I think both the players and the devs see no more value in *4 anymore
HI 3 has had no A-rank valk in over a year
"The players see no more value in 4*’s" after the past 3 four stars were very well liked?
4-stars can still be liked, they just have to make decent ones. Or at all. That's what Genshin taught me.
Goddammit, Schezo... || *insert incredibly thirsty copypasta about Dr. Ratio*4*s are very VERY much needed for plebs to keep up with the game's absolutely insane power creep.
Also its something to give away in events, something of which has been extremely lacking in every way. Like this patch has had 2 events... 1 gave characters everyone probably has at E6 and the other was just press 2 buttons for rewards.
Edited by Memers on Mar 27th 2025 at 2:18:28 AM
if both star rail AND HI 3 haven’t released 4*/A-rank units in a while… must be a honkai thing ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
hit me up on MSN messenger! ;D
At this point, the Honkai team is just as flawed as the Genshin team. While Genshin is stingy with rewards and QOL, they have slower powercreep, while Honkai seems more generous with rewards and QOL, but the powercreep is faster. Even then, the Genshin team has been improving lately, maybe because of how Star Rail is threatening to swallow them PR-wise
I definitely don't agree. Genshin's flaws affect the game at a fundamental level. You can't play it and not see the issues.
HSR's are far more abstract and subjective. I'm a dolphin who doesn't play most of the endgame and I'm eating good. I understand why the lack of 4 stars and the power creep is bad but it doesn't actually hurt me. And I'm almost certainly not the only one, frankly my perspective is probably the norm. HSR's developers aren't perfect but they're leagues better than Genshin's.
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji YangGenshin launched with a few very powerful 4*s, two of which are still like top tier even now. They are also still launching 4*, 3 since 5.0 and all are quite useful. Star Rail... is out of control in its power creep and requirements.
They have been adding more rewards over time for doing the content on patch, which is nice.
Edited by Memers on Mar 27th 2025 at 5:52:13 AM
Even if powercreep is a thing, if you saved your resources for some of the "good" 5* then the current pool of 4* should be enough for you to do pretty much everything in the game.
Free to players roughly get 75-100 pulls during each patch without having to 12-star endgame content. That's about 2 tickets a day, give or take, so ~730 tickets a year, which means you're guaranteed to get 4 limited 5* a year at the very least (if you hit pity and lose all your 50/50).
Honestly, if your 2024 5-star were, say, Ruan Mei, Firefly, Robin and Feixiao, chances are you can still clear a vast majority of the current content while filling your teams with Gallagher, March, Harmony TB, Moze, Xueyi and the like. And, again, that's a worst-case scenario when it comes to pulls, chances are you got enough resources to get 1-2 more at least (like Lingsha or Aventurine, which means that you might have with Gallagher two sustains that will carry you through a LOT of things).
If your first 2025 pull was Herta, well, that means Pure Fiction is solved for the foreseeable future.
And, once again: this is not a "get super lucky with the gacha" situation. On the contrary, only getting 4-5 unique 5* in a calendar year is quite unlucky.
Star Rail... is out of control in its power creep and requirements.
You really do think the power creep is much worse than it actually is. The rest of the game is catching up to Firefly now, oh noooooooo
I'm curious about why you seem to think that what's happening here is exceptional, though. By all accounts, HI3 and ZZZ are worse, and this is apparently pretty common in modern gacha games in general
Edited by Hylarn on Mar 27th 2025 at 7:15:05 AM
You really hate the idea that people want to use characters and teams they like, huh.
I mean, that's understandable, but almost entirely unrelated to the subject at hand. For that to happen you need the game to be well-balanced, not just not have power creep. Which is rare. And effectively impossible with Hoyo's approach to balance patches
I think people use power creep more broadly than the idea that only the new best characters with full investment can clear a single mode (which seems to be this thread's definition?). The idea that investing in the majority of characters will hurt your account via opportunity cost, and even those who are "correct" will be just as useless soon just kills the enthusiasm for exploring in gameplay. Even if you don't care for endgame damage-per-screenshot numbers, it's still disheartening to see your investments slide further and further behind.
Does anyone actually read these?I want to add a caveat to my previous post: I too would like to see more 4*, but that's because I like collecting characters as a whole (and 4* are more readily available). I simply don't think powercreep should factor in it.
