Pikangie

Darkpixie99 wrote: »

The gambling mechanics were first brought to attention via EA's Star Wars Battlefront.
Long story short, everything was behind a paywall, and Disney got as mad as the players.

The sad thing is that gachapons and loot boxes have been going on for nearly a decade, yet even gambling experts can't actually read.
Nay, they brashly refuse to even think about losing profitable businesses over a single definition.
According to Wikipedia:
"Gambling is the wagering of money or something of value (referred to as "the stakes") on an event with an uncertain outcome, with the primary intent of winning money or material goods."

What's most tragic is that even if you are informed of the rates, you still don't know what you're going to get.
Hence it is still an unknown variable.
Also, Virtual Goods such as a Homestead Seed isn't a material good, it's strictly virtual.
While it's virtual, players can still place a monetary material value based off of the real world RNG it takes to get the item.
The gold we use to buy the item is earned either through game play, or eternal AFK shop keeping.
The item remains within the game, it can never be taken out of the game, and vanishes into the virtual void when Mabinogi is sunset.
All monetary in game value is lost alongside the game, the moment it shuts down. This means that there is no longer any value.
When the game is sunset, player money has been placed on randomized items in a virtual world that simply does not exist.
There is no value, yet value has been advertised and expressed by both consumer and company.
So while there is no visible value, there is indeed value in each randomized item.
(This is expressed in other games as either a colors system, or Common/Uncommon/Rare/Super Rare/Ultra Rare rates.)

So yes, by literal definition, Mabinogi's gachapons are gambling.
The gambling mechanic is called the false hope syndrome.
In other words, it's hope in getting that one rare item before the in game price skyrockets.
The player bets money, and receives nothing in return but the loss of money.
You could technically argue that gachapons are a transaction scam.

The problem with the "You need to parent/adult better" argument is that people have seen children no older than 10 with tablets and phones.
I'd have to agree that targeting children at such a young age isn't just unhealthy, you're not giving them much of a choice with Pay To Win.
Tell me how much patience you had as a kid, and try to explain how Pay To Win is good to your mental state at that age.

This.
Also, I think the whole point of making gambling illegal to begin with, the reason it's harmful to anyone, is more to do with the psychological effect on the human brain and how shady it is for businesses to use, the exploitation of an extremely common addiction, and addiction being a brain disease... that kind of psychological effect which is pretty much the same in game gachapons.
From a human-compassionate point of view, it makes sense that these should not be allowed since they are taking advantage of those with RL medical disadvantages and endangering the health of those vulnerable (mental health is health), for the sake of making way more money than is needed to keep the business afloat. It should be seen as how harmful alcohol and tobacco are, and very much kept away from at least children (but ideally discouraged to everyone).
Where they could keep the business up fine if they just sold items directly in a cash shop without manipulative RNG mechanics, and kept the game good quality to keep players happy, playing, and spending without feeling tricked, which is how an ideal and fair business should be.

When I visit Japan, I feel a bit depressed seeing their real life version of gachapon which is so prevalent and considered just a normal thing for a long time... Such as RL clothing stores selling bags with random pieces of clothes inside during New Years sales.

And then I return to USA, and see there are also starting to be stores in USA such as Hot Topic doing the same thing now but with various random junk!

It makes me wonder... Without any laws to regulate or limit this, would we have to live in a world where our groceries will be bought via a Grocery Gachapon? Maybe someday when we want to buy a house, we'll have to play a gachapon to get a random house? This is really concerning about what direction we're headed into when Corporate Greed overwrites society's moral compass.

I really hope more countries will start to follow Belgium, because I feel that's the only way to really get gachapon out of gaming. They kept gachapon in their games, and only disabled it for Belgian players, because they care more about the profits than their Belgian players (otherwise they'd offer a way for Belgian players to buy the items such as selling in cash shop). It is clear that they will not get rid of Gachapon until there are enough countries or a major profit country who also will ban gachapon, to the point that it stops becoming profitable for them. I believe if USA did for example, they surely would start to sell things directly in the shop.

