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In recent weeks, NIKKE Players have observed an interesting phenomena- one they call the 160 wall, marking the difference between free to play players and real-money spenders.
To these players, the 160 Wall is a symbol of their frustration with NIKKE. It represents hitting the apex of a game when the chips are stacked against you, all while it’s own difficulty continues to go up.
Across Facebook and Reddit, many casual players are firing off their frustrations about the phenomenon- acting as an interesting note in Free to Play game culture.
The End Of Free To Play
But first, what is a 160 Wall? To explain this, you’d need to go into NIKKE’s mechanics itself. In NIKKE, you don’t always have to level up every unit you get. Instead, the game has a feature called the Synchro Device- letting you attune your character’s levels to the lowest of the top 5 NIKKEs in your collection.
Like many gacha games, NIKKE has a system called Limit Break to encourage you to collect duplicates. These raise individual characters level caps, past the standard 80 incrementally, per duplicate obtained.
Now, NIKKE has a particularly unique problem with its character economy- the game has orders of magnitude more SSRs compared to its SRs (about 8 SRs to 51 SSRs). Factor in that just getting an SSR at all is a 4% drop rate with no pity system for a non-featured NIKKE, it would seem that any SSRs you do get are locked at 80 if you’re an F2P player.
However, that’s where the Synchro Device comes in- as long as your top 5 characters are all above level 80, you can easily push any synced NIKKES over 80 too. Considering how common SR NIKKEs are thanks to their more generous droprates and smaller pool, you could easily have 5 characters well over level 80, then attune your SSRs to them so that they too would be over 80.
Unfortunately, SRs have a lower maximum level cap than the SSRs- a fully Limit Broken Nikke is capped at 160, meaning that if you’re powering through the game this way, your SSRs will also be locked at 160.
Similarly, a lot of the game’s more extreme content- like Hard versions of stages, etc, are expecting much higher power characters, well above what even a team of 160 SSRs can get you.
As a result, many non-spending players see hitting the 160 Wall as the end of the NIKKE experience- to them, it means there’s nowhere left to go in the game unless you want to fork out the cash to level up your SSRs organically.
Converting F2P To Paying Players
However, invested players have a more defensive stance on the matter. On Facebook, any mention of the game’s obstacle is met with walls of text telling frustrated players to start buying gems if they want more content.
This seems to be the general attitude of mobile game players when it comes to these games- high end content is a privilege, one you’re going to have to pay up to reach. While this won’t affect most casual players (who, coincidentally, are more likely to be F2P), the main audience that does get screwed over are the ones playing in the top percentile, trying to climb that wall.
Admittedly, this is where the pressure and often predatory nature of mobile games kick in. Players who want to access higher tier content are more pressured to spend money to cross that line, converting free players into paid players (albeit simply making purchases doesn’t make you a whale). While no developer may ever admit it, the fact you see similar phenomena in games like Genshin Impact or Diablo Immortal, ascribing optimal play to spending ability will likely be a part of the F2P model for the foreseeable future.
As for if it has the potential to sink NIKKE, it’s incredibly unlikely. Casual players will continue to play the game on a casual level, fulfilling their main function- populating the game. Players who feel the pressure may start spending or drop out depending on their inclinations, but those who do will never be a big enough chunk of the audience to actually affect the game’s bottom line.
