- Anniversary 'gifts' amount to 10 pull on a limited banner. Listen, I don't play gacha games and even I know that's low. From what I know, gacha games at their anniversary would spare no expense in giving their player base pulls to last them power-ups and valuables necessary. Mihoyo eventually relented and gave decent rewards. Look, the player base isn't looking to be treated like royalty, just want their rewards to equal the amount of time they poured into their games. I
- The bizarre Elon Musk Twitter follower post.
- A silhouette guessing game with the winning prize being 1 out of 300 chances among millions of players to get 100 primogems.
- Now the KFC Twitch in which in order to get the wings, you must subscribe to Twitch gamers approved by Genshin, forcing players to buy and subscribe to gamers they don't know, can't play any other games for two weeks, no money but exposure (the worst kind of payment for any content creator), the global community isn't even mostly on Twitch but spread to many other platforms, the rewards including the KFC glider wings are measly and useless.
Look, I have seen the Pokemon fanbase angry at Gamefreak. But even then, at least the general excitement for SWSH, New Pokemon Snap (not developed by GameFreak but Bandai Namco Studios), BDSP (I think people are forgetting ILCA is the one making the game, not GameFreak while The Pokemon Company is the ones making the executive decisions), PMKM Legends Arceus, and PMKM Unite (again, I think people are forgetting Tencent is in charge of this, not GameFreak) was there with the vocal minority being that and we can separate that from the constructive criticism. From what I saw, Gamefreak at least listens to its player base as Nintendo clearly did for the Animal Crossing community.
Time and time again, Mihoyo has been out of touch with their community, making marketing decisions that only flare up tensions in the community and bring dissatisfaction to their long-time players.
The KFC Gliders incident is just another mess.
The Elon Musk post was so bizarre I question what makes them think this would work. Seriously, that would be a red flag for anyone.
Then again the game does have problems that outside of grinding and farming, there isn’t much content to do. Events are only limited time only so newer players won’t be able to play events like Fischl’s quest, the Golden Apple Archipelago, and more. Just boot up the game to collect resin but nowhere else much for gamers to do except catch animals for your Teapot.
I don't know if the intent was for Genshin to have 2-3 hours of gameplay per day. While my previous games have all been JRPGs and role-playing games, I did not have much experience with gacha which I only know the basics about.
Just have something that isn’t grinding and farming. Think of something like a fun continuous side mission we can do like:
How about something like a food challenge that the Persona series got? But this time, it’s Xiangling’s cooking and you have to stomach her weirder foods. Or a food-eating challenge where you can eat at restaurants where you have to eat their biggest meal orders.
Rhythm games like Xinyan and Venti because we already got these events. However, these events have not gone over well and the sound is off. Just don’t make it events but continuous mini-games that can increase something! I have seen single-player music mode in which they play whatever song they have.
The customization of the Teapot can produce great results but at the same time, it can feel hollow because it’s still too open and not enough activity or kinetics. Animals could help with the new Pokémon capture. Maybe, it’s the theme park exposure but kinetics would be helpful to make it feel more alive as in AC, villagers NPCs walk around and dialogue. Just our party in the Teapot walking around in the room rather than standing there and doing their idle animations or sitting down. Add I don’t know unique animations or new dialogue about the party getting to know each other or anything at all snarking like in FE3H. Tales series’ skits! Persona people weekly hangout spots depending on the weather!
Hangouts are fine but when the female characters got the short end of the stick they end up more dating sim rather than having it be an option like in the Persona series. It's one thing if it's a romance simulation but it's another if it's optional.
Events are events therefore it's not there for new players unless they were there for an event. Events are off-limits to new players, letting these guys off the loop and they don't know which important plot point such as Scaramouche being in charge of the Inazuma factory because Inazuma certainly didn't play Scaramouche to his fullest potential at all, and worst, Scaramouche deserted the Fatui when we were told by Childe. Just have these areas open for new players or even have these areas be replayable by old and new players because there isn't much content.
These guys are otakus, right? Even the main theme got that Final Fantasy prelude arpeggio! They even made an insult towards the isekai genre at one point. They knowingly took wholesale things from BOTW.
They could make things more excitable outside of events and grinding. BOTW is so acclaimed because there are just so many things to do even with the story in mind. You could do different things and it’s all applicable as seen by Razbuten’s non-gamer wife trying BOTW.
