Genshin Impact has stayed the same ever since it came out three years ago. Character levels are still at 90, Talent levels are still capped at 10, Weapons are still the same, Artifacts are stil the same, skills and whatnot remain functionally the same. I wanted to talk about how that’s a huge reason why the game feels like it’s going nowhere even though there’s still plenty of content being uploaded.
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#GenshinImpact #Progression #Genshin
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For me the progression is lvling your new character and getting their arrifact and weapon lvl up, creating new teams with them.
Bru imagine if they add lvl 100 characters,level 100 weapons, and 13+ level talents and still don’t increase the resin cap
The lack of progression combined with content bloat is the reason why i hate playing. It feels like im not working towards anything since world exploration became boring to me long ago i only farm artifacts until i hit the cap and then attempt to fight artifact gacha
To use your example, there's 300 burgers, but only 60 of them have toppings and only 20 are actually tasty
I think you forgot a key point: not all progession is vertical. Number doesn't have to go up to make the game more interesting. I'm personally a fan of horizontal progression – introducing more ways to achieve your results – and I think Genshin is succeeding.
Some may discount character collection as progression, but I disagree – at least in Genshin's case – because they do their best to avoid powercreep and make new characters different, rather than just stronger, like most gacha.
Even outside of that, Genshin keeps adding interesting new zones – something every other gacha struggles with, if they even try – and their inclusion of great swimming mechanics makes me excited for future traversal options.
If you are studying game design, then you need to familiarize yourself with "dark patterns," because most of what you ask for in this video are additions to those toxic behaviors, and they will ultimately do more harm than good.
Amen Vars. Exactly.
Peeps are already complaining that leveling a character from 1 to 90 takes too much time. If they add more levels or special requirements (ex. max friendship lvl, max 90, max talent, etc.) to unlock a character's third passive then there's gonna be an uproar especially if the said special requirement needs to be acquired like, say a new crown, if the content is too difficult then the casuals will complain, if its too easy then whats the point of this special required item? Besides higher numbers?
What peeps want is an outlet where they can use their fully built characters besides Spiral Abyss. However, the problem with this is if it has any meaningful award. If the rewards sucks then very few peeps will play the new mode. Sure they can go all out but eventually what's the point if there are no good rewards? If the rewards are good but it's much difficult then the casuals will be left behind.
You are right on so many things but on a couple you are wrong…thanks god we don't have to upgrade old characters!! Levelling them yeah doable in a reasonable amount of time, weapon and talents? Again reasonable unless you want to triple crown…but artifact? You can easily spend months and months on one domain for a character, and unless it's golden dream or severed fate where you can be more efficient (dendro and golden are both good, half of the characters love emblem) I honestly have a lot of characters levelled but that I cannot use because I lack artifact….I was farming for neuvillette…in a week I didn't find any artifact, and I don't mean good artifact I didn't find a single hp piece….I don't want to imagine how long it will take to have good ones!!! If after 2 or 3 months I have decent or good artifact it's enough , each month you can have a new unit if I have to fight rng again and again….no please…plus the story was good, now is boring…hours in an underground fortress to discover that a beverage was doing shady stuff to sell a drink…and 20 second of video for the prophecy and the sea that is going to end Fontaine…the quest was long, boring and honestly painful to end…and for nothing..it seems they don't care about it anymore, they just fill the world with bullshit , the combat is boring in the overworld, the exploration is more a chore ….and it could be an amazing game…
0:25 to me genshin is like black desert theres almost infinite potential but a very limited vision and end product
I don't think they'll ever do something like this. Look at how much traction they've gained from Fontaine who's strongest point is underwater features and new story. All they added for gameplay was the Pneumousia mechanic that is unnecessary 99% of the time and a core part of only Furina's kit (so far). Hate to say it, but I don't think we'll ever get more actual features in the game.
Would be nice to give Traveler a powerup. Make him even more useful, after all he's supposedly the MC and kind of even more powerful than most of the pre-existing characters in the game. That will prolly happen around maybe 5 years, after all the region has been introduced.
And it wont change really coz their formula still works. Many people still wanna spend and simp over their pixels. As long as people are spending, the company have no reason to innovate and add something that is really new to the game. In the business perspective, why touch your business structure when its working and making you millions of dollars? < And sadly thats where genshin is at the moment.
