Recently, there has been an uproar in the Genshin Impact community that was caused by the release of an interview with the developers. The article, which was published by Gamespot, addresses fans’ many questions regarding the game’s current and future content. Many players have shared their opinions on various platforms like Twitter and Reddit; with some agreeing with the views of the developers, while the majority see it as a downgrade for the game. Well-known Genshin content creators like Zy0x, bwaap, and Mtashed have also voiced their frustrations over this matter on their respective platforms.
Here’s what we we think of the matters mentioned in the interview:
Endgame Content
One of the first questions asked was about Hoyoverse’s plans on expanding endgame content in Genshin Impact. The company’s response was as follows: ‘If we design another type of permanent endgame that is similar to the Spiral Abyss, it might end up creating excessive anxiety for our players -not everyone is interested in Musk Reef’.
Here’s our take:
Dionne’s POV
When I first read the article, the reasoning the developers gave for endgame content not being a part of Genshin Impact truly did break my heart. I’m sure that the Sprial Abyss doesn’t create as much anxiety for players as they assume, simply because players have a choice to do it or not, without being forced to by the game itself.
In addition, having no other endgame content options limits players of higher spending tiers from showcasing their maximum damage potential. Although I’m not part of that category of players, I feel that if a person can get a character to C6, they should have a place to showcase it. The current Spiral Abyss is not challenging enough for this purpose, because many well-invested units, including 4-stars, can clear the floors easily.
As a suggestion, maybe Hoyoverse can consider making extra floors for people who want to challenge themselves. The rewards do not have to be extraordinary as it could be just character leveling materials or even artifacts. The goal is just to provide a space for high spenders to feel that their C6 investment was worth it, as well as providing players who want to challenge themselves with a source of motivation to improve their characters’ builds.
Nasser’s POV
While it seems like they are trying to avoid creating anxiety towards the game, I find it very hard to believe that there is anyone that likes or hates Musk Reef at all. We have seen so many time-limited events that last a week or 9 days out of nowhere. I would argue that those create more anxiety as the person will now be understandably anxious about missing out on the free resources given during those events.
I think the problem comes from the lack of ideas for permanent content and diversity in rewards because it does not seem like the game developers are interested in giving out more Primogems consistently.
With the game the way it is right now, it is very hard for me to just throw ideas on how to improve it — they should either make the Abyss a weekly activity and add it to the weeklies of the battlepass, or simply add a 13th and 14th floor to the current Spiral Abyss.
Aliff’s POV
I agree with the sentiments of Hoyoverse in saying that it will create excessive anxiety for players if they create permanent content which is very similar to Spiral Abyss. Spiral Abyss has always been the endgame content to show off your team composition and challenge yourself into beating it with the fastest time.
However, I do feel that at this current point it is kind of stale. A way the developers could improve on Spiral Abyss is to maybe introduce a 13th or 14th floor with level 110 or 120 mobs, and see how far the players can get with it. At the same time, having an in-game leaderboard will make the game even more engaging, as everyone can see where they are placed against other players. Since there is no form of PvP in the game, this can incentivise players to try their best, as not only can they beat the score, but they can also be encouraged to stay on top of their game in order to defend their placement against other players.
As an open-world game, there are many directions that Hoyoverse can take to make new permanent content for Genshin Impact. For example, the Genius Invokation TCG is an interesting addition to the game and it would have been even more popular with players if it had been given rewards similar to those in the Spiral Abyss. At the end of the day, as long as the content is engaging, players will enjoy it no matter what. Personally, I think it would be interesting if the game implemented a guild system or new PvP system.
Powercreeping of Playable Characters
Another important question that was brought up was related to the playable characters in the game, where old releases are getting overpowered by newer ones. In response to this, Hoyoverse acknowledged the problem, but insisted that Genshin Impact is about gameplay, and not how strong the characters are.
Here’s what we think:
Dionne’s POV
I agree with the developer’s views on powercreeping to a certain extent. Since there is not much challenging in-game content at the moment, powercreeping doesn’t pose much of a problem to players. Many well-invested 4-star units can get you through the majority of the game’s content with ease.
Of course, there is no denying a player’s frustration over a new character overpowering their mains. But if you really like a character, you can always find ways to utilise them in every scenario possible, even if they are not ideal. Most importantly, you as a player should enjoy playing the character; damage should come last.
Nasser’s POV
I 100% agree with this sentiment. As long as you have Zhongli, Raiden Shogun, Kazuha, Bennett, Xingqiu, Xiangling, Eula, Xiao, Ayato, Ayaka, Nahida, Diluc, Tighnari, and Ganyu, then powercreeping should absolutely not be an issue.
