I have no idea where a lot of the backtalk of Arknights: Endfield has come from, but it feels like it isn’t steeped in reality. I have been playing Arknights: Endfield Beta Test II since even before the Beta went live at the Arknights: Endfield Event last month, but it still seems like information is coming out like a floodgate that is just straight up not true. A lot of the misinformation comes from the gacha side.
“The Gacha Rates Are Worse Than The Other 3D RPG Games.”
No, they are not. Let’s take this on a very simple route. Genshin Impact has the most prominent system currently, with a straight-up 90 summon hard pity that gives you a 50/50 chance to get the rate up character or an unfeatured 5-star character. The rate for each pull is 0.6% of grabbing a 5-star character. When you reach 75 summons, you get a soft pity. When the rates are now increased with each summon that isn’t a 5-star character. The percentage increases until summon number 90, where it is straight up a 100% chance at grabbing a 5-star character.
Let’s turn the attention to Arknights: Endfield. Banners in Arknights: Endfield are slightly different, though, than Genshin Impact in that you don’t use the same resources to summon on the character banner and on the weapon banner. Weapon banner uses arsenal tokens, which are given to the player for summoning on the character banner. Whereas in Genshin, the weapon banner uses primogems, which is the same currency as the character banner. The rate of a 6-star character (The equivalent of a 5-star in Genshin Impact) is 0.8%. Hard pity is at 80 pulls, which is a 50/50 chance of grabbing the featured banner unit. One big change in the Arknights Endfield character banners is that there are only characters. Genshin has a mix of weapons and characters, with weapons being far more likely to get with having 3-star weapons.
“Pity Doesn’t Carry Over”
This one is a more complicated matter. In Arknights: Endfield, there are two pity types. The first is the one we already went over, Arknights: Endfield has a hard pity at 80 pulls. That means you get a guaranteed 6-star character. The character, however, is a 50/50 shot at being the featured character or an unfeatured character. It is also worth noting that limited characters will stay in the featured banners for three banner rotations. So that unfeatured character may be the previously limited character from the last banner or the banner before that.
There is also a hard pity at 120 pulls. (Which includes the pity at 80 pulls) This pity is guaranteed to be the featured unit. Genshin Impact’s version is 180 pulls and is guaranteed to be the featured unit. Which includes the pity at 90 pulls. Free-to-play users in Genshin Impact basically try to save both pity meters for units that they genuinely want. Mainly cuz both technically carry over. Though if you do get the featured unit in the first pity, the second pity resets. Even if you don’t reach pity and you pull the featured 5-star character, both pity meters reset.
This is where the games divide. If you pull the unit on the first pity in Arknights: Endfield. The second pity does not reset; you are still guaranteed to grab the featured unit at the 120th pull. The pity of the first one resets if you pull a 6-star operator. However, when the banners change, the first pity of Arknights: Endfield rolls over with it. You get to keep your place. The second one does not.
Ultimately, this means that the bolded statement is partially true, but also loses a lot of nuance in the discussion for gacha banners and the pity system.
“This is the same combat as Genshin Impact and all the other 3D Gacha RPGs.”
This is one of the dumbest statements I see all over when it comes to discussing the free-to-play 3D RPGs. This isn’t even solely about Arknights: Endfield. Wuthering Waves also somehow gets grouped up into this complaint. Genshin Impact has a big focus on elemental reactions, and ultimately, the strongest DPS units utilize reactions more than just damage. That is not the case here with Arknights: Endfield. There are elemental reactions, but most of that is more about stacking elements rather than reacting to them. If a person’s critique is mainly that they have skills that can transition to another character’s skill or ultimate ability, then that’s just basic party combat. You can do that in games like Scarlet Nexus. I won’t go too in-depth in the combat here since I will likely do more of a deep dive on an actual preview article of my time in the game. Just note that there is a lot of mechanics in combat that you can engage in if you are a fan of diving into deep combat. Some aren’t, so they won’t, regardless.
There are plenty more things out there people are talking about with Arknights: Endfield, but I think these are the three I see come up the most when I see discussions about it online. One thing I do think is wise to critique is the use of resources. Factory building basically mitigates a lot of the problem with needing resources to build and craft, but if you don’t want to do factory building and try doing everything without automation, it will be a slog of gathering. In that case, I would suggest utilizing the blueprint system as much as you can.
Overall, I am having a blast in the Beta Test II of Arknights: Endfield, and most of my complaints from the first Beta Test have been either fixed or mitigated. The Hypergryph team at GRYPHLINE is doing a solid job at listening to player feedback, so do make your concerns known. Just make sure that they are legitimate concerns. Also, when sending feedback, make sure you also provide possible solutions to the problems and complaints so that the team can make the best game possible when Arknights: Endfield finally releases in early 2026.
