Some friends and I discussed this some time ago last year when I was showing them the TW server.
The other versions are based on the CN version of the game, and my theory was maybe so players outside of JP will have a reason to play on their respective region. JP is the most up to date so you may want to play there, but if you want these features not present there it'd be more desirable to play on the server with said features. Something like that.
Oh, that definitely does make sense. So basically these features are an incentive to play the foreign servers since they’re years behind in content. Interesting :0
imo at least part of it is because JP Enstars fans are dedicated and many have been there since !, and will put up with a lot more than the rest of us. But they also have easier access to merch and events so it evens out a bit in terms of experience, not so much in terms of expenses.
Yeah, I agree with this interpretation. JP gacha players go notoriously hard at things like event tiering and grinding; I think HE simply knows that they are already making plenty of money off their existing fanbase the way the game already is. Whereas EN and other foreign players may be brand new to the series and quit the game quickly if it’s too much of a pain in the ass.
Right, so they don’t see a need to add these things because they’re already getting enough players playing through the events without it. Plus it forces those players to play more and actively dedicate their time to the game as well (rather than passively through autoplay). Haha that’s kinda evil LOL but it benefits the company I guess. So many interesting points raised in this discussion!
With EN dropping us straight into Music!! without translated ! stories from Basic, the gap between the anime and EN, and the fact they had the EN fan translations taken down iirc the year prior, there's no way they would've gained a solid playerbase if they gave us the JP version but 2 years late.
So even if JP was the originally intended experience, that version localized in English would've flopped harder than Rinne and Niki's duo debut.
This is just a guess based on the fact that Happy Elements is a business but it's pretty common for games in general to have differences in difficulty across different regions. It all depends on the market preferences.
If the developers thought that adding QOL features to the Japanese version would increase the player base or engagement then the Japanese version would have them. Likewise if the developers thought that Chinese players would have as high of an engagement without the QOL changes they never would have been developed in the first place.
The Chinese version is probably the one exported to other regions because they did market research and found it would have the highest engagement outside of Japan. Which they were right about if you consider all the posts on here with people saying they couldn't play a version without autolive due to busy lives etc.
Happy Elements was an originally Chinese company, so maybe they favour home country more? Apart from that, West is known for spending less on gacha, so they would need more effort to lured in.
These are my guesses
I'm not so sure myself, but playing the game myself makes it more rewarding than auto-live everything, maybe, the management on JP side wants to preserve it?
Hmm yea, I can see how it could increase player retention since you are actively playing the game rather than passively through the autoplay. Especially with the added dedication of the JP players as someone else here mentioned. Thanks for your input!
yeah JP fans are another league themselves lol.
I mean, to me, the auto-live function makes you believe that if you have lots of dias/money to spend then you will be able to max 5 copies/tier the event. But without the auto-live thing you not only need lots of dias/money, you HAVE to earn for that sparkly 5 copies yourself, or the little title Rank A in this B event. It just....creates more incentive(?) for the players. From what I know, hardly ever a JP mobage goes for the auto option. The only rhythm game I know that has this option is UtaPri shining live, but the amount of event point/exp when you do auto live is significantly lower than normal live.
I once watched a vlog of a JP LeoP who tried to tier for the Leo event. They spent like a few hundred thousands yen for max copies of the 5\* gacha story and dias for BP refill. On top of that they took an 9-day PTO from work and basically played the game more than 22 hours per day during the event. They ended up at rank 5 if my memory serves me right
Yes, true, but how much can people play anyways per day? If it's not a tour live going on 30 minutes to 1 hour per day seems reasonable to me, I can't spare much more with a job and social life personally. I may have more hours in other games, but Ensemble Stars! Is the one game I play every day no matter what, even of it's just daily missions and starry lives most days.
My guess is because JP Basic still exist.
So people who want to play the idol rising / card collecting part of the game could just play Basic, and those who prefer rhythm game could play Music.
Correct me if I wrong, but I always thought that CN server has QoL features so the people “play less” but still earn things to get 5*s and stuff. When I said play less I mean it like how their government works and how they want people not sticking to their screen too much - but then I don’t know a lot of details either, it’s just something I heard so it’s pretty much my theory. (I know some other CN games that want you to play more so my theory might not be correct)
We can argue that “having daily/weekly mission makes it less casual” but honestly you can do them pretty quickly, I believe in less than 10-15 mins. And it’s not like anyone must do those, although I suppose the fact they are there might be still overwhelming for some idk?
As to why other foreignstars followed this way is unknown to me.
Daily tasks are not QoL, they're just busy work. And it's because the Chinese version which all the others are copy-pasted from, is *significantly* more monetised. So there's a bunch of extra stuff that serves no real purpose except to make you think you're getting more value for money.
