https://www.**********/r/Genshin_Impact/comments/ka6sga/everything_wrong_with_genshin_impact/

-Preface-

This, is not an easy thread to write. I've been wanting to write this since the Tartaglia Banner, when I found myself forcing the pity break for a chance at pulling the 5* unit. I was growing anxious and anxious the closer I got because, on one hand, I knew I wasn't guaranteed Tartaglia upon pity, and on the other hand, I could still get that character anyway and all of that stress would be naught.

Spoiler alert:?I pulled Diluc.

That anxiety didn't exactly leave. Relief I didn't have to care anymore, that did I feel. But all that effort gone like that, felt like, such an unnecessary waste. Was it then a good moment to bring this up? I was now "just salty" RNG didn't bless me. But that's not the only thing bothering me. I, was about to hit Adventure Rank 50, the final ascencion. Figured I might as well wait a little, reach the final ascencion, and have the full picture.

What a phenomenal waste of time. I was curious the most, to find out what was the requeriment to raise the talent level from 8 to 9. And oh boy...

I really want to talk about everything wrong with this game now.

But where do we start...? From the quintessential analysis on how the resin system is bad, to the latest in balance drama Zhong Geodaddy Li, the game walks the line that sepparates "annoying but rewarding" from "annoying and I wouldn't touch that again with a nuclear warhead", often landing in the later. Way too often.

-Raw Definition of Genshin Impact-

It all, actually makes sense. The unpolished hitboxes when fighting, the broken boss encounters (which, of course, I'm talking abut Strmterror's neck, but there's more), the constellation system, how limiting resin has been made to be, mora, the less than stellar events... guess I should tackle these problems in that order. I didn't have a particular one ready, anyway.

So, did you know? I mean, sure you do, but, when you unlock comissions, you can earn about 60 protogems daily and some adventure rank exp to go along them. But, you could also pay for a monthly service known as Weklin Wishes(5,5€ for me by the way), to recieve a larger sum of 90 protogems daily? Let me be clear here. They also give you like 300 of these not-protogem coins, but only to tempt you to waste them on a resource bag. The actualy purpose is to?not?allow you to have a pull each day, more concretely, to have you?at the edge?of having a pull.

This level of inconvenience is what best describes everything on a design level. To give you, but not quite, so you have to do extra anyway, and still get you to pay. Nickel and dime. This is the monetization method mihoyo has chosen for the game.

-Fun, but broken combat.-

My main team consists of Amber, Sucrose, and Chongyun. I don't know what is it, but archery draws my attention on every open world game that allows it, and for Genshin Impact, it's been an eye opening experience... to how much Mihoyo went to the trouble of adding it as a mechanic, and still not care about it. Which is a shame, going around in shoulder view mode and hitting things in the head is, raw fun actually, but underperforming... and not damage wise. It just feels dragged down. At times your arrows are going to not connect due to some wonky collision on a random tree trunk, or somehow an enemy is just invulnerable throught a shot. Abyssal mages can evade arrows altogether just by just dancing, the shoulders of the 'thicc' fatui have no hitbox at all...

At least Lawachurls are free real state since headshots don't seem to be affected by damage reduction. You just have to put up with its mnkey business phase, where it repeats the same jumping attack over and over and over with no restriction. Sometimes.

But the true offenders are the bosses. I, did mention I just hit Adventure Rank 50, rght? So I'm on World level 7. To celebrate, I took the two fagile resin from the ranking rewards and went straight to fight Boreas (Wolf boss) and then Stormterror. Later that night I went to solo Childe. I was, greatly surprised to find that Childe and Boreas didn't really get harder, even thought they theorically are since they're now over 10 levels ahead of me. Stormterror thought, quickly became a nightmare. Up to this point I was able to down him in 3-4 phases, but I just wasn't able to keep that up this time. Of course, on that one hand it's because of the level difference, but on the other hand, it's because the fight now lasted long enough for all the ugly sices of the fight to show up.

