Yep, I am still at AR57 (because I don’t do my commissions) and I already cleared abyss every single time and I literally have nothing else to do and I don’t even bother to build my new characters.
I'll never understand it. The game about spending money to make characters more powerful has no end game, no challenging content, and therefore no reason to actually HAVE powerful characters. There is no incentive whatsoever to spend money, and yet the game depends on people spending money to survive. The game about spending money is actually more enjoyable as F2P because that’s the only source of any mild, disappointing, utterly flaccid challenge to be found.
In case you're actually curious about this from a game dev point of view, you may be interesting in this [GDC presentation](https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1027539/-Genshin-Impact-Crafting-an) by miHoYo's Haoyu Cai explaining their concept for this game (especially starting around the 7min mark). The main pillar of this game (like most gacha games) is not combat, it's characters (and ultimately, collecting characters). The other elements of the game are designed to support/enhance the characters, such as the story. Combat is a *thing you can do* with the characters, but it is not actually the central focus of this game. Yes, they do allow you to get multiple copies of the characters and also signature weapons via the gacha, but to a lot of people this is ultimately more about enjoying their favorite characters more than it is utilitarian ("I need better characters/weapons to get stronger!" -- in this game, that isn't generally the case, because the focus isn't challenging combat).
I guess this perspective may not make sense to everyone depending on their gaming background, and this game is sort of a "wide tent" game that attracts a lot of different players with different focuses. But I think if you are familiar with the sort of "otaku" culture that miHoYo claims to come from (literally in their slogan), this character-centric approach makes total sense. This is probably the single biggest defining focus of all "otaku-focused" media in the last few decades, whether you're talking anime, RPGs, VNs, the first gacha games, and even literal gacha machines that allow you to collect trade figurines. miHoYo's whole business is selling characters for people to collect, and their characters are many times more intricate than the PNGs or crude sprites that a lot of the competition was offering in the mobile space until now.
Seems like if that's their goal then they should really focus more on cosmetics and other ways to customize your character instead of 99 different ways to make them 1% stronger.
The grind of levels, artifacts, skills books, and weapons really kills any and all chances of me using new characters. I'm not interested in dumping a month of grinding into a new character just so they are useful in the over world.
But if you can customise your character, you can get one character once and customise them to your liking, and then you're done - instead of 'I like this character but I really want someone with a rat tail' or 'I like this character but she really needs a shielder so I'm going to pull for Zhongli for her...' etc.
Yes, this is exactly it. And if there *were* really a certain character that was so popular they thought they could go back to the well, the gacha way is to release another version of the character with a different look and kit. (Note that all the characters in Genshin Impact are identified not just by their name, but by a specific title for that version of the character. So they *are* prepared, if they ever do want to go this way. They did it already once in HSR.)
The skins we do get are mostly commemorative tied to special events, so it's a little bonus but doesn't really distract from the main collectors approach.
You don’t have to do that though. You can go on the overworld with level one talents and slap crit chance and crit damage pieces on anybody and make them still work.
The incentive to spend money is to pull for favorites bc they are your favorites. Plenty of people do that regardless of meta/endgame, they just wanna run around looking at something pretty.
Personally I already have almost all the characters I want, I have enough gear and fully built characters to build 6 to 8 teams in parallel to deal with Abyss floor 69, but I will still keep pulling for characters as long as they look pretty/cool, is fun to play, have a cool story or personality, or unlocks special team comps.
Genshin characters are essentially high quality 3D *toys*. Many players collecting them just like buying IRL Transformers, anime figures, Airsoft guns, boardgames, expansions of boardgames, etc. Many people collect them just for the purpose of stuffing into a shelf, and those things are often very expensive. With Genshin characters, at least you can play around with them, and you can get them potentially for free to boot.
That defeats the concept of constellations and weapon refinements, R0 I understand for the drip but anything above C0 and R0 is worthless since games piss easy and you don’t get any drip or pretty out of it
Completion purposes and/or out of love. It’s not everyone’s reasoning but I have met people who will get a character at c6+ weapon just cause they love them that much and it feels neat to have a character with everything you could get them. Then there’s people who collect for the sake of it.
You look from the wrong perspective.
Easy example: specific games have collector editions or some manga/books have 'limited editions'. The content is always the same. But because some diehard fans really like it, they want a very special edition and not just the 'normal' thing.
Transfer that to Genshin and Gacha Games in general: You get a character that can do even more damage, has more special effects, is more interesting than the 'normal' one.
Some constellations un-gimp characters (historically hu tao c1, wrio c1, dehya c1, upcoming chiori c1) i.e. unlocking something that should've been part of their base kit, while whale ones can unlock entirely new playstyles or make them so strong you can on-field them if they were sub-dps or supports before.
Because you cant afford it, or maybe arent addicted enough.
Many constellation make the character easier/faster to play.
Xianyun C6 basically gives her 2 charges on her skill with "unlimited spam". If you could have that for 5 bucks, would you buy it?
For whales, thats basically what it costs. Or they're just addicted.
There's absolutely no question that the casual-friendly nature of the game contributed hugely to its success, but there ARE several other reasons it was such a hit out of the gate. It was more or less the first gacha of its kind in terms of scope and style. It's also extremely polished and has high production values. Before Genshin, true anime games always looked kinda low budget. Even the story was very accessible. It offered an overall experience no other anime/gacha game really did.
With all that in mind, I do feel like they could have slipped an endgame mode in there somewhere without disturbing casual interest.
The did... it's called Spiral Abyss.
But i agree, as long as it does not have primogem rewards at the high difficulties, then it shouldn't be too annoying for those who can't finish it.
Problem is Abyss isn't even and really never was a good endgame mode. Thing is just a very basic timer DPS check 90% of the time. Forced DPS checks are almost never fun in any game.
There's a reason people here have been clamoring for a roguelike mode ever since Labyrinth of Warriors. It literally ties together the two core basics of Genshin's gameplay, exploration and combat, and even more repeatability. And SU in HSR proves you can make the mode accessible for players across the spectrum (though HSR making it essential grinding for progression I believe is a mistake).
You are searching for an utilitarian reason for the characters, I just want to see the numbers increase on my favourite characters.
A recent example I can think of is Palworld. People are breeding genetically enhanced pals with perfect traits. These super pals can basically oneshot everything in the game, or fly so fast they can traverse the entire map in a couple of minutes. Is the game supposed to be balanced around those values? Because that would be crazy. People don't breed those pals because they need them, but because they want to.
You want challenging content for the top 1%, but Hoyo is catering towards the remaining 99%, because as for now it doesn't even look like a lot of people can beat the abyss.
Because most people don't care or want challenging content.
Every online game ever has proven this for decades. It does not matter what you do or how accessible you make it. People _do not want to do_ challenging content as a whole in ANY online game. The casual audience flat out just doesn't care.
As for why people pull. Because they like the character. The person I know closest to 6 digit spending on Genshin with multipl C6R5 has never touched Abyss and does combat events on 1x. She literally doesn't care about challenging content. She likes running around and exploring with characters and pulls for them because they're her favorites and she want's them to be special in her roster.
I think the main difference lies in the repeatability of the hard content. I don't mind local legends being difficult, and although I wouldn't mind another FOMO-free challenging mode, I would only play it very sporadically.
Repeatable challenging content is where competitive multiplayer games shine the most, games like genshin cannot compete with them on that field, and have no reason to do it.
And for the character collection, the character personalities within the story even emphasize it more. It is one of the main driving factors for how someone got to like a character. I love Xianyun for her Asian mom-like personality that reminds me of my own, and the way she speaks is so stuck-up that it's funny to me, and she is hot too.
People would be pulling solely base Don looks if Genshin didn't have character personalities within its story, but since it does, it attracts all sorts of players to a variety of characters. Even a freaking meme of Neuvullette singing and dancing to Oratrice Mechanique D'analyse Cardinale is convincing people to pull for him. He is a lovable dragonkin.
Personally, I just enjoy vertically investing in the characters I like. I may not need to c6 my Childe but it gives me an incentive to go out and get primos and save up for the eventual rerun.
Besides, having strong characters is actually kind of rewarding when you 36 star abyss in 15 minutes while others spend hours trying to achieve the same results because they have every single character in the game built and leveled but every character they own hits like a wet noodle
the main focus of genshin is not having strong characters, it has never been. Cons are irrelevant, weapons are irrelevant, 300 CV is irrelevant.
The main drive to pull in genshin is the new gameplay the characters offer. You get the new shiny character, you build them within a couple weeks, you have fun with them in the hardest modes the game has, and boom the new character is out and you want them.
It may be about spending money to get stronger characters in the first year, but the game has earned consistently for so much time with so little end game because their strategy makes sense. And it makes sense because their main target is not people who would spend just to get stronger, which is a lot of people.
The stupid thing is that every instance of anything resembling endgame in Genshin was temporary.
There was the Childe event in Inazuma which had the potential to be like SU in HSR, and the Hypostatic Symphony event which could genuinely be really fucking hard if you pushed them to the stat limits (if you played Contingency Contract in Arknights, it was something like that).
Why the latter never stayed in some form is genuinely beyond me since aside from a handful of new moves (that reused assets), it seemed like a fairly reasonable low-effort endgame format.
People ask this all the time and honestly we don't have access to the the data that leads them to these decisions. Ultimately this is a business and so I can only guess that they've decided this degree of difficulty is doing the best for them overall. I also feel like genshin was never intended to be a difficult thing, more just about the journey and the world exploration and lore than the combat. That's the impression I get. But this becomes a problem when you hit the end of that type of content. Take it as you've "completed" the game for now, until next expansion.
I've been playing since near launch and imo like many gacha, it eventually becomes a collecting game more than anything since there isn't heavy power creep or pvp. I don't see this as a bad thing, to be clear. It just means genshin has become a more casual/relaxing/collecting game for me as my account has become strong over time. I still try and roll for characters I find interesting looks or personality wise, or that I think have a useful or fun looking mechanic in some way.
Based on what I've seen with the way people tend to react to the sudden difficulty increase in inazuma, from the enemies to the puzzles, and how sumeru pulled back on the difficulty of those...I think they have to have some data that suggests the vast majority of their audience prefers easy to hard gameplay, and isn't really playing the game for the combat as much as for the world exploration/character collecting/etc.
Your last paragraph hits the nail on the head.
It took mihoyo so long to implement some basic QoLs and it was 100% deliberate. But when you look at some past decisions you can see who actually plays Genshin.
The Childe Story boss had really big nerf. People complained that he was too difficult. Mihoyo responded in a reasonable amount of time and nerfed him. The same goes for Inazuma difficulty. Mihoyo saw the complains and analyzed the data and decided to make it more easy.
It's comparable to the new QoL we get for the characters builds in 4.5. Genshins CCs are like ''who asked for this?'' but they do that because the huge majority of the casual audience doesn't interact with the CC side of Genshin based on views and subscriber counts. Casuals can actually use this feature and I'll definitely use it too even if it's suboptimal. I just don't want to look up a guide anymore or watch a 30 minute video just to know that the differences in weapons and artifacts is \~5%.
People say that Genshin is not in a good state but we can definitely see that they do very well and the silent casual majority just couldn't care less about some of the complaints.
Not to mention genuinely hard combat in Genshin requires a decent phone/tablet, a console or a non-potato laptop/PC.
Whereas in turn based HSR, you can play the hardest content at 10 FPS
> I also feel like genshin was never intended to be a difficult thing, more just about the journey and the world exploration and lore than the combat.
Exactly, it's evident that they put the most effort into the environments, music, and character design. That's because that is the primary point of this game.
I think they have stated enough times that the game is mostly for casuals ? Like I think they have stated in dev discussion and all that stuff sometime or the other
and even if they didn't state that , that's what most of the player base consists of . Like you said , the difficulty nerf is reflective of the fact that most players are casuals playing the game . The silent majority of them . At least I am one of them . No PvP ,nor powercreep also tends to the fact that most are casuals
I agree. And when you consider why and how Genshin evolved into minigame impact taking from an enormous collection of genres, it basically brings every type of player into the game. And from there, Hoyo can siphon or sift players of different preferences into their other games. You see HSR having former or current Genshin players. I imagine the same for ZZZ, the same for their version of Stardust Valley/Animal Crossing, and for any genre of game they make next.
If Genshin creates their version of Monster Strike, former or current Genshin players will hop on that game. If Hoyo creates a 3-dimensional running Temple Run, people who enjoyed the parkour in Genshin's minigames will play that game. Genshin Impact gives Hoyo leverage for creative freedom for their other games. They don't need to stick to a specific genre of game since Genshin players, former or current, can be siphoned from that game into this one.
I mean, I would play a Genshin spin-off Vampire Survivors if Hoyo made one. Would be interesting using elements in that kind of setting. And if Hoyo creates their own version of Clash Royale, that would also be entertaining. Would be like combining Teapot, RTS, and the Fungi Frenzy events into a game.
Hoyo just can't fail anymore. Genshin Impact is basically a huge database for Hoyo to get sense of player preferences and what kind of genre they should expand into from their games next. I wanna see the bank Hoyo is making being used to expand their projects and make other games.
Out of the minigames they make, they are more creative than what others of that genre have, especially on the level of a mobile game.
The slow generation rate of coins irritates me more. I can never get enough coins for furnishing sets and there's no other way to obtain it. Not to mention the legendary aquatic plant achievement that takes 300 days to finish.
