4 Star characters in gacha games are naturally meant to be less powerful or efficient as 5 Stars to offset their lower rarity, but most well designed gachas find a way to retain their usefulness in any possible way. Genshin faces a growing issue where many 4 stars (not all, but many) aren’t necessitated in any way, causing many of them to be neglected or not invested in. Today we’re gonna discuss why that’s the case.
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Merry Christmas Eve everyone! ☺️
I think Arknights handled this sort of thing really well. They have a similar system to Genshin in that there's no proper limit break, and four stars are sometimes just naturally weaker than five stars, but they're balanced by being overall cheaper to level and some are very versatile to the point that some content creators clear all the very difficult levels with low rarity units only.
They also have hard counters to some game mechanics, such as an enemy in the newest chapter with very high defense + magic resistance but low HP, which was just trivialized by a unit that could ignore both defensive stats on-skill. However, you didn't need that unit to clear. High rarity makes the game easier but isn't required, where I feel like Genshin is already so easy that you don't even want that safety net except for the sake of actually having a good time or flexing big numbers. There's no real threats in Genshin which I think is simultaneously a blessing and a curse
i love yanfei’s playstyle even tho she’s very not meta i still built her as a dps😪
With the 4 stars at 0:54 you can 36 star abyss with good weapons and artifacts, so why do new 4 stars matter? You play the new 4 stars because you like them, will improve your niche combos, or both. Otherwise, don’t go abyss and dps check events and it doesn’t matter what you use. You can literally use Dori Xinyan Amber Collei and clear content perfectly fine
"4*s are easier to obtain than 5*s"
looks at my c0 faruzan and oh wait i dont even have layla after pulling like 4 5*s … yea hold up let me stop you right there……
Couldn’t Heizou be considered a main dps?
This video made me realize how good Honkai is thanks
Wish spiral abyss was more about mechanics than dps checks. And make levelling cheaper so people are enticed to try out new character/equipment combos.
I obviously see the issue – But I also love putting some love to weaker characters because it's much more rewarding seeing them grow instead of already broken ones.
Genshin is so frickn easy that fun with playstile or character design should be the number 1 priority.
i don’t know, personally i really like the gap between 4 and 5 stars in genshin. yes i feel that we should have stronger units, but why would i pull for say yelan when xingqui could do the exact same numbers if i invested a little more time. and people who spend money would be upset because their “rare” characters are falling under 4 stars. and currently people are able to make insanely built 4 stars who aren’t inherently op. thats just my personal outlook on it as a whale 🤷♂️🤷♂️
I personally don't mind the 4 star units being heavy support for whatever 5 star they have on banner…it makes it possible to get a team from any banner and clear the game, and the occasional 4 star dps makes it easier for low spenders and free to play to actually clear easily
Mona is dope in bloom teams btw 😉
New player here but i think the only reason they aren't giving good 4* characters like the old 4* characters because there are a lot of good characters now but during the beginning of the game there were only few 5 stars so just to make players to easily clear the open world and to do average/ok damage even with little investment they made good charcters i think if they hadn't made those 4* at that time they would be 5* if realised at this moment
I hope you get what i wanted to say and sorry if there's something wrong with grammar as English is not my 1st language
I wish Ningguang were a 5 star
If they introduce a limit break system for 4 star then it would be very interesting to see how a 4 star can dipshit a 5 star character
Like I was going to say even before your last few comments: extrinsic motivation is very much needed in a game like this. In every game, but especially gacha titles, players naturally fall into the "optimise the fun out of it" mindset. And because of that, you can't solely rely on intrinsic motivators (personality, gameplay style, lore, etc.) to entice someone to use a character.
Gimmicks alone aren't enough to compete with heavy hitters in any situation that can be brute-forced. And unfortunately for those gimmicks in Genshin, that every situation. It's not enough for people to have fun playing them, if they're never gonna use them, or are pushed too much from the "turn-your-brain-off" comfort that's been cultivated.
There's needs to be that slight push to strategise, the incentive to try them out semi-regularly so they can get used to mechanics and quirks, at least so that there can be enjoyment in BOTH tactical decisions AND mindless gaming. I genuinely think it would be a shame for all the effort crafting intricate lore and gameplay elements to be wasted because miHoYo doesn't advertise these characters in-game.
As far as for stars go, we’re gonna get a dedicated support for every element at this point, we have geo, anemo, cryo, and electro and pyro are kinda dependent on having their respective c6, I think hyper specific bosses that require damage from super specific sources isn’t a good idea but maybe banning a certain weapon type or element for some kind of endgame esc activity would work, I think this game needs a endless wave mode, maybe it’s just me but Infinitely scaling difficulty sounds like the perfect way to test my new shiny character in there new team that I created cause the element of my old carry is banned
We already have the answer to those problems. The seasonal events. People tend to undervalue how important these limited events are. Both gameplay, character variety and lore.
