Life Makeover Shrine

But first.. cabbage and gacha mechanics

I've been a proud hater of the gacha system, or rather, lootboxes as it used to be called, ever since I first encountered it. My first interaction with lootboxes was in Tera, a Korean MMO. Koreans are particularly infamous for their insidious and predatory lootbox practices in games. Just recently, Nexon, the company behind Maplestory and many, many other MMO's and phone games (including Tera, at some point!), has been fined for falsifying loot box drop rates. Mind you, these drop rates are already incredibly miserable. I've heard it's because gambling is illegal in Korea, so they go all out on game lootboxes because of a loophole. Technically, you always win something with a lootbox (despite it being virtually worthless ingame), and since pixels don't really have a value.. well! I think the same happens with those k-pop cds and photo cards. They have a similar stance on porn, due to porn being illegal, Korean games tend to be extra raunchy and toe the line just a bit too hard sometimes. Mostly with the female characters, of course.

I never bought lootboxes in Tera, ever. Partly because playing the game without buying lootboxes was totally possible, and they were mostly there for the cosmetics. And partly because I hated how expensive they were, how low the rates were, and so on. Fast forward to today, and it seems most gacha games require you to roll on the gachas, it's practically the main part of the game! This is why I'm ashamed to admit I even like this game in the first place. But no other game, not even The Sims 4 with the infinite amount of CC, has characters and clothes this cute... Well anyway, the nature of gacha in dressup gacha games feels a bit different. You truly almost always get something of value, because every item that drops is a clothing item. Duplicates get destroyed and you get a currency for other clothing items. As such, I weirdly don't find this system as insidious and unfair, although I still think it could be way, way cheaper. Despite this, I try not to spend money on the gacha mechanic. I did however spend money in other parts of the game...