I am very much a dolphin, who spent some money a year ago to catch up (I started the game six months after release), and who since then has paid for the express pass and most of the battle passes. But I'm also 100% a horizontal investor, with a lot of characters but not any limited 5* above E 0 S 1 (except for two E 1 S 0 due to lucky successive pulls). And the difficulty has remained pretty much steady.
I also want to add that I am not a smart puller: I have pulled on units I liked that aren't exactly "meta-defining" (like Black Swan, or Yunli). But aside from Silver Wolf, I don't think there's a single limited 5* I haven't ever used, ever, in the last 4 months in endgame because powercreep made them irrelevant. And even then - I just prefer to use Acheron with Black Swan and Kafka (which is suboptimal, I know) instead of Silver Wolf and Pela whom I haven't finished building yet, and she would work very well with Ratio too if I used him more.
In the last cycle of MOC/PF/AS, I have used Luocha and Topaz at some points, for example. Luocha helped me clear the last MOC 12 if memory serves. I think it's not too bad for a completely powercrept character.
Okay, there's another I haven't used recently, Blade - but I'm hoping to get Castorice and he'll be on her team. I mean, I won't deny there is some powercreep, but so far the devs have been pretty adept at giving some characters a second wind by releasing new ones who fit very well next to them.
And by comparison, since HSR is the second gacha I invested a lot of time in after Fire Emblem Heroes (in which I spent a LOT more money, which was, in retrospect, extremely stupid on my part), power creep is infinitely more manageable here. You can do endgame stuff in HSR without either selling a kidney or following a meta to the letter - in FEH you had to get yourself a full armor team if you wanted to remain in Tier 1, and when I stopped playing roughly a year and a half after release it already wasn't enough anymore because with your free-to-play armor units you couldn't compete with the premium armor units whales used.
So, basically - it's true F2P players kinda have to choose between "I pull for whomever I like and can't clear all endgame" and "I pull for meta but can't get all units I like"...but the fact that this gacha games allows both options is IMO a positive, as for many there isn't even the option to clear endgame without your credit card number.
Edited by Bexlerfu on Mar 27th 2025 at 4:40:58 PM
x5 Miyabi is pretty OP in ZZZ but its nowhere near the disaster that is Star Rail. About half the release 4*s are still like up there in like T1 or so.
ZZZ will still release 4*s that actually do things and you can get them free during events so things are still accessible unlike Star Rail.
Edited by Memers on Mar 27th 2025 at 9:14:07 AM
If you invested in Pela and/or Tingyun day one, then you can still use them two years later in current content. Not bad for 4* units in a game with completely out-of-control, disastrous powercreep.
Serval or Herta can also help a ton in 2025, and both are gifted 4* units.
Edited by Bexlerfu on Mar 27th 2025 at 5:13:50 PM
If you're talking about HI 3's powercreep, they're actually rather formulaic about it: all S valks tend to have about 2-year shelf life, and some of them get "revived" with newer gacha weapons (like HO Fin Kiana or HOHE Elysia)
They also tend to release "ADV Supply" for certain characters 2 years after the respective char's 1st banner; that supply is for ranking-up said characters (in HSR terms: getting their eidolons faster).
noteworthy stuff from stream
3.2 banners:
- Castorice and triple rerun of Acheron/Jiaoqiu/Fugue
- Anaxa and Dr. Ratio
Free choice between Luocha or Ruan Mei (lasts until 3.4). This is part of an overhaul where old limiteds can be gained through a new currency for anyone who obtains 5* characters after already having max eidolons for them. In addition, Fu Xuan, Seele, and Blade can now be part of the 50/50 loss pool in limited banners. All their light cones will be available in store.
Future content teasers:
- Myraid Celestia trailer featuring various characters like Jing Yuan and Acheron to drop after 3.3
- Kafka, Blade, Silver Wolf, and Jingliu to get buffed in 3.4
- Another free (explicitly stated to be new) 5* character
- Return to Penacony in 3.8

As I understand it, the tally is stored on her, the mark is just a mark. The entirety of her debuffing is done through a single trace, which passively reduces enemy defence, and her first eidolon. She's as much of a debuffer as Topaz