Genshin Impact

the song in question

Edited by asterism on May 10th 2024 at 12:36:13 PM

Poor Kaveh. They seem to have switched to putting 4 star characters that tie into banner 5-star (either through story connection or gameplay synergy). While that's an overall better system, because Hoyoverse seems to have forgotten Dendro as soon as version 3 ended (and Kaveh's best role is a bloom driver) I don't think we will see Kaveh again until an Alhaitham or Nilou banner.

i have nine more dendroculus left to find, and then i will be done with oculi until natlan drops

Pity I can't make more of the finders at the moment, since they need the thing that's used for the Wanderer's ascensions

@ asterism

I'm calling it now, the next Dainsleaf quest has the Wham Line at the end that the Tsarisa is invading Natlan.

So if I were to get into the game today, would I immediately be lost under everything that’s been built up?

The Main Story is over all pretty linear when going from zone to zone so nah. You would go through content in order like we all did.

Events may get you a bit lost but they give character cliffnotes to catch you up if its the first time meeting a character and they allow you to teleport to said event so you can do em.

Y'know, the irony is that both Paimon and Itto had the potential to be pretty darn Rock-and-roll if they weren't sticking to a script for a safe, message-free ballad. If Itto got to sing about the plight of the Oni or how much the Tenryou commission suck, (like seriously, their most prominent member can't even get featured in events that directly have to do with her and in which she's explicitly mentioned, how embarrassing), or Paimon got to give her thoughts on all the shit she's seen and experienced throughout the game (poor girl has faced down the literal and metaphorical Abyss with only her trust in us) and it would be the hardest set ever.

Every time I try to get back into this game for the good story, I immediately get drawn into the gacha like a chump. Just blew my last primogems failing to get Arlecchino, and now I'm too annoyed to continue. Again.

I should note I'm only about halfway through Sumeru, so I'm not even hitting a content wall or anything. I'm apparently just really weak to all the daily crap they use to keep you playing.

@Big Bad Shadow 25:

It's gotten to the point that, despite me starting at the beginning when only Mondstadt and half of Liyue were available, I've fallen behind hard since Sumeru was introduced and am now struggling in trying to complete all the new content. Seriously, it wouldn't hurt Hoyoverse much if they took a couple months break to work on their other games and came back to Genshin later, the playerbase has an absolute ton of stuff to farm by this point.

That being said, it's better that you start sooner rather then later, or else the backlog problem is going to be even further magnified and it'll probably take you a literal month to catch up on the main questline.

You ain't alone, buddy.

Edited by SgtRicko on May 13th 2024 at 2:54:40 AM

If you're planning on starting Genshin it's always better to do so sooner rather than later, since events don't get rerun.

Mind you, the current event is in Inazuma so there's not much point trying to rush towards it.

itto makes a new friend

It absolutely would hurt Hoyoverse much to not update the game without a good reason. You haven't heard the fandom's gripes whenever a "dead" patch comes out (like patches 2.5, 3.7, and 4.3, for instance), and those still had some content even if not much. People bitch about there being nothing to do, then quit the game and don't come back.

Genshin's success is built upon reliable, consistent updates happening every six weeks. It keeps people playing and engaging with the world, which makes them roll for new characters.

Edited by PhiSat on May 13th 2024 at 9:23:04 AM

And since they implemented quick start features so new players can participate in events, it isn't too big a deal to put off permanent content until you have time for it (looks over at all my unfinished hangouts). So asking Hoyoverse to stop the content because I need to catch up is a little silly.

As for if this game is newbie friendly in 2024, that depends on what you're playing for. If exploration is fun for you and you're okay with missing some plot threads as long as the main story wraps up then I'd say this game is for you.

But if you're a completionist or get really absorbed into lore then I'd say you're out of luck because there's a lot of tiny pieces here and there that are gone forever.

Edited by Stage7-4 on May 13th 2024 at 10:03:00 AM

Sheesh. All the more evidence it might be time for that uber-completionist group to take a break. Either way, if you're completing content so rapidly that there's nothing left or leveling up characters so fast that you run out of worthwhile things to fight or grind, that's gotta be a huge chunk of time devoted to Genshin.

I mean, I get it, live service games need to stay active since their very nature demands constant updates and change, but it's certainly not a healthy relationship for either party at this point. The devs end up getting overworked and burnt out, and players just eventually burn out from over-saturation.

If nothing else... that dead patch made it a perfect time to get into Honkai: Star Rail, since one of their most story-heavy patches came out during then.

ZZZ is coming out next month too.

Honky Choo Choo does seem to have its large patches coincide with low impact "dead" patches in Genshin. It's likely intentional from Hoyoverse since there is decent crossover between Genshin and Star Rail players. But not every Genshin player is interested in Star Rail or ZZZ, so they can't rely on players migrating over to their other games and not update Genshin regularly unless they want Genshin to die (and they don't, Genshin's their international cash cow).

Genshin is already the most expensive game ever made. Not sure they can put out content even faster.

If you go by their announced cost per year to operate Genshin... each patch costs 26 mil USD to put out on average.

I agree they shouldn't be pushing themselves to release content faster. I'm saying if they released content more slowly for certain audience members to "catch up" people would get frustrated and quit.

Edited by PhiSat on May 13th 2024 at 12:59:47 PM

The question, of course, is if the loss of the ultra-completionists would cost more than what they would save by slowing down. I have no actual data on it, but I would assume the ones chomping at the bit for more content are also the ones paying the most money.

Well, they could afford to slow down if they did event reruns or made some of them permanent like the Windblume one for the lore drop of the Hexenzirkle.

I remember Dragalia Lost did a thing where whenever they reran events (or had yearly events), it would effectively be two (or more) events at once: a new event for up to date players running simultaneously with the older events for newer players.

Given how much plot and character work is put into the events, it would definitely a very good thing to do.

But I think a lot of the reason stuff like that doesn't happen in Genshin is that they always have to accommodate the comparative system memory, space and power the mobile market is going to have - having the ability to replay events means having all those events in the game, either all the time or even just in specific timeframes, which they might be able to fit in for console and PC but not so much for mobile.

Sadly, it's the characters who suffer most: Albedo, Kaveh, and Fischl are all fighting for second place among lost story and lore for new players, behind the #1 undisputed reigning champ Guoba.

Also Xiao is there, but for him it's just insane amounts of Ship Tease.

Back when I played Genshin I put up with a lot of the game's issues (mute protagonist, rambling dialog, artifact RNG, etc) to enjoy the good stuff, but the realization that events never get reruns was the final straw for me. I consider it almost as unacceptable as Destiny 2 deleting whole chunks of its story campaign, and turned me off any game overly reliant on FOMO. Funny thing is in the end, maybe I gave up on the game because I care too much about the characters to be willing to miss out on their stories.

There was also that one Mona event from, like, 1.1 or something that drops a couple of huge lore bombs and also, y'know, introduces Scaramouche as a character.