there are many factors affecting nucaโs fan culture and engagement level and character literacy, but one that stands out to me at year 5 is that none of the previous event stories have been formally released for free through the game itselfโyou can only read past events through reruns, or reread them after you have played new ones for the first time. and they only rerun events once, in the following year, and never again.
so if you started playing this year, unless you pirate, you have no legit access to the character interactions and growth from events from years 1-3. and this is made significantly worse by the card-locked chara stories, which you canโt access either because you have to wait for a special pull event which hosts them. you pull rerun cards with a separate paid currency than new cards. the rates are abysmal. ftp players are forced to pick a favorite and hope they can get every copy of that specific character, which means their pull success for the rest of the ensemble cast is circumstantial given that theyโre only pulling on their fave chara events. which means theyโre only getting a threadbare and spotty experience of the other characterโs story.
pirated stories are out there for folks to find but that extra step is too much of a bother or insurmountable for many, because piracy literacy is also downโand in some regions of the world, the fan opinion around piracy is so low that they simply wonโt. and that keeps the gacha exclusives profitable because people will buy duplicates for themselves before they will share with others.
this is to say that 1) piracy is not a priority for me re: nuca because i started playing shortly after the year 1 anniversary and thus through reruns and new events i have โkept upโ with the game and 2) i came on just in time to miss out on the rerun of the white day event, which i have no way of reading officially, even 3 years after it originally ran.
and for new playersโฆโฆunable to read past events from the year 1-3 peak of character developmentโฆโฆโฆโฆ.they literally just have less to work with and theyโre taking these characters at face value with no context. no fucking wonder their takeaways are as if theyโre playing a wholly different game. because theyโve missed out on 90% of the everything!