Hot take
Shenhe should have been a 4star, she is just a mono cryo supp on the same line as Sara, Gorou and Faruzan
I just hope Mika and Kaveh are strong and not disappointing
They don't IMPACT much ! ba dum tsh
the simplistic nature of genshin may be because they are still trying to make it accessible for mobile users
while alot of people probably play on pc or controller, and that gives alot of room for more complicated and precise controls, mobile gaming tends to need to be simple, or at the very least in genshin kept with a low bar of entry which seems to be their style for the game
bows are already infamous for mobile users and anything more might disuade them or not fit for a mobile game. if genshin was primarily a pc or controller game, it may have been more ckmplicacted battle wise
Honestly, I'm glad there's only a handful of useful 4*'s; there isn't enough resin to build all of the others! For a game that pushes wishes so hard, you'd think they'd give you enough resin to actually build the stuff you get from those wishes. My account is only 146 days old, and I've already been reduced to mmo style farming, that I only get to do for like an hour because of resin cap. I'd love to theory craft with the other 4*'s, I'm sure I can find team comps that work well, but I'm so resource starved that it's not feasible.
I don't have cadence. Adding a content that requires an specific character that is only obtained by lucky is just plain dumb.
Also that were very whale takes in this video. Not everyone has lv90 characters that one-shot any in the abyss.
Heizou quietly sips his tea in the corner with his angry little god destroying fists.
They also did a stupid mistake with the food system. Most players at high AR don't even need food anymore other than literally a couple core recipes, basic revive, and high %hp/heal. Everything else is pointless to cook because either you don't need them once your teams reach a certain strength (enemies die way too fast cause your DPS check is off the charts), or they are clones of previous recipes, or you can't use in Abyss. Waste of a good potential system, they could have recipes do so many unique useful things for players even outside of Abyss.
Let say… I love anemo but i really have to say that.. even when i love Sayu's character, story etc… in battle she is kinda useless, bc i dont find any use for her. i have other healers who work fine…
And yeah, i have xingqiu c4? but he is someone who i dont play and upgrade bc oceanid, i have other hydros like kokomi, ayato, barbara, etc whos are so much better for me.
Yeah.. im not whale, i dont use money in genshin so its nice to see how everyone works, and its kinda nice that we have dif characters who works same way. and i love kokomiand in some cases she is so much better, bc she is – barbara (healer) + mona (off-field-hydro) –
another biggest pain for me while building a dps 4 star character is the ascension stat. the 19.2% crit rate or 38.4% crit damage that 5 star characters get makes a hell of a difference while farming for artifacts as you don’t need god tier artifacts to have a decent crit ratio. on the other hand it is extremely difficult to compensate for that ascension crit stats with extremely good sub stat rolls for 4 stars
Genshin, while being an easy game, it's also the reason why it is very f2p friendly.
With your suggestion on the last part of the video, can turn this game to be f2p unfriendly because needing some must-have characters also means must-pull.
But you can't get every character you need by being f2p, therefore this kind of idea will only tell people to use their real money or else suffer.
"We have never had a 5 star character for free since release"
The traveler: Ami I a joke to you?
The 4 star characters offer variation in play style and team building. Furthermore you don't have to build a character with the recommended artifact set. I used thunder fury Bennett until dendro made overload less appealing. I currently have blizzard Xingqiu and Layla, Petra Ningguang with prototype amber, thunder fury razor with the rain slasher, and I've used Sayu in abyss as a swirl DPS barricading through enemies and self healing. Is this meta? No. But it's so much fun. Currently working on a DPS Gorou paired with Yun Jin. Your argument seems to be concerned with Meta. And meta slaves are as morally bankrupt as Sam Bankman Fried. LOL I do agree that being able to make 4 stars comparable to 5 stard with proper investment and sacrifice should be a thing. Love your topics.
I think you kinda forgot that not everyone can afford getting every 5* they want and raise every character they want
7:41 Heizou 💀
Are 4 stars really lower rarity when it's theoretically possible to c6 a 5 star and not get a single 4 star you want? 🤔 I did 50 wishes on wanderer banner got wanderer but not a single faruzan
Pp
On the topic of getting people to invest in 4 stars: I can't remember which event it was, but there was one where you made a new team for each round but the units in previous rounds couldn't be picked again. I feel like that could be used cleverly in some end-game dungeon that would encourage people to build their roster of 4 stars.
I'd imagine it would work a bit like arena assault in FEH + spiral abyss. 1 team per 1/2/3 waves of mobs and it gets progressively harder as you go down the levels. Each level you clear gives primos. Newer players probably wouldn't be able to get too far but as your roster expands, and as you finish building more and more units you'll be able to progress further and go deeper into the abyss.
I agree with people in the comments saying that bosses that get too specific can be really annoying (fellow wolflord hater here. The only geo chara I've built is zl ;-;). But this event was the first that really had me think and use some 4 stars I hadn't used in a while. Heck, it even made me pick some 5 stars who were collecting dust on the shelf.
