Remember Tower of Fantasy? It was one of those Genshin Impact-ish gacha games, with its particular twist, so to speak, being that it’s sort of an MMO. I say sort of, because it’s described as a shared open world, meaning you can see other players, and there are some MMO elements, but its monetisations are much more gacha like. Or, well, they are until tomorrow, November 25th, as in quite a big move developer Hotta Studio is stripping Tower of Fantasy of all of its gacha elements.
That is in one new server, anyway, the Warp server. Once there, you’ll no longer need to pull for weapons and matrices (bits of gear), you can get all of that for free like by simply playing different events and “daily gameplay.” With this there’ll be a bit more of a traditional trade system, alongside a new in-game currency called dark crystals, where you can buy and, well, trade for resources and the like.
There’ll also be a new season system! Not like the weather, like game seasons. These’ll come with different progression styles and play modes, there’s rewards to be earned like outfits, typical season stuff, though I’m not entirely sure if this will be a thing you pay for or not. On top of that, to make it much more like an MMO, there’s some new social stuff, such as a new place called the Crew Base, a space you can just sort of hang out in with other players.
Honestly, specifics are weirdly scant, which is perhaps a misstep given how the game isn’t exactly universally beloved right now. Still, I do wonder if the old ways of gacha are on the way out. Games like Duet Night Abyss have decided to forgo them, and the upcoming mashup between Spider-Man and GTA, Ananta, also isn’t going the gacha route. Here’s hoping more games follow that path.