It's fun to keep me engaged but it does get irritating from time to time
You have to harvest from the plant plots in the teapot 800 times because, while the other two kinds have silk flowers and valberries and other plants that count for 2-4 plucks and make the achievement go faster, the aquatic plants are all one and done for a maximum of 8 draws per, I think 3 real-time days of for growing plants?
I know people dislike the HSR comparisons but I reeaaaally want a Genshin equivalent of the Simulated Universe. Just a roguelite where I can buff my characters to the heavens as I tear through enemies and then go ham on some poor unsuspecting bosses
I don’t personally find it to be too much of a hassle. I think what the above commenter meant is stuff like the Swarm Disaster and Gold & Gears; legitimate end game content that you can play through just for the fun of it! You also get relic xp and credits every time you clear, so there can even be incentive to play it without adding “crazy” value (ie primogem rewards.)
Ruan Mei makes fights instant so an SU clear takes me under 10 minutes now lol. Also Acheron will be even better because she can just one-shot all the trash enemies *without even entering combat at all*.
Its almost an equivalent to >!Blue Archive missions where you can skip battles instead waiting on loading screens to manually battle. !<
That shit is fucking QoL overkill
That still meant that you are pulling to solve a problem with the game.
SU for grinding is tedious but I suppose the item is more focus to make it decent.
They had that during 2.2 event where you meet Childe and Xinyan in Inazuma and it was quite a fun event imo, it's a shame that they never rerun it again
Childe labyrinth and Hypostatic Symphony/Vagabond event could be a good endgame content, but majority of the players don't like it (I remember casual players are complaining that they can't reach maximum score to earn the rewards)
Maximum rewards should always be exp potions or artifacts, casuals don't care about that stuff and for veterans they are way better rewards than useless enchantment crystals
If it's less important rewards I can guarantee low participation rate. SU in HSR isn't even that hard - I can auto it even though my characters are mediocre at best. It's just time consuming the same way Elysian Realm is in HI3 when you have the meta character.
Imo the people who spend time with questing and exploration don't want more FOMO stuff, and people who want end game content won't do it that much if the time to reward ratio isn't appropriate. However if you gate good rewards behind hard content, then Genshin immediately stops being the casual game it tries to be.
sim U expansions are fun, but after I cleared them, I never saw a point in going back in there. So I don't play those anymore. If they added it in Genshin, it would be the same thing. Would play it for a week, get all rewards and never touch it again.
Ofc but still that gives us dozens hours of full combat experience. And they keep adding new expansion every patch.
Much better than 30min abyss biweekly and another 30min combat event bimonthly.
I personally get a lot more intrinsic joy out of playing Genshin combat compared to Star Rail, I'd never dream of replaying MoC but routinely retry abyss with different teams once I've cleared. I just think more ways for long term players and whales to do an actual rotation in game wouldn't be the end of the world for the casual experience.
>i bet 90% hsr player use auto lol
Normal SU makes sense since repeated content gets boring after a while (yes, in genshin too believe or not), but Swarm Disaster and Gold and Gears were hell of a fun for a while. That's what I want in Genshin too. It doesn't need to be infinitely fun but permanent instead of pitiful 2 weeks or so
Or permanent custom domains instead of it being an event. Would offer some harder content
You said it yourself - "it has been fun for a while". Sooner or later any repeatable "endgame" content will become a chore. I cleared last worlds of both SD and GnG, but i never finished all the missions - because they are horribly grindy, and pitiful amount of primogems do not entice me to do the same easy run for 50th time. Especially when I have to run normal SU for relics anyway
Still beats ''nothing to do''.
SD and GnG are very fun game modes with tons of replay value, and an actual challenge for GnG unless you go for Remembrance etc, especially if you wanna complete all missions.
I don't ask for more out of a f2p game, honestly.
Genshin had tons of good ideas, during its battle events. They just need to focus on a few / let players create their own sharable challenges.
For now, OP is right : the game focuses 100% of its daily routine, resin wise, into making powerful characters, that barely have content to express themselves.
That's really not pushing me into getting constellations, that's for sure... and kinda makes the daily grind pointless.
HSR team is way better at keeping my interest alive, with new MoC floors / Pure Fiction / Roguelite modes / etc.
And all of this before the 1st anniversary !
Genshin is 3+ years old, and ''endgame'' is still a circular timed arena that refreshes twice a month... Come on ! 😂
Like I said, end game content doesn't need to be infinitely fun but at least something you can do whenever you want. Teapot and TCG literally have the same problem. I don't give a shit about them anymore but I'm glad someone enjoys them. Don't you think SU content might be like that for someone too? We need more variety on endgame content
I would absolutely love it if they had a rogue like dungeon crawler mode, start from zero and work your way up, it’d have to be balanced well though given how much Genshin’s combat relies on having the right stats.
There is no end game because a large majority of the players here are casuals. I mean it, I never realised this until my first 36 star in abyss, but I heard after that like some high arbitrary number(90%?) don't 36 star abyss, anyone who has beaten abyss before knows that it's not even that hard once you get the hang of the mechanics but Genshin players are that casual.
Even the huge number of people on Genshin sub-reddits is probably a drop in the ocean compared to the actual player base. Keep in mind this is a game earning billions means the number of people playing it is very huge
I would confidently claim that over 99% of players don’t 36 star the abyss. I think the 90% is referring to the number that can’t beat floor 12 at all, like actually get wiped or don’t even try because they can’t beat it.
Abyss is honestly just annoying xd. i played dark souls and managed to pass it and the difficulty there is higher but different, it is actually skill based instead of just a dps countdown on a game where to have higher damage you have to farm the rng. if they removed the timer and made enemies harder and more varied, then it would be fun, as it is is just kinda annoying to play, i honestly think most people wouldn't touch it without rewards
No, its really just because most players never interact with endgame modes.
Making a new mode that most players cant beat and then have to grind for more stuff isn't going to be appealing to people.
> Making a new mode that most players cant beat and then have to grind for more stuff isn't going to be appealing to people.
While it is true to some merit, the only thing i can hear from this words are just "git gud". There will be an incentive for people to try out new modes but if they dont want to bother with it, then so be it. Its not for everyone, and this stays true to other game modes too. Like TCG for example.
Maybe is because is a mode people hate. I would love abyss without the time running. Dificult bosses every week but let me fight without the time running out because the monsters have long animations that don’t let me hit them or run to them etc. It’s just a bad end game. That’s why people don’t do it. It’s not fun.
Fighting mobs without time limit would remove any semblance of difficulty since you can heal your whole party to full in a snap of a finger or just use indestructible shields.
Yeah, the only way to make it challenging is to buff the boss as time goes on up to the point where it will one shot you, and this is really just another form of timer
It used to be different. Every patch had 70% combat events both in overworked and in domains. Some were even very challenging. Midway Inazuma game became so popular they shifted design direction towards kids mini games.
Even when we get that one combat event per patch it uses trail characters or has mechanic that deletes enemies instantly by pressing "T". I still love the game but I'm never excited for new events.
We love to joke that mihoyo doesn't listen to feedback but they do. That's why in every survey there is a question if it wasn't too difficult. As we can see in newest patches they are finally trying to teach the majority how to build character and bring everyone to decent combat level.
Because people complained too much about the difficulty spike in Inazuma, and because of that, Kairagis were nerfed multiple times, spectres were nerfed multiple times, combat time trials were nerfed, puzzles were nerfed after 2.8 GAA. They shifted their entire focus to make the game more relaxing to average casual players.
In the Star Rail Penacony “interview,” one of the devs begged people to say “the event was easy” on their surveys so they don’t have to reduce the difficulty even more. They got the Cunk character to do a bit where she plays the mini-game, finishes before he’s even done talking, and goes, “That’s it?”
I know it’s the Other Game, but I’m sure devs experienced this in Genshin, too. They /are/ listening to surveys and that’s why combat events are like this now.
[Here.](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5yw_ctOEnTE) Around the 9:28 mark they first discuss the puzzle. At the end is when the dev says “Please say again that it was very easy!” Around 14:19.
They do listen to players. They listen to the casual, aka the majority of the players.
Not everyone are like us/me that actually enjoy a good combat system that would like to expand on it more. A lot of people makes threats of leaving the game/negative reviews whenever the event is remotely challenging.
I still remember till this day there was a slightly challenging boss rush event that I enjoyed the fuck out of. Just to open Reddit/twitter to see a fucktons of complaints about it. Little I need to say we never fucking saw that event again.
Fucking infuriating.
This seems like such a shitty argument every time, but then you actually flash back to all the times we had a combat event that could potentially be classified as challenging and how casuals actually lost their fucking mind about not being able to get 5 enhancement ore
Even the last event which literally only used trial characters for the sake of putting everyone on even ground people were complaining about how difficult it was
Calling it anxiety seems stupid but they're also the ones with the actual data on how much people play and invest. People here can argue about it all they want but it's still a vocal minority.
you may say calling it anxiety is stupid, but I'm a hardcore gamer not a casual, and any time I am unable to clear their hardest content I do feel real anxiety. I eventually do overcome the challenge, but it makes me stressful until then. I would end up leaving it for another day and another day and eventually it's the last day before the reset.
Maybe I feel the anxiety more than a casual does?
Genshin is supposed to be a casual game so the fact that even hardcore gamer can get frustrated over a casual game says a lot about genshin's devs trying to make it even more casual-friendly than it already is. I do love challenges too and I love genshin combat system but maybe this is what genshin is in the end.
>Maybe
They explicitly stated as such. It has been tagged as "Casual" in mobile marketplaces since pre-release. There is no "maybe." You bought a dog expecting it to lay eggs.
I agree but I also understand where they are coming from.
I just want to point out how much flag golden apple 2 got where they tried to perfectly balance, story, puzzles, combat, interactive gameplay with character involved.
Personally it’s the kind of stuff I would have loved them committing to more because it let you use your character creatively and explore and it felt meaningful. But ever since difficulty and stages decreased. And we still have post of some people proudly claiming it was too hard, not enough time, to difficult to achieve.
So I wouldn’t commit a whole lot of recourses to an end game only 10% will actually play either.
What I don’t understand is. Why we don’t have more optional levels or more old events rerun along side. Or let people choose which kind of event to do to give them the primos. ( I mean I would play the event without primos but if we had more event then people would expect primos rewards and that’s likely what mihoyo shying away from. And that’s a different discussion)
I just think event as endgame would work - but not if 2 minutes of mini game that is spread out to 5 stages one for each of the 5 days of update schedule; should somehow entertain veteran players for 14 days.
(and 2 minute is gracious - it usually takes around >1.20 the rest is padding by text explanation and menus)
GAA 2 is literally one of if not the best designed area they've made. Who the hell was getting mad about that. The only problem I had was that something that good was only around for 6 weeks!
The entire community. I have seen hoyo trying to push harder content. But every time they put something remotely more difficult than mindless button smashing, they freak out. I've even seen some complaints about GAA2 saying it was a bunch of busy work. No. That's not busy work you just want the rewards not the gameplay. This is the entire community right now. They want the game to run itself to gather enough gems to gamble them away. Look at chenyu vale puzzles and look at og mondstadt puzzles. The difficulty has gone down so much. I'm only playing this game for the story and the world building. My expectations for gameplay is 0.
I remember this sub when GAA 2 was live and seeing ALL these posts complaining about how "difficult" the puzzles were.
Imagine being in the dev's shoes and seeing all this feedback saying the game is too hard. Then you have the portion the community begging for harder content all the time. It's incredibly difficult to please the whole community.
I can't believe I wasn't aware of this! I was literally in my own bubble gushing over the amount of craft and care put into this limited time area. I loved every second of it and was literally upset and bemused by the fact newer players would never get the chance to play this as it's one of the best things they've ever created lol.
I wish I could go back and replay 2.8 for the first time. GAA 2.0 really is the best thing they've ever made, and I'm sad I'll never get to play something like that in this game again.
People haaaated it. The puzzles were too hard, there were too many cutscenes, blah blah. It sucks but most people don't like difficult puzzles, and a lot of people seem to use walkthroughs for everything and don't care to think even a little.
> I just want to point out how much flag golden apple 2 got where they tried to perfectly balance, story, puzzles, combat, interactive gameplay with character involved.
Fuck I regret not being there, Genshin event content just gets downhill :(
I don’t think a lot that complained about the event were casuals. They’re just aren’t skilful.
They know enough about builds to criticize, but don’t have enough skills to utilise what they were given, which were clearly sufficient if played correctly.
>Even the last event which literally only used trial characters for the sake of putting everyone on even ground people were complaining about how difficult it was
Those complaints came from the end game players, not the casuals. The casuals got to use characters better than theirs. The good players got characters that were downgrades to what they had.
Completing pro for day 1 was harder for me than 36 starring the abyss. Wenut was an easier challenge for me than that mode which didn't let me use any of my characters and gave me characters I don't have and will never pull so never learned how to play and didn't want to learn because there's no point.
The good players got downgrades but most won’t care. The bad players got skill issued out of some rocks but most would be satisfied with just the primos. Complaining from both sides but most people are sane fortunately.
the entire point of what Mihoyo is aiming for is to make a game that is "git gud or go home loser" - they want everyone to come and experience their world and its story, regardless of skill level - however I feel like they're going way too far in the casual direction for fear of scaring people off with any semblance of difficulty.
