Small drama afternoon: people are just now discovering that NTE's dating system only allows you to date women (making it probably the first Chinese yuri gacha)

[u/ferinsy]

It's been known in China for a while, since the last beta (in February), but just today a video by iYatoOfficial is getting viral on Twitter and lots of posts gathering over 100k likes in total have brought it to the general public's attention that in NTE you can't date men, but you can date women as female MC.

It's actually a bit of a flirty friendship, but very clearly intended to be seen as dating since the interactions are a bit too intimate. You can set up to 5 girls to date.

While it flew over my head in February (even thought I often browse xhs and bilibili) due to its neutral reception, the negative reception today is really hard to ignore bc it's everywhere if you follow any gacha fanpage, with several reposts and retweets bashing it (and a couple praising it as well).

This is making some people a bit bitter, specially because the info comes to the public attention a week after Mongil's announcement that they won't release more male characters after releasing the game with a small amount of them (https://www.reddit.com/r/gachagaming/s/Fkub1W2Yyh).

Well, at least they aren't baiting their players into playing a game that only caters to male players (and bi/lesbian women, even if by accident and it ends up being patched in the future).

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Source: https://x.com/i/status/2045495647311433984

[u/Bake-Danuki7]

This was known a while back, but I also remember posts even in the NTE sub where people just assumed they would add more and men by the time launch came around. So while this game clearly was never gonna be for husbando enjoyers, I think many are simply seeing this as final confirmation. I'm sure within the coming months they will have a post saying they will be prioritizing releasing women and will only release men if the narrative calls for it or some such, then we will see people freak out again.

[u/Kim_Se_Ri → u/Bake-Danuki7]

A quick look at ToF cast would've given these people all the confirmation they needed to be able to instantly move on...

[u/Bake-Danuki7 → u/Kim_Se_Ri]

Ur not wrong, but I also don't blame people out of all the modern style gachas only HSR and Genshin have had somewhat healthy male releases. So male enjoyers are simply starving if they enjoy these style gachas and are desperate to latch onto one.

[u/ComedianExtreme7522 → u/Kim_Se_Ri]

HI3 it's like that yet Genshin still released the war it did. Both Genshin and HSR had pretty decent ratios and yet ZZZ released like that. I don't really think previous games are a good reference when the whole point of a new game is to attract new players.

[u/KMinato00 → u/ComedianExtreme7522]

It's sad that ZZZ ended up like that, from any of the Hoyo games, I kinda wished that ZZZ was the one with the better male to female ratio, and at launch it kinda would seem that it would at least be similar ratio wise to Genshin or HSR, with all of the squads having at least 1 male chara on the team. But then the post launch roster end up with barely any male chara being released.

[u/Beelzebuuuuub3 → u/KMinato00]

not only do they release few men, but they're also even making them bait banners before a highly anticipated update, and also always 2nd phase.

[u/KMinato00 → u/Beelzebuuuuub3]

Yeah... I still remember gunning for Hugo thinking that the next major chara would be released in 2.4 like how Miyabi was 1.4, but then Yixuan got released literally the next banner. The same with Banyue being a super cool chara that I look forward to, only for him to be underperforming massively and then the next banner to be ANOTHER female major chara

[u/Sensitive-Ad-4130 → u/KMinato00]

Believe it or not, if there aren't any more hotfixes, Billy seems to be quite strong, very different from what Hugo and Banyue were.

[u/KMinato00 → u/Sensitive-Ad-4130]

That's great, maybe I'll log back in to pull him, but I'm probably still going to stay away from ZZZ just because of their track record. I kinda wished that they made ZZZ as a waifu only game in the first place, because it's kinda clear that they aren't that interested in making male chara, even in the story (at least until 2.4 where i left off) i'm pretty sure all the male chara role within the story is either very minor or very much isolated from the bigger plot

[u/Intelligent_Wind5597 → u/Sensitive-Ad-4130]

He’s still gonna be on a second phrase banner right before 3.0 patch which will inevitably introduce new meta and power ceiling tho. He’s also both Rupture and physical which overlap with TWO power ceilings in season two. Those two archetypes are gonna get heavily anti shilled like Miyabi to sell new meta. This is just what happened to Hugo all over again. It’s not gonna be any different 

