>>725718650
They're still impossibly successful gatcha games, you can't ringfence them out. Plenty of people who play Genshin or ZZZ also play Nikke or GFL2.
>>725718812
Because that's not what the audience wants? And the gatcha audience is one of the last remaining audiences that will push back on companies that try change the agreement.
If you want to have a story where the girls are shipped with other guys you can, a Genshin and ZZZ do that, so does FGO to some extent, and Umamusume has a fair bit of yuri baiting.
They were built from the ground up like that, that's the audience they cultivated. If you cultivate an audience that wants or expects something like Snowbreak and then try pivot into something like Genshin, then people will be pissed.
>>725718839
Case in point, GFL2 made a huge misstep there, because they saw how popular Genshin was and they wanted to try make the sequel along those lines.
The original intention was to have the MC be an outside observer like in Genshin, the fiasco with Raymond was them dipping their toes in and seeing if Genshin style NPC shipping would work.
It absolutely imploded, and rightfully so, because GFL2 was a sequel, and GFL1 hadn't been anything like that. They were essentially pivoting from their original fanbase into a direction they thought might have been more profitable (or maybe just one they preferred).
It was stupid and ridiculous, and it's absolutely right that the team that did that got fired and replaced with the writers from GFL1.
The issue wasn't having other male NPCs, the issue was Daiyan treating the MC like a distant colleague, while being pushed so strongly with this other guy. Thankfully it all got removed and what the story was replaced with was MUCH better.
The MC takes an active role and events will now be about pushing the narrative forward, rather than random side stories.