I would recommend trying channel 8 of Nao, because that seems to be less populated.

The 3 least populated servers just merged very recently though, due to being extremely underpopulated, so it's extremely unlikely they'll un-merge any server or make any new server. The channels 8-10 of Nao server were newly made, though.

Donk3y wrote: »

Why gachapon? There are enough gacha exclusives already, if they make something, they should make some more free stuff, you know, besides storyline quests.

This. I really cannot stand Gachapon gambling systems and how normalized they are becoming.
If it absolutely has to cost money (which Nexon doesn't "need" to survive, they are multi-billion profit company they don't need donations), then I'd much more prefer if it were just directly buyable in the cash shop, fair and square without manipulative exploitative greedy gambling. If it's just sold directly there, if people want it, they'll buy it. With gachapon, only those willing to gamble and risk getting something of no value to them, or wealthy people, will buy it. Moreover, those who live in countries like Belgium have no access to Gambling systems like Gachapon, they are disabled to those countries, so they have no access to anything Gachapon even though they can play Mabinogi.

I particularly want to see a return of the non-AFK event where you had to protect the Quila base camp from exploding zombies. Except with updated clothing rewards if possible.
The last time I saw this event was when Iria was still new... so many years ago. And back then, everyone was too weak and it used the old loading-time combat, so it failed almost always. So I'd like to see it return when we actually can succeed.

Honestly, pretty much anything that isn't just AFK standing online and hogging computer memory while alt-tabbed in other games, and also things that aren't overly competitive (KSing, contests, etc), but rather cooperative (protect the camp, dragon boat race, etc).

Also bit of a rant, even though it probably won't be taken seriously... I would like there to be just LESS events running simultaneously period. It's excessive and burns me out so quickly whenever I come back to Mabinogi, I feel like my life is overrun with "must win the 3 event's prizes", and it just stops being fun to even log in, feels like a mobile game or job and hogs up my computer's memory when I want to play other games but "need" the AFK event's reward. That is in addition to being more rewarding and beneficial for bots and multi-clienters than to those who actively play. >.<
Events do not feel special at all from how neverending they are, and I do not even have any energy or time left after doing daily event crap to actually do anything like training, leveling, or story progression in the game.

Wolfsinger wrote: »

Harukari wrote: »

Pan wrote: »

I'm going to steal some player's IGNs. I hope you guys look forward to it, because you'll regret excluding Alexina out. S> IGNs, 500m.

Wow that is pretty disgusting behavior. Lol.
I never wanted a merge in the first place, but I wouldn't stoop this low.

Alexina players are pretty salty about this.
Entertainment at it's finest.

They literally just announced this yesterday and it's already turning in a .

Some of them are, frankly. Honestly I had to leave the discord yesterday because of the massive level of toxicity that was going around from ALL the servers. Like one person who was deliberately trolling those on Alexina BECAUSE some of the players mocked the others for being smaller servers? I wasn't even really aware of it, outside that a couple people did it. I didn't think there were that many trash-talking trolls, but I guess that's not really a surprise, knowing some people...
Good gods though, I think I'm going to avoid it until this is over XP Got enough stress in my life without all that to drag what's left of my mood down!

I've ended up muting the discord besides the Announcements and market channels because of how overly lax the Discord is with their rule of "respect". >.< It feels more like a fan-run server, but actually the fan-run Mabi Discord servers don't even come close in how toxic people can be or overly forgiving to trolls, extremely-rude people, and hate speech (as in RL hate speech) the moderation is. They even let someone spout out hateful/violent incel propaganda in it at one point (who repeatedly did it before and even stalked and harrassed my guildie in DMs), and just gave the guy a slap on the wrist, then he later continued to act out lol. Such a person would have been banned or kicked out so fast in any other server I'm in, but I have met multiple people like this in just a few days of the official Discord server.
So yeah, that is why I just ignore the official discord's socialization and just stick with being social in the fan-run guild/raid Discords I'm in. x_x