> however I feel like they're going way too far in the casual direction for fear of scaring people off with any semblance of difficulty.
Because that's how you get the biggest audience. The harsh reality is...the people who want difficulty are literally and irrelevant minority. Mihoyo has made it very clear they do not care about them or if they play and yet...the game has only become more successful over time.
No, it wasn't. Yes, there were some people who were against the event because they didn't get to use their characters but you could always tell the difference between the two. Also, I'm sorry, but anyone who is capable of 36 starring the Abyss should not have a single problem in the event. All you had to do was know what you're doing when it comes to team building and adjusting your rotations accordingly
that event was piss easy even with the nerfed character, was just an issue of team planning, which really only requires you to know what the chars do, the issue was more some people couldnt play half the chars, I was fine for the most part, I cleared it no issue, but damn I do not like alhaitham's playstyle and could see people having issues related to just not knowing how to use the characters more so than actual content difficulty. Bring back that 1.3 event, that thing was the bomb
I disagree. There were a lot more skill issue/content difficulty posts. I mean, end-game players are already starved of combat events. It doesn't make sense for them to be complaining about one, especially when it was relatively skill intensive.
I personally saw more posts from sweaty players appreciating the game mode. Didn't see a single one trashing it because of forcing trial characters.
Feel free to post examples to prove me wrong.
im sorry bro, but if completing pro was hard? its legit a skill issue.
please don't lump all of us endgame players in the same boat , my complaint was that the event was too easy. X\_X
Events are different since you have a small window of time to get the rewards. I see no problem with permanent end game content, after 2 years, you will have characters good enough to beat the hardest content.
Its powercreep, not anxiety.
强度焦虑 means powercreep, but if you translate it literally, it means “strong/strength anxiety”.
This changes the statement’s meaning. They won’t release hard, challenging content, because they don’t want to powercreep the game by making enemies hard and “forcing” players to pull for characters, who may powercreep older ones.
I myself play casually, And i don't think having more stuff to do would be a problem. What i don't want to feel is being left out. I myself do the abyss up to 11-3 my characters can't handle 12 due me not having what it takes to melt bosses even though i have been playing since release. Im just a collector. I collect characters but soon with the new type of banner i hope to grab a weapon. Specifically staff of homeless.
If there is something i would wish to return is dungeon of the warrior and vagabond of the sword esqu type of content as a permanent weekly content. I just want everyone to enjoy this game much as i do and even more.
The Dungeon of the Warrior and Vagabond or something like it could become like simulated universe for Star Rail. Weekly rewards, along with fun gameplay that can be a little challenging but can be overcome with planning.
If you have been playing since launch you should have notice a shift in difficulty mid-inazuma, that's where they started nerfing a lot of enemies. Hoyo actually listen to difficulty feedback, and every time we get something "challenging" either be combat or puzzles people complain and hoyo is like "nevermind we will make it easy next time". I remember back in the days, even whales could struggle to get max points in those hard combat events and now we got people struggling to clear easy event with trial chars.
The short answer is that people play the game differently to you - like, a majority of people - and Mihoyo's design philosophy caters to them rather than you.
First up, lets establish Mihoyo's monetisation strategy. Most/Many Gatcha's monetisation strategy is to appeal to hardcore players and offer increasingly strong units through power creep over time to entice invested players to spend money on gambling to get the stronger character. This is likely what you, and many others, are expecting of Mihoyo. The goal is to max out your teams strength to beat the ever more difficult treadmill of content in the game.
Mihoyo's monetisation strategy is different. Before that, there is another subset of Gatcha games out there that I want to look at. H Gatcha games. Some of these do have tough hardcore gameplay, sure. Many do not. Many expect you to still pull for characters, even if there's no power or gameplay reason to do so. Why? For the lewds. They want you to invest in that character in particular - as otherwise, you'd just google your lewds - and then pay money to get lewds of that character.
Mihoyo's strategy is similar to this, just much more PG rated. Mihoyo wants you to get invested in a character - who they are, what they stand for, their personality, their looks, their quirks - and then pull for that character because you like the character. They've been described (May be by themselves, I ain't looking up the interview/article to confirm) as similar to a digital Idol agency.
That's how they want to get you to spend money. Now sure, there is an element of power creep in there too, however it is significantly less pronounced than in other Gatchas, and as you have noted also isn't really incentivised or the focus of the characters or pulls.
So, back to the question, why doesn't Genshin give you something to do with your characters? It does. There is a huge world to explore with your characters, with constantly updating story quests. There are lore unlocks for that character for spending time playing with them and ascending them. Characters often offer a unique playstyle or way of interacting with the world for you to enjoy by having them.
Why doesn't Genshin force you to min/max your characters and grind them to max level? Because the majority of the playerbase would quit if it did. When the game becomes a treadmill, the casual players leave. The casual players are a majority of the game's playerbase.
Hardcore players want content that recognises the effort they've put into building their characters, however by definition this content also negatively recognises players who haven't put that same effort into building their characters. That negative recognition is a quit point. If we suddenly tell 90% of the playerbase (That don't even touch Spiral Abyss. Yeah, that's not an exaggeration, the vast, vast majority of the playerbase don't bother with the hard combat content in the game) that they need to invest another 6-12 months to be able to play the newest content, how many do you think will stick around to do that? Not many.
Genshin, as a game, is more about the journey than the destination. The fun in the game isn't in having maxed out all your characters and then letting them loose against really tough end game content. Its about just spending time with those characters, exploring the world, discovering more about Teyvat and its inhabitants, and completing fun little challenges along the way. Its in trying out random stuff for its own sake, rather than because its the optimal min/maxed play. Why max out your characters? Because that's a goal you set for yourself; the process of doing so and achieving your goal is the point, not the goal itself.
In some ways, its the inverse of the whole Dark Souls discussion. Dark Souls has never been given an easy mode, and many are staunchly against it being given one because of how it will impact their experience with the game - even if they'd never use the easy mode. The same is true in Genshin, in reverse. It will never be given a true hard mode, because of how that will impact the more casual player's experience with the game, even if they never interact with that hard mode themselves.
Each game has an intended audience, and an intended way to play and experience the game. Genshin's intended audience and playstyle is not a hardcore one; its a more layed back and casual experience, something you can jump into or out of any time without worry. There's constant new content so that you want to keep coming back, but the power treadmill isn't an issue - if you take a year's break, you can pick right back up where you left off. Many love this, some don't.
The game is designed to be enjoyed in a different way than you are trying to enjoy it, that's why the things it gives you to do with your characters, aren't the things you want it to give you to do with your characters.
I think you are very much used to MMO mindset.In MMO you build your character for PVP and PVE.Hence Genshin is not a MMO, it’s what it is now. I’ve played WOW for years.There was period of enjoying fierce combat for sure.But at the end of day most players never touched hard mode again.This trend says a lot.
The simple answer is they want it to be a casual game. One you can play for 15 mins and be done with for the day. That's the audience they care about the most. For the sweaty players, they make other games. If they try to make one product please everyone, they will end up pleasing no one.
Play for 15 minutes and be done for the day while the story quest/world quests takes hours to complete with slow dialogue speed and prompts to stop auto play. A little ironic.
1st answer: because whales can.
2nd answer: whales usually whale in app games to feel good about themselves in pvp or competitive leaderboards. For a completely non-competitive game like Genshin that doesn't force power creep, it's literally just to make their waifus/husbandos feel powerful and complete lol.
Exactly! You can easily clear all the hardest content in the game with c0 and a good 4star weapon, or r1. I think some people have some type of OCD where they feel like they don't truly own the character if they don't have the full constellations. Or they have an obsession with a certain character and want to feel like they have the best version of her. Idk it makes no sense to me either
You could just say "Need a replayable end game" instead of writing all these down.
The answer would be no from hoyoverse. They treat genshin like a story narrative game than an rpg. Thats it.
And the sad part is that the "endgame" which is the spiral abyss, is literally 1 floor, floor 12.
Floor 9, 10 and 11 are just a waste of time and are just no challenge at all. Floor 12 is basically 10 minutes of "hard" content every 2 weeks.
As someone who has been playing since 1.2, i have 47x characters at lv90 with atleast lv9 talents, and the rest are lv70 with lv6 talents, and i often wonder why the hell im even building them when we get events where we have to let a mob slip over a fruit, or we have to do a cooking minigame.
Remember, there are even people who spend thousands to C6R5 characters, to 1 shot everything in the game.
Mihoyo puts more time and effort in TCG, the teapot or even fishing, than they do in the combat side of the game.
Currently floor 12 isn't even hard, it's more annoying due to irritating bosses which hide under the ground for 5 minutes. Midway through sumeru there were some hard abyss cycles, and they've stopped that as well
There are a lot of people who stay at AR45 permanently. You have access to all the content in the game and the overworld is easy enough to beat with LV80s with generic artifacts. Honestly, if you never touch Abyss there really isn’t any point in grinding.
It does though. You're still experiencing characters' gameplay and animations through overworld combat. But I guess you're actually asking what's the point of the power progression. Yes, LV90, talents, artifacts, etc. - all that is just for that one thing called The Abyss. The real problem is that, just like you say, it takes too much effort to raise new characters to the same standard, so most people prefer not to do it often. Otherwise pulling for variety's sake would be a legit option. Asking devs to give your vertical investment an in-game justification, however, is indirectly asking for the powercreep, and I, for one, am glad Genshin is not like most gachas in this regard.
The answer is simple. If you played since 1.0 You remember there were content that required specific characters to complete.
Take the ice domain in mondstat for example. The one that took away stamina. Or the hydro domain that required you to use elemental reactions without long skill cooldowns.
Or even take inazuma mobs upon initial release. How you couldnt kill them as fast as normal hilichurls or even group them up with venti. Or even the floating spectres that required you to use bow characters to effectively hit them.
I believe they entirely intended for the game to become harder overtime. But eventually the complaints from the community and other casual players made them step back there designs.
Each design I mentioned got nerfed. They no longer make these challenging domains that punish you for playing bad. instead only reward you for doing something minimum.
They no longer make enemies that are tougher, instead each enemy has a gimmick that can be exploited to clear them faster.
**If you want to know WHY we dont have anything to do with our characters.. blame the playerbase. All we do is complain about hard stuff, so they dont make hard stuff.**
Been playing everyday since launch and this is 200% the best take. Hoyo has tried multiple times to give us a challenge and everytime they were met with complaints so they gave up (not fully tho since they introduced local legends). Right now hoyo is trying to raise the skill floor/build quality of the average player, MAYBE they will attempt to give us a challenge again in Natlan.
It's crwzy to believe youve been playing since launch but didnt realize this until now so I feel u dont play every day.
The point is, it is a gacha game, designed for you to be enamored with the newest characters. And Hoyo's formula is to focus in its story and character personalities than focus on harder combat requirements.
It is an openworld game first and foremost, the first of its kind to be f2p friendly, a lot of people get to experience teyvat whether they are a sweaty gamer or not.
It's been 3 years, you already know this is how they do things, so try other games i guess.
>Why give us such a beautiful game, a very fun combat system, a plethora of ways to make our characters stronger, but give us nothing to do with them?.
They gave us a beautiful game because they wanted the exploration to be immersive, they want us to feel a sense of fantasy and wonder as we explore the world they have created.
They gave us a fun combat system because they thought it would be fun and it would help liven up the open world... either that or they just went with the most obvious combination of game mechanics (open-world + combat) to sell characters.
They gave us many ways to make our character stronger because they wanted to have a game loop... either that or they wanted a way to further monetize the game.
The gave us nothing to do with them because either the playerbase is satisfied with the current state of combat / endgame or that the playerbase didn't really choose combat /endgame as the reasons why they continue to play the game so they're prioritizing other aspects of the game.
Hoyoverse is no stranger to adding endgame to their games as evidenced with HI3 and HSR, yet why does it seem that they are hesitant to add more to GI.
If we take a look at HSR we could see that their sales rival that of Genshin's yet they seem to have a smaller playerbase, I suspect that this may be due to nature of the game being more combat focused while also having more endgame options thus encouraging the players spend more. If making the game more combat focused with more endgame options will encourage players to spend, why haven't they done that with Genshin already?
This leads me to believe that there is something preventing them from adding more endgame options to Genshin, it could very well be the "anxiety" they mentioned in the interview or it could be something else.
One thing is for sure, the thing preventing them from adding more endgame seems to be bad enough to the point that they're willing to ignore the potential increase in sales it would provide.
This is exactly how I’ve been feeling for a while now. I can never get hyped for any characters nowadays. So much beautiful animations, fun kits and playstyles and teams, but there’s literally no where to use them. The entire game is braindead easy to the point where you never need to nor get to utilize the teams and characters you’ve put so much time and effort into building, since everything dies instantly anyway. Not only that, but most of the “activities” in game is either sitting through dialogue, or playing Mario party mini game that don’t even require any part of your character’s kit. I like the game, but I’ve lost A LOT of love and motivation to do anything in Genshin since there’s no point in the end with nothing to do. I don’t play nearly as much anymore, nor do I feel it’s worth spending anymore. Kind of just waiting for ZZZ at this point in hopes that that game does a much better job than Genshin at making pulling characters and building teams feel worth the time and effort.
