With new gacha games upon us and some games implementing anti-player monetisation tactics such as NFT’s it’s more important than ever to make sure you are not overspending when playing gacha games. In our previous guide to playing gacha games we made a note of what would be detrimental to players when saving for a gacha game character and what sort of tactics companies might use to try make players spend money on a limited banner character.
Here are our top 5 ways to make sure you are not overspending in your gacha game.
#1 Make sure you save up a healthy amount of premium currency in gacha games
Saving up in gacha games is one of the only ways for players to take control of their experience and ensure that they have a stash to draw upon when needed. In many gacha games, there is often a stock market like term that floats around F2P players to HODL their currencies until it is time to spend it on a meta character or a character with a lot of aesthetic value for the player.
Make sure that the premium currency for rolls you are saving is enough for a guarantee in games that feature a pity system and enough for at least ~200 rolls for games that do not feature a pity system.
#2 Only play gacha games that have a pity system
One of the only player-friendly gacha mechanics within these mobile games is a pity system. Pity systems in gacha games allow players to get a character after a specific number of rolls guaranteed. This takes out the RNG (Random Number Generator) from the game and allows players to save up a correct amount prior and know how much would be the limit they would need to spend. Having a pity system in gacha games provides a cap that any player, F2P or Whale can spend and is healthy for the game.
To alleviate the money lost from not having infinite loss, most gacha games would make this pity system a 50/50 type system like Genshin Impact where the player is only guaranteed a 5 star character after 90 pulls but not guaranteed the featured banner character. This tactic is quite familiar however there would still be a guarantee at the end of it, in this case the maximum a player could spend would be 180 pulls in Genshin.
#3 Do not get caught up in the hype on release
Now we know that everyone loves to pull on the day of the patch for their favourite gacha games however it is necessary to point out that patches, banners and events often last for longer than just that 1 day. Most gacha games only update their banners every fortnight or even longer. This gives the player a lot of extra time to save and grind the events available in order to earn even more currency.
The ideal tactic for rolling the banners if you have not saved enough premium currency for rolls is to make sure you are rolling towards the end of the banner. This would also mean you would be less likely to get drawn into spending money to get the banner character as the anxiety and anxiousness in your mind would have worn off. You would also be able to know more about the character and their performance in the game getting a full view before making the decision to spend.
#4 Make sure the character you are pulling for has a use in your team for your gacha game
Unless you are pulling for just the aesthetics of the character or pulling for other reasons like the voice and art style, it is often good for players to take an overarching view of their team and how they play the game. The characters you pull will inevitably be good but only for a period of time before the meta shifts again to another character. This makes it evermore important to assess if the character you are pulling for has any actual utility in most of your normal team compositions or if the character is merely a stand-in.
For characters that have long term usage such as New Jersey in Azur Lane and Venti in Genshin Impact these characters are bound to be useful even if the meta shifts because they are strong in a variety of content and not just locked into a certain team composition or playstyle. Their utility in combat within the game makes them more useful than just being a pretty face and will give the player endless value.
#5 Remember, the gacha game is just a game
One of the most important things to remember is that a gacha game in the end is just a game, it will not change your life or affect you in any real way and therefore you should take a step back before pulling to make sure you are in a healthy mental state first. There have been many horror stories of people pulling characters in a gacha game and spending money while in the zone but regretting their choices later on, this is a typical experience for newer players especially as they are not used to the predatory mechanics of gacha games.
Make sure you are in the correct state of mind by going off social media before pulling and doing it in a calm, quiet location. This will at least give you some breathing room to make sure you are conscious of your decision to spend money if you do choose to spend and not get drawn into what other players might be doing at that time.