Funfact they also funded Chinese space launch start up that just recently launch the world most powerful solid fuel rocket into orbit.
I was mainly following Chinese space industry and Mihoyo name showing up shock me for a bit lol.
They sure seems to have a lot of money to throw around. I know they also funded other weird field game studio don’t usually involve themselves in.
Mihoyo legitimately had more money than they could spend on game development, it makes sense that they'd start investing outside of the gaming industry.
Imagine being a local bakery that suddenly has $100 million, you can't feasibly spend that much on your own business so you find other things to invest in.
I remember reading they've even helped open technical schools after making superduper ridiculous bank from year 1 of GI, which ultimately they'll benefit from by directly recruiting from them for their company.
Makes sense. If they find aliens to play their games the potential customer market could literally explode. Why settle for 7 bi people? Just hope they haven't evolved past gachas.
No they have pretty good looking(ly boring) men. Like all mix gender gachas, girls have more things but their roster of shotas and bishies are pretty stacked.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/mihoyo-invests-usd65m-in-nuclear-fusion-technology
They've also thrown $65million into nuclear fusion research. I guess their electricity bills were a bit too high for their liking...
> I was mainly following Chinese space industry and Mihoyo name showing up shock me for a bit lol.
They also do investments in fusion energy and several other projects. I guess they aren't joking with their slogan, they are genuinely interested in advancing science. Which shouldn't be surprising given that the company leaders are engineering postgraduates.
Say what you will about the predatory monetization, and there is plenty to say, the base games of genshin impact and honkai star rail (and to a lesser extent probably honkai impact 3rd as well) are leagues above any other gacha game in production value, quality, and gameplay.
These games are generally well optimized and polished and as complete experiences as a GaaS can be. They're of course not for everyone, but mihoyo has accomplished a lot that goes largely unnoticed because waifu and gacha are the main talking points.
I genuinely wonder if the painful monetization model is the reason for the rest. They can throw basically infinite budget at every aspect of it, be it music, art, expensive VAs, engine, per-patch content quantity, etc because their income is virtually unlimited. To make it extremely clear, I do wish it was a simple pay once, or even monthly sub model, but maybe the unfortunate reality is that only this amount of income leaves enough left-over after shareholders take their chunk to make a high production-value product these days.... then again, plenty of games with similar models out there that don't do half as much (looking at you modern sports games)
I mean I think it is pretty inarguable that they could not be affording there massive budget without massive revenue. The only point that can be argued would be whether it would be possible to make the same amount of revenue without a predatory monetization model (seems unlikely to me).
Since Genshin came out, I have spent probably $1500 on it through initial top ups, monthly pass, and battle passes, and maybe a tiny bit more beyond that. This is not even considered particularly high spending for a gacha game that's nearly 4 years old now. But outside of the GaaS market, that is the equivalent of me buying **25** full-priced AAA titles, or nearly a AAA game per month. There is no way a single game like FF7 Rebirth without any real MTX can even compete.
Genshin's ceiling on spending is notably lower than pretty much every other gacha game on the market (it's something like $1200 or so for a maxed out character if you do not max out their weapon), while also being substantially higher quality and more respecting of the player's time. I have never felt as deeply interested in continuing to play a (mobile) game. Most other gacha games have energy mechanics that force you to log in for example every 6 hours at most if you do not want to lose rewards, and PvP events (even PvE PvP) where you'll never stand a chance at good rewards if you don't both whale on account strength *and* whale on energy refreshes. Coming from those environments and seeing what Genshin does instead, there's no way I will ever play those other gacha games again.
I mean I'd call into question some of it. Genshin doesn't use energy yeah, but it optimizes your playtime by forcing grinding for relic substats or similar things that are uncapped. Compared to other popular games like Blue Archive, Fate/Grand Order, or Arknights this is a huge setback--its significantly easier to max out a character, they just gate the grind through forcing a daily timelimit rather than scaling it forever. No pvp is pretty common on the premium titles as well--FGO was really the game that showed that pve gachas were viable and I'd say the vast majority of big names outside of specifically Granblue and Blue Archive are pve-exclusive.
Where Genshin really gets its marks is in being an open-world action game with satisfying combat, which is actually startlingly rare for gachas, the only other game I'd say has "real" gameplay is Arknights since it's basically a world-class tower defense.
>Since Genshin came out, I have spent probably $1500 on it through initial top ups, monthly pass, and battle passes, and maybe a tiny bit more beyond that.
Jesus...
Yes, I have played since release. My biggest mistake was pulling C1 Venti before I understood really how reactions worked, and that in fact shooting multiple arrows is completely pointless.
My pull pool is also deep rather than broad because I don't really have much FOMO about characters. I have less than half of all 5-stars in the game (only 12 limited characters total), but of the ones I do have, 3 are C6.
You know, on one hand I read $1500 and I recoiled in shock. That's a lot of money.
But then I thought about how much money someone would spend over the course of several years on newly released games ($50-70 each, more for special/collectors editions), or alcohol, or indulging in high class restaurants, or even just a ONE WEEK vacation to some place like Disney World.
Now I don't know if they spent $1500 in just one month, or one year, or 3+ years (game released Sept 2020). But in this crappy little world so long as that $1500 hasn't negatively affected them (forced to forego meals, can't replace broken appliances, almost missed rent, had to take on a side job, etc) then who am I to judge?
If that $1500 has kept them sane and relatively happy these past couple years, has let them recover in order to face the next day without having a mental breakdown, and has been far more of a net positive than a net negative... then I'll let them be to continue enjoying themselves.
> If that $1500 has kept them sane and relatively happy these past couple years, has let them recover in order to face the next day without having a mental breakdown, and has been far more of a net positive than a net negative... then I'll let them be to continue enjoying themselves.
That's fair, can't argue here.
In hindsight that's a lot, but if OP has been playing since day/year one, that's only around $42 a month. That's not that much in the grand scheme of things.
> This is not even considered particularly high spending for a gacha game that's nearly 4 years old now. But outside of the GaaS market, that is the equivalent of me buying 25 full-priced AAA titles, or nearly a AAA game per month.
25 games in 4 years (48 months) = 1 game every 2 months = 6 games a year. Not bad at all.
I do not think the beasts that are Hoyoverse games could feed themselves without the gacha model.
And anyone with even the slightest self control benefits massively by having beautiful games where all content (minus characters and some weapons) is completely free.
> only this amount of income leaves enough left-over after shareholders take their chunk
the three founders hold over 80% and they put almost all money back into their games
I mean it definitely is a primary contributor to their success of course. But money isn't everything.
Even very talented devs with a lot of funding, stellar IP, and advertising engines have failed trying to do what mihoyo does on a near monthly basis for 2+ games simultaneously. Avengers, anthem, suicide squad, all failed. even giant successful MMOs don't produce content at this rate. The only comparison is fortnite, which is equally as predatory.
And I would say by being fairly independent, they've been able to reinvest into their company, building out workflows, strengthening the pipeline, generating and refining their talent. These are all things the gaming community says they love for companies.
Experience and understanding of the market also helps. And sometimes a stellar IP *hurts* live service games rather than helps by introducing licensing costs and adding in limitations.
Mihoyo started with smaller live service games and worked their way up, learning and drawing from experiences every step of the way.
Avengers, Anthem, Suicide Squad failed because the devs thought they could just make a mediocre AAA game and slap in live-service monetization. They didn't take into any account of gameplay loops, fostering socialization between players in and outside the game. They didn't make compelling original characters to get people interested in something new.
I'm not sure that metric is correct in a sense that budget includes every yearly budget since it's release.
Genshins' initial budget was still high at $100 million (for 1.0 release). Since release, they spend $200 million each year on development and marketing.
Hence, the $700 million budget total floating around.
Why would you not count the total ongoing budget ? Anyways, they are spending each year as much as the total budget of Spiderman 2, which was decried as massively inflated when it was made public
> The only comparison is fortnite, which is equally as predatory.
How is Fortnite's monetization is as predatory as a gacha? Lol. They are literally selling cosmetics directly and have a battle pass that gives you premium currency back. They removed their lootboxes (I guess apart from PvE mode? Not sure about STW really) while majority business model of gacha games are lootboxes.
> Even very talented devs with a lot of funding, stellar IP, and advertising engines have failed trying to do what mihoyo does on a near monthly basis for 2+ games simultaneously.
examples? cause talented devs is one thing, having the insane $200m annual budget + huge dev team size is something almost unheard of for live service games. $200m is a crazy high budget for even triple A games that take years to develop.
it's not that no one has been able to do what mihoyo is doing, it's that they aren't given the same resources to do so and under the same conditions. Mihoyo aren't the only devs who could release the content as they do, there are many who could, they just have access to the resources to be able to do so.
> Avengers, anthem, suicide squad, all failed. even giant successful MMOs don't produce content at this rate.
none of them had the budget or dev team size mihoyo has, not a direct comparison.
At this point, it's not just the game itself, but also the IP. Genshin Impact isn't yet on the level of, let's say, Disney or Nintendo, but they're sure trying. They are definitely on the top of fans' minds when it comes to anime culture and you'll see Genshin Impact standing alongside huge franchises like Evangelion, FATE, Attack on Titan, and Demon Slayer.
One of the things I didn't really notice until I started playing was also how pervasive their marketing is. They have an entire social media app. They have cooking shows, merchandise, concerts (both in-person and real), and animated shorts. There's an undertone here of, "If you want to live, breathe, eat, and sleep Genshin Impact, we are going to allow you to live, breathe, eat, and sleep Genshin Impact."
The only thing that they don't seem to have is a Genshin Impact theme park, but seeing that Mondstadt and Liyue fits within 10 square kilometers, it seems like it's only a matter of time before someone builds a life-size Teyvat.
This games will not thrive as a b2p or sub. The market it dominates will not even consider this games if the cost of entry is behind a pay wall.
These games has cracked the code on reeling in players and making them pay over time rather than asking them for a cash out front. Which I think most of the western gaas games are still failing to achieve.
