No money challenge so far sounds very realistic to me, but no gatcha at all? I'm not sure you can get characters except early game ones any other way. And those starter characters don't even cover full list of elemental powers meaning you won't even be able to solve some open-world puzzles that require certain elementals to interact with stuff. And I'm not sure those crystals can be used for much more than wishes (aka pulls aka gatcha? do I understand correctly it's all synonyms?).

PS: also the tutorial pull isn't forced I think? it's just -20% meaning it's 8 crystals for 10 wishes, but you're free to not use it at all

[–] Vipsu@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

Yeah no gatcha is no gatcha, no wishes so you would have to make due with starter characters and stuff you can earn without pulls/wishes.

Its basically challenge run that also tests how good the game actually is without any gambling elements.

In Puzzle and Dragons it was possible to clear dungeons to get new characters and some where really good. It was also possible to use premium currency for continues allowing one to use brute force methods to clear dungeons. It was also possible to pair your leader with friends leader reducing the need for gatcha.

[–] hisao@ani.social 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

(2) Also, I'm personally more interested in "no money" challenge. I like "gambling elements" tbh and enjoy all kinds of RNG in games: starting from randomized items stats in Diablo and procgen in roguelikes and ending with randomized perks in roguelites and stuff like pulls in Genshin. So for me "gambling elements" themselves aren't something inherently bad and definitely not something I would want to avoid. For me, it's social implications of gambling mechanics that are sometimes bad (in context of people who can't control their spending), but not randomness or mechanics themselves.

[–] hisao@ani.social 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

(1) Well, all I can say for now is that my week of playing wasn't enough to be able to say whether this is even possible at all. Maybe there will be more unlocked characters from regular questing later in the game, but so far I only got a single dendro character (Collei) from a random pull. And I think there were some open world mini-puzzles activated by dendro. I don't think there were a lot of them though. Also they are definitely optional and not a big deal. Could also be possible it was intended for later game players going back with their dendro characters unlocked organically in the later questlines.

[–] Vipsu@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

https://www.zleague.gg/theportal/genshin-impact-no-wish/#%3A%7E%3Atext=By+avoiding+spending+money+on%2CImpact+without+impacting+their+wallets. (Probably some a.i article)

Seems like this is already a thing in Genshin impact and some players have been succesful with it.

Reddit and Hoyoverse forums seem to have handful of people doing this.