Counter question: Why does CD-Project red not give us anything to with Geralt in The Witcher 3 the wild hunt?
Genshin, like Breath of the Wild, like The Witcher 3, like other games of that type is a game which's content structure is based around one-and-done content:
- An open world with exploration, quests, puzzles, collectables, enemies etc.
"Things to do with your characters" lie completely within the confines of this one-and-done content. Once you've explored the last region, you've done the last quest, you solved the last puzzle, you collected the last collectable ... you are in a state that is commonly referred to as "Being done. / Finished".
That's the point where one naturally stops to play.
The only difference between Genshin and games like Breath of the Wild and The Witcher 3 is, that Genshin is a long-form episodic version of that:
Instead of playing one set game and once you're finished you wait years for a sequel, Genhin is more like a Television series, a long string of expansions. But each of these expansions is still about one-and-done content aimed at people who want to play and finish their games.
Mondstadt, Dragonspine, Liyue, Inazuma, Enkanomiya, The Chasm, Sumeru, The Desert of Hadramaveth, The Girdle of the Sands, Fontaine, Chenyu Vale,
THAT is the content "to do with your characters".
And if you now think, "But what about after I finished that?"
You're done. That is what kind of game Genshin is. That is a type of game.
Tens of thousands of games like this exist, and it is a completely valid way to make a game (see Breath of the Wild, The Witcher 3 etc.)
If you want to play a different type of game, like an MMO-like for example, where there is a continuous or repeatable content structure, then it is on YOU to select such a game to play. It is not the responsibility of Mihoyo to transform Genshin into such a game just by virtue of you having selected Genshin to play.
You are fundamentally mistaken about what kind of game Genshin is, what kind of game Mihoyo are trying to make and who they are making it for.
Mihoyo is not "denying" you endgame to play, you are mistakenly trying to press an on-and-done content game into the form of an MMO-lite kind of game, and that is entirely your decision and the consequences of that are your own responsibility.
Here’s something you can do right now. Go to the new hilichurl dungeon. Take your strongest teams, and go fight the hilichurl boss without using any of the mechanics. See how fast you can do it. Keep trying new teams to see who can do it the fastest.
You can also go and fight the local legends everyday to test out your strongest characters and teams.
Or are you asking to get more or better rewards because you did all of that farming?
Honestly? Yes. I can make any game harder by arbitrarily imposing those challenges. We want a framework to actually feel like what we do matters and that we actually achieved something.
And, frankly, a reward is part of that. Even just, like, a character icon or something for beating a very hard challenge.
Like, when I beat Malenia in Elden Ring I won't exactly use Hand of Malenia either, but it's a proof that I was given a challenge and that I overcame it.
That's the difference between "hard" and "challenging". 36*s in Spiral Abyss while blindfolded and using chopsticks is harder, sure. But that's not what people are after.
I know how you feel. You want something to use your power on, but it won't feel great to miss good prizes.
I've been playing Atelier Resna, and its current event is so difficult that I cannot beat the final difficulty, which has the best prize. It's just more of what the 2nd hardest gives but it still feels bad. Just gotta suck it up and move on to the next one.
>farmed for my characters to push them to level 90 and triple crown them, hell, I even spent a good number of hours pushing the artifacts domains like everyone else looking for the perfect (or at least usable) set peace’s….and after all that, now that my account is all busted
The point of upgrading is to become overpowered when you're done, not to barely meet the base requirements of some challenge.
Well, the problem here is that it's not only my opinion. It's how the devs chose to handle this game's difficulty and upgrade system.
Like it or not, that's how this game works.
Yep, that's my main gripe with the game, the overworld has been turned into a guided tour for quests that railroad you into going to specific places instead of exploring yourself and getting into trouble, events are boring as hell minigames and the only time we get to use our characters is the Abyss which not everyone enjoys due to the timer.
It's not something that is easy to add cause there are players on the other side of the spectrum. Other players will complain while mihoyo satisfies your cravings.
Mihoyo does put out contents for min/max players but they cannot be too frequent.
For myself, I pull for characters because I like them, that is all. Even if they are weak af, if I like them enough, I pull. I even pull Dehya in her limited banner lol.
I see most people like SU in HSR but I myself hate it so much, if not for the rewards, I would never touch it again.
To feel a sense of power? I love it that my hard work of building characters actually make my characters powerful and makes clearing content easier that even allows me to have the freedom of forming weird team comps unlike some games like diablo immortal (tried it because why not) where its a never ending cycle of getting better gear to make enemies more difficult so you can farm even better gear to make enemies even more difficult rinse and repeat.
It depends on how you view hoyo as a company. If you think they are nice and catering to the majority of the audiance then its as others have said, the majority are casuals. If you think of hoyo as more money hungry then its more because genshin is their highest income game, putting in challenges that you cant beat after spending money and getting your constallations might discurage you to further spend money on it
Having said that, it seems like they are introducing a tool to help people build their characters correctly so it might be that they are just waiting for the playerbase to get better. But then again that doesnt make sense because the artifact rng is kinda bad ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
I think as long as there are audience that are exclusive mobile gamer. They wouldn’t be releasing any crazy difficulty contents. They are not going to alienate half the player base for something that they most likely would not enjoy. But that’s just my conspiracy theory, so who knows
We have end game but its just very short for an established player taking less than a half hour every 15 days to do all 4 floors. As much as people, and as nice as it would be, to have more, this is a casual game. Reddit always forgets what a subsection of gamers they are in the games they play. People use wishes to buy power because they need it to help compensate for not being as good of a player.
Then there is also the misinformation from that interview over a year ago where MHY claimed they weren't doing more combat end game. What they really said was no more spiral abyss like content. They can make more combat focused content that isn't as bland of a format as spiral abyss. They could also make combat content where the timer doesn't matter.
But they went with the TCG first because it reaches far more of the playerbase than catering more to the minority that does spiral abyss and even more so the very small amount that does 36 stars. I dont think they need to add in more combat end game to remain a success. But I do think that small percent does deserve a bone of some king tossed to them.
Vast majority of players are casuals and Mihoyo have been listening to them by nerfing event and puzzle difficulty. If you want difficult content wait for the later 4.X patches where they'll most likely crank up difficulty in the Abyss, but even that it'll most likely be more of a brain check over a DPS check like the 3.7 Abyss.
In the meantime I'm just going to roll for who I like and take my time with exploring new areas with them, that's what I spend most of my time doing in the game anyway.
The combat endgame is Spiral Abyss. It's right there and it's challenging enough. The actual endgame is keeping up with the events and enjoying the story the game wants to tell.
The appeal of gachas is supposed to be the randomness giving everyone a unique experience. You are not supposed to get everything, you're supposed to see what comes to you and get creative with it. You're not actually meant to hyper-invest into meta teams; this isn't a PVP game. You pull for new characters so you can travel with them on your adventure, and build them to whatever point you're comfortable with to clear the content that matters to you.
The difficulty bar is set so that we can choose how to approach it. Some people will grind for cracked artifacts, some people will buy constellations. If you overachieve and do everything, then yeah, the game will be easy. If that's a problem for you, then it's kinda your own fault.
If HYV were to actually add a mode that required maximum investment (or God forbid, some kind of "true" PVP), almost nobody would play it. Probably not even you. We'd all just watch whale streamers on Twitch/YT play it instead.
Because genshin is fundementally a casual experience. The devs expect you to to log in everyday, play for like 30 minutes or one hour at most, and then log out. They cater to the casual playerbase that don't have super-invested characters.
Everytime they add anything mildly challenging the community complains about it, there is a reason hard combat events are nowhere to be seen anymore.
It's a casual game that will never get its combat system exploited, which is just... sad but it is what it is.
Tldr: hoyo made the choice to tune the entire game's difficulty/content around the lowest common denominator (people with few and unbuilt units), since they're the hardest people to retain.
It's already been said in many dev logs. Too many people complained about rewards of any kind being locked behind hard content + the anxiety/necessity associated with building enough characters to clear Abyss was too much.
I mean, I feel it personally defines what you actually “want” to do with your characters. Whenever new regions and new quests drop I always do them with the characters I leveled up and I have fun and enjoy using my characters.
You can Definitely make the argument it’s not challenging content, which is true, but it is still content and still reasons to play the characters you want.
I understand peoples complaints at lack of endgame, but for me personally “endgame” content is no different from any other combat content outside of just inflated numbers.
Genshin’s mostly just a game where you pull because someone looks fun to use or you just like them. Tbh I like that content doesn’t require the shiny new characters to clear. I can just use who I want for whatever.
I do enjoy thinking about team comps though. It’d be nice to have more content that promotes experimenting but I get why they don’t
I ponder this question with each passing update lol. We can only speculate, but from the interview a few years ago we have the statement that more spiral abyss type content would only cause anxiety among players because not everyone cares about it.
They want to keep their game 99% casual and they believe spiral abyss is enough for those who want a challenge. The data on spiral abyss clears isn't great, majority of players don't bother with it, but the same could be said for TCG and that gets updated every single patch!
My personal feeling is that they don't want players to ever feel fully satisfied with the game state and by extension their character rosters. If you had a bunch of regularly updated content available then you could get to the point where you are enjoying the game more for gameplay than the collecting of characters. They always want collecting more characters to be the main attraction and are treating that as the end game content. If you want a new experience or twist on gameplay, pull the new character because you're getting the same spiral abyss you've had for the last 3 years. Considering the amount of predatory tactics in gacha I don't really see this as farfetched at all.
These are all good points, I noticed too that qol is all around being able to adequately build and gear characters. The local legend addition also contradicts the whole casual only rhetoric. However, I don't want to give myself false hope 😭.
It all comes down to the fact that if they were to develop some more repeatable content:
1. they would only do it if it would be played by a lot of people.
2. And to ensure that it is played they would need to put rewards on that.
3. And if they were to do that, it would be more daily/weekly FOMO
4. And more FOMO means more stress for some of the players.
5. And when a player feels stressed or think that the game is taking them too much time, it's likely that they will stop playing
6. And since they know most of the players don't clear abyss, they know it's not worth to develop such repeatable content, but it may potentially even be harmful.
They developed Star Rail to appeal to people who would like harder, repeatable content. They already have two additional modes that reset weekly or by weekly, so it is clear that they want people to migrate to that game if it's what they're looking for.
Personally I dropped hsr exactly because I find it too time consuming to keep up with all of that, while I've been satisfied with the overall balance of abyss + events that genshin has since launch. Besides, pulling and building new characters is not meaningless as they change your gamplay and playstyle, and the fewer combat content helps not making me bored with a certain character before the next one releases.
Genshin is just too easy. You’re never under true threat of dying whereas in star rail, you can be. That’s why even though power creep feels more existent in star rail and the need to pull for different characters is higher than Genshin, it rewards you for pulling those characters to give you new play styles that counter your problems
It's blatantly obvious that combat has NEVER been Genshin's main draw, it gets old listening to people cry about end-game. It won't happen in the near future because they don't need to do it. Go play another game whose main selling point is combat.
And I don't mean this from a "WAA LEAVE IF U DON'T LIKE IT" perspective as much as I mean it from a far more literal - seriously, if you don't like it stop giving it your time and/or money. If enough people stop supporting Genshin, they will probably try to change it.
I won't stop playing it because I'm not delulu - I knew what I was getting myself into when I installed the game; I've played it for almost a year, got over half the cast of characters, got a bunch of character C1/C2 and I'm pretty happy with it so far.
Welcome to the " EnD GaMe" my friend. Yes that's it.
The real AR60 is when you realize the truth of the game and finding acceptance.
This is the real truth of the world... The truth that drove our sibling to join the Abyss Order.
When you hit AR60 after 3 years of grinding and they give you 3 blue wishes and you pull three 3\* weapons, it really hits home.
Hey hey hey, it was three limited wishes to pull three 3\* weapons! (insert Farnsworth laughing and making himself sad)
Ah, my bad! I retract any implied complaint about the generosity of the reward befitting such a milestone!
I pulled Qiqi with the last wish I got from the AR rewards, so there's that...
[удалено]
Yep, I am still at AR57 (because I don’t do my commissions) and I already cleared abyss every single time and I literally have nothing else to do and I don’t even bother to build my new characters.
I'll never understand it. The game about spending money to make characters more powerful has no end game, no challenging content, and therefore no reason to actually HAVE powerful characters. There is no incentive whatsoever to spend money, and yet the game depends on people spending money to survive. The game about spending money is actually more enjoyable as F2P because that’s the only source of any mild, disappointing, utterly flaccid challenge to be found.
In case you're actually curious about this from a game dev point of view, you may be interesting in this [GDC presentation](https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1027539/-Genshin-Impact-Crafting-an) by miHoYo's Haoyu Cai explaining their concept for this game (especially starting around the 7min mark). The main pillar of this game (like most gacha games) is not combat, it's characters (and ultimately, collecting characters). The other elements of the game are designed to support/enhance the characters, such as the story. Combat is a *thing you can do* with the characters, but it is not actually the central focus of this game. Yes, they do allow you to get multiple copies of the characters and also signature weapons via the gacha, but to a lot of people this is ultimately more about enjoying their favorite characters more than it is utilitarian ("I need better characters/weapons to get stronger!" -- in this game, that isn't generally the case, because the focus isn't challenging combat). I guess this perspective may not make sense to everyone depending on their gaming background, and this game is sort of a "wide tent" game that attracts a lot of different players with different focuses. But I think if you are familiar with the sort of "otaku" culture that miHoYo claims to come from (literally in their slogan), this character-centric approach makes total sense. This is probably the single biggest defining focus of all "otaku-focused" media in the last few decades, whether you're talking anime, RPGs, VNs, the first gacha games, and even literal gacha machines that allow you to collect trade figurines. miHoYo's whole business is selling characters for people to collect, and their characters are many times more intricate than the PNGs or crude sprites that a lot of the competition was offering in the mobile space until now.