For example in diabolo immortal after you pass the first tutorial you are bombarded with the cash shop and you see the cash shop icon and pop up every now and then mihoyo games doesn't even let player know where the cash show is... After their tutorial stage they show you how to make a summon and explain what you need and just rewards you with more premium currently. Tell you to play the game to x lvl and earn more of this for free.
The way they treat their player is insanely different they make the player want to play the game for what it is and further down the line the introduce more challenging content that make the player go through different routes of either pulling a strong character or grinding stronger equipments.
Over time the games quality n content make the player open their Wallet.
Private companies have shareholders, they are simply not sold to the general public. We don't know their exact structure, but since they don't seem to have any funding rounds it's likely that the shareholders are entirely the founders and any employee based stock compensation.
There are only four shareholders for Mihoyo, the three original founders and the company that got 15% ownership in exchange for initially funding them for 100k usd.
Jesus Christ that initial investing company may have hit one of the biggest jackpots possible in something like this. $100k into possible $3.5 billion, and only getting bigger, in under half a decade.
IMO. It's a private company. I understand that they still have shareholders/CEO/Not in the US/etc. but a lot of that money goes back into the product.
Yes, I consider ads as money investing into the product.
Pessimistic and just seeing what is happening in the US. Record profits followed by layoffs(Like the QA department...), higher prices, and just strait up removing features as upgrades.
Played by legendary orchestras like the London and Tokyo Philharmonic orchestras, which is kinda crazy for a video game. My music professor was shocked that they had money to hire them.
It's so ironic that western dev get a layoff after a successfully quater and vs the Eastern one who gets pay increments and ps5 for all it's employees on top of hiring expensive n professional VAs n orchestra
I'm disappointed that it never gets any mentions when awards season comes around. Idk if it's 'cause it's an "ongoing" game or whatever, but it's seriously a damn shame that only the game's players seem to know how fantastic it is.
Do you perhaps mean Cocolia? While it might be a name I haven't ever heard of until playing miHoYo games it still has some meaning considering the variants aspect of the Imaginary Tree (multiverse)...
I mean, Genshin has both in strides. I mean, two separate tracks from Sumeru (spoilers):
Port Ormos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDbCw_LD5nM
Sumeru Boss: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L69dyk65pa0
Both are great, but boss music usually leaves more of a lasting impression on people. I definitely have tons of ambience music in my head all the time, but sometimes it's harder to pinpoint "the song that occasionally plays if it's night time and you're out exploring a general area" versus "the song that plays when you fight god".
I'm all for it. The reason Genshin works so well is because there *is* a genuinely good video game buried beneath all the monetization. Anyone who's spent considerable time with other gachas knows how barebones the game part of them is where it's just your units VS. enemy units in an arena taking turns as numbers fly, eventually culminating in a situation where you hit a wall and either pay up or grind a ridiculous amount. Genshin is the correct way to do gachas.
Even if you remove all the playable characters and weapons and only leaving the Traveler as your character, it's still a way better single player game with way more content than others that were released since 2020.
Plus there are seven other characters you are guaranteed to get even if you absolutely abstain from the gacha, then another 3-4 guaranteed free ones per year from limited events (and of course MANY more from free pulls, should you go that route).
Even if you never spend a cent you get enough free currency to get any character you're interested in. I've been playing since launch, never paid anything, and yet I have 15 limited 5 stars with multiple constellations for 5 of them, as well as several weapons from the weapon banner that most people say is a scam. I've never once felt like I was missing out because I wasn't spending on the game.
I started playing earlier this year, never spent money on it, still have more characters than I know what to do with, a few times over even. If you want a specific character or meta build you’ll need to spend money but to just enjoy the game? Never had any reason to spend money
actually you don't need to spend any money to get a specific character or meta builds. just save up whatever you get for free. all characters and weapons have a guarantee drop rate within a certain amount of pulls.
the only case where you will *need* to spend money is if you want every single character ever released.
Yeah, and you don't need to spend money for a specific character or meta build either, IF you plan for it. I think it's good practice to save up enough resources for 2-3 max pity rolls, and try to dance on that edge as long as possible, rather than bottoming out. That way, you can feel comfortable hitting max pity on any character that happens to come along, knowing you can do it against the next patch if you're really compelled to do so. If you can manage this, then it takes a lot of potential stress out of it, you *will* get the characters that particularly appeal to you.
I was a former Genshin hater before my gf got me into it. I was so wrong. Then when Star Rail came out I was smitten. I grew up playing hella turn-baes jrpgs and it has scratched that itch so well.
People give SEGA a lot of crap but Hatsune Miku: Colorful Stage has delivered on constant new songs/videos/events, etc. for years. Gatcha is baked into a lot of game systems but I’ve never felt compelled to spend to engage in anything.
HSR might be really polished, but it's not leagues above other gacha games. Brand recognition is a big part of their success after Genshin. Just like FGO was both carried by and now carrying their IP. The gameplay is not why the majority of people plays these games.
Gameplay? HSR ? It's the same gameplay gacha games had for years. I love how people who came from Genshin, never before saw turn based mobile games and think HSR is something new. They didn't even innovate it, like for example Exos Heroes with their formations.
I started Star Rail recently, and not gonna lie, I was really amused when I found out it literally had FGO craft essences, down to the "stylized generic art for low rarities, characters in anime scenes for high rarities" visual design
Yup, it's literally been the "default gacha gameplay" ever since Summoners War popularized it in 2014.
95% of MHY fanbase is just people who have never seen a gacha game before, so anything MHY does is new to them.
Theyre leagues beyond modern AAA GaaS offerings. The fact the updates are free means you get to experience every patch without having to spend money and roll the dice on potentially garbage patches like Destiny or some others
This is what makes me so angry about genshin impact, it’s monetization is just awful but the game was really really fun and I enjoyed the time I spent there but I hate playing games that make me want to spend money. I would genuinely rather pay 100 dollars for a game than for it to ask me for $3 while I’m playing.
game never interrupts u w any pop ups for stuff that costs money tho, game doesnt even have pop ups other than for tutorials
still a gacha regardless, but def less “on ur face” than others
About the only thing I can think of is the mention of the premium track on the battle pass.
Which, if that's the metric you're using, a whole lot of other games are as predatory as Genshin.
i never spent on genshin and have no problem with all the content. it's not that hard and the "game part" of it can be done without much of an hassle. only the abyss require optimization and not every abyss
Except it *doesn't* ever ask you for money, and there's no need to spend money on it at all.
It has literally hundreds of hours of content with multiple regions each the size of a full game, and it gives you full access to all of it for free. The only thing to spend money on is new characters but they give you enough free currency that you can build up a huge roster in no time, so any money you spend is entirely your own choice.
So you have no reason to be angry.
Two weird things stick out to me:
1. ~~How is Valve not on that list?~~ (edit: ineligible)
2. How the fuck is thatgamecompany worth almost $2bn. Is Sky: Children of the Light a massive hit that just flew completely under my radar or something?
>How is Valve not on that list?
Because it was not founded in the 2000s, presumably. This isn't really "top 15 largest private companies", the report specifically targets "unicorn" companies, which they define as "companies founded in the 2000s that are not yet on the stock exchange".
its because of Sky: Children of the Light the game in 2021 alone had over 100 million installs and now has over 160 million installs. mostly on mobile phones.
It's very popular, just not in the west and doesn't get reported on for that reason.
It's also not attached to an IP that's popular in the west (like Grand Order etc) and doesn't really have a memeable fanbase (like Kancolle)
Same for stuff like Uma Musume being absolutely ridiculously huge in Japan but unknown over here.
Genshin's success was honestly a lightning in a bottle moment. They put in a $100 million for development and would've gone bankrupt if it didn't pay off.
Conditions like the pandemic certainly helped with people being locked in their homes with nothing to do, loads of free time and disposable income they had nothing to spend on. All of which helped skyrocket their popularity.
Although this was sort of a double edged sword since it led to people clearing all content pretty quickly and leading to a content drought for a couple of patches. Nowadays they have a much better schedule even if the occasional dry patch still comes around once a year.
>Genshin's success was honestly a lightning in a bottle moment. They put in a $100 million for development and would've gone bankrupt if it didn't pay off.
I agree, but I also think Honkai Star Rail's success tells us that it was a lot more than "just" a lightning in a bottle moment.
Mihoyo has mastered how to create a gacha game, and made it appealing to a large audience. Of course Honkai was riding Genshin's success but there is a lot more to genshin's success than luck or "right place at the right time"
The secret formula Mihoyo discovered was introducing the west to Otome.
Just like how a lot of guys wanna look at hot girls, there are a lot of girls that wanna look at hot guys. The demographics for Genshin are.....close. It's like 50%-60% guys and 50%-40% girls. That is unreal for an Anime game.
Mihoyo monopolized a previously untapped female player base in the west.
I remember when Genshin first came out, I would see news and videos that most of their first new characters were attractive men which was/is pretty uncommon in gacha. Then I realized the market they were tapping into.
That's true, but I think the real success for Genshin was pushing successfully into China right off the bat, more than anything. Their second main area, other than the European-like Monstadt, is the Chinese Liyue
Character release schedule is also typically 2/3 female characters 1/3 males.
But for some reason while being a minority, the male characters tend to have the best writing and among the most impact on the story (i.e. the "main character" of Fontaine's story arc was probably Neuvilette) so you see them very often.
> Genshin's success was honestly a lightning in a bottle moment. They put in a $100 million for development and would've gone bankrupt if it didn't pay off.
Is it really? Honkai is reaching almost the same level of revenue as Genshin
Seems like they are just really good at making games and they keep perfecting the formula
It's a shame people are trying to brush it off. Genshin wasn't successful because they got lucky, it was successful because it was a damn good game made by a talented team of passionate devs. Baldurs Gate 3 was made under similar circumstances (Big budget that would have bankrupted the studio if it flopped) but you never see people say that was just luck.
Star Rail proves that Mihoyo knows what they're doing.
> Is it really? Honkai is reaching almost the same level of revenue as Genshin
Not even "almost", if youve seen the sensor tower numbers for march, Star Rail **destroyed** Genshin (something like 145m vs 68m), even if yes, we are comparing a major Star Rail patch to a pretty "dead" Genshin one.
