Whether you like gacha games or not, you’ve probably started pondering whether we really need another one.
Genshin Impact’s gargantuan success has paved the way for dozens upon dozens of copycats, with NTE: Neverness to Everness being the next on the horizon, due out later this month.
It’s something the Arknights: Endfield team is all-too aware of, and it’s doing its best to differentiate its game with automation elements, similar to what you find in titles like Satisfactory.
Speaking with Games Radar, lead developer Ryan explained:
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“There are so many similar titles nowadays. We still think that players are expecting something new. For some open world RPG gacha games, for some titles, they are so similar that players go into the game for one hour and they know what will happen in the next 20 hours. It's like, build teams, fight the dungeons, and get rewards.
Our hope is to make something different for the characters. We actually decreased the cost of building teams so players can try out more combinations, and we are giving out more free pulls in the [current] version and the next version for players to get more characters to try out different combinations.”
Personally, we’ve found it more difficult to unlock characters in Arknights: Endfield than some of the alternatives, but perhaps it’s because we’re not quite as engaged as we are with Honkai: Star Rail and Zenless Zone Zero.
Nevertheless, we do completely agree that the automation elements bring something uniquely different to this game which sets it apart.
Ryan expanded on that:
“[In] a lot of open world games, the world is more aesthetic. Players cannot influence the world. So the factory building part introduced some of the experience from the sandbox games, which makes players feel different. And we find that, on average, players spend more hours [in our game] than other similar games because of the sandbox. The building part is something new to them.”
That makes total sense to us. We’ve spent hours with this aspect of the game ourselves, and while it can be frustrating to get to grips with, it’s a lot of fun when everything works as intended. We’ve even spent time optimising some of our builds to maximise production.
Ryan expanded that the dev doesn’t intend to overcomplicate this aspect; instead it aims to build additional systems that add depth.
Personally we’re excited to see how this aspect evolves because it’s already quite complicated as it is, so it’s going to require a delicate touch to keep existing players engaged without completely turning off newcomers.