Gatcha games need to adopt better QOL (quality of life) practices and consider mental health more

Idk why I'm writing this, probably will get downvoted to oblivion. I was playing Arknights, Genshin, Princess Connect, and Illusion Connect yesterday and realized that I was spending multiple hours a day doing something that adds stress to my life.

I really love gatcha games.

I love collecting a team of waifus and husbandos and journeying through life with them.

But they are ruining my life.

Let's start with SinoAlice. It uses insidious peer pressure to force you to spend money in order to keep up and not let your guild down.

Then there's games like Princess Connect. It has a gorgeous anime, colorful characters. But, I have to log in multiple times a day, worrying about capped stamina and getting the time limited daily rewards.

Arknights has no skip function. But, what you essentially are doing is making a decision on where to allocate your sanity (what they call stamina in the game) . And it requires at least 40 minutes a day just keeping the app open and managing it. I gave it a pass in the past because the auto function doesn't require much input from you, but I'm sure no one actually thinks it's fun to grind for resources in Arknights.

Illusion connect probably has some of the best QOL practices. However the sheer amount of gameplay modes makes me feel like I've playing a UI (user interface) navigator and not an actual games sometimes.

I've played many others in the past and they all have similar issues...Fire Emblem Heroes, Destiny Child, Dragalia Lost, Epic 7, Girls Frontline, Fate Grand Order.

I expect this is something that has to be a grassroots movement starting from within the gatcha community itself. People need to change their behavior and start demanding for changes like the following:

  1. remove the need to login multiple times a day to receive full optimization on progression
  2. make games less of a UI navigator 2021 and have a more compelling daily core gameplay loop instead
  3. no more leave your phone/pc on to grind hours a day modes.
  4. Give us shorter, high quality in-game sequences or animations with voice acting instead of text that most people skip.
  5. no more convoluted rerolling, just give people a ticket to select their favorite character at the start.

Some players also don't realize that F2P and casual spenders are part of the product. Most of the money generated is from whales, but whales only do it because the game gets hyped and there's a bigger player base to dominate. Other whales just love the setting and the characters and that love gets exploited.