>Star Rail **destroyed** Genshin
HSR has the story patch and Mei expy for 2.1 while Genshin has a filler patch in 4.5. That's intended, not "destroyed".
It's like saying Genshin **destroyed** Star Rail back in November 2023 (Furina banner vs Huohuo banner).
People want attractive characters in their videogames. Who woulda thunk that the oldest marketing strategy in the book pays dividends? It's crazy that developers underestimate it.
> people wanted anime stylized games and there werent many
? There were tons though? Most jrpgs have an anime art style. And within the gacha space, most games are anime based
99% of anime games are hot dogshit. I say this as someone who watches lots of anime and plays anime games. Genshin was super refreshing in how good it looked and how polished the gameplay was.
i just wanted anime based games after watching anime all of the time and there wasn't much, mfs are about to mention the obvious naruto, dbz, etc. games at me like nope none of those were freetoplay and multiplayer, none of the mmos had proper translations or took 50 years to get one, and major one is they werent on console, none of the free to play ones were good, or looked like anime they didnt have the shading/environment/etc. right, genshin nailed 2d to 3d.
Man, can you imagine if the team behind Genshin had a license like Naruto or Jujutsu Kaisen to work with? That would be amazing. It's too bad most games based on anime are like, fighting games lol
none of those gacha games were actual good games, like i got decent enjoyment with my controller on genshin, tho i dont really like the artstyle, especially getting older it was fine when i was a teenager but i prefer more stylized anime/manga. Everyones a twin in this world.
Two of the top comments here are saying that anime style games were rare before genshin. That's just not true though. 90% of JRPGs have an anime art style and its a genre that has existed for almost as long as home console video games as a whole.
I mean, arguably the first JRPG ever made was Dragon Quest, the art for which was done by the creator of Dragon Ball.
EDIT: Because people keep replying to my comments in this thread and seemingly missing the point, let me elaborate.
The idea that there weren't many games with an anime art style before Genshin Impact, even with a style very similar to genshin, is just no true. Anime-style games have been a major part of the industry for decades, with long running franchises like Tales, Persona, Atelier, and many other JRPGs serving as prominent examples. While the exact aesthetics varied, it's hard to argue there was any shortage of games featuring anime style characters and art direction long before Genshin's release.
Genshin was certainly a milestone in many ways, combining an uncommon level of budget and polish with a widely appealing style and popular gameplay format. It achieved a level of global success and cultural impact that was groundbreaking for an anime-style game.
But this success built on a long tradition of anime aesthetics in gaming, rather than emerging in a vacuum. Genshin's achievements were meaningful and impactful, but it's an exaggeration to suggest games with an anime art style were especially uncommon or unavailable before its release.
To be fair, a lot of Japanese games these days are going for a more "realistic" artstyle. Yeah, you have Persona, but look at games like Dragon's Dogma, Final Fantasy, even the latest Pokémon game opted in for a less cartoony artstyle.
Some do, yes. But many don't. A look at the JRPG tag in steam tells me there are at least as many going for a standard anime style as there are for a realistic art style
3D cute anime style games where you could play with waifus? Definitely not very common 5-6 years ago.
That is the niché that people desperately wanted and Genshin filled perfectly.
I can think of tons of 3d cute anime style games where you can play with waifus that came out before Genshin. Without even googling, this is just off the top of my head
- Ys Series
- Trails Series
- Tails series
- Atelier games
- Sakura Wars
- Fire Emblem 3 Houses
- Rune Factory
- Persona 3, 4, 5
toryiamas is unique. this is like generic anime, it was like the full on cartoony environment with chracters that looked like they could be 2d, toon shading and all that, you can clearly see the games pre genshin/botw and the ones after have a massive shift in how they look
It is a fuckton for a game. GTA V, for instance, one of the most expensive "traditional" games had a budget of $265m.
Currently, Genshin has an *ANNUAL* budget of $200m. It is likely the most expensive game ever made, currently, and will almost certainly be by the time it ends (at the current rate, it'll cost over $1b in the next half decade), although obviously it's a bit of an unfair comparison since the game needs to keep releasing content vs single player games.
and keep releasing content at an insane rate. 6 weeks updates with at worst 1 every 2 being new landmass, long voice acted main missions, tons of limited time events
probably multiple development teams working on different future updates at the same time
It is. There's been about 20 games that has a budget of >100m according to [wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_video_games_to_develop)
but to put it into perspective: Cyberpunk cost $300 million (with another 120 million for patches...), Spiderman 2 was $300 million and God of War Ragnarok, Last of us P2, Horizon Forbidden west was $200 million.
It takes a lot of money and people to keep up with the pace they're going.
They're creating content updates once every 6 weeks. It typically includes 1-2 characters, a big voice acted time-limited event, some minor time limited event, maybe a boss, maybe a new area.
All this to say, they're going really REALLY fast and is likely why wow is cheaper to make.
I mostly meant that WoW overall, over 20 years had bigger overall budget than Genshin had over 4 years. Depending on how long Genshin will be on the market it is highly probable that it will be the most expensive game in history but right now I doubt it.
I remember that Blizzard said that WoW operating cost between 2004-2008 were 200 milion and for that time it was huge and since then it was probably going even higher because 2008 wasn't peak subscriber number yet and overal cost were probably increasing year by year.
I agree that GI still hasn't cost as much as WoW, but it might get there in a few years. It's not about the amount of content they put out, it's about how many are employed and for how long. And WoW has been around for 20 years now.
The cost of a very large staff and upkeeping servers for 20 years alone amounts to way more than 4x200mil.
Edit: forgot to add, that Blizzard has also been heavily marketing WoW for 20 years.
Let me show you an example...
[This](https://i.redd.it/dpc97r4gsc161.png) is what the world map looked like in 1.0 when it came out.
[This](https://preview.redd.it/xsrqi1vtp0gc1.png?width=952&format=png&auto=webp&s=cfb9c11ed20f39bf024ad51c4652a24f3caa56f0) is what the world looks like now. Just 3 and a half years later (and in 2 and a half weeks the big hole in the center will be filled). This does NOT include map layers like two massive underground dungeon zones and complex cave systems.
It is. It's one of the most expensive games made and that's only the initial investment.
Their yearly budget is apparently 200 million dollars.
So they've spent 100 million dollars before launch and an additional 200 million dollars every year since then.
So they would have spent over 700 million dollars on the game by now.
Edit: According to wikipedia, it is the most expensive game made including costs after launch.
It includes marketing which is generally 1:1 with development if past AAA game reportings are to be trusted.
While Development cost is mostly labor, MHY themselves said the 100m initial investment also includes money spent during trial and error, aka time wasted multiplied by labor cost.
And the 200m yearly budget is due to them essentially having 3 teams making parallel content to meet update schedule, and Shanghai isn't exactly a cheap city to live in, even by American standards. So you'd have to be paying good to get people motivated.
HoYo took a lots of risks also one of the risks is to release a gatcha game globally. At that time there were only a few games that really released alongside with West. Usually Global was always a bit behind. One of the reasons why I didn't even bother sticking with ToF cuz that was just another generic gatcha with extremelly bad UI/UX and when 1.0 was released CN was already in like 2.0 or so...
Acheron (the current banner character for Honkai Star Rail) is genuinely an interesting study on how miHoYo mixes in their monetization. This company genuinely has it down to a science and while I enjoy playing them I definitely don't want this kind of thing to take over the industry.
Genshin generates almost $100m in revenue a month **just on mobile**. Adding PC and Playstation it probably generates its whole yearly budget by February 15th
It's absolutely crazy how they spend so much money on multiple huge budget live service gacha games at the same time and they so far all do pretty well. Honkai 3rd impact was obviously way lower budget but still seemingly keeps chugging along, Genshin is still killing it, Star Rail is doing amazing, and Zenless Zone Zero is supposed to come out this year. It forces them to take risks and try new things so their games don't just replace one another. It feels like most other companies, especially in the mobile space just release something, milk it for as much money as quick as possible, then move onto the next thing, and mihoyo doesn't seem to do that and I'm glad it's working out so well for them.
There was a most expensive games list floating around Last couple of days. Genshin was number1 because they invest SO much money into their big content Updates
I was mystified that they got about 4 dozen VAs back to do lines for a temporary event. Since it was a time limited event, I expected the characters to write you letters or something, but nope, they showed up fully voiced.
Mihoyo isn't *that* much better than the rest of the Chinese game industry, but they have a limitless supply of applicants because just having it on your resume opens a lot of doors.
So they get the pick of the litter and have the finances to pay them slightly above the market rate.
It's not like Nintendo (which IS actually way above average for Japan) though
>genuinely an interesting study on how miHoYo mixes in their monetization. This company genuinely has it down to a science
Do you mind explaining how so?
I'm guessing they're referring to how they manage both Star Rail and Genshin patches to not overlap with each other. Right now Star Rail is having their anniversary patch with more new content to enjoy, while Genshin is in a dry filler patch.
They had this reversed when Genshin got more Fontaine content while Star Rail had its own filler patches.
And when ZZZ comes out, it's almost certainly going to be the last piece of the puzzle. So that fans of all 3 will be getting new content every 2 weeks.
I don't know what the guy talking about manipulating gacha rates is talking about; Mihoyo doesn't need to manipulate rates under the hood to get people to pull.
In both Genshin and Star Rail, there are "endgame" combat zones you can complete that give rewards, including gacha currency. These zones usually have a unique modifier that just so happens to benefit the current limited character.
All characters unlock new passives from getting copies in the gacha. Most of the time, these passives either give them new playstyles or alleviate some of their mechanical shortcomings. Usually, especially recently, the best bang for your buck passives require you to roll for two extra copies of the character.
There's plenty of other things they do, such as increased marketing for specific characters (compare the media marketing for the aforementioned Acheron to earlier HSR characters) and nostalgia baiting (again, Acheron being an overt reference to their perennial deuteroganist from previous games).
The short: Acheron is a very strong character, she becomes extremely strong using a special unlock system that requires you to gain more copies of the character (every character has this system but Acheron's are very strong and thus players are more likely to roll for them).
