Be Careful What You Wish For: Gacha Mechanics In Once Human

It's been a while since I last found myself playing a new game that others in this part of the blogosphere were also playing - and writing about. I'm going to have rate the experience "Mixed", as Steam would have it. On the one hand, it's great to read other peoples' takes on the gameplay, the story and the setting but things can get way too spoilerific for my taste, even just in screenshots.

Every time someone posts about Once Human I'm torn between wanting to know what they think about the stuff I've already seen and not wanting to know what they've found that I don't know about yet. I haven't even opened Heartless Gamer's post on Once Human Surprises because I know he's much further into the storyline than I am and I'm scared of what I might learn. 

Ditto Scopique, who I'm sure has also progressed much faster through the storyline than me. Also the title of his latest post on the game - Once Human, Twice Shy, makes me think he's going to tear it apart and I don't really want the negativity. (Apologies to Scopique if that's a misinterpretation but titles are there to do a job and that's the job that one did on me. Great title, though.)

I did read Azuriel's Impressions post because I figured - it's a first impressions post! How spoilery could it be? Well, quite spoilery as it turns out, although in an interesting and useful way.

In the post Azuriel compares the game to the Fallout series, specifically Fallout 76, an impression shared by Nimgimli in a comment here. As I've said, I've never really gotten on with the Fallout games for a variety of aesthetic, conceptual and gameplay reasons but the similarity is fairly apparent just from what I've read. 

That didn't surprise me but something Azuriel said in a reply to a comment I made did. He referred to a "gacha arcade game" within Once Human, which I initially misread as a description of Once human itself but by which he was actually referring to the Wish Machine, something I'd encountered in beta but completely forgotten.

I thought I'd posted something about the Wish Machine back then but if I did I can't find it now. Just a picture in the Mid-Beta Review to prove I knew about it. From memory, at that time the machine was just a fun mini-game that gave trivial rewards. I seem to recall trying it a couple of times then not bothering any more.

From things I've read since, it appears the functionality changed in later testing until we get to the current Live situation, where the Wish Machine becomes a very important tool of progression. As Azuriel puts it "the Wish machine unlocks gun blueprints that are absolutely stronger than I have access to currently."

It certainly does and a lot more, too. It unlocks Legendary weapons and Armor sets. The machine is very clearly not a toy any more. Is it a gacha game, though?

Hell yes! It is precisely what Azuriel said it was: a gacha arcade game. I'm so used to hearing the term "gacha game" used to describe a specific genre of online video games, largely popularized in the West by the enormous success of Genshin Impact, that I didn't realize he was being entirely literal.

For the one or two people reading this who might not know (Actually, I did know and could swear I'd written about it already...) but had forgotten, the term "gacha", as used in online gaming, is a loan-word borrowed from Japanese, where it refers to those machines you often see outside supermarkets, (Where I live, at least.) that dispense small toys randomly when you insert a coin and turn a handle.

Apparently you can also get arcade versions, where you play a simple game and the same thing happens, although I have to say I'm finding that surprisingly hard to verify. None of the photos or descriptions I've found shows toys being delivered by those kinds of devices.

That's exactly what the Wish Machine is like though. It's a Whack-A-Mole game in a classic arcade cabinet that you can get through a quest in Deadsville or simply craft by spending the necessary mimetics to open the option on the tree. I made mine last night and almost immediately, in fact possibly as a direct result, also received the quest, the main purpose of which appears to be to give some lore-related context to the whole thing.

The Wish Machine in the quest is a Deviant by the name of Mr. Wish, who turns up outside Deadsville and freaks out the guards. As the local Mayfly, a status extraordinarily similar to being one of the A-Team, namely an itinerant do-gooder recognized by those in the know and called upon to fix pretty much any local problem, naturally the guards want you to go talk to the thing because, yes, it can talk...

I quite like the lore element although like most things in the game (And indeed most lore in most games...) it's hand-waving nonsense. There's a lot of stuff about Space and Time but in the end it comes down to loot, just like always.

And it's good loot, too. I'm not up to speed with all the color-coded qualities in Once Human but I've played more than enough games to know Purple is always good and Orange is usually even better. There are lots of purple and orange items you can win and that ought to be encouragement enough for anyone to drop some coins and pull the handle.

At this point I ought to make it quite clear that no actual money is changing hands here - or at least not necessarily. This might be a gacha machine but Once human is not a gacha game per se. The Wish machine takes an in-game currency called Starchrom and there are numerous ways to get some. I'd list them all but GameRant already did an exemplary job of that, along with a very clear description of how to spend it in the Wish Machine, so I'm just going to link to their excellent guide.

As they explain, if you have the patience of a five-year old and the disposable income of a trust fund brat you can just pony up for the inevitable Battle Pass, which comes with a Starchrom stipend. Otherwise, just play the game and the necessary coins will rain down. I didn't even know what they were for and I certainly didn't go looking for them and yet, by the time I made my Wish Machine, I already had over three thousand of the damn things.

After my first pull I had a thousand fewer. Not because it's a thousand a pull (I think it's 500 but I got a 90% discount for my first ten pulls. Or something) but because I had no clue what I was doing so I just picked what looked like the most obvious buttons to press and that's what it cost. I've read several guides since and frankly I still don't really understand the intricacies but the gist is spend Starchrom, get blueprints, get more Starchrom, repeat.

First time out, I got a Purple rifle (In more ways than one.) along with a bunch of lesser items. Then I went off to do something else, ran into a world event, had a couple of people join me, beat it and ended up with more Starchrom than I started with - so I immediately went and had another go.

If I had the patience I was taking other people to task for not having earlier, I'd stop playing the gacha game and just save my Starchrom for the things I really want. Always assuming I had any idea what those might be. That's because, if you prefer, you can opt right out of the gacha part and just buy what you want straight from the machine.

The Wish Machine is really just a gacha skin for a game system much more familiar to Western players: a Token shop. The Blueprint Store, accessible from the Wish Machine, contains all the same items you can win, at prices that, while fairly steep, are by no means unaffordable, especially given you don't have to waste any currency on things you neither need nor want. 

I have to say that for me rolling the dice and seeing what comes up is usually more fun than just buying stuff from a storefront, something I remember first seeing introduced in Dark Age of Camelot, much to my displeasure at the time. I'm a long-standing supporter of most kinds of randomized loot systems provided they only require in-game resources and getting to hit things with a mallet while I'm spinning the wheel just adds to the entertainment. Still, it's always nice to know you have the choice.