Let’s be honest. Gacha isn’t the most ethical game mechanic due to its monetization system. It has a predatory tendency to exploit players’ fear of missing out. Genshin Impact isn’t the worst offender in the industry, but it’s not the best either. While there is a safety belt that guarantees players to obtain a new 5-star unit, the same can’t be said about their 4-star characters. While some may say that this isn’t important, I would argue that this problem will worsen as more characters are added to the game.
4-Stars Are Somehow Rarer Than 5-Stars
The reason why the Genshin Impact Gacha system isn’t flat-out gambling is the fact that there is a guarantee. When you’re pulling on a banner, you will slowly build pity that will eventually give you the featured character.
Let’s say that you’re pulling on Mavuika‘s banner and haven’t pulled before this. If you want to get the Archon, you may luck out and get her early. However, if you fail to get her when you reach 90 pulls, you are guaranteed to get a 5-star character in your 90th pull. Note that this is called 50/50 since you have a 50 percent chance to get the featured character, but you may also get 5-star characters from the standard banner.
The guaranteed pull happens when you have spent 180 Intertwined Fates on the banner. If you lose 50/50, you will get the featured character as your next 5-star. Unfortunately, these safety belts don’t exist for 4-star units. While the game will give you one 4-star every 10 pulls, it never specifies which one you will get.
You are only guaranteed to get one of the featured 4-star every 20 pulls in Genshin Impact. The issue is that there are three of them in every featured banner. If you want only that one specific character, you still depend on your luck to get that unit.
This is the big flaw of the Gacha system in Genshin Impact. The problem isn’t that big when there’s a limited pool of characters, but there are around 100 of them now. If you want to get that new shiny 4-star character, you can only depend on lady luck to smile at you. I’ve even heard stories of players spending over 100 pulls to get a new 4-star from a featured banner.
Where Are My Copies?
It’s even more egregious when you consider that you want to get copies of those 4-star units. Unlike 5-star characters who are already great with their base version, 4-star are much weaker. Although you can still use them with only one copy, unlocking their Constellation will make them much more viable.
You know what’s the most ridiculous thing about this issue? It’s statistically harder for you to get copies of the three free 4-star units you get at the start of the game than a 5-star. All players will get Amber, Kaeya, and Lisa during Mondstadt’s main quest. While they’re not the most popular units, it’s still comical to consider that you have around a two percent chance of getting her during the 4-star guarantee pull.
Although this may feel like a minor issue in Genshin Impact, I believe it’s important for HoYoverse to address this. They could easily fix this problem by allowing players to pick which 4-star unit they want from the featured banner. They already somewhat fixed the weapon banner using this method. Unfortunately, I think it’s unlikely that HoYoverse will improve their Gacha system since it’s currently making them money from desperate fans.