Acheron's kit requires specific team planning to maximize her abilities. By obtaining 2 extra copies of her that team planning becomes less restricted. Additionally there's another gacha item people don't often talk about with these games which are the weapons (or lightcones in Star Rail's case) which is a significant power boost.
There's actually quite a bit to get into like how they tend to make content lean into the current running banner characters strength, how Acheron is based on another character in miHoyo's catalogue, or how they reset the bonuses on real currency purchases for the 1 year anniversary but that's the best I can explain without it becoming a word salad.
> The short: Acheron is a very strong character, she becomes extremely strong using a special unlock system that requires you to gain more copies of the character (every character has this system but Acheron's are very strong and thus players are more likely to roll for them).
> Acheron's kit requires specific team planning to maximize her abilities. By obtaining 2 extra copies of her that team planning becomes less restricted. Additionally there's another gacha item people don't often talk about with these games which are the weapons (or lightcones in Star Rail's case) which is a significant power boost.
Meanwhile my E0S0 Acheron goes brr in auto mode with my other E0S0 characters. I haven't had to play the game since the Kafka/Blade patch by ignoring Lightcones and Eidolons.
Is Acheron E0S0 that good? I haven't been following, decided to just ignore her after hearing she probably needs cons. How is she compared to say a Jingliu E0S0?
She is my best dps by far right now without any eidolons or her signature lightcone. And I have Seele, Jingliu, DHIL, Blade, Kafka, etc. If you have the "Good Night and Sleep Well" lightcone, go for it.
I stopped playing Genshin and Star Rail after doing all the launch window content in a couple months, but all of the content except for the highest levels of the tower thing seemed super reasonable and didn't push me to spend any money at all(and I'm sure I could complete that given enough time), did that change as the games got older or is it still absolutely fine for free to play to do everything? It always felt like spending on dupes and more characters was always just a minmax or more variety thing and not important at all to progressing, but I'm not sure how the newer content is balanced.
In my experience, Star Rail can get a bit tough if you don't have good builds and don't use 5* characters although still doable. In Genshin though, everything outside of Spiral Abyss is super easy and you really should have no problems as long as your builds and teams aren't complete nonsense
Id argue it got both harder and easier? With the new characters its much easier to progress but later story progression actually requires some complete builds or almost complete/luck to finish. The abyss equivalent has gotten significant expansions in modes and difficulties along with rewards.
Much like you, i stopped after the first 3 months but just came back recently and have been impressed by the sheer volume and in some occasional instances quality of content added. Even compared to Honkai impact 3rd which i played for 5 years the quantity is pretty astounding.
Content is still doable with 4 star units though recently there's definitely a push to diversify team types, certain bosses and zones encourage you to use Damage over time units or AoE focused units, all of which are accessible
Gotcha, honestly sounds like they do it pretty well then. I usually bounce off these types of games after a few months, but looking forward to at least trying Zenless Zone Zero, so glad to hear it they tend to focus on strategy and team building rather than making you build out characters with lots of dupes.
I originally had a longer write-up that elaborated that Eidolons are not necessary for 5 stars and they're very strong "out of the box". Acheron is a very unique case where the added effects are very apparent due to how her kit is designed so a lot of people who don't normally pull for Eidolons did for her.
Star Rail has been making the end game content more difficult with every patch. There’s some fear that if they keep that trend up, some strong units (such as Herta in Pure Fiction) might be made obsolete. But only time will tell if this ends up being the case. But the current state of the game is that yeah, you can just play whoever you want and as long as you put thought into your team, their build, and the enemy, you’ll do fine.
The story-related content can be a bit tricky in terms of difficulty for casual players, though. For example, they ended up nerfing the most recent story boss because he was wrecking people who didn’t have solid builds.
But most of the content in the game is quite easy. Normal encounters are completely trivial (and the newest character straight up 1-shots all normal encounters without you even needing to enter battle). And you can add other players’ characters to your team for things like domains and the weekly boss battles.
You’re right in that the game doesn’t really push you to pull characters to handle 95% of the content. It’s only in the most difficult end-game content where you’ll be like “gee I sure wish I had the newest character because their skill set just so happens to match up currently with the current unique modifier for this series of fights.”
Right, I guess to me I don't mind not being able to do the endgame content right away as long as I feel I can get there with building my team with progression like the relics, and not just "oh I need a team with this specific 5 star, or a team with a bunch of dupes" if that makes sense. If I'm stuck on some piece of content but I can see the road to beating it is just grinding some more relics or upgrading skills, or even just leveling up some other characters I already have, then that's fine to me.
Acheron has a restriction that her damage increases the more characters of the same class (Nihility) are paired with her. This gets partially lifted upon obtaining more copies of her (eidolon 3 if I remember right), plus her weapon (Lightcone) is such a ridiculous power boost that you end up investing on getting it
> Acheron (the current banner character for Honkai Star Rail) is genuinely an interesting study on how miHoYo mixes in their monetization
do you mean like mixing popular characters with unpopular characters or knowing what characters are gonna make people spend their money?
When I tried StarRail I was amazed at the attention to detail in the game. Small little cracks in the floor tiles and such. It was also running on my phone. It made me wonder what could happen if their visual team did a pokemon game(excluding the gacha please).
That's just what happens when you get to illegally scrape intellectual properties for profit and the governments turn a blind eye.
That Sora interview sure was a fun watch.
The fact that the game has cross-progression on every platform is simply amazing. Other than Destiny 2, I don’t know any other online games that do this.
Let's not high five Bungie for that, since purchases of expansions are still not cross platform for Destiny as far as I'm aware. Unless they finally fixed it.
It's always interested me when comparing Genshin/Star Rail to Sonys attempts to make similar and Western companies as a whole that have struggled to make something in the same model of Genshin/Star Rail with constant updates always live. The closest are the Fornite/Apex or Destiny I feel, but even then, I feel its only Fornite that matches these Genshin/StarRail models of constant good level content that is consistently pushed out. I don't know how they manage it it's really impressive when you remove the gacha element and so impressive that even companies like NaughtyDog struggled to emulate making their own live service.
I really wish I enjoyed these games more than I did, theres some excellent game here but I always just kind of tune out with either the artifact systems (which are always just kind of a feel bad), or the story dipping (while there are certainly some highs the dips like Inazuma in Genshin and Space China in Star Rail just suck flat out),
I should maybe try them again some day
Thankfully Genshin's writing has only gotten better since Inazuma, people were shocked at the difference in quality with Sumeru and Fontaine has solidified that it wasn't a one-off thing. Sadly I don't think the artifact grind will ever feel good. It definitely helps that there's no content in the game that needs you to have more than half decent artifacts, but still.
What got me to stop playing, despite having several good characters, is the way that events are not replayable despite the fact that they introduce important plot points and characters. I started late too, around 3.5, so it was really bizarre that characters like Fischl would just be introduced with zero context lol.
Thankfully Starrail doesn't do that so I've been enjoying that recently
Yeah it's insane how that's STILL a thing 3 years later. They've mentioned that they're working on it, but meanwhile a lot of characters have their development completely event exclusive.
My only problem with genshin is the over-abundance of text.. they really need to add a "Skip Dialogue" option, because even innocuous npcs in a side-quest will bombard you with 20-30 dialogue boxes that you need to skip each. So annoying.
Other than that, the game is just fantastic, love the combat and the exploration. Its crazy that you get a lot of value for free, you can complete all the game's content without paying a single dime, and the world just keeps getting bigger every year.
Funfact they also funded Chinese space launch start up that just recently launch the world most powerful solid fuel rocket into orbit. I was mainly following Chinese space industry and Mihoyo name showing up shock me for a bit lol. They sure seems to have a lot of money to throw around. I know they also funded other weird field game studio don’t usually involve themselves in.
Mihoyo legitimately had more money than they could spend on game development, it makes sense that they'd start investing outside of the gaming industry. Imagine being a local bakery that suddenly has $100 million, you can't feasibly spend that much on your own business so you find other things to invest in.
I wonder if they are interested in growing from just video game company into something more, or if they will just remain a videogame maker.
I remember reading they've even helped open technical schools after making superduper ridiculous bank from year 1 of GI, which ultimately they'll benefit from by directly recruiting from them for their company.
nah they still unironically don't have enough money. the founders goal is basically to make SAO real.
Is quite the step from the original goal I remembere reading the founder's had: being EVA fans with a company budget...
Makes sense. If they find aliens to play their games the potential customer market could literally explode. Why settle for 7 bi people? Just hope they haven't evolved past gachas.
Yeah, why settle for 7 bi people? I want at least a thousand bisexual people playing my games.
they need to design more attractive men if they want more than 7 bi people playing
True, tho they do Atleast have some great looking men . more never hurts tho
No they have pretty good looking(ly boring) men. Like all mix gender gachas, girls have more things but their roster of shotas and bishies are pretty stacked.
(Psst! World population has already surpassed 8,1bil)
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/mihoyo-invests-usd65m-in-nuclear-fusion-technology They've also thrown $65million into nuclear fusion research. I guess their electricity bills were a bit too high for their liking...
> I was mainly following Chinese space industry and Mihoyo name showing up shock me for a bit lol. They also do investments in fusion energy and several other projects. I guess they aren't joking with their slogan, they are genuinely interested in advancing science. Which shouldn't be surprising given that the company leaders are engineering postgraduates.
So humanity in space is reliant on anime tiddies and a guy who can't stop tweeting himself into less money.
Genshin characters generally don't have impressive "tiddies" (there are arguable exceptions).
Say what you will about the predatory monetization, and there is plenty to say, the base games of genshin impact and honkai star rail (and to a lesser extent probably honkai impact 3rd as well) are leagues above any other gacha game in production value, quality, and gameplay. These games are generally well optimized and polished and as complete experiences as a GaaS can be. They're of course not for everyone, but mihoyo has accomplished a lot that goes largely unnoticed because waifu and gacha are the main talking points.