When fighting bosses, I use the Viridiscent Bow from the battlepass. I don't have to change anything else, I hit exactly 50% crit chance and that's where I like it. It has an effect where it spawns a tornado that does physical damage over time based on your total attack. The key detail here being that the effect doesn't work at all on Stormterror, it just won't summon the otherwisely helpful tornado to take the stun bar down. And the greater offender here, is that, the literal glowing purple thing?is not considered a weak point. Archer class completely destroyed... if any other archer besides Amber were actual archers instead of two warlocks and a healer with a bow, that's it. But, no weakpoint. What?

Fighting Boreas, you have to dance around his three resistances: No weakpoint (even though it has a gigantic head), nullifies Anemo damage, and Cryo damage. Amber, Sucrose, and Chongyun go brrrrrrrrrr, the game. Now, I'm not so challenged that I can't adapt to the situation - I can definitelly keep myself from pressing E and Q when chongyun is on the field -, but in a completely arbritrary manner, the game has completely nullified my party.

I'm guessing they don't want to let the bosses have a weakspot, because that could make them... easier? Die faster? I mean, Boreas' got a gigantic headpiece but, what's the excuse for Childe? A literal humanoid, in a game where every other humanoid has a weakpoint on the head. He doesn't. If that was the logic, then why is it possible to stun him with normal attacks? If he lost that weak spot during the last phase because he put a helmet on - that at least would make sense.

The irony is that, out of these three, 60 resin or it didn't happen juggernauts, the one boss that could do completely without a weak point is stormterror, because you can actually hit his stun bar while not in melee range with a properly aimed shot. But no, you still have to deal with the broken neck mechanics, slowly pushing you outwards, making you lose time for no merited reason. By the way, did you know that Sucrose's E actually misses the purple thorn on the neck? It spawns on the platform instead of the neck. Another rant added to the deck.

Then there's the open world bosses. Three types: Flowers, Pushovers, and Please No More.

Flowers actually have a weakpoint... that is only active after you break them. It's kind of cool, actually, since it adds breaking parts into the mix. The problem comes with the massive area of effect attacks they can do, that will not stop until they've been stunned... while the breakpoint takes a while to spawn. That is not so ok. The idea in general is the same as Stormterror: dodge, break point, spam damage on glowy shinny thing, except that it is considered a weakpoint so what gives the logic behind stormterror again?

Pushovers, hypostasis, cubes, they got names. They don't have weak points, but they permanently channel the element they're associated to instead, which is cool, and their patterns are tailored to reflect their element. They're fine. Geo Hypostasis is arguably the harder one, since exploiting Geo as an element doesn't create more damage and it's always on top of a pillar.

Then there's Please No More, the Oceanid. You like the concept, I like the concept, there's nothing wrong with a minion wave based encunter. The problem is execution - or the lack of it. Leaving aside the bug that doesn't let geo constructs be used on the arena (which sounds like something Mihoyo is happy about), the game has zero regards about what it throws at you. At the second half, when it starts throwing two groups instead of one, some combinations make the fight insanely harder than others, or straightout not fun. The crabs by themselves are beyond annoying, since they do not do a lot of damage but they're guaranteed to deal damage. Even if they stop, they run faster than you, so they get a better chance at avoiding all of your attacks, all while dropping constant damage on you.

However, the truly unfair mechanic is the water bomb some larger mobs drop on death - a frog and a bird. The frog will swap between slime-like jumps (with area telegraphing) and shooting frontal projectiles, so it's easier to dance around it. The bird however, besides a slime-like jump, it will also jump and do area damage with no graphing at all - essentially the same attack but with graphing. To make things worse, the telegraphinga nimatin on the ground does not match the actual timing of damage - you need to iframe through them while the circle is half-full. I remember when this was a thing in FF14. Everyone hated it. And yet, it does not stop. The explosion that happens after killing them reaches about an extra square and a half away from the explosion's origin, so you need to specifically pull these mobs to a corner, then kill them, and then run away to another corner.

