Genshin Soapbox or the disillusionment of week 3

The first event for Genshin Impact is here! While you go off to work on that, it’s week 3 of release, and there’s plenty of things to get used to – or otherwise – over this time. After my review of the game of week 1, I feel like I can weigh in about the current state of the game. There’s quite a bit to not like.

You spend how MUCH time?

It is difficult to enjoy the game. I don’t mean to say I dislike the gameplay loop. You see, miHoYo announced that version updates would be roughly every 6 weeks. I get it: it’s a big game. However, I’m at Adventure Rank 32, and I am putting off doing content I have unlocked or else I would have nothing else new to do.

So, why don’t you play casually?

You… can’t. Strictly speaking, yes, of course you can, but if you wanted to play with friends, co-op is unlocked at Rank 16. That requires a modest amount of time investment. Don’t need co-op, you say? Ascending your character beyond level 20 needs at least AR 15. Quests are locked at certain AR ranks. Even redeeming certain items in the shop requires high enough AR ranks. Want to buy some food recipes? AR rank gated. Then, once you hit the high AR ranks, clearing out the shiny new quests, what else is there to do but do farming? If you don’t like that, then tough luck until they update.

You are effectively being punished for not playing enough, and for playing more, until the next content cycle.

Prayeth to RNG

I made no secret about despising the gacha, maybe in more polite terms. It bears repeating: it. is. Bad. The minimum is a 4-star item within 10 pulls. You’re at 5% base rate for a 4-star character, and 0.6% for any 5-star. 90 pulls is a minimum pity for a 5-star, and 180 pity is a guaranteed for the featured 5-star. You get the featured 4-star character within 20. While I can praise the pity system, it’s hardly feasible.

A free-to-play player will earn enough primogems for a full 10-pull in at least twenty-seven days, almost an entire month if they complete their daily commissions. Daily commissions do not unlock until AR 12. Do you see a problem here, besides the rates? The Abyss Spiral, previously a source of primogems, now only provides a one-time reward. The repeatable ones are locked behind you getting sufficiently geared up, which is unreliable depending on how fast you can grind there. And then what? The pity rate carries over across the banners, I guess…

It’s just that it’s extremely bold of them to introduce an apparently true limited character – Venti – at launch. Say bye bye to the spoony bard if you play any later! Good luck burning all your one-time primogems! Imagine saving up for so long and not getting what you want because gacha is like that and the rates are beyond awful.

That’s not even getting into the random Artifact stat distribution but at least they’re usable, mostly.

Stacking currencies

Genesis Crystals are the paid currency which converts 1:1 into primogems. Primogems can then be used to refresh Original Resin, or split further into Intertwined Fates or Acquaint Fates. Intertwined are for limited/event banners, while Acquaint are for regular.

It could have been that you directly pay for primogems, separated into paid and free ones, and just one kind of universal Fate for all banners. However, I suppose that doesn’t earn enough money. What can I say?

More like Original (Re)Sin

I tried avoiding talking about Resin in the other sections because, oh boy. There is so much to unpack about this system right here. I don’t care about rotating domains, I don’t care that bosses are on a respawn timer. What I care about is the 1 Resin point per 8 minutes and the Resin hard cap limit. Oh, Arknights, my dearly beloved, the 6 minutes of waiting for One (1) whole Sanity never felt so good.

Costs increase with every Resin refresh. You are limited to refreshing Resin 6 times a day. You never get more than 120 Resin. Weekly bosses cost 60 Resin. Regular overworld bosses take 40 Resin. Leylines take 20 Resin. You want to make your characters stronger? Boy, good luck with that, as you run out of Wisdoms and Mora, much less Ascension materials.

Vague suggestions

I’m not a game developer. I’m not about to say, oh my god just put in more content. But if I may, I will offer my humblest of ideas:

• Increase Resin cap with Adventure Rank
  • Kind of a no brainer. You grinded that hard, here, have more Resin to do more things
  • Dare I say it, even a refresh with every Adventure Rank? You do realize it’s pushing 6k and above EXP for higher AR which would take me roughly a week if I only do Commissions?
• Increase Resin refill rate?
• Daily log in rewards
  • Commissions are not log in rewards

• Give out more primogems on Commission completion
• Kinder gacha rates?
  • Mayhaps even free daily rolls?
• More resources provided from the Resin use?
  • I know you’d want me to keep playing but with how restrictive it is, what am I supposed to play
• More frequent open world events?
  • Encourages exploration
  • Make the rewards worth it, make backtracking worth it besides resource runs
• Raise and lower World Level at any time
  • To join friends in their World; just because they play more casually shouldn’t lock them out from socializing with their more hardcore friends in-game…
  • So that I can fight the Geo cube after I realized I didn’t have any other Claymore users besides Noelle and I would just die with my current party members at WL 3 and I can’t raise Noelle any higher than level 40 – not that I have the Mora and Wisdoms anyway – and I can’t get new Claymore users from the gacha
• Another way to improve Character Constellations
  • Not to bring up Arknights again but having tokens would be nice to improve potentials, when rates are so low. AK’s are expensive, but they’re at least an option

Genshin is a good game, but it’s made bad with all the restrictions in place. I’m not even going into co-op with which I had a terrible experience, not because of people stealing my resources but because of the lag. Is it my connection or the server? It is a mystery…

In any case, free to play or “just a gacha game”, I’m sure we can expect better. miHoYo and Genshin have delivered a world many might have not thought possible. Surely we can only go higher from here?

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