same.
  • Having exploration quests for your side characters. Think Merc Missions from Xenoblade 2 or Explore with Spirits in Smash Bros Ultimate. Essentially, your characters that aren't used in your primary party can be used to farm additional resources automatically, but they are unavailable for use while doing so.
3
jstwildbeat•

I'm also confident that Cygames will do DL right. If anything it'd be nice to have content or boss fights that take advantage of the current battle system. Like having fights that encourage you to switch between your AI party members. For instance a boss in normal mode can be hit by all units, but when it goes into overdrives it floats above the ground and can only be damaged by ranged units (wands/bows). You can also throw in High Dragon mechanics like unavoidable AOE attacks at certain time checks. Which then requires you to bring and temporarily main as a healer.

For me I'm almost always using a blade character for all of my elemental teams. They're great at DPS and have a long reach. There's really no need for me to have a healer when I can use a friend helper skill for that. I just want a reason to play other roles, because right now events/boss fights require very little strategy beyond beefing up your main unit. It'd also bring value to characters with kits that rely on FS to activate buffs or do more damage, because the AI can't maximize it.

3
Erst09•

Whales will continue to pull just because they are whales and there will always be a new unit they want even if they don’t needed. Also powercreep is a thing, just see Ieasu he is is probably the best unit in the game atm.

3
DamianWinters•

They just add more mechanics that need to be resisted by new characters, like maybe this new void will have some kind of void damage/debuff that they will release new characters to combat.

You definitely underestimate how much people care about cool looking characters, they will pull if they look cool or even just to fill the collection. There will also be powercreep that new characters are just stronger.

3
Maxx1986•

Well, other than power creep, the easiest thing they could do, eventually, is to add content where we need more than 4 units, just like it happened in feh, or a lot of other games.

That way, they can easily keep the necessity to obtain more assets (both adventurers, dragons and wyrmprints) in place

2
DarkPaladinX•

Even when you factor all the freebies Cygames like to hand out, it still going to appeal to whales regardless. Cygames primarily makes their money through gacha games like Dragalia Lost and GBF. Even Shadowverse, a CCG, have some degree of gacha mechanic with pack-exclusive alternate leaders (apparently, this is 100% cosmetic and you can craft the legendary cards you need for your decks). A lot of what makes gacha games appealing to whales is primarily the husbando/waifu factor (as well as obvious blantant powercreep characters). With that being said, Cygames can keep the longevitiy of Dragalia Lost by including limited 5* characters with overly broken kits like Gala Sarisse (which is the closest thing we have for power creep, but not in FGO Merlin levels powercreep). Now granted, powercreep is going to happen in gacha games.

​

Using the Merlin FGO example, the powercreep of him is so insane that it has gotten to the point where a particular team comp is rendered obsolete for 1.5 years. With that being said, when it comes to dealing with powercreep, you really can't nerf the characters unless the game has PvP elements along with it (cough, cough...Epic Seven). Instead, most gacha games with PvE environments will counter power-creep with much harder content, but at the offset of making things harder for F2P players. Whales are going to spend thousands of bucks to try to get their favorite waifu/husbando alongside with obviously powercreeped OP characters.

​

However, with that being said, when it comes to content released that requires whale setup, they make sure that the content that would require a whale-ish 5* character setup is entirely optional. Using the Master challenge battle we have recently in the facility event, I can tell you this is almost impossible to do with a 3* adventurer/dragon/wyrmprint setup. (I happen to be lucky with my previous pulls and got Julietta and Lucretia for my light adventurers and even I struggle to beat this challenge battle since I didn't grind enough to get the 4* and 5* weapons). The same goes with the Advanced Dragon Trial battles where you almost cannot do this with 3* adventurers (and not even with an AI setup). But regardless, many gacha games make sure that the general content released (such as Imperial Onslaught and Dragon Trial Masters) is F2P friendly and allow players to go in their own pace. Having played FGO alongside with Dragalia Lost, I've actually seen a lot of players even going to the extent of using lower rarity characters to try and beat the challenge quest, also like most gacha games, there are challenge quests that are almost impossible to beat with lower rarity characters). The same go with Dragalia Lost, as F2P will try to do the cheesiest 3* adventuer/dragon/wyrmprint setup to see if they can beat the hard content with it (and I think the new Master Challenge Battle in this recent facility event is one of the few events that is impossible to do with a 3* setup).