[u/drafan5 → u/Intelligent_Wind5597]

Well he is going to be released before the first Wind Elemental character, slightly better than before an overpowered Voidhunter anyway

[u/greatleacher2 → u/KMinato00]

Hoyo are not trying to cannibalise their profits, they are deliberately trying to strech their tendrils into every audience. they’ve had this philosophy since they dropped ToT. ZZZ was their attempt to cater to the “gooner” audience alá NIKKE, extremely obvious from the one shitty human make on release, to the copious (in comparison) levels of fanservice, to the extremely self inserty hangout/movie date functions. They didn’t bother with a good gender ratio because they already have female players playing their other games.

[u/ComedianExtreme7522 → u/greatleacher2]

If they were bothering with that audience, they wouldn't have released a single male character. They would say most just be NPCs.

[u/greatleacher2 → u/ComedianExtreme7522]

maybe not the same exact “ML” audience, but i mean a primarily male audience that heavily favours fanservice. They aren’t even being subtle about it when every female released is conventionally attractive whilst half the males are are unorthodox. Characters like shiyuan are made npcs whilst they release robots and anthros.

[u/KMinato00 → u/Kim_Se_Ri]

Tbh, I can get behind why people might have put some hope that they might add more males since just because the previous game have a certain gender ratio doesn't necessarily mean the next game from the same studio would be the same. HI3 was purely female gacha, but then Genshin and HSR released with probably some of the better male to female character ratio, and then ZZZ release and they have barely added any male chara post launch.

[u/Kim_Se_Ri → u/KMinato00]

It doesn't necessarily mean they will repeat things, correct, but it can mean just that. That very real chance is what should at least be in the minds of people, so if it does happen, it's like "well, shit, I guess that was expected at least".
It's very hard for the higher chains of command in a company to change, so usually the vision a company has, how it does things, tends to stay the same, simply the people that make the final decisions tend to stay the same. It's just far from unrealistic to expect a company to have habits, that's all.

[u/ImitationGold → u/Kim_Se_Ri]

Move on to what? This is every game release now. They just don’t give a fuck about their male characters.

And don’t say love and deepspace please god, I understand that’s THE game but a lot of people (myself included) really enjoy games that TRY with their male characters so it’s not just girl number 548 in “Girls online the video game”

Makes the story less shit everytime and makes the world feel more realistic.

But that never matters it’s just how goonable it is to the main Chinese fanbase.

[u/Kim_Se_Ri → u/ImitationGold]

Indeed, and I can't an answer as to 'where' to move. But what I can say is I have yet to see a gacha that was doing fine or was going to do fine guaranteed change direction because of protests and complaints, at least when it comes to the overall vision for the game. However, what I've always seen is people that want change such as 'more male characters' to chose the worst places to "protest", ones where it would never work.
That's not to say complaints about that specific topic could never bring a change, but there are games in which it never would, and that's a reality, and I find curious that usually it's in those I see the protests being the loudest.
And I get it, it must be frustrating, specially on games that would hold the greatest 'potential' if they were just a bit different, but fighting against an immovable force won't really lead anywhere, it's immovable after all.
So in the end all I always see is people getting "eternally" angry because they can't 'move on', or basically give up at the first sign that they already lost.

[u/UwUSamaSanChan → u/Kim_Se_Ri]

I have no intention of playing. But if they're gonna keep shoving ads for ""mixed"" gacha number 9999 on my TL no matter how much I block and say I'm not interested I WILL take potshots at it. I'm T I R E D.

[u/pipic_picnip → u/Bake-Danuki7]

Going by the quality of “men” they have released so far, they should just save the effort. No one is downloading their game for the that low quality, bland and generic crap. 

[u/Beelzebuuuuub3 → u/pipic_picnip]

didnt they update a lot of female characters throughout the entire development (design and animations) but left all males untouched? lol

[u/JackfruitNatural5474 → u/Bake-Danuki7]

Just like in tof - all playable men will be main villains in story. Bosses as well.