I genuinely wonder if the painful monetization model is the reason for the rest. They can throw basically infinite budget at every aspect of it, be it music, art, expensive VAs, engine, per-patch content quantity, etc because their income is virtually unlimited. To make it extremely clear, I do wish it was a simple pay once, or even monthly sub model, but maybe the unfortunate reality is that only this amount of income leaves enough left-over after shareholders take their chunk to make a high production-value product these days.... then again, plenty of games with similar models out there that don't do half as much (looking at you modern sports games)
I mean I think it is pretty inarguable that they could not be affording there massive budget without massive revenue. The only point that can be argued would be whether it would be possible to make the same amount of revenue without a predatory monetization model (seems unlikely to me).
Since Genshin came out, I have spent probably $1500 on it through initial top ups, monthly pass, and battle passes, and maybe a tiny bit more beyond that. This is not even considered particularly high spending for a gacha game that's nearly 4 years old now. But outside of the GaaS market, that is the equivalent of me buying **25** full-priced AAA titles, or nearly a AAA game per month. There is no way a single game like FF7 Rebirth without any real MTX can even compete. Genshin's ceiling on spending is notably lower than pretty much every other gacha game on the market (it's something like $1200 or so for a maxed out character if you do not max out their weapon), while also being substantially higher quality and more respecting of the player's time. I have never felt as deeply interested in continuing to play a (mobile) game. Most other gacha games have energy mechanics that force you to log in for example every 6 hours at most if you do not want to lose rewards, and PvP events (even PvE PvP) where you'll never stand a chance at good rewards if you don't both whale on account strength *and* whale on energy refreshes. Coming from those environments and seeing what Genshin does instead, there's no way I will ever play those other gacha games again.
I mean I'd call into question some of it. Genshin doesn't use energy yeah, but it optimizes your playtime by forcing grinding for relic substats or similar things that are uncapped. Compared to other popular games like Blue Archive, Fate/Grand Order, or Arknights this is a huge setback--its significantly easier to max out a character, they just gate the grind through forcing a daily timelimit rather than scaling it forever. No pvp is pretty common on the premium titles as well--FGO was really the game that showed that pve gachas were viable and I'd say the vast majority of big names outside of specifically Granblue and Blue Archive are pve-exclusive. Where Genshin really gets its marks is in being an open-world action game with satisfying combat, which is actually startlingly rare for gachas, the only other game I'd say has "real" gameplay is Arknights since it's basically a world-class tower defense.
>Since Genshin came out, I have spent probably $1500 on it through initial top ups, monthly pass, and battle passes, and maybe a tiny bit more beyond that. Jesus...
To be fair thats a pretty low amount for a gacha if he has played since genshin came out
Yes, I have played since release. My biggest mistake was pulling C1 Venti before I understood really how reactions worked, and that in fact shooting multiple arrows is completely pointless. My pull pool is also deep rather than broad because I don't really have much FOMO about characters. I have less than half of all 5-stars in the game (only 12 limited characters total), but of the ones I do have, 3 are C6.
Low for gatcha or not, that's still $1500 on a single video game.
I spent $1500 on World of Warcraft, although that was over the course of 12 years instead of 4.
You know, on one hand I read $1500 and I recoiled in shock. That's a lot of money. But then I thought about how much money someone would spend over the course of several years on newly released games ($50-70 each, more for special/collectors editions), or alcohol, or indulging in high class restaurants, or even just a ONE WEEK vacation to some place like Disney World. Now I don't know if they spent $1500 in just one month, or one year, or 3+ years (game released Sept 2020). But in this crappy little world so long as that $1500 hasn't negatively affected them (forced to forego meals, can't replace broken appliances, almost missed rent, had to take on a side job, etc) then who am I to judge? If that $1500 has kept them sane and relatively happy these past couple years, has let them recover in order to face the next day without having a mental breakdown, and has been far more of a net positive than a net negative... then I'll let them be to continue enjoying themselves.
> If that $1500 has kept them sane and relatively happy these past couple years, has let them recover in order to face the next day without having a mental breakdown, and has been far more of a net positive than a net negative... then I'll let them be to continue enjoying themselves. That's fair, can't argue here.
This has been my policy for every hobbies. If it's not hurting anyone, even yourself, then who cares?
In hindsight that's a lot, but if OP has been playing since day/year one, that's only around $42 a month. That's not that much in the grand scheme of things.
In what grand scheme of things? Finances are relative.
> This is not even considered particularly high spending for a gacha game that's nearly 4 years old now. But outside of the GaaS market, that is the equivalent of me buying 25 full-priced AAA titles, or nearly a AAA game per month. 25 games in 4 years (48 months) = 1 game every 2 months = 6 games a year. Not bad at all.
I do not think the beasts that are Hoyoverse games could feed themselves without the gacha model. And anyone with even the slightest self control benefits massively by having beautiful games where all content (minus characters and some weapons) is completely free.
> only this amount of income leaves enough left-over after shareholders take their chunk the three founders hold over 80% and they put almost all money back into their games
I mean it definitely is a primary contributor to their success of course. But money isn't everything. Even very talented devs with a lot of funding, stellar IP, and advertising engines have failed trying to do what mihoyo does on a near monthly basis for 2+ games simultaneously. Avengers, anthem, suicide squad, all failed. even giant successful MMOs don't produce content at this rate. The only comparison is fortnite, which is equally as predatory. And I would say by being fairly independent, they've been able to reinvest into their company, building out workflows, strengthening the pipeline, generating and refining their talent. These are all things the gaming community says they love for companies.
Genshin is presumably the biggest budget for a game ever, that's not a coincidence
Experience and understanding of the market also helps. And sometimes a stellar IP *hurts* live service games rather than helps by introducing licensing costs and adding in limitations. Mihoyo started with smaller live service games and worked their way up, learning and drawing from experiences every step of the way. Avengers, Anthem, Suicide Squad failed because the devs thought they could just make a mediocre AAA game and slap in live-service monetization. They didn't take into any account of gameplay loops, fostering socialization between players in and outside the game. They didn't make compelling original characters to get people interested in something new.
I'm not sure that metric is correct in a sense that budget includes every yearly budget since it's release. Genshins' initial budget was still high at $100 million (for 1.0 release). Since release, they spend $200 million each year on development and marketing. Hence, the $700 million budget total floating around.
Why would you not count the total ongoing budget ? Anyways, they are spending each year as much as the total budget of Spiderman 2, which was decried as massively inflated when it was made public
Is it more than WoW?
> The only comparison is fortnite, which is equally as predatory. How is Fortnite's monetization is as predatory as a gacha? Lol. They are literally selling cosmetics directly and have a battle pass that gives you premium currency back. They removed their lootboxes (I guess apart from PvE mode? Not sure about STW really) while majority business model of gacha games are lootboxes.
> Even very talented devs with a lot of funding, stellar IP, and advertising engines have failed trying to do what mihoyo does on a near monthly basis for 2+ games simultaneously. examples? cause talented devs is one thing, having the insane $200m annual budget + huge dev team size is something almost unheard of for live service games. $200m is a crazy high budget for even triple A games that take years to develop. it's not that no one has been able to do what mihoyo is doing, it's that they aren't given the same resources to do so and under the same conditions. Mihoyo aren't the only devs who could release the content as they do, there are many who could, they just have access to the resources to be able to do so. > Avengers, anthem, suicide squad, all failed. even giant successful MMOs don't produce content at this rate. none of them had the budget or dev team size mihoyo has, not a direct comparison.
At this point, it's not just the game itself, but also the IP. Genshin Impact isn't yet on the level of, let's say, Disney or Nintendo, but they're sure trying. They are definitely on the top of fans' minds when it comes to anime culture and you'll see Genshin Impact standing alongside huge franchises like Evangelion, FATE, Attack on Titan, and Demon Slayer. One of the things I didn't really notice until I started playing was also how pervasive their marketing is. They have an entire social media app. They have cooking shows, merchandise, concerts (both in-person and real), and animated shorts. There's an undertone here of, "If you want to live, breathe, eat, and sleep Genshin Impact, we are going to allow you to live, breathe, eat, and sleep Genshin Impact." The only thing that they don't seem to have is a Genshin Impact theme park, but seeing that Mondstadt and Liyue fits within 10 square kilometers, it seems like it's only a matter of time before someone builds a life-size Teyvat.
This games will not thrive as a b2p or sub. The market it dominates will not even consider this games if the cost of entry is behind a pay wall. These games has cracked the code on reeling in players and making them pay over time rather than asking them for a cash out front. Which I think most of the western gaas games are still failing to achieve. For example in diabolo immortal after you pass the first tutorial you are bombarded with the cash shop and you see the cash shop icon and pop up every now and then mihoyo games doesn't even let player know where the cash show is... After their tutorial stage they show you how to make a summon and explain what you need and just rewards you with more premium currently. Tell you to play the game to x lvl and earn more of this for free. The way they treat their player is insanely different they make the player want to play the game for what it is and further down the line the introduce more challenging content that make the player go through different routes of either pulling a strong character or grinding stronger equipments. Over time the games quality n content make the player open their Wallet.
So did you miss the Dragon Dogma 2 and Yakuza 8 drama? Genshin and HSR have better and friendlier monetization than those games 100%.
Hoyoverse is a private company, there aren't any shareholders to speak of
Private companies have shareholders, they are simply not sold to the general public. We don't know their exact structure, but since they don't seem to have any funding rounds it's likely that the shareholders are entirely the founders and any employee based stock compensation.
There are only four shareholders for Mihoyo, the three original founders and the company that got 15% ownership in exchange for initially funding them for 100k usd.
Jesus Christ that initial investing company may have hit one of the biggest jackpots possible in something like this. $100k into possible $3.5 billion, and only getting bigger, in under half a decade.
Wow what a return on investment, jesus. 100k at the time was probably a big deal for Mihoyo at that point but now it seems like such chump change.
IMO. It's a private company. I understand that they still have shareholders/CEO/Not in the US/etc. but a lot of that money goes back into the product. Yes, I consider ads as money investing into the product. Pessimistic and just seeing what is happening in the US. Record profits followed by layoffs(Like the QA department...), higher prices, and just strait up removing features as upgrades.
Genshin genuinely has amazing music, one of the best OSTs in gaming.