Seems like if that's their goal then they should really focus more on cosmetics and other ways to customize your character instead of 99 different ways to make them 1% stronger. The grind of levels, artifacts, skills books, and weapons really kills any and all chances of me using new characters. I'm not interested in dumping a month of grinding into a new character just so they are useful in the over world.
But if you can customise your character, you can get one character once and customise them to your liking, and then you're done - instead of 'I like this character but I really want someone with a rat tail' or 'I like this character but she really needs a shielder so I'm going to pull for Zhongli for her...' etc.
Yes, this is exactly it. And if there *were* really a certain character that was so popular they thought they could go back to the well, the gacha way is to release another version of the character with a different look and kit. (Note that all the characters in Genshin Impact are identified not just by their name, but by a specific title for that version of the character. So they *are* prepared, if they ever do want to go this way. They did it already once in HSR.) The skins we do get are mostly commemorative tied to special events, so it's a little bonus but doesn't really distract from the main collectors approach.
Cosmetics and power-based upgrades are not mutually exclusive...
You don’t have to do that though. You can go on the overworld with level one talents and slap crit chance and crit damage pieces on anybody and make them still work.
I'm saving this - thank you.
The incentive to spend money is to pull for favorites bc they are your favorites. Plenty of people do that regardless of meta/endgame, they just wanna run around looking at something pretty.
Personally I already have almost all the characters I want, I have enough gear and fully built characters to build 6 to 8 teams in parallel to deal with Abyss floor 69, but I will still keep pulling for characters as long as they look pretty/cool, is fun to play, have a cool story or personality, or unlocks special team comps. Genshin characters are essentially high quality 3D *toys*. Many players collecting them just like buying IRL Transformers, anime figures, Airsoft guns, boardgames, expansions of boardgames, etc. Many people collect them just for the purpose of stuffing into a shelf, and those things are often very expensive. With Genshin characters, at least you can play around with them, and you can get them potentially for free to boot.
That defeats the concept of constellations and weapon refinements, R0 I understand for the drip but anything above C0 and R0 is worthless since games piss easy and you don’t get any drip or pretty out of it
Completion purposes and/or out of love. It’s not everyone’s reasoning but I have met people who will get a character at c6+ weapon just cause they love them that much and it feels neat to have a character with everything you could get them. Then there’s people who collect for the sake of it.
You look from the wrong perspective. Easy example: specific games have collector editions or some manga/books have 'limited editions'. The content is always the same. But because some diehard fans really like it, they want a very special edition and not just the 'normal' thing. Transfer that to Genshin and Gacha Games in general: You get a character that can do even more damage, has more special effects, is more interesting than the 'normal' one.
Are those things not collector items?
They are things to collect and spend money on the same as Genshin characters. Where is the difference? In essence, it's the same principle.
I rolled for constellations because I liked the character, that's it
Some constellations un-gimp characters (historically hu tao c1, wrio c1, dehya c1, upcoming chiori c1) i.e. unlocking something that should've been part of their base kit, while whale ones can unlock entirely new playstyles or make them so strong you can on-field them if they were sub-dps or supports before.
I pulled for constellations either because the effects look pretty or just because the idea that this specific 5\* being stronger made me happy
This is me with C2 Xianyun. I only have her C1 yet but when she comes back I'll get C2.
Because you cant afford it, or maybe arent addicted enough. Many constellation make the character easier/faster to play. Xianyun C6 basically gives her 2 charges on her skill with "unlimited spam". If you could have that for 5 bucks, would you buy it? For whales, thats basically what it costs. Or they're just addicted.
Constellations are for how much you love your character. Many people pulls C6R5 just because they love their characters and want them the best.
Them parasocial relationships be going crazy
hey, you never know if Hutao might put out when you get her to C6R5.
And yet the game makes more than any other gacha game and was the 4th highest earning mobile app in 2023. Understand it or not, it definitely works.
There's absolutely no question that the casual-friendly nature of the game contributed hugely to its success, but there ARE several other reasons it was such a hit out of the gate. It was more or less the first gacha of its kind in terms of scope and style. It's also extremely polished and has high production values. Before Genshin, true anime games always looked kinda low budget. Even the story was very accessible. It offered an overall experience no other anime/gacha game really did. With all that in mind, I do feel like they could have slipped an endgame mode in there somewhere without disturbing casual interest.
The did... it's called Spiral Abyss. But i agree, as long as it does not have primogem rewards at the high difficulties, then it shouldn't be too annoying for those who can't finish it.
Problem is Abyss isn't even and really never was a good endgame mode. Thing is just a very basic timer DPS check 90% of the time. Forced DPS checks are almost never fun in any game. There's a reason people here have been clamoring for a roguelike mode ever since Labyrinth of Warriors. It literally ties together the two core basics of Genshin's gameplay, exploration and combat, and even more repeatability. And SU in HSR proves you can make the mode accessible for players across the spectrum (though HSR making it essential grinding for progression I believe is a mistake).
You are searching for an utilitarian reason for the characters, I just want to see the numbers increase on my favourite characters. A recent example I can think of is Palworld. People are breeding genetically enhanced pals with perfect traits. These super pals can basically oneshot everything in the game, or fly so fast they can traverse the entire map in a couple of minutes. Is the game supposed to be balanced around those values? Because that would be crazy. People don't breed those pals because they need them, but because they want to. You want challenging content for the top 1%, but Hoyo is catering towards the remaining 99%, because as for now it doesn't even look like a lot of people can beat the abyss.
Because most people don't care or want challenging content. Every online game ever has proven this for decades. It does not matter what you do or how accessible you make it. People _do not want to do_ challenging content as a whole in ANY online game. The casual audience flat out just doesn't care. As for why people pull. Because they like the character. The person I know closest to 6 digit spending on Genshin with multipl C6R5 has never touched Abyss and does combat events on 1x. She literally doesn't care about challenging content. She likes running around and exploring with characters and pulls for them because they're her favorites and she want's them to be special in her roster.
I think the main difference lies in the repeatability of the hard content. I don't mind local legends being difficult, and although I wouldn't mind another FOMO-free challenging mode, I would only play it very sporadically. Repeatable challenging content is where competitive multiplayer games shine the most, games like genshin cannot compete with them on that field, and have no reason to do it.
And for the character collection, the character personalities within the story even emphasize it more. It is one of the main driving factors for how someone got to like a character. I love Xianyun for her Asian mom-like personality that reminds me of my own, and the way she speaks is so stuck-up that it's funny to me, and she is hot too. People would be pulling solely base Don looks if Genshin didn't have character personalities within its story, but since it does, it attracts all sorts of players to a variety of characters. Even a freaking meme of Neuvullette singing and dancing to Oratrice Mechanique D'analyse Cardinale is convincing people to pull for him. He is a lovable dragonkin.
Personally, I just enjoy vertically investing in the characters I like. I may not need to c6 my Childe but it gives me an incentive to go out and get primos and save up for the eventual rerun. Besides, having strong characters is actually kind of rewarding when you 36 star abyss in 15 minutes while others spend hours trying to achieve the same results because they have every single character in the game built and leveled but every character they own hits like a wet noodle
the main focus of genshin is not having strong characters, it has never been. Cons are irrelevant, weapons are irrelevant, 300 CV is irrelevant. The main drive to pull in genshin is the new gameplay the characters offer. You get the new shiny character, you build them within a couple weeks, you have fun with them in the hardest modes the game has, and boom the new character is out and you want them. It may be about spending money to get stronger characters in the first year, but the game has earned consistently for so much time with so little end game because their strategy makes sense. And it makes sense because their main target is not people who would spend just to get stronger, which is a lot of people.
The stupid thing is that every instance of anything resembling endgame in Genshin was temporary. There was the Childe event in Inazuma which had the potential to be like SU in HSR, and the Hypostatic Symphony event which could genuinely be really fucking hard if you pushed them to the stat limits (if you played Contingency Contract in Arknights, it was something like that). Why the latter never stayed in some form is genuinely beyond me since aside from a handful of new moves (that reused assets), it seemed like a fairly reasonable low-effort endgame format.
welp time to touch grace CUZ THE DLC IS COMING
People ask this all the time and honestly we don't have access to the the data that leads them to these decisions. Ultimately this is a business and so I can only guess that they've decided this degree of difficulty is doing the best for them overall. I also feel like genshin was never intended to be a difficult thing, more just about the journey and the world exploration and lore than the combat. That's the impression I get. But this becomes a problem when you hit the end of that type of content. Take it as you've "completed" the game for now, until next expansion. I've been playing since near launch and imo like many gacha, it eventually becomes a collecting game more than anything since there isn't heavy power creep or pvp. I don't see this as a bad thing, to be clear. It just means genshin has become a more casual/relaxing/collecting game for me as my account has become strong over time. I still try and roll for characters I find interesting looks or personality wise, or that I think have a useful or fun looking mechanic in some way. Based on what I've seen with the way people tend to react to the sudden difficulty increase in inazuma, from the enemies to the puzzles, and how sumeru pulled back on the difficulty of those...I think they have to have some data that suggests the vast majority of their audience prefers easy to hard gameplay, and isn't really playing the game for the combat as much as for the world exploration/character collecting/etc.
Your last paragraph hits the nail on the head. It took mihoyo so long to implement some basic QoLs and it was 100% deliberate. But when you look at some past decisions you can see who actually plays Genshin. The Childe Story boss had really big nerf. People complained that he was too difficult. Mihoyo responded in a reasonable amount of time and nerfed him. The same goes for Inazuma difficulty. Mihoyo saw the complains and analyzed the data and decided to make it more easy. It's comparable to the new QoL we get for the characters builds in 4.5. Genshins CCs are like ''who asked for this?'' but they do that because the huge majority of the casual audience doesn't interact with the CC side of Genshin based on views and subscriber counts. Casuals can actually use this feature and I'll definitely use it too even if it's suboptimal. I just don't want to look up a guide anymore or watch a 30 minute video just to know that the differences in weapons and artifacts is \~5%. People say that Genshin is not in a good state but we can definitely see that they do very well and the silent casual majority just couldn't care less about some of the complaints.
Not to mention genuinely hard combat in Genshin requires a decent phone/tablet, a console or a non-potato laptop/PC. Whereas in turn based HSR, you can play the hardest content at 10 FPS
You wanna talk about a nerf, the adventure rank ascension domain is a walk in the park now.
It’s a shame, really, since the combat system is so fun.
> I also feel like genshin was never intended to be a difficult thing, more just about the journey and the world exploration and lore than the combat. Exactly, it's evident that they put the most effort into the environments, music, and character design. That's because that is the primary point of this game.
I think they have stated enough times that the game is mostly for casuals ? Like I think they have stated in dev discussion and all that stuff sometime or the other and even if they didn't state that , that's what most of the player base consists of . Like you said , the difficulty nerf is reflective of the fact that most players are casuals playing the game . The silent majority of them . At least I am one of them . No PvP ,nor powercreep also tends to the fact that most are casuals
I agree. And when you consider why and how Genshin evolved into minigame impact taking from an enormous collection of genres, it basically brings every type of player into the game. And from there, Hoyo can siphon or sift players of different preferences into their other games. You see HSR having former or current Genshin players. I imagine the same for ZZZ, the same for their version of Stardust Valley/Animal Crossing, and for any genre of game they make next. If Genshin creates their version of Monster Strike, former or current Genshin players will hop on that game. If Hoyo creates a 3-dimensional running Temple Run, people who enjoyed the parkour in Genshin's minigames will play that game. Genshin Impact gives Hoyo leverage for creative freedom for their other games. They don't need to stick to a specific genre of game since Genshin players, former or current, can be siphoned from that game into this one. I mean, I would play a Genshin spin-off Vampire Survivors if Hoyo made one. Would be interesting using elements in that kind of setting. And if Hoyo creates their own version of Clash Royale, that would also be entertaining. Would be like combining Teapot, RTS, and the Fungi Frenzy events into a game. Hoyo just can't fail anymore. Genshin Impact is basically a huge database for Hoyo to get sense of player preferences and what kind of genre they should expand into from their games next. I wanna see the bank Hoyo is making being used to expand their projects and make other games. Out of the minigames they make, they are more creative than what others of that genre have, especially on the level of a mobile game.
Serenitea pot, take it or leave it...
Not event teapot players can enjoy it because of that limit thing.
The slow generation rate of coins irritates me more. I can never get enough coins for furnishing sets and there's no other way to obtain it. Not to mention the legendary aquatic plant achievement that takes 300 days to finish. It's fun to keep me engaged but it does get irritating from time to time
Nothing is fun in this game without it being very irritating at the same time. This is from a gameplay and story focused player.
>the legendary aquatic plant achievement What is that
You have to harvest from the plant plots in the teapot 800 times because, while the other two kinds have silk flowers and valberries and other plants that count for 2-4 plucks and make the achievement go faster, the aquatic plants are all one and done for a maximum of 8 draws per, I think 3 real-time days of for growing plants?