There isn’t much at all as doing different things in the same obstacle. No plunge outside of Archons and no fixing up kits. I know Childe mains wanted the Hydro melee plunge.
I have seen arguments that it's meant to be played 30 minutes per day unlike the hours poured into a JRPG. Still, just having a casual player base playing that many minutes per day isn't that sustainable when the important events would tell more story and characters than limiting it to the main plot that isn't expanded much. I heard old players wanted the new ones to experience the old events instead of being forced to watch them without being able to play them. When the events are limited instead of being available all the time, it means new players won't experience much of the world.
I doubt new players know Venti kicked off a mountain into the sea to create an island. I mean just knowing that and hearing it from Albedo would be fun.
All I can say about Genshin is that they got plot development at all, unlike Miraculous Ladybug.
Mihoyo is still new to the worldwide thing that Cookie Run and Granblue Fantasy are already used to. It makes me think they should track their veterans and even look at Honkai’s team because their team is pissing off the global community much less due to their horrendous writing that many don’t have much faith in after Inazuma.
The writing - waifu writing for the female characters, telling more than showing, lore on the back burner or worse as flavor text instead of in the main story - has fundamental problems even before the Inazuma arc. The new writers, though they have their triumphs after the Inazuma arc, just made the problems worse.
Still, even with these fundamental problems, another enemy is the draconian censorship laws. The Inazuma archon quest was hit hard complete with the cracks made by the new writers. The redesigns in the CN server say everything - hence the Chinese players are compensated - while internationally it’s a free skin I think. I’m more concerned about the laws impacting the writing than I am about the redesigns no matter how much I do like it. Just because I like the redesigns does not mean I support the censorship laws. Censorship is bad no matter what.
Yes, there’s a problem with the character design where it looks like the female characters are not wearing pants and it doesn’t blend well with their top but would I want censorship to come in and wreck it? Fuck no! Instead of censorship, I’ll rather they do it by choice and allow it as a skin. I really do not care if these female characters are showing skin because it’s their choice anyway and they are humans and it’s a freedom of creativity and speech thoroughly destroyed. If they want to show skin, let them! I never made a fuss about the fanservice. Or even care if women are wearing revealing clothes when it’s their choice. I like the redesigns because at least they look like they’re wearing pants when the tendency to make them look like they aren’t wearing pants. Baal was the biggest offender.
The only things consistent are the animations and music. The writing team, the PR team, and the executives have ups and downs. The dev team has a tendency to not listen to their betas as even the Chinese betas can't get through to them. Everywhere else though, the Chinese players can get through to Mihoyo. See when the Chinese players gave just as much of an outcry about the Zhongli and Geo thing. After the Inazuma archon quest, Chinese players made it known just how stupidly written the story was.
I'm not good with math but I have seen the ratio of the male to female playable characters, even mentally adding the four new characters, there are still more female characters with Pyro being most of all.
The game has a plan for the story within five years. It’s just that not a lot of things in the current state of things are just floating for lack of a better term. I heard the writing recently is doing well so nobody is letting up the terrible writing of past chapters. I mean when people are saying outright that the writing is good now and begging these writers to take part in the main arcs, then yeah.
For what it’s worth, Genshin isn’t entirely bad. While it’s still close to being the pile of wasted potential and terrible storytelling in the likes of Miraculous Ladybug, VLD, and RWBY, Genshin still has things going for it.
At the same time, whether external forces censor the story, the writing still has its failings even though the Inazuma Archon arc made it more obvious with the CCP thrown in for good measure.
At this point, the second anniversary should decide whether or not they learn from the last anniversary where they tried to make money off of their foreign market more than the Chinese base. The Chinese base is where they're far more likely to listen. It's only because of the review-bombing that hurt the publicity that gave them the half-hearted apology in the form of another prize. Some fans seem okay with that but others aren't.
And it seemed the second anniversary was far more welcomed than the mess that was the first anniversary.
I haven't heard about Sumeru and any fan reactions outside of the mashing of cultures and light-skinned which is bad enough on its own. I just don't know enough about the current land visited to know what are the fans saying about the story.
Edit: Apparently, now that we're in Fontaine and that Sumeru is long past now, it seems that Genshin's colorism doesn't matter much in the end. While Asian countries are still under scrutiny for their racism against SE and Eastern countries, at this point Sumeru is on the lighter end of things since I heard it probably doesn't matter now.
Genshin is not perfect or it will ever be.