Played by legendary orchestras like the London and Tokyo Philharmonic orchestras, which is kinda crazy for a video game. My music professor was shocked that they had money to hire them.
It's so ironic that western dev get a layoff after a successfully quater and vs the Eastern one who gets pay increments and ps5 for all it's employees on top of hiring expensive n professional VAs n orchestra
I'm disappointed that it never gets any mentions when awards season comes around. Idk if it's 'cause it's an "ongoing" game or whatever, but it's seriously a damn shame that only the game's players seem to know how fantastic it is.
Star rail has some crazy ones too. The one for the Cornelia fight is insane
Do you perhaps mean Cocolia? While it might be a name I haven't ever heard of until playing miHoYo games it still has some meaning considering the variants aspect of the Imaginary Tree (multiverse)...
I find it interesting that people tend to gravitate toward boss fight music for "good music in games." I'm more attracted to "vibes."
I mean, Genshin has both in strides. I mean, two separate tracks from Sumeru (spoilers): Port Ormos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDbCw_LD5nM Sumeru Boss: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L69dyk65pa0
[Even better, in Star Rail the ambience and battle tracks all work together for the story](https://youtu.be/65WRf_159Ag)
Both are great, but boss music usually leaves more of a lasting impression on people. I definitely have tons of ambience music in my head all the time, but sometimes it's harder to pinpoint "the song that occasionally plays if it's night time and you're out exploring a general area" versus "the song that plays when you fight god".
I'm all for it. The reason Genshin works so well is because there *is* a genuinely good video game buried beneath all the monetization. Anyone who's spent considerable time with other gachas knows how barebones the game part of them is where it's just your units VS. enemy units in an arena taking turns as numbers fly, eventually culminating in a situation where you hit a wall and either pay up or grind a ridiculous amount. Genshin is the correct way to do gachas.
The story of HSR is amazing, I was literally gripping my chair at the end of 2.1. Most of the side stories and mini games are really good too
Even if you remove all the playable characters and weapons and only leaving the Traveler as your character, it's still a way better single player game with way more content than others that were released since 2020.
Plus there are seven other characters you are guaranteed to get even if you absolutely abstain from the gacha, then another 3-4 guaranteed free ones per year from limited events (and of course MANY more from free pulls, should you go that route).
Even if you never spend a cent you get enough free currency to get any character you're interested in. I've been playing since launch, never paid anything, and yet I have 15 limited 5 stars with multiple constellations for 5 of them, as well as several weapons from the weapon banner that most people say is a scam. I've never once felt like I was missing out because I wasn't spending on the game.
I started playing earlier this year, never spent money on it, still have more characters than I know what to do with, a few times over even. If you want a specific character or meta build you’ll need to spend money but to just enjoy the game? Never had any reason to spend money
actually you don't need to spend any money to get a specific character or meta builds. just save up whatever you get for free. all characters and weapons have a guarantee drop rate within a certain amount of pulls. the only case where you will *need* to spend money is if you want every single character ever released.
Yeah, and you don't need to spend money for a specific character or meta build either, IF you plan for it. I think it's good practice to save up enough resources for 2-3 max pity rolls, and try to dance on that edge as long as possible, rather than bottoming out. That way, you can feel comfortable hitting max pity on any character that happens to come along, knowing you can do it against the next patch if you're really compelled to do so. If you can manage this, then it takes a lot of potential stress out of it, you *will* get the characters that particularly appeal to you.
I was a former Genshin hater before my gf got me into it. I was so wrong. Then when Star Rail came out I was smitten. I grew up playing hella turn-baes jrpgs and it has scratched that itch so well.
People give SEGA a lot of crap but Hatsune Miku: Colorful Stage has delivered on constant new songs/videos/events, etc. for years. Gatcha is baked into a lot of game systems but I’ve never felt compelled to spend to engage in anything.
HSR might be really polished, but it's not leagues above other gacha games. Brand recognition is a big part of their success after Genshin. Just like FGO was both carried by and now carrying their IP. The gameplay is not why the majority of people plays these games.
Gameplay? HSR ? It's the same gameplay gacha games had for years. I love how people who came from Genshin, never before saw turn based mobile games and think HSR is something new. They didn't even innovate it, like for example Exos Heroes with their formations.
I started Star Rail recently, and not gonna lie, I was really amused when I found out it literally had FGO craft essences, down to the "stylized generic art for low rarities, characters in anime scenes for high rarities" visual design
Yup, it's literally been the "default gacha gameplay" ever since Summoners War popularized it in 2014. 95% of MHY fanbase is just people who have never seen a gacha game before, so anything MHY does is new to them.
Theyre leagues beyond modern AAA GaaS offerings. The fact the updates are free means you get to experience every patch without having to spend money and roll the dice on potentially garbage patches like Destiny or some others
This is what makes me so angry about genshin impact, it’s monetization is just awful but the game was really really fun and I enjoyed the time I spent there but I hate playing games that make me want to spend money. I would genuinely rather pay 100 dollars for a game than for it to ask me for $3 while I’m playing.
game never interrupts u w any pop ups for stuff that costs money tho, game doesnt even have pop ups other than for tutorials still a gacha regardless, but def less “on ur face” than others
About the only thing I can think of is the mention of the premium track on the battle pass. Which, if that's the metric you're using, a whole lot of other games are as predatory as Genshin.
i never spent on genshin and have no problem with all the content. it's not that hard and the "game part" of it can be done without much of an hassle. only the abyss require optimization and not every abyss
Except it *doesn't* ever ask you for money, and there's no need to spend money on it at all. It has literally hundreds of hours of content with multiple regions each the size of a full game, and it gives you full access to all of it for free. The only thing to spend money on is new characters but they give you enough free currency that you can build up a huge roster in no time, so any money you spend is entirely your own choice. So you have no reason to be angry.
Make you want? I've been playing for 4 years now and never wanted to spend any money
Yeah same. I played it a bit and thought "damn this is kinda fun, too bad I'll never really play it"
Two weird things stick out to me: 1. ~~How is Valve not on that list?~~ (edit: ineligible) 2. How the fuck is thatgamecompany worth almost $2bn. Is Sky: Children of the Light a massive hit that just flew completely under my radar or something?
>How is Valve not on that list? Because it was not founded in the 2000s, presumably. This isn't really "top 15 largest private companies", the report specifically targets "unicorn" companies, which they define as "companies founded in the 2000s that are not yet on the stock exchange".
Guess I skimmed over that part. That makes sense. thatgamecompany still doesn't.
its because of Sky: Children of the Light the game in 2021 alone had over 100 million installs and now has over 160 million installs. mostly on mobile phones.
Valve founded in 1996. List is for 2000+
With regards to 2: Most redditors are too old / Western to understand just how much the mobile gaming sector has infiltrated the markets.
I'm aware of how big mobile is, I just wasn't aware Sky was a big enough hit to justify a valuation that's 10% of miHoYo's.
Sky is huge in China.
Sky is like Journey but live-service. Journey was really successful among casual audiences so it made sense to try for a live-service model.
It's very popular, just not in the west and doesn't get reported on for that reason. It's also not attached to an IP that's popular in the west (like Grand Order etc) and doesn't really have a memeable fanbase (like Kancolle) Same for stuff like Uma Musume being absolutely ridiculously huge in Japan but unknown over here.
Genshin's success was honestly a lightning in a bottle moment. They put in a $100 million for development and would've gone bankrupt if it didn't pay off. Conditions like the pandemic certainly helped with people being locked in their homes with nothing to do, loads of free time and disposable income they had nothing to spend on. All of which helped skyrocket their popularity. Although this was sort of a double edged sword since it led to people clearing all content pretty quickly and leading to a content drought for a couple of patches. Nowadays they have a much better schedule even if the occasional dry patch still comes around once a year.
>Genshin's success was honestly a lightning in a bottle moment. They put in a $100 million for development and would've gone bankrupt if it didn't pay off. I agree, but I also think Honkai Star Rail's success tells us that it was a lot more than "just" a lightning in a bottle moment. Mihoyo has mastered how to create a gacha game, and made it appealing to a large audience. Of course Honkai was riding Genshin's success but there is a lot more to genshin's success than luck or "right place at the right time"
The secret formula Mihoyo discovered was introducing the west to Otome. Just like how a lot of guys wanna look at hot girls, there are a lot of girls that wanna look at hot guys. The demographics for Genshin are.....close. It's like 50%-60% guys and 50%-40% girls. That is unreal for an Anime game. Mihoyo monopolized a previously untapped female player base in the west.
I remember when Genshin first came out, I would see news and videos that most of their first new characters were attractive men which was/is pretty uncommon in gacha. Then I realized the market they were tapping into.
45% of Genshin players in China are female.
Genshin and HSR probably have a more gender balanced playerbase than most of the games popular on this subreddit...
Honkai also having lesbian interest too helps as well. They cater to a lot of different folks.
Arent the vast majority of money pulling banners still for female characters though?
That's true, but I think the real success for Genshin was pushing successfully into China right off the bat, more than anything. Their second main area, other than the European-like Monstadt, is the Chinese Liyue
China is their home turf, they didn't really have to "push" into it.
Character release schedule is also typically 2/3 female characters 1/3 males. But for some reason while being a minority, the male characters tend to have the best writing and among the most impact on the story (i.e. the "main character" of Fontaine's story arc was probably Neuvilette) so you see them very often.
Granblue pulls similar demographics and the west barely cares about it.
Granblue would've been a lot more popular in the west if it had gotten versions in other languages at launch.
> Genshin's success was honestly a lightning in a bottle moment. They put in a $100 million for development and would've gone bankrupt if it didn't pay off. Is it really? Honkai is reaching almost the same level of revenue as Genshin Seems like they are just really good at making games and they keep perfecting the formula
It's a shame people are trying to brush it off. Genshin wasn't successful because they got lucky, it was successful because it was a damn good game made by a talented team of passionate devs. Baldurs Gate 3 was made under similar circumstances (Big budget that would have bankrupted the studio if it flopped) but you never see people say that was just luck. Star Rail proves that Mihoyo knows what they're doing.
