The New Arcade Not-a-Gacha

A new buying method has hit the grid. Part conveyer and a little bit "lucky board". Put them together and you have the new Arcade Hud system. 

I was at the event just a few minutes after it opened. Not that I was in  a hurry to see what was going on, I didn't even know The Arcade was back so to speak. But I saw the poster on Seraphim and decided to head over.  

There has been a LOT of conversation about this new method today, both pro and con -- some heated, some not.  Here is the scoop and I will let you decide for yourself. 

*******************

In the beginning there was chaos.   If you had missed the "get a hud" sign on entering (easy to do when things are not loading and you THINK you know where you are going) you had no idea you needed it. The FAQ page on the website did eventually mention a hud, but still not how to GET a hud. HMMM.   Then there was the fact that if you didn't KNOW this was a new way of doing things everything looked pretty much like the old event where you paid to play and took your chances.   

There ARE buttons WAY at the bottom of each gacha machine base saying "Pair" (of course you might have no idea what that means) and Help (which takes you to the help page on the web which is sort of helpful but leaves out some info).

In the first few minutes of the event the machines weren't working for folks in the mirror sim, apparently they were fine in the main sim. Lots of chatter and complaining as folks couldn't play. That did get fixed, but I am not sure how quickly. 

So confusion was definitely the key word of the early morn.  If you play the machine without a hud your money gets refunded, but there is no message telling you WHY and also no message from the spam bot telling you that you need a hud (hopefully they have fixed that).   

There isn't really much to play for in this round (typically called the extra Halloween round) of the event.  Few big name folks were there and lots of empty machines sitting around.  But people ARE playing and here is how you manage to do that. 

1. Grab a hud at the entry to the event.

2. Accept the "experience" and wear the hud

3. Find a machine you want to play.

4. Click on the "Pair Hud" sign and a graphic appears showing you what number is up and the other numbers to follow.  In this case number 7 is what you would get if you paid now and you would get a 7 again the next pull.

5. Click off the pairing when finished playing by touching the  red "X". 

6, Move to the next machine you want to play and PAIR with it. Rinse and Repeat. 

Now there are a few more things you need to know.  Each hud is PERSONAL which means it has a random selection of ball numbers for each non-gacha machine. It KEEPS those number for a day and then rests with different numbers. So -- you can go the next day and get a completely different set of numbers  to play.  Hence my reference to a Lucky Board.   

It is fairly easy to "game" the machines simply by getting alts to go. Items are transfer so whoever plays does not need to KEEP what they win.  In reality with a little work or luck or BOTH you can pick up just what you want at a good price without getting a bunch of stuff you don't want.  That's the plus side. 

While I didn't find anything I wanted to play for, I did want to check things out for myself after finding all the breadcrumbs of information out there.  There were only a couple of machines I was willing to play. The first was a huge set and I wasn't interested in the numbers coming up. The second had the RARE as the first item to buy. I bought it. 

 

This is the rare SHRINE from Dynasty. Beautifully made with great LODs it is fairly high prim (those good LODs I am betting) but would be a lovely backrop for a photo. All for one machine pull. 

So that's the main story and I hope this helps cut down on the confusion.   

Happy playing.