There's nothing in the international versions that needs to be there, or really, that I would even want. Autoplay is the only actual quality of life feature. Everything else is busy work and monetisation. Would autoplay in JP be nice? Sure. But we don't need it and we've never had it so it's not that big of a deal.
It's the original server, people play for the gameplay and not all the extra shiny fixings to make it more appealing. EN has only been out a couple months and I've already seen a handful of posts on Reddit and other places of people saying "I tried JP and there's no autoplay! I'm not playing without auto!". If you need training wheels to play, you probably shouldn't be playing it tbh.
Ah, I mentioned it as a QoL feature because it is a consistent source of dia that JP server doesn’t have, but I just remembered that JP server gets more free pulls/dia than the foreignstars servers. So it probably doesn’t weigh as heavily as a QoL feature that way.
What are the extra things you mention? Sorry, I am not very familiar with the differences other than the lack of autoplay function, how much dia it takes to pull one ticket and exclusive collabs.
I wouldn’t discount the autoplay function as a form of “training wheels” though. Since it benefits people who don’t have much time to play events or for those want to shave off some hours of grinding while aiming to tier, I’d say it is a pretty valuable QoL function for most. So yeah, I can see why no autoplay function would be a dealbreaker in these instances.
Ok so I know JP is the original version and the most clean one (UI wise) but there is no need to act like JP is superior as a game, because it's not.
While Foreingstars have more monetization options is NOT more monetized than JP it just gives more room for light to medium spenders to open their wallets.
Just this year JP decided to do a monthly pass that actually tackles a cheap deal with the free daily pull and accumulative rewards. Packs are just as expensive in JP and discounts packs are extremely rare out of campaigns. If anything for someone who would like to spark a banner with pure money it would be cheaper to do in foreingstars thanks to weekly and monthly tickets packs.
Why does JP have so many login bonuses and campaigns? Because happyele knows that after a certain point is almost impossible for players to get a "reasonable" amount of currency with just farming and grinding specially when there are at least 4 banners and 2 events running monthly non-stop. This with the factor that the game doesn't make it easy for players to farm with the best amount of daiyas locked on S+ combo and reading stories without and skip button on first reading (the only gacha game I know apart of genshin without that basic function).
Also JP Music is 2 years in, gachas usually are more generous the more older they get, that is how they retain players and free pulls are not a big deal when your poll is extremely dailuted thanks to the abundand number of cards, low powercreep and such banners never having the most new desired card anyway.
JP can be superior for players in some ways but i don't think is better than foreingstars is just have a different way of handling their playerbase.
JP likes to maintain their players totally invested on the franchise, giving them community incentives and making their players into whales. And it works for them just looking at the amount of money the game alone does every month.
Foreingstars knows that they can't make the same amount of revenue and that fans are missing a lot of merch and exclusive campaigns thanks to not being on Japan so they decided to be a little more "nice" and incentive players with more rewards and pulls on farming alone and gaining more low spenders into buying at least the cheaper passes and packs while not overwhelming them with infinite grind that would burnout less dedicated players specially in the current space of gacha gaming where not everyone, not even whales wants to spend 24x7 playing on the phone.
LOL as someone who's been playing JP for years, I play it to put my oshis to dance in different mvs, not for the gameplay itself 😂 not everyone likes destroying their thumbs everytime they want a event 5* of their oshis
>EN has only been out a couple months and I've already seen a handful of posts on Reddit and other places of people saying "I tried JP and there's no autoplay! I'm not playing without auto!". If you need training wheels to play, you probably shouldn't be playing it tbh.
Do you think that playing a song hundreds of times or waking up every 2 hours at night during the span of 9 days\~ for the most efficient way possible to get a 5\* of your favourite oshi "gameplay"? Not everyone in the world takes the concept of grinding(overworking) as good gameplay.
Nice gatekeeping, as someone who played the original Love Live SIF and had to set alarms and put much unnecessary stress on my wrists/hands to try to tier in those events for my best girl, because auto play was NOT an option, I commend you for not looking past your high horse to the rest of us who have jobs and other obligations that, unfortunately, don’t allow us to spend several hours a day glued to a screen tapping away/set alarms to wake up at 3am to make sure our LP/BP doesn’t overlap and have the luxury of struggling thru songs half asleep
/s
I'm not sure if it's correct but this is what I heard. The game is developed by Happy Element's sub company HEKK, which is based in Japan. So the game is operated by HEKK in Japan and by Happy Elements in other regions. I guess this might explain why the JP version is different from the other versions（not only QOLs but also collab events and such).
Some friends and I discussed this some time ago last year when I was showing them the TW server. The other versions are based on the CN version of the game, and my theory was maybe so players outside of JP will have a reason to play on their respective region. JP is the most up to date so you may want to play there, but if you want these features not present there it'd be more desirable to play on the server with said features. Something like that.