​

But remember, when it comes down to gacha games, always remember that gacha is gambling in a sense (RIP Dragalia Lost and FGO having a chance in the Belgium mobile app market with the "loot box" ruling last year). A lot of Japanese video game companies make a ton of money by encouraging people to gamble with their own money to get their favorite characters. With that being said, between FGO and Dragalia Lost, I feel Dragalia Lost will have better appeal to whales in the long run because Dragalia Lost has "value packs" which has very good value of your own dollar since you get a lot of goodies and sometimes exclusive endeavors (as opposed to FGO where they don't have that kind of "value pack" deals, which the only thing FGO give the best value on your dollar is when they have GSSR summons available, which only occurs twice per year). But honestly, if you are going to spend lots of money in any gacha game, at least be responsible with your own finances.

2
Redcrimson•

The trick to longevity in the gacha game market is not to placate current whales, but to incentivize F2Ps to spend money. Limited collabs, holiday units, alternate costumes, QoL purchases, that's how you get get someone over the edge from "LMAO why would I spend money on a free game!" to "Well maybe if I just buy the value pack..."

1
sl33pym4ngo•

This is absolutely false. The top 10% or so of spenders account for more than 70% of the revenue. Standard business logic is to focus your efforts on the smallest percentage of your customer base that return the largest percentage of your revenue. F2P and Dolphins are completely irrelevant to the gacha economy.

They only have to give the non-whales enough to keep us around so that the whales have someone to show off to.

4
Redcrimson•

The top 10% or so of spenders account for more than 70% of the revenue.

75% of people will believe 90% of what you say 100% of the time if you cite a statistic.

2
sl33pym4ngo•

So I guess that makes your point right then, does it?

Sorry that what you said is wrong, but it is. You don't convert F2P to whales, or even dolphins for that matter. Resources and personality type are hard-limiting factors that prevent this from happening.

Whales are who they are and do what they do for very specific reasons, primarily to be better and farther ahead than the rest of the playerbase. If you cater to the F2Pers (who give you no revenue) and bring them closer to the power level of the whale (who give you all the revenue), the whale has less reason to spend, and they will quit.

1
Maxx1986•

Or... They will spend more.

Think about summoners war. In my experience, I never found a game that hands out so much premium currency to everyone (with events, login, activities etc etc) like that one, and the packs are hella expensive. Yet it's still one of the most profitable games world wide (just look at the charts on the play store).

Because what you said is absolutely true: whales are less likely to spend on a game that has few f2p/dolphins. It's mostly about being better than the rest of the player base, but just like dolphins, they're more motivated to spend on a game that doesn't show itself to be upfront greedy.

2
-CacheMoney•

Yeah but you said it yourself: the whales will leave if ftp players aren’t around. So even though the 90% don’t spend the most money, they’re definitely not irrelevant.

I also would be interested to see if your 10% figure is true for this game, since it encourages spending on other things than the gacha, like monthly dragon unbinds. I bet the earnings are more stratified than in a typical gacha.

2
sl33pym4ngo•

Yes they need to be around to give the whales someone to flex on, but from an economic strategy / marketing standpoint, the company doesn’t care about them. Just enough handouts to keep them around, the rest is whale service. The main point I was refuting was that the strategy is to turn F2P into spenders. It doesn’t work, and takes too much effort.

The 10%/70% figure was from a Tapjoy study across multiple titles, and some time ago. Those numbers will vary from title to title, but in general the distribution should be similar, and the business philosophy has always been and will always be to focus on whales.