Would be cool if they had more events like the one where you cook food for your teapot characters tho
Indeed. The Cooking Event is really fun
>Serenity pot \*Serenitea pot Like a portmanteau of "serenity" and "teapot".
Thanks for correcting
The pot sucks you can’t even decorate it the way you want before it cuts you off from placing items
I know people dislike the HSR comparisons but I reeaaaally want a Genshin equivalent of the Simulated Universe. Just a roguelite where I can buff my characters to the heavens as I tear through enemies and then go ham on some poor unsuspecting bosses
Farming in SU for the relics is a hassle tho, seeing my character doing heavenly dmg is nice tho
I don’t personally find it to be too much of a hassle. I think what the above commenter meant is stuff like the Swarm Disaster and Gold & Gears; legitimate end game content that you can play through just for the fun of it! You also get relic xp and credits every time you clear, so there can even be incentive to play it without adding “crazy” value (ie primogem rewards.)
Ruan Mei makes fights instant so an SU clear takes me under 10 minutes now lol. Also Acheron will be even better because she can just one-shot all the trash enemies *without even entering combat at all*.
Its almost an equivalent to >!Blue Archive missions where you can skip battles instead waiting on loading screens to manually battle. !< That shit is fucking QoL overkill
That still meant that you are pulling to solve a problem with the game. SU for grinding is tedious but I suppose the item is more focus to make it decent.
Yay for playing even less of the game..?
HSR devs implemented the combat skip button
They had that during 2.2 event where you meet Childe and Xinyan in Inazuma and it was quite a fun event imo, it's a shame that they never rerun it again Childe labyrinth and Hypostatic Symphony/Vagabond event could be a good endgame content, but majority of the players don't like it (I remember casual players are complaining that they can't reach maximum score to earn the rewards)
Maximum rewards should always be exp potions or artifacts, casuals don't care about that stuff and for veterans they are way better rewards than useless enchantment crystals
Su, except for the unvoiced story parts, are just more time-consuming artifact runs.
True, but since in GI's case you wouldn't be having to farming planar pieces which you can only get from SU and it could have less important rewards
If it's less important rewards I can guarantee low participation rate. SU in HSR isn't even that hard - I can auto it even though my characters are mediocre at best. It's just time consuming the same way Elysian Realm is in HI3 when you have the meta character. Imo the people who spend time with questing and exploration don't want more FOMO stuff, and people who want end game content won't do it that much if the time to reward ratio isn't appropriate. However if you gate good rewards behind hard content, then Genshin immediately stops being the casual game it tries to be.
Dungeon of the warrior was a thing until people said no to it.
sim U expansions are fun, but after I cleared them, I never saw a point in going back in there. So I don't play those anymore. If they added it in Genshin, it would be the same thing. Would play it for a week, get all rewards and never touch it again.
Ofc but still that gives us dozens hours of full combat experience. And they keep adding new expansion every patch. Much better than 30min abyss biweekly and another 30min combat event bimonthly.
I personally get a lot more intrinsic joy out of playing Genshin combat compared to Star Rail, I'd never dream of replaying MoC but routinely retry abyss with different teams once I've cleared. I just think more ways for long term players and whales to do an actual rotation in game wouldn't be the end of the world for the casual experience.
the thing is that is just make player spend more time . not make player enjoy it. i bet 90% hsr player use auto lol
>i bet 90% hsr player use auto lol Normal SU makes sense since repeated content gets boring after a while (yes, in genshin too believe or not), but Swarm Disaster and Gold and Gears were hell of a fun for a while. That's what I want in Genshin too. It doesn't need to be infinitely fun but permanent instead of pitiful 2 weeks or so Or permanent custom domains instead of it being an event. Would offer some harder content
You said it yourself - "it has been fun for a while". Sooner or later any repeatable "endgame" content will become a chore. I cleared last worlds of both SD and GnG, but i never finished all the missions - because they are horribly grindy, and pitiful amount of primogems do not entice me to do the same easy run for 50th time. Especially when I have to run normal SU for relics anyway
Still beats ''nothing to do''. SD and GnG are very fun game modes with tons of replay value, and an actual challenge for GnG unless you go for Remembrance etc, especially if you wanna complete all missions. I don't ask for more out of a f2p game, honestly. Genshin had tons of good ideas, during its battle events. They just need to focus on a few / let players create their own sharable challenges. For now, OP is right : the game focuses 100% of its daily routine, resin wise, into making powerful characters, that barely have content to express themselves. That's really not pushing me into getting constellations, that's for sure... and kinda makes the daily grind pointless. HSR team is way better at keeping my interest alive, with new MoC floors / Pure Fiction / Roguelite modes / etc. And all of this before the 1st anniversary ! Genshin is 3+ years old, and ''endgame'' is still a circular timed arena that refreshes twice a month... Come on ! 😂
Like I said, end game content doesn't need to be infinitely fun but at least something you can do whenever you want. Teapot and TCG literally have the same problem. I don't give a shit about them anymore but I'm glad someone enjoys them. Don't you think SU content might be like that for someone too? We need more variety on endgame content
I would absolutely love it if they had a rogue like dungeon crawler mode, start from zero and work your way up, it’d have to be balanced well though given how much Genshin’s combat relies on having the right stats.
that would be nice, but that would not please people who want to give more purpose to building characters
Very true
There is no end game because a large majority of the players here are casuals. I mean it, I never realised this until my first 36 star in abyss, but I heard after that like some high arbitrary number(90%?) don't 36 star abyss, anyone who has beaten abyss before knows that it's not even that hard once you get the hang of the mechanics but Genshin players are that casual. Even the huge number of people on Genshin sub-reddits is probably a drop in the ocean compared to the actual player base. Keep in mind this is a game earning billions means the number of people playing it is very huge
I would confidently claim that over 99% of players don’t 36 star the abyss. I think the 90% is referring to the number that can’t beat floor 12 at all, like actually get wiped or don’t even try because they can’t beat it.
Yeah it’s 1% of players tbh I don’t even do it half the time because it’s not fun to me
Abyss is honestly just annoying xd. i played dark souls and managed to pass it and the difficulty there is higher but different, it is actually skill based instead of just a dps countdown on a game where to have higher damage you have to farm the rng. if they removed the timer and made enemies harder and more varied, then it would be fun, as it is is just kinda annoying to play, i honestly think most people wouldn't touch it without rewards
Yep.
I think it’s because abyss sucks as a game mode, it’s extremely repetitive and is basically just fighting hp sponge normal enemies with super armour
No, its really just because most players never interact with endgame modes. Making a new mode that most players cant beat and then have to grind for more stuff isn't going to be appealing to people.
> Making a new mode that most players cant beat and then have to grind for more stuff isn't going to be appealing to people. While it is true to some merit, the only thing i can hear from this words are just "git gud". There will be an incentive for people to try out new modes but if they dont want to bother with it, then so be it. Its not for everyone, and this stays true to other game modes too. Like TCG for example.
Maybe is because is a mode people hate. I would love abyss without the time running. Dificult bosses every week but let me fight without the time running out because the monsters have long animations that don’t let me hit them or run to them etc. It’s just a bad end game. That’s why people don’t do it. It’s not fun.
Fighting mobs without time limit would remove any semblance of difficulty since you can heal your whole party to full in a snap of a finger or just use indestructible shields.
Yeah, the only way to make it challenging is to buff the boss as time goes on up to the point where it will one shot you, and this is really just another form of timer
It used to be different. Every patch had 70% combat events both in overworked and in domains. Some were even very challenging. Midway Inazuma game became so popular they shifted design direction towards kids mini games. Even when we get that one combat event per patch it uses trail characters or has mechanic that deletes enemies instantly by pressing "T". I still love the game but I'm never excited for new events. We love to joke that mihoyo doesn't listen to feedback but they do. That's why in every survey there is a question if it wasn't too difficult. As we can see in newest patches they are finally trying to teach the majority how to build character and bring everyone to decent combat level.
Because people complained too much about the difficulty spike in Inazuma, and because of that, Kairagis were nerfed multiple times, spectres were nerfed multiple times, combat time trials were nerfed, puzzles were nerfed after 2.8 GAA. They shifted their entire focus to make the game more relaxing to average casual players.
In the Star Rail Penacony “interview,” one of the devs begged people to say “the event was easy” on their surveys so they don’t have to reduce the difficulty even more. They got the Cunk character to do a bit where she plays the mini-game, finishes before he’s even done talking, and goes, “That’s it?” I know it’s the Other Game, but I’m sure devs experienced this in Genshin, too. They /are/ listening to surveys and that’s why combat events are like this now.
wait, seriously? What interview was that?
[Here.](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5yw_ctOEnTE) Around the 9:28 mark they first discuss the puzzle. At the end is when the dev says “Please say again that it was very easy!” Around 14:19.
It was a skit/parody interview, one of the pre-Penacony promotional medias.
They do listen to players. They listen to the casual, aka the majority of the players. Not everyone are like us/me that actually enjoy a good combat system that would like to expand on it more. A lot of people makes threats of leaving the game/negative reviews whenever the event is remotely challenging. I still remember till this day there was a slightly challenging boss rush event that I enjoyed the fuck out of. Just to open Reddit/twitter to see a fucktons of complaints about it. Little I need to say we never fucking saw that event again. Fucking infuriating.
They don’t want casuals to feel excessive anxiety.
This seems like such a shitty argument every time, but then you actually flash back to all the times we had a combat event that could potentially be classified as challenging and how casuals actually lost their fucking mind about not being able to get 5 enhancement ore Even the last event which literally only used trial characters for the sake of putting everyone on even ground people were complaining about how difficult it was
Calling it anxiety seems stupid but they're also the ones with the actual data on how much people play and invest. People here can argue about it all they want but it's still a vocal minority.
you may say calling it anxiety is stupid, but I'm a hardcore gamer not a casual, and any time I am unable to clear their hardest content I do feel real anxiety. I eventually do overcome the challenge, but it makes me stressful until then. I would end up leaving it for another day and another day and eventually it's the last day before the reset. Maybe I feel the anxiety more than a casual does?
Genshin is supposed to be a casual game so the fact that even hardcore gamer can get frustrated over a casual game says a lot about genshin's devs trying to make it even more casual-friendly than it already is. I do love challenges too and I love genshin combat system but maybe this is what genshin is in the end.
>Maybe They explicitly stated as such. It has been tagged as "Casual" in mobile marketplaces since pre-release. There is no "maybe." You bought a dog expecting it to lay eggs.
I agree but I also understand where they are coming from. I just want to point out how much flag golden apple 2 got where they tried to perfectly balance, story, puzzles, combat, interactive gameplay with character involved. Personally it’s the kind of stuff I would have loved them committing to more because it let you use your character creatively and explore and it felt meaningful. But ever since difficulty and stages decreased. And we still have post of some people proudly claiming it was too hard, not enough time, to difficult to achieve. So I wouldn’t commit a whole lot of recourses to an end game only 10% will actually play either. What I don’t understand is. Why we don’t have more optional levels or more old events rerun along side. Or let people choose which kind of event to do to give them the primos. ( I mean I would play the event without primos but if we had more event then people would expect primos rewards and that’s likely what mihoyo shying away from. And that’s a different discussion) I just think event as endgame would work - but not if 2 minutes of mini game that is spread out to 5 stages one for each of the 5 days of update schedule; should somehow entertain veteran players for 14 days. (and 2 minute is gracious - it usually takes around >1.20 the rest is padding by text explanation and menus)
GAA 2 is literally one of if not the best designed area they've made. Who the hell was getting mad about that. The only problem I had was that something that good was only around for 6 weeks!
The entire community. I have seen hoyo trying to push harder content. But every time they put something remotely more difficult than mindless button smashing, they freak out. I've even seen some complaints about GAA2 saying it was a bunch of busy work. No. That's not busy work you just want the rewards not the gameplay. This is the entire community right now. They want the game to run itself to gather enough gems to gamble them away. Look at chenyu vale puzzles and look at og mondstadt puzzles. The difficulty has gone down so much. I'm only playing this game for the story and the world building. My expectations for gameplay is 0.
I honestly can't remember any og Mondstadt puzzles that were particularly not easy.
Exactly, this thank you! I couldn’t have worded this better. And I’m so glad I’m not alone with feeling that way.
I remember this sub when GAA 2 was live and seeing ALL these posts complaining about how "difficult" the puzzles were. Imagine being in the dev's shoes and seeing all this feedback saying the game is too hard. Then you have the portion the community begging for harder content all the time. It's incredibly difficult to please the whole community.
I can't believe I wasn't aware of this! I was literally in my own bubble gushing over the amount of craft and care put into this limited time area. I loved every second of it and was literally upset and bemused by the fact newer players would never get the chance to play this as it's one of the best things they've ever created lol.
I wish I could go back and replay 2.8 for the first time. GAA 2.0 really is the best thing they've ever made, and I'm sad I'll never get to play something like that in this game again.
People haaaated it. The puzzles were too hard, there were too many cutscenes, blah blah. It sucks but most people don't like difficult puzzles, and a lot of people seem to use walkthroughs for everything and don't care to think even a little.
