Imo I find the dopamine hit to figure out your own team comp and build to be much higher. And sometimes it's not possible to use the best teams.

That's serving a different niche. And fewer people find tolerating frustration to find dopamine hit to be worth it.

Comparing Dark Souls sales numbers and its ilk gacha games and their ilk shows that the number of people willing to tolerate the frustration is much lower than those willing to buy their way through it.

The thing about F2P games is that the vast majority of revenue is made from a tiny majority of players. In reality you'll find that the majority of players did not spend any money, a certain portion spends some money but around as much as Dark Souls costs, and a small minority spends massive amounts of money which makes up most of the revenue.

So indeed, most people that do play Genshin Impact do find the frustration worth it. I'd say a fair few of those find that the frustration makes it better.

> most people that do play Genshin Impact do find the frustration worth it

That's a hell of a conclusion from assumptions that have a shaky base.

As per [1] below, the "tiny minority" of players typically accounts for over 20% of the playerbase.

And per [2], the average amount spent by a mobile player in F2P games is over $85.

And I bet Genshin Impact does better than this - they have better marketing, better art, and lots of experience milking players for money.

[1] A developer sharing his revenue breakdown per player: https://medium.com/building-the-metaverse/game-economics-par...

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20160913155032/https://intellige...

dark souls isn't a good comparison. It's dark and broody, and unappealing to casual players. Many people won't enjoy it. There are many significantly more successful titles that are not pay to win and are challenging to their target audience.