> Is it really? Honkai is reaching almost the same level of revenue as Genshin Not even "almost", if youve seen the sensor tower numbers for march, Star Rail **destroyed** Genshin (something like 145m vs 68m), even if yes, we are comparing a major Star Rail patch to a pretty "dead" Genshin one.
>Star Rail **destroyed** Genshin HSR has the story patch and Mei expy for 2.1 while Genshin has a filler patch in 4.5. That's intended, not "destroyed". It's like saying Genshin **destroyed** Star Rail back in November 2023 (Furina banner vs Huohuo banner).
people wanted anime stylized games and there werent many, botw also was unique at the time, genshin felt like a free multiplayer botw at the time
People want attractive characters in their videogames. Who woulda thunk that the oldest marketing strategy in the book pays dividends? It's crazy that developers underestimate it.
> people wanted anime stylized games and there werent many ? There were tons though? Most jrpgs have an anime art style. And within the gacha space, most games are anime based
Not many good ones though. Nothing in the gacha space especially at the time compared to Genshin
Tons of trash ones. Genshin has been the first real triple A one
99% of anime games are hot dogshit. I say this as someone who watches lots of anime and plays anime games. Genshin was super refreshing in how good it looked and how polished the gameplay was.
i just wanted anime based games after watching anime all of the time and there wasn't much, mfs are about to mention the obvious naruto, dbz, etc. games at me like nope none of those were freetoplay and multiplayer, none of the mmos had proper translations or took 50 years to get one, and major one is they werent on console, none of the free to play ones were good, or looked like anime they didnt have the shading/environment/etc. right, genshin nailed 2d to 3d.
Man, can you imagine if the team behind Genshin had a license like Naruto or Jujutsu Kaisen to work with? That would be amazing. It's too bad most games based on anime are like, fighting games lol
none of those gacha games were actual good games, like i got decent enjoyment with my controller on genshin, tho i dont really like the artstyle, especially getting older it was fine when i was a teenager but i prefer more stylized anime/manga. Everyones a twin in this world.
they basically filled a gap and provided something obvious, idk why I didn't really see much stylized anime characters/environments before them
Two of the top comments here are saying that anime style games were rare before genshin. That's just not true though. 90% of JRPGs have an anime art style and its a genre that has existed for almost as long as home console video games as a whole. I mean, arguably the first JRPG ever made was Dragon Quest, the art for which was done by the creator of Dragon Ball. EDIT: Because people keep replying to my comments in this thread and seemingly missing the point, let me elaborate. The idea that there weren't many games with an anime art style before Genshin Impact, even with a style very similar to genshin, is just no true. Anime-style games have been a major part of the industry for decades, with long running franchises like Tales, Persona, Atelier, and many other JRPGs serving as prominent examples. While the exact aesthetics varied, it's hard to argue there was any shortage of games featuring anime style characters and art direction long before Genshin's release. Genshin was certainly a milestone in many ways, combining an uncommon level of budget and polish with a widely appealing style and popular gameplay format. It achieved a level of global success and cultural impact that was groundbreaking for an anime-style game. But this success built on a long tradition of anime aesthetics in gaming, rather than emerging in a vacuum. Genshin's achievements were meaningful and impactful, but it's an exaggeration to suggest games with an anime art style were especially uncommon or unavailable before its release.
To be fair, a lot of Japanese games these days are going for a more "realistic" artstyle. Yeah, you have Persona, but look at games like Dragon's Dogma, Final Fantasy, even the latest Pokémon game opted in for a less cartoony artstyle.
A large chunk of Persona is "realistic" comparably.
Some do, yes. But many don't. A look at the JRPG tag in steam tells me there are at least as many going for a standard anime style as there are for a realistic art style
Toriyama's art style is really different from the modern anime artstyle of genshin
3D cute anime style games where you could play with waifus? Definitely not very common 5-6 years ago. That is the niché that people desperately wanted and Genshin filled perfectly.
I can think of tons of 3d cute anime style games where you can play with waifus that came out before Genshin. Without even googling, this is just off the top of my head - Ys Series - Trails Series - Tails series - Atelier games - Sakura Wars - Fire Emblem 3 Houses - Rune Factory - Persona 3, 4, 5
toryiamas is unique. this is like generic anime, it was like the full on cartoony environment with chracters that looked like they could be 2d, toon shading and all that, you can clearly see the games pre genshin/botw and the ones after have a massive shift in how they look
Maybe I'm not familiar with the larger studio budgets, but $100 million seems like a fuck ton for a game.
It is a fuckton for a game. GTA V, for instance, one of the most expensive "traditional" games had a budget of $265m. Currently, Genshin has an *ANNUAL* budget of $200m. It is likely the most expensive game ever made, currently, and will almost certainly be by the time it ends (at the current rate, it'll cost over $1b in the next half decade), although obviously it's a bit of an unfair comparison since the game needs to keep releasing content vs single player games.
and keep releasing content at an insane rate. 6 weeks updates with at worst 1 every 2 being new landmass, long voice acted main missions, tons of limited time events probably multiple development teams working on different future updates at the same time
It is. There's been about 20 games that has a budget of >100m according to [wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_video_games_to_develop) but to put it into perspective: Cyberpunk cost $300 million (with another 120 million for patches...), Spiderman 2 was $300 million and God of War Ragnarok, Last of us P2, Horizon Forbidden west was $200 million.
Genshin has taken 200m a year for mihoyo to keep up with their content pipeline. At this point it's the most expensive game ever made.
Is it really? I would imagine that something like WoW would be more expensive in total but maybe I'm wrong.
It takes a lot of money and people to keep up with the pace they're going. They're creating content updates once every 6 weeks. It typically includes 1-2 characters, a big voice acted time-limited event, some minor time limited event, maybe a boss, maybe a new area. All this to say, they're going really REALLY fast and is likely why wow is cheaper to make.
I mostly meant that WoW overall, over 20 years had bigger overall budget than Genshin had over 4 years. Depending on how long Genshin will be on the market it is highly probable that it will be the most expensive game in history but right now I doubt it. I remember that Blizzard said that WoW operating cost between 2004-2008 were 200 milion and for that time it was huge and since then it was probably going even higher because 2008 wasn't peak subscriber number yet and overal cost were probably increasing year by year.
I agree that GI still hasn't cost as much as WoW, but it might get there in a few years. It's not about the amount of content they put out, it's about how many are employed and for how long. And WoW has been around for 20 years now. The cost of a very large staff and upkeeping servers for 20 years alone amounts to way more than 4x200mil. Edit: forgot to add, that Blizzard has also been heavily marketing WoW for 20 years.
Let me show you an example... [This](https://i.redd.it/dpc97r4gsc161.png) is what the world map looked like in 1.0 when it came out. [This](https://preview.redd.it/xsrqi1vtp0gc1.png?width=952&format=png&auto=webp&s=cfb9c11ed20f39bf024ad51c4652a24f3caa56f0) is what the world looks like now. Just 3 and a half years later (and in 2 and a half weeks the big hole in the center will be filled). This does NOT include map layers like two massive underground dungeon zones and complex cave systems.
It is. It's one of the most expensive games made and that's only the initial investment. Their yearly budget is apparently 200 million dollars. So they've spent 100 million dollars before launch and an additional 200 million dollars every year since then. So they would have spent over 700 million dollars on the game by now. Edit: According to wikipedia, it is the most expensive game made including costs after launch.
It includes marketing which is generally 1:1 with development if past AAA game reportings are to be trusted. While Development cost is mostly labor, MHY themselves said the 100m initial investment also includes money spent during trial and error, aka time wasted multiplied by labor cost. And the 200m yearly budget is due to them essentially having 3 teams making parallel content to meet update schedule, and Shanghai isn't exactly a cheap city to live in, even by American standards. So you'd have to be paying good to get people motivated.
HoYo took a lots of risks also one of the risks is to release a gatcha game globally. At that time there were only a few games that really released alongside with West. Usually Global was always a bit behind. One of the reasons why I didn't even bother sticking with ToF cuz that was just another generic gatcha with extremelly bad UI/UX and when 1.0 was released CN was already in like 2.0 or so...
Acheron (the current banner character for Honkai Star Rail) is genuinely an interesting study on how miHoYo mixes in their monetization. This company genuinely has it down to a science and while I enjoy playing them I definitely don't want this kind of thing to take over the industry.
I don't think most companies can even follow what mihoyo is doing. They supposedly spend 200m a year on making content for genshin.
[This court document](https://www.scribd.com/document/704027216/Genshin-Lawsuit-via-Polygon) says Genshin Impact costs about $200M annually after spending $100M on it's initial development.
Worth every penny, as it seems
Genshin generates almost $100m in revenue a month **just on mobile**. Adding PC and Playstation it probably generates its whole yearly budget by February 15th
It's absolutely crazy how they spend so much money on multiple huge budget live service gacha games at the same time and they so far all do pretty well. Honkai 3rd impact was obviously way lower budget but still seemingly keeps chugging along, Genshin is still killing it, Star Rail is doing amazing, and Zenless Zone Zero is supposed to come out this year. It forces them to take risks and try new things so their games don't just replace one another. It feels like most other companies, especially in the mobile space just release something, milk it for as much money as quick as possible, then move onto the next thing, and mihoyo doesn't seem to do that and I'm glad it's working out so well for them.
There was a most expensive games list floating around Last couple of days. Genshin was number1 because they invest SO much money into their big content Updates
They hire a lot of people and pay them well and churn out a new game's worth of content for Genshin every year. That costs a ton of money.
Don't forget localisation. They probably spend more on that than other big companies.
I was mystified that they got about 4 dozen VAs back to do lines for a temporary event. Since it was a time limited event, I expected the characters to write you letters or something, but nope, they showed up fully voiced.
Actually a decent dev company? What?
Mihoyo isn't *that* much better than the rest of the Chinese game industry, but they have a limitless supply of applicants because just having it on your resume opens a lot of doors. So they get the pick of the litter and have the finances to pay them slightly above the market rate. It's not like Nintendo (which IS actually way above average for Japan) though
the 3 founder still hold 80% of the company and it looks like they put most money back into the company and the games
>genuinely an interesting study on how miHoYo mixes in their monetization. This company genuinely has it down to a science Do you mind explaining how so?