13:25 tru
that chongun-shenhe comparison….are you making this video while drunk because too much eggnog???
I most definitely agree with this. Literally I’m getting so bored in genshin that I’m just levelling and building my 4 stars just to get a different experience
Some of the recent events actually try to address this issue by forcing you to select specific characters and allowing you to rent them.
Character-specific challenges where you HAVE to use a specific character, similar to the Trials but unlockable once the character reaches 90 and actually designed to be tricky, would be cool. Would take a lot of effort, though. Maybe not so much since you wouldn't need a story for it.
Also Dendro's release and Nilou did pop some characters into relevance, with Collei and Barbara as mentioned in the video.
Of course Collei got powercrept by Nahida, but a 100% no BS free unit being powercrept by the ARCHON of the element isn't exactly a bad thing, and they still work well together.
Honestly it's probably going to peter off once they add a dendro healer, but so long as Bloom and Hyperbloom are viable, two of the best units to have around are 4 stars that were overlooked before.
no matter how weak the 4 stars get you’ll still have people maining them as dps (literally just so they can tell people they main them)
Afraid your idea about locked boss mechanics to specific 4-stars isn't very good. If you've been playing since the beginning, you have a pretty big roster. But the older the game gets, the more watered down the standard banner is, and the less likely you are to get any given 4-star unless you wait for their banner, just like with 5-stars.
I don't know if or how they'll ever solve this, but the problem gets increasingly worse as more characters join the roster. Maybe they need a banner split for standard and run both, but that also seems clunky and unsustainable.
Rather than making bosses have specific mechanics, Genshin apply this to endgame content in a slightly different manner. Create a tower style game mode with lets say 15 stages.
For each stage you can bring a team of 4. However, every time you use a character for a stage, they cannot be used again. This would make the game more strategic as people will have to plan ahead for what they might face in later stages.
This would also make players use their underutilized 4 stars since they need more main dps, sub dps and supports. All the 4 star on field carries will start being used more.
Characters like Candace and Chongyun will gain so much value for just being able to bring their element to the main dps. For example, if you want to run Xaingling, but have no other hydro/cryo units left for melt/vap, you could use Candace or Chongyun to infuse Xiangling's fast attacking autos with their element for reactions.
Other lesser used supports like low constellation Sara for attack buff, collei for some dendro application, qiqi for healing, sayu for vv, etc will all of a sudden be used so much more.
This game mode also makes endless artifact farming and weapon banners very valuable since you now need artifacts and weapons for 15 teams since they cannot be switched between units once they are used.
vars: the last 4* main dps we got was yanfei.
heizou: am i a joke to you.jpg
There's a thing called F2P and P2P not everyone can afford to pull every 5 stars that comes out.
While I think that having more reasons to build up the various units and have time be viable for specific boss encounters or other such situations would be great for the game. Personally I think I’d just not participate in those unless the characters I like are viable. (Eula works is practically everything as phys damage is almost never completely blocked)
And I guess that’s why Genshin is the way that it is.
I have 1 question, Why is Xiangling better then Keaya? There burst are litterally the samr, its just that its cryo instead of pyro.btw i still use keaya and im AR51 lol
♥️
In relations to you suggesting raids. I remember during yelan patch when we had that event they had a puzzle solving enemy rush dungeon that rotated out random characters and I wanted that to be a permanent feature. It felt nice knowing I needed to actually make sure I farm up for not just 8 characters for a change.
I like variety in my teams. I have my 5* only reactionless Xiao team. My budget variant with Bennett/Thoma/Sucrose on support. Yoimiya with Zhongli/Yun Jin/Xingqiu/Yelan/Bennett (pick any 3). Diona/Venti/Ayato/Ayaka freeze and Chongyun/Kazuha/Xingqiu/Kaeya freeze. Diona/Xiangling/Kaeya/Klee melt (or swap in Diluc for Klee). Ayato hyper-freeze at top speed with Jean (c2)/Chongyun/Yun Jin, or replace Chongyun with Bennett for a slower but harder hitting Ayato. A leyline monolith-specialized team of Miko/Fischl/Albedo/Ayato. I've been running an Ayato team in the overworld since 3.0 with Shinobu/Kazuha/Collei for hyperbloom. Then there's Childe International and the Itto hypercarry team, though I will continue to insist that Gorou/Albedo/Itto form that core and the fourth is a FLEX slot, because Gorou's heaing/shields are already sufficient to stop you from needing to dodge so you may as well bring another element in rather than use Zhongli yet again. Bringing Shinobu along with the boys is so satisfying.
And no, I don't have any amazing builds because I split my attention between all my characters. I sacrificed the prospect of wishing for any limited 5* weapons so I could have more characters to work with. I triple crowned Kaeya and nobody else (though basically everybody I use has at least one crowned or level 9 talent). And since I've split my attention so much, after 2 years as a daily player, I still struggle slightly with Spiral Abyss. But that's okay because I'm having fun with the variety. I guess I'm not a typical player.