Just boils down to the least amount of effort for the largest return- it’s human nature.

1
ChildishPerspective•

Unpopular opinion, but I do not want double wyrmprint. Wyrmprints have the greatest potential for tipping the balance of p2w and f2p. They have the most variety built in and require dupes. Currently dragons are the biggest power gap. If prints become useful, that can easily change.

The saving grace is that DL is not a pvp game, and probably never will be outside some kind of possible leaderboard. However, one of the greatest perks of this game is how much can be done without relying on the gacha, even without summoning at all. It’d be a shame to suddenly hit the wall built into many other f2p games.

Double wp will have a temporary boost for sure, possibly allowing people to defeat High dragons much earlier. However, as HBH proved, endgame content is built around the top. The further the gap between f2p and p2w, the exponentially more time f2p will need to invest.

(If you do disagree, I’d like to invite you to a discussion to go with your dislike. Talking things over is fun.)

1
SmithPointOP•

I agree and disagree.

I don’t think an extra WP slot creates THAT much of a gap or at least nothing that’s intolerable. I have two main reasons doe this. First, they have and probably will continue to lock content behind a grind for mandatory WPs. For high dragons, there is that feelsbadman.jpeg situation where people don’t get to use their WPs. A second WP slot give players a little more flexibility in customizing their character and strategy - which this game desperately needs. Second, the event prints have actually been really good for F2P (looking at you Plunder Pals and Astounding Trick). A year or two down the line, even F2P will be swimming in tons of good prints, most of which will be languishing.

I just think that this doesn’t solve the problem of WPs in the Gacha. How do you make it so people don’t groan when they pull WPs? How do you make them impactful enough that they influence tactics and strategy? Honestly, there are a few changes I would like to see.

  1. No more pity breaking: WPs and dragons/characters should be on independent pity break systems.
  2. WP rates doubled or tripled
  3. 6 WP slots where 4 have to be bound to a character with a cost to remove them. Think skills in FEH.
  4. This is a total aside, but I think dupe adventurers should give a character skill book in addition to th eldwater. The skill book can be used used on a similar adventurer (same element and class) to bind one skill from the dupe adventurer. All adventurers now have one extra skill slot to be customized via the skill books. Again, think FEH skills. There are plenty of great 3/4 star adventurers that can provide great skills to 5 stars and vice versa. This may also alleviate the irritation of pulling dupes.
1
crimson117•

My guess is that besides the usual power creep, they can mix and match elements and resistances. Shadow+Stun, anyone? You'll need a new 5* to get 100% resist.

1
kind_simian:Euden:•

The key thing missing in the OP is player churn. If everyone playing today were somehow day 1 players and the game never attracted new players, game would be shut down inside of two years no matter what Cygames did or did not do.

But that’s not how mobile games survive. They survive by attracting new players constantly and shedding old players constantly. Long term player retention is actually of relatively low importance since, of those that are going to spend, whale or minnow, that spending is front loaded into their first months.

The longest I ever continually played a single gacha game was 18 months and there were three “waves” of whales in that time frame. There were only about 100-200 at a time, a by-product of their competitive tier sizes, but at their peak they were each dropping thousands a month. The biggest ones were BMOCs on the official forums and the devs totally catered to them. However, eventually there would be something that would sour them and they would threaten to quit. Once they hit that point, the publishers just waved bye-bye. They had intentionally crafted the competitive events for this very scenario. Once one crop of whales got fed up, there would be a power vacuum at the top prize tiers that would tempt former dolphin spenders to start whaling and the cycle would repeat itself.

They want you to spend as much as you are willing to spend for as long as you are willing to keep spending it, and then they would appreciate it if you would hold the door on your way out for the dewy eyed noobs who are going to look at the same game that you see as stagnant and dead like a kid views Disneyworld. And then some of those new players will start spending, and some of them will start whaling, and the game will keep going just fine.

0