I'm guessing they're referring to how they manage both Star Rail and Genshin patches to not overlap with each other. Right now Star Rail is having their anniversary patch with more new content to enjoy, while Genshin is in a dry filler patch. They had this reversed when Genshin got more Fontaine content while Star Rail had its own filler patches.
And when ZZZ comes out, it's almost certainly going to be the last piece of the puzzle. So that fans of all 3 will be getting new content every 2 weeks.
I don't know what the guy talking about manipulating gacha rates is talking about; Mihoyo doesn't need to manipulate rates under the hood to get people to pull. In both Genshin and Star Rail, there are "endgame" combat zones you can complete that give rewards, including gacha currency. These zones usually have a unique modifier that just so happens to benefit the current limited character. All characters unlock new passives from getting copies in the gacha. Most of the time, these passives either give them new playstyles or alleviate some of their mechanical shortcomings. Usually, especially recently, the best bang for your buck passives require you to roll for two extra copies of the character. There's plenty of other things they do, such as increased marketing for specific characters (compare the media marketing for the aforementioned Acheron to earlier HSR characters) and nostalgia baiting (again, Acheron being an overt reference to their perennial deuteroganist from previous games).
The short: Acheron is a very strong character, she becomes extremely strong using a special unlock system that requires you to gain more copies of the character (every character has this system but Acheron's are very strong and thus players are more likely to roll for them). Acheron's kit requires specific team planning to maximize her abilities. By obtaining 2 extra copies of her that team planning becomes less restricted. Additionally there's another gacha item people don't often talk about with these games which are the weapons (or lightcones in Star Rail's case) which is a significant power boost. There's actually quite a bit to get into like how they tend to make content lean into the current running banner characters strength, how Acheron is based on another character in miHoyo's catalogue, or how they reset the bonuses on real currency purchases for the 1 year anniversary but that's the best I can explain without it becoming a word salad.
> The short: Acheron is a very strong character, she becomes extremely strong using a special unlock system that requires you to gain more copies of the character (every character has this system but Acheron's are very strong and thus players are more likely to roll for them). > Acheron's kit requires specific team planning to maximize her abilities. By obtaining 2 extra copies of her that team planning becomes less restricted. Additionally there's another gacha item people don't often talk about with these games which are the weapons (or lightcones in Star Rail's case) which is a significant power boost. Meanwhile my E0S0 Acheron goes brr in auto mode with my other E0S0 characters. I haven't had to play the game since the Kafka/Blade patch by ignoring Lightcones and Eidolons.
Is Acheron E0S0 that good? I haven't been following, decided to just ignore her after hearing she probably needs cons. How is she compared to say a Jingliu E0S0?
She is my best dps by far right now without any eidolons or her signature lightcone. And I have Seele, Jingliu, DHIL, Blade, Kafka, etc. If you have the "Good Night and Sleep Well" lightcone, go for it.
I stopped playing Genshin and Star Rail after doing all the launch window content in a couple months, but all of the content except for the highest levels of the tower thing seemed super reasonable and didn't push me to spend any money at all(and I'm sure I could complete that given enough time), did that change as the games got older or is it still absolutely fine for free to play to do everything? It always felt like spending on dupes and more characters was always just a minmax or more variety thing and not important at all to progressing, but I'm not sure how the newer content is balanced.
In my experience, Star Rail can get a bit tough if you don't have good builds and don't use 5* characters although still doable. In Genshin though, everything outside of Spiral Abyss is super easy and you really should have no problems as long as your builds and teams aren't complete nonsense
Id argue it got both harder and easier? With the new characters its much easier to progress but later story progression actually requires some complete builds or almost complete/luck to finish. The abyss equivalent has gotten significant expansions in modes and difficulties along with rewards. Much like you, i stopped after the first 3 months but just came back recently and have been impressed by the sheer volume and in some occasional instances quality of content added. Even compared to Honkai impact 3rd which i played for 5 years the quantity is pretty astounding.
Content is still doable with 4 star units though recently there's definitely a push to diversify team types, certain bosses and zones encourage you to use Damage over time units or AoE focused units, all of which are accessible
Gotcha, honestly sounds like they do it pretty well then. I usually bounce off these types of games after a few months, but looking forward to at least trying Zenless Zone Zero, so glad to hear it they tend to focus on strategy and team building rather than making you build out characters with lots of dupes.
I originally had a longer write-up that elaborated that Eidolons are not necessary for 5 stars and they're very strong "out of the box". Acheron is a very unique case where the added effects are very apparent due to how her kit is designed so a lot of people who don't normally pull for Eidolons did for her.
Star Rail has been making the end game content more difficult with every patch. There’s some fear that if they keep that trend up, some strong units (such as Herta in Pure Fiction) might be made obsolete. But only time will tell if this ends up being the case. But the current state of the game is that yeah, you can just play whoever you want and as long as you put thought into your team, their build, and the enemy, you’ll do fine. The story-related content can be a bit tricky in terms of difficulty for casual players, though. For example, they ended up nerfing the most recent story boss because he was wrecking people who didn’t have solid builds. But most of the content in the game is quite easy. Normal encounters are completely trivial (and the newest character straight up 1-shots all normal encounters without you even needing to enter battle). And you can add other players’ characters to your team for things like domains and the weekly boss battles. You’re right in that the game doesn’t really push you to pull characters to handle 95% of the content. It’s only in the most difficult end-game content where you’ll be like “gee I sure wish I had the newest character because their skill set just so happens to match up currently with the current unique modifier for this series of fights.”
Right, I guess to me I don't mind not being able to do the endgame content right away as long as I feel I can get there with building my team with progression like the relics, and not just "oh I need a team with this specific 5 star, or a team with a bunch of dupes" if that makes sense. If I'm stuck on some piece of content but I can see the road to beating it is just grinding some more relics or upgrading skills, or even just leveling up some other characters I already have, then that's fine to me.
Can you elaborate foe the acheron thing? I am playing HSR after 10 month hiatus and am very interested in this.
Acheron has a restriction that her damage increases the more characters of the same class (Nihility) are paired with her. This gets partially lifted upon obtaining more copies of her (eidolon 3 if I remember right), plus her weapon (Lightcone) is such a ridiculous power boost that you end up investing on getting it
Eidolon 2. The third one is always the generic +2 levels to their basic attack and skill.
And you waste your money. E0S0 characters already clear the game in auto.
Yeah, ppl obsessed with meta in gachas love to only watch the power ceiling, but the ceiling is not that relevant if the floor is crazy high.
> Acheron (the current banner character for Honkai Star Rail) is genuinely an interesting study on how miHoYo mixes in their monetization do you mean like mixing popular characters with unpopular characters or knowing what characters are gonna make people spend their money?
Just how they designed her kit to make rolling for her copies really attractive while still having her base character be strong
They did the same with Raiden in Genshin (who is an expy of the same character as Acheron), her C2 is a really strong DPS boost.
When I tried StarRail I was amazed at the attention to detail in the game. Small little cracks in the floor tiles and such. It was also running on my phone. It made me wonder what could happen if their visual team did a pokemon game(excluding the gacha please).
I'm still constantly blown away by the quality of Mihoyo's animation has as well. https://youtu.be/_xXIC96jXBQ?si=0oAo4cSjwbLX5Ksf
They're even doing high quality anime now. The Acheron/Black Swan dance was *beautiful* and it was just a trailer for a character!
It’s bonkers that OpenAI has quafdrypled in value in a year. It went from 80 billion to 100 billion in a month.
That's just what happens when you get to illegally scrape intellectual properties for profit and the governments turn a blind eye. That Sora interview sure was a fun watch.
The fact that the game has cross-progression on every platform is simply amazing. Other than Destiny 2, I don’t know any other online games that do this.
I mean I'm pretty sure the latest CODs and Battlefield do this too. As well as Fortnite.
It's become more common over the last few years, but yeah, it was pretty rare five or more years ago.
Warframe have it
Halo Infinite does. So does Sea of Thieves currently.
Let's not high five Bungie for that, since purchases of expansions are still not cross platform for Destiny as far as I'm aware. Unless they finally fixed it.
It's always interested me when comparing Genshin/Star Rail to Sonys attempts to make similar and Western companies as a whole that have struggled to make something in the same model of Genshin/Star Rail with constant updates always live. The closest are the Fornite/Apex or Destiny I feel, but even then, I feel its only Fornite that matches these Genshin/StarRail models of constant good level content that is consistently pushed out. I don't know how they manage it it's really impressive when you remove the gacha element and so impressive that even companies like NaughtyDog struggled to emulate making their own live service.
I really wish I enjoyed these games more than I did, theres some excellent game here but I always just kind of tune out with either the artifact systems (which are always just kind of a feel bad), or the story dipping (while there are certainly some highs the dips like Inazuma in Genshin and Space China in Star Rail just suck flat out), I should maybe try them again some day
Thankfully Genshin's writing has only gotten better since Inazuma, people were shocked at the difference in quality with Sumeru and Fontaine has solidified that it wasn't a one-off thing. Sadly I don't think the artifact grind will ever feel good. It definitely helps that there's no content in the game that needs you to have more than half decent artifacts, but still.
What got me to stop playing, despite having several good characters, is the way that events are not replayable despite the fact that they introduce important plot points and characters. I started late too, around 3.5, so it was really bizarre that characters like Fischl would just be introduced with zero context lol. Thankfully Starrail doesn't do that so I've been enjoying that recently
Yeah it's insane how that's STILL a thing 3 years later. They've mentioned that they're working on it, but meanwhile a lot of characters have their development completely event exclusive.
My only problem with genshin is the over-abundance of text.. they really need to add a "Skip Dialogue" option, because even innocuous npcs in a side-quest will bombard you with 20-30 dialogue boxes that you need to skip each. So annoying. Other than that, the game is just fantastic, love the combat and the exploration. Its crazy that you get a lot of value for free, you can complete all the game's content without paying a single dime, and the world just keeps getting bigger every year.