It's not that each of the minions the oceanid summons is wrong on their own, the problem is the combination of some of them. Two squirrels and Three flying birds will keep you outside the platforms for a long time - with the squirrels trying to push you away rather than trying to do damage, and the birds taking turns to take shots at you. The birds are flying high enough so you can't just melee them, you need to bring a mage or an archer, and in this scenario, you hardly get a chance to aim. But now let's say that instead of squirrels, it's the big bird. Now you have to carefully dodge four damage sources while manipulating the larger bird so it does in a place that doesn't cause the explosion to reach the entire arena. It would be mighty fine to use a geo construct to jump out of the way, but the boss needs a check to make sure some combinations can not happen.

As if all of that wasn't enough, then there's the pityful experience rewards from killing enemies. Or the pityful rewards from killing these bosses over and over, with no guarantee of better drops as your world level increases. Maybe 57 experience points are enough to not let you do anything worthile, but hey, got something right? Buy our exp tomes.

-Constellations-

So, my biggest question is, 3 more months down the line, how is it going to be possible to obtain dupes of the characters I got? Just keep RNG'ing? Then what about the retired 5* units? Sure a lot of people must have been able to play for long enough to max the constellation on their klees right?

The constellation system is yet another way for Mihoyo to give something but not do it. You need 14400 protogems to enforce a pitybreak at 90 rolls. Valuing a single primogem at 0.01cent (109.99€/6480 primogems package from the shop, first purchase bonus not to be considered), you have the honor of paying 144€ for?half?a chance of getting the banner character. And you may get what you want. If you do not, feel free to spend another 144€, and if you do, how about you pay 144€ six more times for six half chances of completely unlocking your character? Once again - as reflected on the recent community concerns with Zhong Li - Mihoyo sells you, but not quite , a character, so you can have, but not quite, what you wanted. It's the same damn thing.

It baffles me that a gacha game launches in 2020 without an alternative to this method. It's common for characters to have a Limit Break mechanic where their level goes beyond by having multiple copies, but more so for the last two to three years, it's also become commonplace to have an alternate mechanic that allows it without requirign a dupe. Azur Lane lets you use a specific unit as a generic, wild card upgrade for any character (and any weapon? That much I dont remember). On a sense, Genshin doesn't need it. You can perform limit breaks just by obtaining materials in-game, which... require... resin...

... so you kind of, don't need constellations. It sucks that they chose to limit character mechanics behind these half chances, but something else is bugging the rear of my head right now. If you don't need these constellations... actually, do you need to roll for anything? Like,

need?

-Empty Impact-

I?want?to?focus?on?the?open?world?experience?in?this?section,?but?it?becomes?increasingly?harder.?You'll?see...

This games' success lies in how it managed to rope in, the one demographic that has avoided this genre of games for the longest, while also being more than accostumed to drop big bucks on all kinds of microtransactions. I'm talking about console and PC gamers, the ones that are well too adjusted to paying for battle passes, dropping three figure numbers to upgrade their setups, and bought lootboxes frequently. They're also used to games with much more content than what Genshin Impact offers, even for free.

I remember?this post?which gives... strangely accurate details about mihoyo. But what really caught my eye, is the metric offered: Lifetime earnings.

This is how gacha games rope you in; first they give you a massive gameplay exposure, give the impression there's something farther beyond, and then you're in their ecosystem. Everytime you're in the game, you're open to be "convinced" to spend money. Like, for example, earning 150 of 160 protogems required for a single roll through gameplay, then spending a single euro to make up the rest and roll. This is the reason this demographic avoids these games, they're aware of them being mostly lies, and would rather spend their day playing, purchasing every single DLC available,?rather?than having their playtime gated. Once again, resin appears in the conversation. it's endemic to the game's problems, but not yet. Not yet.