The best part of the game is that you can pick whatever character you want and use it as a main. And with some team-tweaking, most characters can get you through all of the content in the game with minimal issues. I don’t think players should be worried about the power of a character as long as the character is well within the rules of the gameplay.
Aliff’s POV
As a day 1 player of Genshin Impact, the fact that I can use some of the OG characters to clear new content makes it certain that powercreep is not a prevalent issue. As long as you can create a team composition that works well, the game will be easy. You can even create a mono-colour team and it will still work.
Sure, some characters’ constellations make them better to use than some, but at the end of it it’s not all down to the characters. Rather, it’s up to the player’s game sense and how lucky they are when they are upgrading their artifacts. Hopefully this status quo can be maintained as players can easily skip character banners if they don’t like the character’s design or kit. In other words, pick waifu over meta!
The Player-Base
In response to a question about elemental reactions, Hoyoverse mentioned that they currently have no plans to bring new reactions to the table, adding that ‘with easy and open rules, given some time, players will come to discover their own ways of developing builds’.
What do we think of this?
Dionne’s POV
As a player who is interested in completing builds for characters, I’m incline to agree that no new elemental reactions are needed for players to experiment with. One of the reasons being each character has different internal cooldowns (ICD), that will lead to them being able to proc or enable certain reactions depending on who they’re paired with. This already opens many doors for players themselves to come up with creative builds like Cryo Zhongli, Burgeon Thoma and Pyro Eula.
However, do most people in the Genshin community care about discovering unique builds for characters on their own? The answer is probably not. From my experience, many of the people I know rarely invest time in-game to learn about how to use the characters, let alone testing out new builds for characters for fun. This is simply because of the following reasons (not limited to these only):
- They have no time;
- They watch content creators, and are willing to wait for their opinion on a specific character;
- They are meta followers, where they only care about the highest possible damage output;
- They are just playing the game for the lore/pulling for new characters;
- They don’t care about the combat mechanics at all.
Hence from my perspective, while the elements are there for players to experiment with, the majority will not take advantage of it.
Nasser’s POV
This has been demonstrably true, I have used Xinyan as my main DPS character for a period of 3 months when she came out and I did not feel like I missed out that much on elemental reactions. The game’s flexibility seems to be in a good spot, allowing players to interact with the game in whatever way they want.
Other than the underwhelming Geo reactions, most reactions are implemented really well into the game and with the recent addition of Dendro, it seems like there is already enough diversity in terms of reactions. So, it does not seem to me like elemental reactions are the fun factor that the game is missing.
A more interesting suggestion would be the addition of a new weapon class.
Aliff’s POV
The reality is that a lot of players follow new meta builds when they see them on the internet. For example, there are currently many players playing team compositions that utilise Kokomi, but when she first came out, no one was using her. Similarly, while many players are hyped for the new Dendro element and how current characters can react to it, these meta builds will eventually become outdated down the line as more new characters are released.
Since Hoyoverse actually took their time when introducing the new Dendro element with all its various reactions, I believe they will revisit Geo reactions in the future. Depending on how the development of the game goes, this might change in the future, so here’s hoping that it will be different down the line.
In-Game Currency
When asked if there will be an increase in the in-game resin cap, the developers went full circle with their response. They acknowledge that character materials are indeed gatekept by resin; however, they also said that players can try different options to obtain said items.
Here is what’s on our mind:
Dionne’s POV
First of all, I feel like the developers should give us more resin alternatives because of the increasing number of domains and bosses that are coming with each update. As of the 3.1 Genshin update, there are a total of 19 domains, 20 world bosses and 6 weekly bosses, with the cost of claiming rewards from them being 20 resin, 40 resin, and 60 resin (30 resin for the first 3 times) respectively. If a player were to do each domain once, it would take around 1,450 resin in total. Even if the average player spends their full amount of resin (160) everyday, it is still not enough to challenge each of the domains once in a span of a week. This is not including players that want to do a specific domain multiple times, which of course uses more resin.
Although many might say that the game gives out fragile resin from time to time, the amount is really insufficient in my opinion as they are only given out for free in the battle pass (5 fragile resin) and during special login events (usually during anniversary period only). Of course, you could argue that you could refill your resin daily with Primogems. However, this method is also not worth it as the Primogems that are provided through in-game methods are barely enough for one to obtain a new character/weapon.