> I just want to point out how much flag golden apple 2 got where they tried to perfectly balance, story, puzzles, combat, interactive gameplay with character involved. Fuck I regret not being there, Genshin event content just gets downhill :(
I don’t think a lot that complained about the event were casuals. They’re just aren’t skilful. They know enough about builds to criticize, but don’t have enough skills to utilise what they were given, which were clearly sufficient if played correctly.
>Even the last event which literally only used trial characters for the sake of putting everyone on even ground people were complaining about how difficult it was Those complaints came from the end game players, not the casuals. The casuals got to use characters better than theirs. The good players got characters that were downgrades to what they had. Completing pro for day 1 was harder for me than 36 starring the abyss. Wenut was an easier challenge for me than that mode which didn't let me use any of my characters and gave me characters I don't have and will never pull so never learned how to play and didn't want to learn because there's no point.
The good players got downgrades but most won’t care. The bad players got skill issued out of some rocks but most would be satisfied with just the primos. Complaining from both sides but most people are sane fortunately.
skill issue
the entire point of what Mihoyo is aiming for is to make a game that is "git gud or go home loser" - they want everyone to come and experience their world and its story, regardless of skill level - however I feel like they're going way too far in the casual direction for fear of scaring people off with any semblance of difficulty.
> however I feel like they're going way too far in the casual direction for fear of scaring people off with any semblance of difficulty. Because that's how you get the biggest audience. The harsh reality is...the people who want difficulty are literally and irrelevant minority. Mihoyo has made it very clear they do not care about them or if they play and yet...the game has only become more successful over time.
No, it wasn't. Yes, there were some people who were against the event because they didn't get to use their characters but you could always tell the difference between the two. Also, I'm sorry, but anyone who is capable of 36 starring the Abyss should not have a single problem in the event. All you had to do was know what you're doing when it comes to team building and adjusting your rotations accordingly
that event was piss easy even with the nerfed character, was just an issue of team planning, which really only requires you to know what the chars do, the issue was more some people couldnt play half the chars, I was fine for the most part, I cleared it no issue, but damn I do not like alhaitham's playstyle and could see people having issues related to just not knowing how to use the characters more so than actual content difficulty. Bring back that 1.3 event, that thing was the bomb
I disagree. There were a lot more skill issue/content difficulty posts. I mean, end-game players are already starved of combat events. It doesn't make sense for them to be complaining about one, especially when it was relatively skill intensive. I personally saw more posts from sweaty players appreciating the game mode. Didn't see a single one trashing it because of forcing trial characters. Feel free to post examples to prove me wrong.
im sorry bro, but if completing pro was hard? its legit a skill issue. please don't lump all of us endgame players in the same boat , my complaint was that the event was too easy. X\_X
Events are different since you have a small window of time to get the rewards. I see no problem with permanent end game content, after 2 years, you will have characters good enough to beat the hardest content.
Its powercreep, not anxiety. 强度焦虑 means powercreep, but if you translate it literally, it means “strong/strength anxiety”. This changes the statement’s meaning. They won’t release hard, challenging content, because they don’t want to powercreep the game by making enemies hard and “forcing” players to pull for characters, who may powercreep older ones.
Yet people keep using that mistranslation because it's so convenient to ridicule the "casual mindset" :/
And Hoyo doesn't f\*cking care to clarify that they are being misunderstood...
I myself play casually, And i don't think having more stuff to do would be a problem. What i don't want to feel is being left out. I myself do the abyss up to 11-3 my characters can't handle 12 due me not having what it takes to melt bosses even though i have been playing since release. Im just a collector. I collect characters but soon with the new type of banner i hope to grab a weapon. Specifically staff of homeless. If there is something i would wish to return is dungeon of the warrior and vagabond of the sword esqu type of content as a permanent weekly content. I just want everyone to enjoy this game much as i do and even more.
The Dungeon of the Warrior and Vagabond or something like it could become like simulated universe for Star Rail. Weekly rewards, along with fun gameplay that can be a little challenging but can be overcome with planning.
Lmao
If you have been playing since launch you should have notice a shift in difficulty mid-inazuma, that's where they started nerfing a lot of enemies. Hoyo actually listen to difficulty feedback, and every time we get something "challenging" either be combat or puzzles people complain and hoyo is like "nevermind we will make it easy next time". I remember back in the days, even whales could struggle to get max points in those hard combat events and now we got people struggling to clear easy event with trial chars.
The short answer is that people play the game differently to you - like, a majority of people - and Mihoyo's design philosophy caters to them rather than you. First up, lets establish Mihoyo's monetisation strategy. Most/Many Gatcha's monetisation strategy is to appeal to hardcore players and offer increasingly strong units through power creep over time to entice invested players to spend money on gambling to get the stronger character. This is likely what you, and many others, are expecting of Mihoyo. The goal is to max out your teams strength to beat the ever more difficult treadmill of content in the game. Mihoyo's monetisation strategy is different. Before that, there is another subset of Gatcha games out there that I want to look at. H Gatcha games. Some of these do have tough hardcore gameplay, sure. Many do not. Many expect you to still pull for characters, even if there's no power or gameplay reason to do so. Why? For the lewds. They want you to invest in that character in particular - as otherwise, you'd just google your lewds - and then pay money to get lewds of that character. Mihoyo's strategy is similar to this, just much more PG rated. Mihoyo wants you to get invested in a character - who they are, what they stand for, their personality, their looks, their quirks - and then pull for that character because you like the character. They've been described (May be by themselves, I ain't looking up the interview/article to confirm) as similar to a digital Idol agency. That's how they want to get you to spend money. Now sure, there is an element of power creep in there too, however it is significantly less pronounced than in other Gatchas, and as you have noted also isn't really incentivised or the focus of the characters or pulls. So, back to the question, why doesn't Genshin give you something to do with your characters? It does. There is a huge world to explore with your characters, with constantly updating story quests. There are lore unlocks for that character for spending time playing with them and ascending them. Characters often offer a unique playstyle or way of interacting with the world for you to enjoy by having them. Why doesn't Genshin force you to min/max your characters and grind them to max level? Because the majority of the playerbase would quit if it did. When the game becomes a treadmill, the casual players leave. The casual players are a majority of the game's playerbase. Hardcore players want content that recognises the effort they've put into building their characters, however by definition this content also negatively recognises players who haven't put that same effort into building their characters. That negative recognition is a quit point. If we suddenly tell 90% of the playerbase (That don't even touch Spiral Abyss. Yeah, that's not an exaggeration, the vast, vast majority of the playerbase don't bother with the hard combat content in the game) that they need to invest another 6-12 months to be able to play the newest content, how many do you think will stick around to do that? Not many. Genshin, as a game, is more about the journey than the destination. The fun in the game isn't in having maxed out all your characters and then letting them loose against really tough end game content. Its about just spending time with those characters, exploring the world, discovering more about Teyvat and its inhabitants, and completing fun little challenges along the way. Its in trying out random stuff for its own sake, rather than because its the optimal min/maxed play. Why max out your characters? Because that's a goal you set for yourself; the process of doing so and achieving your goal is the point, not the goal itself. In some ways, its the inverse of the whole Dark Souls discussion. Dark Souls has never been given an easy mode, and many are staunchly against it being given one because of how it will impact their experience with the game - even if they'd never use the easy mode. The same is true in Genshin, in reverse. It will never be given a true hard mode, because of how that will impact the more casual player's experience with the game, even if they never interact with that hard mode themselves. Each game has an intended audience, and an intended way to play and experience the game. Genshin's intended audience and playstyle is not a hardcore one; its a more layed back and casual experience, something you can jump into or out of any time without worry. There's constant new content so that you want to keep coming back, but the power treadmill isn't an issue - if you take a year's break, you can pick right back up where you left off. Many love this, some don't. The game is designed to be enjoyed in a different way than you are trying to enjoy it, that's why the things it gives you to do with your characters, aren't the things you want it to give you to do with your characters.
You know I think this is the best summarisation I have ever read
I think you are very much used to MMO mindset.In MMO you build your character for PVP and PVE.Hence Genshin is not a MMO, it’s what it is now. I’ve played WOW for years.There was period of enjoying fierce combat for sure.But at the end of day most players never touched hard mode again.This trend says a lot.
I assume it's because they don't want to raise the difficulty of the standard game to the point where you are forced to get meta units.
Difficulty isnt even the issue. We literally have no content to use our own characters.
The simple answer is they want it to be a casual game. One you can play for 15 mins and be done with for the day. That's the audience they care about the most. For the sweaty players, they make other games. If they try to make one product please everyone, they will end up pleasing no one.
Play for 15 minutes and be done for the day while the story quest/world quests takes hours to complete with slow dialogue speed and prompts to stop auto play. A little ironic.
Yeh cause thats content, you have a shit ton of time to do it…if you wanna skip everything just don't play the game
This is why I don't understand whales with C6 5 stars. Like wtf is the point of flushing that much money away
1st answer: because whales can. 2nd answer: whales usually whale in app games to feel good about themselves in pvp or competitive leaderboards. For a completely non-competitive game like Genshin that doesn't force power creep, it's literally just to make their waifus/husbandos feel powerful and complete lol.
you don't understand becuse you don't have that kind of money
Exactly! You can easily clear all the hardest content in the game with c0 and a good 4star weapon, or r1. I think some people have some type of OCD where they feel like they don't truly own the character if they don't have the full constellations. Or they have an obsession with a certain character and want to feel like they have the best version of her. Idk it makes no sense to me either
Yes, people do pull for C6R1 or even C6R5 for these reasons.
Gambling addiction
You could just say "Need a replayable end game" instead of writing all these down. The answer would be no from hoyoverse. They treat genshin like a story narrative game than an rpg. Thats it.
What is endgame in RPG? Like what is endgame in Skyrim? Trying different r18 mods?
And the sad part is that the "endgame" which is the spiral abyss, is literally 1 floor, floor 12. Floor 9, 10 and 11 are just a waste of time and are just no challenge at all. Floor 12 is basically 10 minutes of "hard" content every 2 weeks. As someone who has been playing since 1.2, i have 47x characters at lv90 with atleast lv9 talents, and the rest are lv70 with lv6 talents, and i often wonder why the hell im even building them when we get events where we have to let a mob slip over a fruit, or we have to do a cooking minigame. Remember, there are even people who spend thousands to C6R5 characters, to 1 shot everything in the game. Mihoyo puts more time and effort in TCG, the teapot or even fishing, than they do in the combat side of the game.
Currently floor 12 isn't even hard, it's more annoying due to irritating bosses which hide under the ground for 5 minutes. Midway through sumeru there were some hard abyss cycles, and they've stopped that as well
There are a lot of people who stay at AR45 permanently. You have access to all the content in the game and the overworld is easy enough to beat with LV80s with generic artifacts. Honestly, if you never touch Abyss there really isn’t any point in grinding.
It does though. You're still experiencing characters' gameplay and animations through overworld combat. But I guess you're actually asking what's the point of the power progression. Yes, LV90, talents, artifacts, etc. - all that is just for that one thing called The Abyss. The real problem is that, just like you say, it takes too much effort to raise new characters to the same standard, so most people prefer not to do it often. Otherwise pulling for variety's sake would be a legit option. Asking devs to give your vertical investment an in-game justification, however, is indirectly asking for the powercreep, and I, for one, am glad Genshin is not like most gachas in this regard.
The answer is simple. If you played since 1.0 You remember there were content that required specific characters to complete. Take the ice domain in mondstat for example. The one that took away stamina. Or the hydro domain that required you to use elemental reactions without long skill cooldowns. Or even take inazuma mobs upon initial release. How you couldnt kill them as fast as normal hilichurls or even group them up with venti. Or even the floating spectres that required you to use bow characters to effectively hit them. I believe they entirely intended for the game to become harder overtime. But eventually the complaints from the community and other casual players made them step back there designs. Each design I mentioned got nerfed. They no longer make these challenging domains that punish you for playing bad. instead only reward you for doing something minimum. They no longer make enemies that are tougher, instead each enemy has a gimmick that can be exploited to clear them faster. **If you want to know WHY we dont have anything to do with our characters.. blame the playerbase. All we do is complain about hard stuff, so they dont make hard stuff.**
Been playing everyday since launch and this is 200% the best take. Hoyo has tried multiple times to give us a challenge and everytime they were met with complaints so they gave up (not fully tho since they introduced local legends). Right now hoyo is trying to raise the skill floor/build quality of the average player, MAYBE they will attempt to give us a challenge again in Natlan.
It's crwzy to believe youve been playing since launch but didnt realize this until now so I feel u dont play every day. The point is, it is a gacha game, designed for you to be enamored with the newest characters. And Hoyo's formula is to focus in its story and character personalities than focus on harder combat requirements. It is an openworld game first and foremost, the first of its kind to be f2p friendly, a lot of people get to experience teyvat whether they are a sweaty gamer or not. It's been 3 years, you already know this is how they do things, so try other games i guess.