The game becomes bare, after there are no more chests to find. Exploration is a limited resource, that I understand, but what is left after it is plain worthlessness. A game of waiting to wait that lands on the "annoying and I wouldn't touch that again with a nuclear warhead" side of the equation. That by itself drives people out of the game. People believed the hoaxes about chests respawning because it?makes sense. So much about the player's agency and economy relies on finding these chests and opening them, and not just because of primogems. So why has mihoyo not made it into an actual thing? Well, once again is because they would rather have you buy these resource packs at 300 not-primogems the pop. Lifetime revenue you see.

What about these events? Week-long once-a-day-ding-a-longs that sum to be worth between nothing, if done daily, and hardly anything when put together? The current gliding event would have been mileages better if they let you do it all in one sit. And yes, I know that means it gets devoured - but you get to do something else than waiting for your resin that one day,instead of just a minor inconvenience for a minigame not that well put together.

The fallen stars event is the closest we got to a tradtiional gacha event, coming in with an event shop and tokens you can get by completing it, and so far the best one. But once again, it was being gated. This time, you had to do X runs of Y mode to get Z item from the event shop. Al within the span of the event's last week. And you likely had to do more than your resin allowed for (there we go again, what can I do) if you didnt have a high enough world level. The events so far have been... a replacement for what was already in there.

So why bother with the open world when it puts so much emphasys not you not playing it in the end? At this point, you have to ask yourself if what you've been through has been worth it. The time? The money? The effort? And with these temporal patches, the content doens't exactly grow. Guild Wars 2 used a update system that changed entire chunks of the game's world to provide a "living world" experience, but these changes were temporary and didn't reflect in the game afterwards, causing a content draught (until they switched their model into one that made new content permanent).

All of these points will cause that demographic to leave the game, but that's fine if... we're to believe mihoyo only looks at lifetime revenue. Remember that example about not having enough primogems for a roll. You could drop 1€ in primogems only once, then figure the game isn't for you (sometime in the future), and drop it. A new player takes the place, and also has 150/160 primogems. They may decide instead to go for the battle pass. And then drop the game. A new player takes the scene... this model favors incoming new players. For any new piece of content they make and sell to a veteran plaer, they can instead sell it and the entire game to a new one. This explains why they don't care about player feedback, about the myriad solutions and alternatives to the restrictive resin, or something as simple as not gating gameplay mechanics behind constellations.

It makes too much sense. But then why, and I do mean why go ahead and undo the enviromental damage fix not even two days after? It was only affecting a specific type of character, and they have no qualms about completely the usability of some (given Boreas is completely invulnerable to two elements - TWO). One cannot help but think, since it was affecting Diluc the most in particular, it became a priority. But?that's only speculation. The truth is that they have the ability to fix the game at a short notice. So in their eyes, nothing right now is broken...

I see this point being made that there is nothing quite like Genshin Impact, and I disagree so profoundly so. I can think of one gacha game, sold on consoles, whose only microtransaction is an extra game. I'm talking about Xenoblade Chronicles 2. You get new units through gameplay, you upgrade your units through gameplay, and the expansion pass includes a full, standalone prequel. Leaps and leagues ahead of 140€ for half a chance at a 5* unit. Hell, Leaps nad leagues ahead for a full constelation unit too, since that's enough to pay for a gaming system. But perhaps we're comparing on the open world experience? Well, there's Breath of the Wild - no surprises there - but if you're on PS4, get yourself and a friend Ghosts of Tsushima instead of rolling for a 5*.

it is true though. THere's nothing like Genshin Impact. A game that crosses over gacha monetization with an open world. It feels like a design that would clash with itself... becuase that's exactly what it does. Down to the level design, if you go to the edges of the world, you'll find the blandest vistas ever, and any kind of polish missing. It truly can't compare itself in a positive light. The story is nowhere near finished, and all the way up to Liyue's arc, it certainly isn't enough to wait for more. No, if you're a new player, you might as well wait a year or two so there's enough content to cycle you through what, otherwisely, would be a game of waiting to wait.

Yes. It is finally time.

PD: The elemental reaction system is cool, but limited by being an imitation of Breath of the Wild's chemical engine. But it'll be perfect the day dendro does something else besides burning.