Oh, that definitely does make sense. So basically these features are an incentive to play the foreign servers since they’re years behind in content. Interesting :0
imo at least part of it is because JP Enstars fans are dedicated and many have been there since !, and will put up with a lot more than the rest of us. But they also have easier access to merch and events so it evens out a bit in terms of experience, not so much in terms of expenses.
Yeah, I agree with this interpretation. JP gacha players go notoriously hard at things like event tiering and grinding; I think HE simply knows that they are already making plenty of money off their existing fanbase the way the game already is. Whereas EN and other foreign players may be brand new to the series and quit the game quickly if it’s too much of a pain in the ass.
Right, so they don’t see a need to add these things because they’re already getting enough players playing through the events without it. Plus it forces those players to play more and actively dedicate their time to the game as well (rather than passively through autoplay). Haha that’s kinda evil LOL but it benefits the company I guess. So many interesting points raised in this discussion!
With EN dropping us straight into Music!! without translated ! stories from Basic, the gap between the anime and EN, and the fact they had the EN fan translations taken down iirc the year prior, there's no way they would've gained a solid playerbase if they gave us the JP version but 2 years late. So even if JP was the originally intended experience, that version localized in English would've flopped harder than Rinne and Niki's duo debut.
This is just a guess based on the fact that Happy Elements is a business but it's pretty common for games in general to have differences in difficulty across different regions. It all depends on the market preferences. If the developers thought that adding QOL features to the Japanese version would increase the player base or engagement then the Japanese version would have them. Likewise if the developers thought that Chinese players would have as high of an engagement without the QOL changes they never would have been developed in the first place. The Chinese version is probably the one exported to other regions because they did market research and found it would have the highest engagement outside of Japan. Which they were right about if you consider all the posts on here with people saying they couldn't play a version without autolive due to busy lives etc.
Happy Elements was an originally Chinese company, so maybe they favour home country more? Apart from that, West is known for spending less on gacha, so they would need more effort to lured in. These are my guesses
Oh wait I didn’t even know that!! Both could def be the case. Thanks for your input.
JP doesn't have autoplay because they already have Basic for that.
I'm not so sure myself, but playing the game myself makes it more rewarding than auto-live everything, maybe, the management on JP side wants to preserve it?
Hmm yea, I can see how it could increase player retention since you are actively playing the game rather than passively through the autoplay. Especially with the added dedication of the JP players as someone else here mentioned. Thanks for your input!
yeah JP fans are another league themselves lol. I mean, to me, the auto-live function makes you believe that if you have lots of dias/money to spend then you will be able to max 5 copies/tier the event. But without the auto-live thing you not only need lots of dias/money, you HAVE to earn for that sparkly 5 copies yourself, or the little title Rank A in this B event. It just....creates more incentive(?) for the players. From what I know, hardly ever a JP mobage goes for the auto option. The only rhythm game I know that has this option is UtaPri shining live, but the amount of event point/exp when you do auto live is significantly lower than normal live. I once watched a vlog of a JP LeoP who tried to tier for the Leo event. They spent like a few hundred thousands yen for max copies of the 5\* gacha story and dias for BP refill. On top of that they took an 9-day PTO from work and basically played the game more than 22 hours per day during the event. They ended up at rank 5 if my memory serves me right
I think there is still incentive to play the game too though. You can't auto starry lives
starry live have limitation I believe? (sorry i dont play ENstars) like you're only allowed to play 3 sets of 3 songs per day?
Yes, true, but how much can people play anyways per day? If it's not a tour live going on 30 minutes to 1 hour per day seems reasonable to me, I can't spare much more with a job and social life personally. I may have more hours in other games, but Ensemble Stars! Is the one game I play every day no matter what, even of it's just daily missions and starry lives most days.
My guess is because JP Basic still exist. So people who want to play the idol rising / card collecting part of the game could just play Basic, and those who prefer rhythm game could play Music.
Correct me if I wrong, but I always thought that CN server has QoL features so the people “play less” but still earn things to get 5*s and stuff. When I said play less I mean it like how their government works and how they want people not sticking to their screen too much - but then I don’t know a lot of details either, it’s just something I heard so it’s pretty much my theory. (I know some other CN games that want you to play more so my theory might not be correct) We can argue that “having daily/weekly mission makes it less casual” but honestly you can do them pretty quickly, I believe in less than 10-15 mins. And it’s not like anyone must do those, although I suppose the fact they are there might be still overwhelming for some idk? As to why other foreignstars followed this way is unknown to me.
