Ananta (Game) is either going to Go big or Go home.
My Thoughts with some research and Message to Naked Rain/NetEase
Written in 09-12-2024/12-09-2024 Unknown Time UTC and Published in 11-12-2024/12-11-2024 09:23 PM UTC
Before we go on about it, a brief about Ananta and developers/publisher message.
Ananta (formerly Project Mugen) is a free-to-play urban open world RPG game developed by Naked Rain and published by NetEase that takes place in the fictional world of Nova City. The game seems to focus around a mixture of a Chinese city and Tokyo for the world and it's gameplay is inspired by the likes of GTA and Spiderman with of course the anime game sprinkled on top (we don't know exactly how they will handle the combat). With that out of the way:
My message to NetEase/Naked Rain
As I said during my Vanguard application, my expectation of this game is that it should at all costs not be rushed or this will end up like how many other Triple A games end up in this situation, we beg you and if it is necessary to negotiate with NetEase (unless they read it too) to take all the time necessary, do not at all costs announce an exact date or no date of the game before it is actually polished and/or ready for release and reviewing the NetEase Q3 2024 financial report, your/the publisher should still have plenty of revenue/net revenue/profit to go before the release of the game, at least from what I'm seeing, I hope the publishers will allow you the necessary funding to release the game, but as I see it it should be doable.
Other things I would like to add in the expectations are that I hope you can interact the world of Nova City with other players and friends multiplayer, this will be amazing and add to the fun of Ananta you can have and as I said no rush so if it means it will add development time then so be it! The community also seems to be asking for more male characters and I have to agree from here, if not at launch then after launch may be fine, just make sure we can have more male options like the competitors do!
Finally, I would love to see the ability to buy vehicles and housing with the currency we earn (For housing, in keeping with the goal of the game, make each room of the house interactive, such as the kitchen, living room, balcony and fireplace, swimming pool when available to the player, and finally the bedroom. I hereby acknowledge that this will add development time, and as I urged in the first paragraph, take your time with it!)! This will add to the immersion of the game and also allow players to feel rewarded for their progress, this also assumes we will be fairly rewarded which I hope we will, seriously do not at any cost make rewards unfair, the industry has moved to this point so we should follow suit! And do not make purchases only possible with the premium currency, reserve that for characters/weapons!
Thank you very much for taking my English feedback,
Signing off,
Gorujo.
For everyone else:
To be honest with you, the hype of this game is crazier than what was in the likes of say Neverness to Everness (NTE), it's almost impossible to filter out but I managed to get out of the hype and focus on what I think. However, the hype can be understandable considering what Ananta is going for, but on the other hand almost every gacha like Wuthering Waves (WuWa) if not then NTE or Zenless Zone Zero (ZZZ) especially has been hyped to oblivion, which I'll be honest I was clueless about ZZZ at first until I tried it, but we'll get into ZZZ/Honkai in another article, this is about Ananta.
So what's with the article title? Well, remember when I said:
it's gameplay is inspired by the likes of GTA and Spiderman with of course the anime game sprinkled on top (we don't know exactly how they'll handle the combat).
That's right, while the Gacha gaming community are excited to play Ananta, if we assume or rather if Ananta is going for this core gameplay style of inspiration, I have wondered if they have the budget for it? The answer is yes, considering the NetEase Q3 2024 financial report they should have enough budget [correlating revenue, gross profit and net revenue] to make the game a success, considering also what it's costing Rockstar to make GTA VI, if not for the rest of the games (Note that this is not representative of industry trends but it should give you an idea).
Alright budget is not an issue it seems so they should be able to release the game in it's best state, what about the gaming community? Good question, as I stated before the gacha gaming community is excited but I have wondered what would the average gamer think of this game considering the inspiration it's going for? This assumes Ananta doesn't flop on it's launch there's a potential to impact even Non-gacha gamers interested in games like these that are inspired by other games (Even if not all of them, unfortunately not all are at the idea of "Gacha Games" if unless this will be forgotten that it is somehow. However, the fact is that it already happened with Palworld[1][2] for example, which was inspired by Nintendo's Pokemon and became one of the most successful games in the world). So this is is why I am sending a message to developers in hopes that this will not fail.
The point here is that, hype aside, this has the potential to be one of the successful games next to Palworld, or to flop hard on its tracks like other Triple A games and either not succeed outside the Gacha community or fail completely.
Soo, are you excited?
I want to, however, without any gameplay confirmation, without me trying the game through the closed alpha Vanguard (and assuming I would be allowed by NetEase or Naked Rain to disclose my thoughts as I don't want to pursue legal trouble, also assuming I would be accepted), I won't be able to tell you that I will love this game, nor if it is the best, and optimism should be the key here. By the way, NetEase, this isn't a threat, we want Ananta to be a win-win, not a lose-lose situation.
To be fair to them, after what I saw in the trailer, I was so excited about Ananta that I immediately dropped NTE from one of my next Gacha games to this one. So Announce trailer wise: Yes, but I'm still optimistic unless Naked Rain and NetEase listen to feedback like this and make a successful game, which I hope is a goal we can align with.
So what's next?
Moving forward, we will have to see how things develop for the game itself, as the announce trailer is not enough for us to make a conclusion about the state of the game, we can only speculate about it. However, I can only hope a good ending for it.
If you need to add anything about it (No leaks to stay on the safe legal side and use common sense), feel free to Contact me