Thread:Nep-Nep/@comment-26913812-20160502142844/@comment-24978536-20160513025937

Ugh, screw Wikia, it again decided to simply have the long post that I wrote disappear the moment I click "reply"...

Anyway, I do know that feeling from Summer 2014, the damn compass in that event trolled me hard while trying to find Amatsukaze, though I admit my less-than-optimal set ups were also the cause for many of my failed sorties too. Also, I agree on it being annoying that we suddenly need those useless equipments. Though I have bought some slots, I've still had to scrap all except a few pieces of those rockets for example, can't imagine how things are for 100-slotters. I'll probably get back on the event today (just "probably" though, still suffering from addiction to Metal Gear), so we'll see how well things go for me. How are things going on your end now?

Gacha (I misspelled it earlier) is basically a system where you use a currency of the game to buy a random character to your roster from a limited pool of different characters. Who appears is completely random, and there are no "recipes" like in Kancolle's construction to limit the pool of characters that may appear. There are however, different gachas, usually a "normal", "rare" and sometimes a third "seasonal/event" gacha, each having a different character pool. Normal gacha is easy to afford with the main currency of the game, but the only characters to get from there are common ones. Other gachas with the rare, better and often more interesting characters require an another sort of currency, but of course that currency is hard to earn in the game, usually only as a reward from a few quests here and there. This limits to maybe 10 rare gacha attempts/rolls in the first two weeks of playing and to much less after that. That currency can obviously be bought with real money however.

In gacha games you can pretty much never collect all the characters in the game without paying real money, since even clearable maps don't usually drop any characters (and even if they do, they are common ones). Also, upgrades (read: remodels in Kancolle) for a character usually require a duplicate of that character in the process, so even if you were to find the rare character you want in a gacha game, you may still be required to find the girl/guy once more in order to upgrade her/him. The rarest of the rarest characters usually only have about 1% drop chance from a rare gacha, but thankfully they are usually already in their highest or second highest form, so no need for many duplicates. There are a lot Japanese smart phone / browser games today that are essentually copycats of Kancolle from a gameplay perspective, but unlike Kancolle they usually make money by a Gacha system instead. Monster Musume no Iru Nichijou Online and Brave Girl Ravens, both games I've played a fair bit on DMM are such games for example - though they have some things better than in Kancolle, such as an affection system (and R-18 scenes + a story in Brave Girl Ravens), the gacha systems pretty much ruins things for me.