So, I am going to take this in mind of a game developer, instead of a player.
As a game developer, many ideas for your game come to your head, and majority of which, are absolute trash. But, some ideas are good enough to tell the rest the development crew. After the development looks into this idea, they decide whether or not it is worth trying. If it’s worth trying, they program something like a crash test, like a level with mostly blank sprites. They try it, see if it works, and see if it’s enjoyable.
They keep testing and changing rules until they feel like it’s refined and well done. Afterwards, they decide if it’s worth adding to the game. If it is, they temporarily release it to the public in an update. (Like Ceobe’s Fungimist) They see how the public likes it. If they public really enjoys it, the developers are overjoyed, and will sometimes start making a follow-up. In Arknight’s case, it was followed-up by the permanent, and refined, Crimson Solitaire.
So what does this have to do with Alternates?
So our first alternate, Lava, started as an idea. An idea that was a simple question, “What if Lava wasn’t a three-star?”. So, they likely follow the process above, creating something brand new for their game. They released Lava later, but it wasn’t particularly a success. However, Hypergryph liked this idea, so they started thinking of a different way to do it.
Our next alternate, Skadi, probably came to mind whilst trying to think of an operator didn’t typically use, to cause the least amount of commotion. They likely thought that an operator that is nothing like original would give more reason to use both operators, versus just the alternate.
Sadly, Skadi still wasn’t as great of a success as they hoped for. Still, they really liked the idea. So they tried again, but this time with a more popular operator, Ch’en. I believe their goal this time was to create an operator similar to the more used operators, such as Surtr. Ch’en was a much bigger success, but something still wasn’t right for them. The original goal was to take a low rarity operator and turn them into a higher rarity one.
They tried again, this time it was Kroos. Let’s just say that Kroos wasn’t very satisfying for the community.
That’s where Specter comes in, an operator that a lot people like and use. This time, they changed the arch-type, whilst keeping the same playstyle that people like. All this while keeping the original goal of turning them into a higher rarity operator.
Now I honestly like the idea and I admire their perseverance. With how easy it is to give up on something, this is something they have really been pushing to get it right.
Do I think of this as a cash-grab? Absolutely not. With as fair as it is to say they are hard to obtain, I don’t think it’s fair to say it’s a cash-grab, especially since they will probably get reruns. 300 pulls to get guaranteed operator from the banner? Eh, it’s expensive, but I just think of it as both a pity System and an extra reward for those who pay money.
I do believe though, that once they are content with the results, they will slow down on releasing new alternate operators.
s , Ashlock as the rate-up 5