It will only change when the player base starts to decay or if something revolutionary pops out of nowhere and becomes its REAL competitor. *There's Wuthering Waves but I dont think it can be considered as a Genshin killer or even a competitor on the same footing*.
Many people should try Artifact Optimizer, at least it's easier to manage resources there, to build every characters in one sit
And yeah they should add more progress at least after this version history
this game has alr turned into a visual novel. There's barely any content in which you even use need to use your character's ability to complete, so i doubt they will add any progression that is related to combat.
I disagree. Dendo is a thing. Thay have also made it so you can build some characters using diffrent stats and all that.
I like the idea of an item that can be used on any character to unlock another talent / skill / ability. But it would mean expanding the kit of every character… they probably won't do it while releasing new characters. Aside from that, I want higher world levels with better rewards and stronger enemies. Lastly, another form of spiral abyss but with a higher difficulty and bigger arenas with different combat environments. A co op mode where you can earn primos would be great too
I feel like the gaming paradox is wrong in principle. Why do we feel like ending the game implies ending the fun? Is "gaming" only the act of playing the game? Do we want the gamer to have fun just for the sake of having fun?
I feel like gaming, as an artform, should first and foremost leave a lasting memory. Having fun during the game while trying to get to the ending, however far it may be, is not the end goal, but a mean to leave lasting memories.
Prolonging the gameplay, and by proxy the fun, only gives more opportunities to create memories, but by not giving a proper closure, like in live service games, the game doesn't consolidate those memories. What I'm trying to say is that NO, we have not come closer to solving the paradox by prolonging gameplay with live services and by putting more focus to the mid-objectives, instead we just diluted the games to a point that even the players don't know anymore why they are playing the game and they just consume the media without thinking.
Which games will we talk more about in the future and which ones will we study more in game design? Games like Dark Souls, Undertale and FFXV or Fortnite, Diablo IV and Valorant? I'm not saying that live services don't leave lasting memories, but in those games, are the games that achieve that by forcing the player to play more or the communities that are willing to keep the game alive even after they stop caring about progression?
There is no paradox, it's just that we are greedy and we cant have enough of that feeling we feel when we finish the game and we recall everything we did to arrive to that moment.
Just two cents from a broke man.
the biggest lore drops are usually from dainsleif who appears once every blue moon or istaroth, who a lot of the player base wouldn't recognise when she shows up, because listening to the story can be tedious and mundane. fontaine really shook things up with a central focus on the characters since they're all new and fresh. however, powercreep is inevitable; furina will be an absolute beast of a unit, and put most supports to shame.
sumeru mostly lacked in this department and inspired a lot of players to move on because it was confusing, long and anything relevant to the lore was locked behind abysmal quests that took time and effort. dendro was a nice addition tho, and brought some new interesting team comps, and even then powercreeped melt and vaporise.
I don't mind if they won't add another MORE DAMAGE progression. What I want as progression could be tied to the world itself, the stamina upgrade when collecting anemoculus and geoculus was a good start. Imagine if collecting electroculus you get to upgrade waverider and turn it in to a giant ship to set sail on open waters and they can just link all the open world sea ports together, collecting dendroculus will get you a mount that gets stronger and faster, and collecting hydroculus gets you an exosuit/grapplinggun/hoverboard or whatever that can be upgraded. Point is they don't have to make progression tied to RPG points for more damage. I want progression that have novelty in it and I don't find more stats as enjoyable as much. Same reason why people who played Diablo 4 left because progression for the sake of progression just to get more damage and fighting the same enemy scaled higher have barely any difference when fighting with low damage against enemies scaled normally, these types of games doesn't value a player's time that much and I'm happy Genshin isn't going towards that direction, but that doesn't mean progression shouldn't exist in some other form.
Imagine if you collected all oculus of an element you can freely switch between them as a reward on the fly, I don't mind if they disable this feature in the abyss but the open world it's not that bad. Imagine if doing world quest you get a reward that could help you explore, a pet that can pick up loot or meet a master to teach you how to wall run. These are the types of progression I personally want to see in game.
For a game that focus on story they should make side quests with cut scenes like Subutai made.