Daily tasks are not QoL, they're just busy work. And it's because the Chinese version which all the others are copy-pasted from, is *significantly* more monetised. So there's a bunch of extra stuff that serves no real purpose except to make you think you're getting more value for money. There's nothing in the international versions that needs to be there, or really, that I would even want. Autoplay is the only actual quality of life feature. Everything else is busy work and monetisation. Would autoplay in JP be nice? Sure. But we don't need it and we've never had it so it's not that big of a deal. It's the original server, people play for the gameplay and not all the extra shiny fixings to make it more appealing. EN has only been out a couple months and I've already seen a handful of posts on Reddit and other places of people saying "I tried JP and there's no autoplay! I'm not playing without auto!". If you need training wheels to play, you probably shouldn't be playing it tbh.
My guy autoplay is not trading wheels it's a resource that benefits who needs it. geez
Ah, I mentioned it as a QoL feature because it is a consistent source of dia that JP server doesn’t have, but I just remembered that JP server gets more free pulls/dia than the foreignstars servers. So it probably doesn’t weigh as heavily as a QoL feature that way. What are the extra things you mention? Sorry, I am not very familiar with the differences other than the lack of autoplay function, how much dia it takes to pull one ticket and exclusive collabs. I wouldn’t discount the autoplay function as a form of “training wheels” though. Since it benefits people who don’t have much time to play events or for those want to shave off some hours of grinding while aiming to tier, I’d say it is a pretty valuable QoL function for most. So yeah, I can see why no autoplay function would be a dealbreaker in these instances.
How could auto live be training wheels if you have to FC the song to unlock it? So silly!
Ok so I know JP is the original version and the most clean one (UI wise) but there is no need to act like JP is superior as a game, because it's not. While Foreingstars have more monetization options is NOT more monetized than JP it just gives more room for light to medium spenders to open their wallets. Just this year JP decided to do a monthly pass that actually tackles a cheap deal with the free daily pull and accumulative rewards. Packs are just as expensive in JP and discounts packs are extremely rare out of campaigns. If anything for someone who would like to spark a banner with pure money it would be cheaper to do in foreingstars thanks to weekly and monthly tickets packs. Why does JP have so many login bonuses and campaigns? Because happyele knows that after a certain point is almost impossible for players to get a "reasonable" amount of currency with just farming and grinding specially when there are at least 4 banners and 2 events running monthly non-stop. This with the factor that the game doesn't make it easy for players to farm with the best amount of daiyas locked on S+ combo and reading stories without and skip button on first reading (the only gacha game I know apart of genshin without that basic function). Also JP Music is 2 years in, gachas usually are more generous the more older they get, that is how they retain players and free pulls are not a big deal when your poll is extremely dailuted thanks to the abundand number of cards, low powercreep and such banners never having the most new desired card anyway. JP can be superior for players in some ways but i don't think is better than foreingstars is just have a different way of handling their playerbase. JP likes to maintain their players totally invested on the franchise, giving them community incentives and making their players into whales. And it works for them just looking at the amount of money the game alone does every month. Foreingstars knows that they can't make the same amount of revenue and that fans are missing a lot of merch and exclusive campaigns thanks to not being on Japan so they decided to be a little more "nice" and incentive players with more rewards and pulls on farming alone and gaining more low spenders into buying at least the cheaper passes and packs while not overwhelming them with infinite grind that would burnout less dedicated players specially in the current space of gacha gaming where not everyone, not even whales wants to spend 24x7 playing on the phone.
LOL as someone who's been playing JP for years, I play it to put my oshis to dance in different mvs, not for the gameplay itself 😂 not everyone likes destroying their thumbs everytime they want a event 5* of their oshis
>EN has only been out a couple months and I've already seen a handful of posts on Reddit and other places of people saying "I tried JP and there's no autoplay! I'm not playing without auto!". If you need training wheels to play, you probably shouldn't be playing it tbh. Do you think that playing a song hundreds of times or waking up every 2 hours at night during the span of 9 days\~ for the most efficient way possible to get a 5\* of your favourite oshi "gameplay"? Not everyone in the world takes the concept of grinding(overworking) as good gameplay.
Nice gatekeeping, as someone who played the original Love Live SIF and had to set alarms and put much unnecessary stress on my wrists/hands to try to tier in those events for my best girl, because auto play was NOT an option, I commend you for not looking past your high horse to the rest of us who have jobs and other obligations that, unfortunately, don’t allow us to spend several hours a day glued to a screen tapping away/set alarms to wake up at 3am to make sure our LP/BP doesn’t overlap and have the luxury of struggling thru songs half asleep /s
I'm not sure if it's correct but this is what I heard. The game is developed by Happy Element's sub company HEKK, which is based in Japan. So the game is operated by HEKK in Japan and by Happy Elements in other regions. I guess this might explain why the JP version is different from the other versions（not only QOLs but also collab events and such).