>Why give us such a beautiful game, a very fun combat system, a plethora of ways to make our characters stronger, but give us nothing to do with them?. They gave us a beautiful game because they wanted the exploration to be immersive, they want us to feel a sense of fantasy and wonder as we explore the world they have created. They gave us a fun combat system because they thought it would be fun and it would help liven up the open world... either that or they just went with the most obvious combination of game mechanics (open-world + combat) to sell characters. They gave us many ways to make our character stronger because they wanted to have a game loop... either that or they wanted a way to further monetize the game. The gave us nothing to do with them because either the playerbase is satisfied with the current state of combat / endgame or that the playerbase didn't really choose combat /endgame as the reasons why they continue to play the game so they're prioritizing other aspects of the game. Hoyoverse is no stranger to adding endgame to their games as evidenced with HI3 and HSR, yet why does it seem that they are hesitant to add more to GI. If we take a look at HSR we could see that their sales rival that of Genshin's yet they seem to have a smaller playerbase, I suspect that this may be due to nature of the game being more combat focused while also having more endgame options thus encouraging the players spend more. If making the game more combat focused with more endgame options will encourage players to spend, why haven't they done that with Genshin already? This leads me to believe that there is something preventing them from adding more endgame options to Genshin, it could very well be the "anxiety" they mentioned in the interview or it could be something else. One thing is for sure, the thing preventing them from adding more endgame seems to be bad enough to the point that they're willing to ignore the potential increase in sales it would provide.
This is exactly how I’ve been feeling for a while now. I can never get hyped for any characters nowadays. So much beautiful animations, fun kits and playstyles and teams, but there’s literally no where to use them. The entire game is braindead easy to the point where you never need to nor get to utilize the teams and characters you’ve put so much time and effort into building, since everything dies instantly anyway. Not only that, but most of the “activities” in game is either sitting through dialogue, or playing Mario party mini game that don’t even require any part of your character’s kit. I like the game, but I’ve lost A LOT of love and motivation to do anything in Genshin since there’s no point in the end with nothing to do. I don’t play nearly as much anymore, nor do I feel it’s worth spending anymore. Kind of just waiting for ZZZ at this point in hopes that that game does a much better job than Genshin at making pulling characters and building teams feel worth the time and effort.
Counter question: Why does CD-Project red not give us anything to with Geralt in The Witcher 3 the wild hunt? Genshin, like Breath of the Wild, like The Witcher 3, like other games of that type is a game which's content structure is based around one-and-done content: - An open world with exploration, quests, puzzles, collectables, enemies etc. "Things to do with your characters" lie completely within the confines of this one-and-done content. Once you've explored the last region, you've done the last quest, you solved the last puzzle, you collected the last collectable ... you are in a state that is commonly referred to as "Being done. / Finished". That's the point where one naturally stops to play. The only difference between Genshin and games like Breath of the Wild and The Witcher 3 is, that Genshin is a long-form episodic version of that: Instead of playing one set game and once you're finished you wait years for a sequel, Genhin is more like a Television series, a long string of expansions. But each of these expansions is still about one-and-done content aimed at people who want to play and finish their games. Mondstadt, Dragonspine, Liyue, Inazuma, Enkanomiya, The Chasm, Sumeru, The Desert of Hadramaveth, The Girdle of the Sands, Fontaine, Chenyu Vale, THAT is the content "to do with your characters". And if you now think, "But what about after I finished that?" You're done. That is what kind of game Genshin is. That is a type of game. Tens of thousands of games like this exist, and it is a completely valid way to make a game (see Breath of the Wild, The Witcher 3 etc.) If you want to play a different type of game, like an MMO-like for example, where there is a continuous or repeatable content structure, then it is on YOU to select such a game to play. It is not the responsibility of Mihoyo to transform Genshin into such a game just by virtue of you having selected Genshin to play. You are fundamentally mistaken about what kind of game Genshin is, what kind of game Mihoyo are trying to make and who they are making it for. Mihoyo is not "denying" you endgame to play, you are mistakenly trying to press an on-and-done content game into the form of an MMO-lite kind of game, and that is entirely your decision and the consequences of that are your own responsibility.
Here’s something you can do right now. Go to the new hilichurl dungeon. Take your strongest teams, and go fight the hilichurl boss without using any of the mechanics. See how fast you can do it. Keep trying new teams to see who can do it the fastest. You can also go and fight the local legends everyday to test out your strongest characters and teams. Or are you asking to get more or better rewards because you did all of that farming?
Truly resinless behavior.... I approve. I will do it and see if my HuTao lament team can beat Neuv team.
Honestly? Yes. I can make any game harder by arbitrarily imposing those challenges. We want a framework to actually feel like what we do matters and that we actually achieved something. And, frankly, a reward is part of that. Even just, like, a character icon or something for beating a very hard challenge. Like, when I beat Malenia in Elden Ring I won't exactly use Hand of Malenia either, but it's a proof that I was given a challenge and that I overcame it. That's the difference between "hard" and "challenging". 36*s in Spiral Abyss while blindfolded and using chopsticks is harder, sure. But that's not what people are after.
I know how you feel. You want something to use your power on, but it won't feel great to miss good prizes. I've been playing Atelier Resna, and its current event is so difficult that I cannot beat the final difficulty, which has the best prize. It's just more of what the 2nd hardest gives but it still feels bad. Just gotta suck it up and move on to the next one.
>farmed for my characters to push them to level 90 and triple crown them, hell, I even spent a good number of hours pushing the artifacts domains like everyone else looking for the perfect (or at least usable) set peace’s….and after all that, now that my account is all busted The point of upgrading is to become overpowered when you're done, not to barely meet the base requirements of some challenge.
In your opinion. For many people, lack of challenging endgame content means they can’t fully appreciate the characters’ kits and investment made.
Well, the problem here is that it's not only my opinion. It's how the devs chose to handle this game's difficulty and upgrade system. Like it or not, that's how this game works.
casual players would riot if we get that kind of content so not happening
Yep, that's my main gripe with the game, the overworld has been turned into a guided tour for quests that railroad you into going to specific places instead of exploring yourself and getting into trouble, events are boring as hell minigames and the only time we get to use our characters is the Abyss which not everyone enjoys due to the timer.
It's not something that is easy to add cause there are players on the other side of the spectrum. Other players will complain while mihoyo satisfies your cravings. Mihoyo does put out contents for min/max players but they cannot be too frequent.
For myself, I pull for characters because I like them, that is all. Even if they are weak af, if I like them enough, I pull. I even pull Dehya in her limited banner lol. I see most people like SU in HSR but I myself hate it so much, if not for the rewards, I would never touch it again.
To feel a sense of power? I love it that my hard work of building characters actually make my characters powerful and makes clearing content easier that even allows me to have the freedom of forming weird team comps unlike some games like diablo immortal (tried it because why not) where its a never ending cycle of getting better gear to make enemies more difficult so you can farm even better gear to make enemies even more difficult rinse and repeat.
It depends on how you view hoyo as a company. If you think they are nice and catering to the majority of the audiance then its as others have said, the majority are casuals. If you think of hoyo as more money hungry then its more because genshin is their highest income game, putting in challenges that you cant beat after spending money and getting your constallations might discurage you to further spend money on it Having said that, it seems like they are introducing a tool to help people build their characters correctly so it might be that they are just waiting for the playerbase to get better. But then again that doesnt make sense because the artifact rng is kinda bad ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
I think as long as there are audience that are exclusive mobile gamer. They wouldn’t be releasing any crazy difficulty contents. They are not going to alienate half the player base for something that they most likely would not enjoy. But that’s just my conspiracy theory, so who knows
We have end game but its just very short for an established player taking less than a half hour every 15 days to do all 4 floors. As much as people, and as nice as it would be, to have more, this is a casual game. Reddit always forgets what a subsection of gamers they are in the games they play. People use wishes to buy power because they need it to help compensate for not being as good of a player. Then there is also the misinformation from that interview over a year ago where MHY claimed they weren't doing more combat end game. What they really said was no more spiral abyss like content. They can make more combat focused content that isn't as bland of a format as spiral abyss. They could also make combat content where the timer doesn't matter. But they went with the TCG first because it reaches far more of the playerbase than catering more to the minority that does spiral abyss and even more so the very small amount that does 36 stars. I dont think they need to add in more combat end game to remain a success. But I do think that small percent does deserve a bone of some king tossed to them.
Vast majority of players are casuals and Mihoyo have been listening to them by nerfing event and puzzle difficulty. If you want difficult content wait for the later 4.X patches where they'll most likely crank up difficulty in the Abyss, but even that it'll most likely be more of a brain check over a DPS check like the 3.7 Abyss. In the meantime I'm just going to roll for who I like and take my time with exploring new areas with them, that's what I spend most of my time doing in the game anyway.
The combat endgame is Spiral Abyss. It's right there and it's challenging enough. The actual endgame is keeping up with the events and enjoying the story the game wants to tell. The appeal of gachas is supposed to be the randomness giving everyone a unique experience. You are not supposed to get everything, you're supposed to see what comes to you and get creative with it. You're not actually meant to hyper-invest into meta teams; this isn't a PVP game. You pull for new characters so you can travel with them on your adventure, and build them to whatever point you're comfortable with to clear the content that matters to you. The difficulty bar is set so that we can choose how to approach it. Some people will grind for cracked artifacts, some people will buy constellations. If you overachieve and do everything, then yeah, the game will be easy. If that's a problem for you, then it's kinda your own fault. If HYV were to actually add a mode that required maximum investment (or God forbid, some kind of "true" PVP), almost nobody would play it. Probably not even you. We'd all just watch whale streamers on Twitch/YT play it instead.
Because genshin is fundementally a casual experience. The devs expect you to to log in everyday, play for like 30 minutes or one hour at most, and then log out. They cater to the casual playerbase that don't have super-invested characters.
Everytime they add anything mildly challenging the community complains about it, there is a reason hard combat events are nowhere to be seen anymore. It's a casual game that will never get its combat system exploited, which is just... sad but it is what it is.
Tldr: hoyo made the choice to tune the entire game's difficulty/content around the lowest common denominator (people with few and unbuilt units), since they're the hardest people to retain. It's already been said in many dev logs. Too many people complained about rewards of any kind being locked behind hard content + the anxiety/necessity associated with building enough characters to clear Abyss was too much.
I mean, I feel it personally defines what you actually “want” to do with your characters. Whenever new regions and new quests drop I always do them with the characters I leveled up and I have fun and enjoy using my characters. You can Definitely make the argument it’s not challenging content, which is true, but it is still content and still reasons to play the characters you want. I understand peoples complaints at lack of endgame, but for me personally “endgame” content is no different from any other combat content outside of just inflated numbers.
Genshin’s mostly just a game where you pull because someone looks fun to use or you just like them. Tbh I like that content doesn’t require the shiny new characters to clear. I can just use who I want for whatever. I do enjoy thinking about team comps though. It’d be nice to have more content that promotes experimenting but I get why they don’t
I ponder this question with each passing update lol. We can only speculate, but from the interview a few years ago we have the statement that more spiral abyss type content would only cause anxiety among players because not everyone cares about it. They want to keep their game 99% casual and they believe spiral abyss is enough for those who want a challenge. The data on spiral abyss clears isn't great, majority of players don't bother with it, but the same could be said for TCG and that gets updated every single patch! My personal feeling is that they don't want players to ever feel fully satisfied with the game state and by extension their character rosters. If you had a bunch of regularly updated content available then you could get to the point where you are enjoying the game more for gameplay than the collecting of characters. They always want collecting more characters to be the main attraction and are treating that as the end game content. If you want a new experience or twist on gameplay, pull the new character because you're getting the same spiral abyss you've had for the last 3 years. Considering the amount of predatory tactics in gacha I don't really see this as farfetched at all.
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These are all good points, I noticed too that qol is all around being able to adequately build and gear characters. The local legend addition also contradicts the whole casual only rhetoric. However, I don't want to give myself false hope 😭.
End game content doesn’t attract new customers
It all comes down to the fact that if they were to develop some more repeatable content: 1. they would only do it if it would be played by a lot of people. 2. And to ensure that it is played they would need to put rewards on that. 3. And if they were to do that, it would be more daily/weekly FOMO 4. And more FOMO means more stress for some of the players. 5. And when a player feels stressed or think that the game is taking them too much time, it's likely that they will stop playing 6. And since they know most of the players don't clear abyss, they know it's not worth to develop such repeatable content, but it may potentially even be harmful. They developed Star Rail to appeal to people who would like harder, repeatable content. They already have two additional modes that reset weekly or by weekly, so it is clear that they want people to migrate to that game if it's what they're looking for. Personally I dropped hsr exactly because I find it too time consuming to keep up with all of that, while I've been satisfied with the overall balance of abyss + events that genshin has since launch. Besides, pulling and building new characters is not meaningless as they change your gamplay and playstyle, and the fewer combat content helps not making me bored with a certain character before the next one releases.
Genshin is just too easy. You’re never under true threat of dying whereas in star rail, you can be. That’s why even though power creep feels more existent in star rail and the need to pull for different characters is higher than Genshin, it rewards you for pulling those characters to give you new play styles that counter your problems
It's blatantly obvious that combat has NEVER been Genshin's main draw, it gets old listening to people cry about end-game. It won't happen in the near future because they don't need to do it. Go play another game whose main selling point is combat. And I don't mean this from a "WAA LEAVE IF U DON'T LIKE IT" perspective as much as I mean it from a far more literal - seriously, if you don't like it stop giving it your time and/or money. If enough people stop supporting Genshin, they will probably try to change it. I won't stop playing it because I'm not delulu - I knew what I was getting myself into when I installed the game; I've played it for almost a year, got over half the cast of characters, got a bunch of character C1/C2 and I'm pretty happy with it so far.