In March, developer Netmarble revealed Ni no Kuni: Cross Worlds – new F2P RPG for PC and Mobile. Although it was warmly received when it was first announced, Cross Worlds had a not very successful debut. Fans expected a traditional RPG, but what they got was a gacha game and worse, a gacha revolving around electronic money. Players can exchange ingame items for in-game tokens. The above tokens can be traded for the developer’s own cryptocurrency, copper Marblexand can then be exchanged for other cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.
It’s a complex exchange system, but this element of the game doesn’t seem to have enough depth. In a post on the gachagaming subreddit, user Tezoze complained about the sheer amount of activity related to Territe – main currency in the game. Most everything in the game currently requires currency, but with Marblex, players can purchase “game-breaking things”.
Tezoze said “it looks like you can buy the best pet in the game right from the store.” Using cryptocurrency eliminates the need to pay to unlock things through traditional gacha mechanics, and the only way to earn this currency without spending money on it is through PvP – a capital mode has become seriously unbalanced compared to the monetary system. As a result, even the “whales” are not interested in interacting with the above system simply because they have nothing else to do when they already own the best items.
Cross Worlds is Netmarble’s first foray into cryptocurrency and NFTswhich may somehow explain the new approach, but that’s unlikely to assuage fans’ frustrations.
