>>720392898
There's something you need to understand about gacha.
Around 2015, the gacha industry hit critical mass. Regulations started being enforced on it, way too many games were coming out, and it was no longer possible for established devs to pivot into gacha for a quick buck. Tons of games began dying following that period and the industry entered decline.
Two big developments happened in this period. The first was that gacha went way harder on fanservice and games started rolling out increasingly polarized rosters of super sexed up women or incredibly hot men. Coming from an established property or trying to establish a unique aesthetic simply wasn't enough anymore. You HAD to court coomers, even if they were female coomers, to get attention on your game to start because the selection was so big.
The second thing that happened was that the quality of the actual games raised significantly. Mihoyo kind of started an arms race. Gamers simply weren't falling for auto battlers anymore and it was difficult to maintain players in a market space where the selection was massive and people were entrenched. Contrary to popular belief gacha gamers are really picky compared to AAA gamers, so it wasn't possible to simply bank on a few whales to carry everything anymore.
Many studios couldn't afford big AAA productions like Mihoyo though, so instead what happened is that a lot of them started putting budget into story instead and hiring established writers from the industry. When you see that meme about a bunch of gacha games on a train all insisting their game has a great story, it's because it's more or less true. Basically every gacha after 2015 that doesn't have a massive production budget went really hard on writing an intricate plot in order to survive in the market.