With all that said, I personally feel that not increasing the resin cap is totally fine if Hoyoverse reduces the amount of resin needed to claim rewards, as well as introducing more ways for players to obtain materials without needing to spend resin.
Nasser’s POV
The way games like Genshin Impact are designed is simple. They want you to login at least twice a day, which is why your resin takes less than 24 hours to fully replenish. So, it seems very unlikely that they would increase the cap because it would heavily impact (funny) the game negatively from a modular standpoint.
However, I do think that some changes can be made to accommodate the growing number of domains and bosses in a way that slightly impacts (funny again) the overall game. The first change would be introducing a separate currency for weekly bosses or making them cost 0 resin, as this would really make players more flexible with their daily resin expenditure and make it easier for them to keep farming domains and bosses for materials and artifacts. Another suggestion is increasing the cap of condensed resin and reducing the resin costs by half for the leylines, weekly bosses, domains and world bosses, to allow more flexibility without breaking the game’s internal clock.
Aliff’s POV
Increasing the resin cap at the moment feels like an easy answer to this question, but that’s not how reality works. The game limits your game time and the player needs to min-max it to make sure they get all the materials they can get.
However, there are many ways around this that the developer can implement in-game. They can increase the ways players can get fragile resins from in-game events or content. With this method, Hoyoverse wouldn’t need to increase the resin cap, and it allows players to have more ways to farm for materials. On the other hand, increasing player rewards instead of having players farm them also kinda defeats the purpose of playing the game, so it is a difficult balance for the developers to strike.
Replayability of Limited Time Story Quests/Events
Gamespot also questioned Hoyoverse on the replayability of previous event story quests, as many players who have missed such events might not have an all-rounded experience with the game. Hoyoverse responded with, ‘limited-time events shall never become barriers to understanding and playing Archon Quests’, and also mentioned that they are exploring solutions to the matter.
What’s our take?
Dionne’s POV
While I think the developer’s statement makes sense, I still have an argument against it. I feel that it is ok to bring back limited-time events for people who did not have the chance to experience it previously. This is because some event stories may be related to the main storyline or the characters themselves. Besides, some events involve limited-time obtainable weapons, like the Luxurious Sea-Lord and Dodoco Tales, which many players would like to collect.
Even if the events are not replayable, I feel like the least that the game could do is have a cut-scene archive, where players can replay notable scenes from the Archon Quests, event stories and character stories. It is understandable that it might result in more game data, however, I feel like that is one of the basic features that the game should have.
Nasser’s POV
You just had to be there.
Aliff’s POV
At the moment, I feel that limited time events will only have replay value once we enter the 4th year of Genshin. There are many other games that do such things, such as Granblue Fantasy and Princess Connect! Re:Dive. Limited-time events are a special occasion and making them replayable after a short period of time doesn’t make sense, as it will diminish the feelings the players had when they first experienced the event.
I’m also okay with certain limited time events tying into the archon story quest. This will heighten the situation around the event story and make players play it earnestly. But it doesn’t have to happen all the time, so players can take their time to play the game as they see fit.
Travelers
Lastly, the interview also brought up outfits and accessories for the two main characters (MCs), to which the developers revealed that they are keen on listening to more ideas, but do not have any solid plans for the time being.
Here is what’s on our mind:
Dionne’s POV
Personally, I feel that Hoyoverse has not shown enough love to the Traveler (in-game wise). Sure, they do have merch and visuals that include the two Travelers, but I feel like they could do much more for the playable character in the game. Many players have suggested wonderful ideas through platforms like Reddit, Discord and Twitter, which include having alternative outfits and accessories or even making switching between elements easier and more convenient instead of having to interact with the Statue of The Seven every time.
Nasser’s POV
While these things are not dealbreakers, I think a really cool idea would be adding at least 1 costume that is local to the nations that the Travelers go to. Being able to assimilate into the story and showing individuality by representing your favorite regions with simple outfits seems like a good idea to me. I just want to wear a Sumeru outfit while eating shawarmas and pita pockets. However, these costumes must not be purchased but rather given to the players in order to promote inclusivity.
Aliff’s POV
Let’s be real, I would pay good money to have a new outfit for Aether or Lumine. In fact, I would even pay for more outfits to be introduced in the game in general. While there are already a few in-game outfits that players can obtain, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t mind if Hoyoverse gave out more outfits for each character. It’s a monetary trap that many players will be stuck in, but at least I get to see my Raiden Shogun in a new shiny outfit!
There you have it – our thoughts on the recent Genshin Impact interview. What is your take on the current situation of the game? Let us know in the comments!
