Twitch streamer Lacari spent over $2,000 playing Genshin Impact to get his hands on a five-star character. Though Genshin Impact is free-to-play, many players are dedicating hundreds, if not thousands of dollars to pulling high-tier characters.
This is the quintessential gacha system found in free-to-play games such as MiHoYo's newest launch. Getting those higher-ranking characters may not be necessary to play the bulk of Genshin Impact's content, but the systems behind it may be addictive for some gamers.
Lacari, who has been streaming his experience with Genshin Impact, set out on a near-impossible journey to unlock all characters in the Chinese game. A few characters are given to the player for free at the beginning, and a few high-star characters are provided with free in-game wishes and accomplishments like reaching Adventure Rank 20. Otherwise, most four and five-star character need to be rolled for using the gacha system. Collecting them all is difficult, but Lacari decided to do it anyway.
After spending $1500 to try his luck at Genshin Impact's gacha system, friends watching the Twitch stream began making fun of him in chat. "Do you know the chances of getting a five-star?" One asked. "It's 0.6 percent." They continued to call him a loser for spending so much on in-game characters until Lacari got the five-star character he was after: Keqing, a sword-wielding user of Electro. However, he still had seven more to try and pull.
This gacha system found in the free-to-play model has been controversial alongside loot boxes, which many decry for adding additional transactions for random prizes and strong items on top of a game's main price tag. Titles like Genshin Impact are free upfront, however, so interested players won't need to put down any money for dozens of hours of gameplay if they would rather avoid it.
It's only once the player reaches the more difficult areas of the game that four or five-star characters and weapons may become necessary, and even once this money is allocated to getting Wishes there's no guarantee that the player will get a higher-ranking character. There's an extremely low chance of winning a five-star Genshin Impact character, less than 1 percent, so players should think things through before following in Lacari's footsteps and trying to collect them all.
Genshin Impact is out now for mobile devices, PC, and PS4, with Switch and PS5 versions coming at an undetermined date.