First of all visual novels are games
Second Power creap is bad no matter what
Third its a gacha and the type of progression is more ways to do the same thing
Forth thinking casual and hardcore players is stupid is not truly possibly u cant keep our cake and eat it too minecraft is an exception not the rule
And last but not least saying minecraft have more progression u forget that for the longest time minecraft had alot updates yet the community still was alive and well just because players left is not a bad thing the point of a gacha in my opinion is variety not difficulty more ways to do the same thing not every play like the challenge and saying artificially creating a need is stupid as the idea of needing to go somewhere for a specific location is part of the fun not every game has to be a challenge
It is not just a
Action RPG
Gacha
Open world
It is all 3 u cant cherry pick posative of othe games and say its a good idea u need to find ways to have a better solution not just because most games do it does not mean its a good thing how can have studied game design and not understand what kind of players is it for in the first place just because the game is on a decline dose not mean its bad and do you even have statistics to prove their is a decline of players of u just asume just because people stop talking about it u even have shown u did not follow the story that the goal was not longer to find the other sibling but to find out what happened in the history fo tayvat and why the other siblings is doing what they do
Great Vid
Bruh I have so many unbuilt characters I’ve pulled. My Venti is still level 1, and I’ve had him since his very first rerun…
I feel like a solution to make the traveler better would be that you could only use an element once you start of finish the archon quest on the current of past region and with the element they give an additional stat and maybe multiplier buff to help keep traveler relevant. I know there are quite a few flaws in this design but I think making it so the traveler getting stronger each regions quest being start/completed gives a reason for players to play the story and it help traveler be a more used element making it so people play and care about them more.
True
we have already seen characters use other elements besides the main 7, we have seen hints of characters being able to reach talent level 15, enemies level 100 and above, various gameplay related events where they are testing new mechanics….. for now they are mostly trying to optimize artifact farming by focusing on stuff like elemental mastery and hp change (sumeru and fontaine). since they cant outright change the whole system they are giving us more dual scaling characters and expanding strongbox. they are fixing problems and constantly implementing quality of life changes, like the new commissions system. they also changed the party setup, a nice touch to the game and its characters. and since both of those changes came from star rail, im assuming they will increase the resin cap and add resin reserve soon too. my only complaint is lack of stuff like spiral abyss, we need more places to take out maxed characters, and possibly motivate to build more teams.
Nope, powercreep is NOT a necessarry evil.
I feel like they should add a version of stimulated universe to Genshin. Like have no time limit but have conditions that make you have to think of strategises, not just adding enemies with higher atk or hp that you can brute force your way through. You could also obtain buffs to help along the way. Or maybe add a new feature to existing characters where you can unlock their full potential by feeding them an ultra-rare item which would give them more passives or you could chose the characters skills or smth.
Yesss I was SO disappointed when I found out other -culus didn’t increase stamina anymore I don’t feel enough motivation to find all of them
"Every journey has it's final day, don't rush." – Osmanthus Wine
From how i see it, Genshin is just a slow burn story, the point isn't to reach the goal, it's to enjoy the journey, have fun exploring the world and meet all sorts of new people, go on amazing adventures, it's all about the worldbuilding and exploration, it's all about the "now", the rich lore of the game is what makes the world so recognizable and fantastic, every asset, character and soundtrack the game has is built upon by the game's world, if you like the game by what it is then you don't need much more, there's only so much you can do to incentivize someone to actually enjoy something outside of their confort zone, a game is not subject to just a set of rules and regulations, a game is whatever we want it to be, game design after all is just another tool for creative expression, the game works by it's own standards, genshin is just genshin, not "action rpg number #67" the incetive to play a game is the interactivity yes, but Genshin already has plenty of that, in and outisde of the game itself, none of the worldbuilding of this game could be done in a manga or book, really, there is so much shit to do, some people go crazy over it, the story of Genshin has progressed immensely since the start of the game, people just don't notice if they don't care to notice, people are always too focused on "What's next? What's next?" they completely forget what we've gone through, people can't keep track of anything, i mean if you even forget what the traveler's journey is all about, then that's just a sign you're playing the game wrong, it's mentioned so fucking often, be it in events, side quests and practically every archon quest, and even if, even if they don't mention their sibling, they are so important to the traveler and drive so much of their motivations, personality and actions, you'd have to practically try to forget it, if you just go complete "monke" mode and smash your keyboards with your forehead everytime you can't shot a hilichurl for 5 seconds then that's just kinda on you ¯_(ツ)_/¯, the game's not doing anything wrong, it's just not the genre you like, you're completely missing the point of all of it and acting entitled about it.
Mihoyo did not forget what Genshin is…a business. It's main motive is profit and I believe far exceeded their expectations for both profit and longevity so as far as they are concerned they are just milking an already aging concept.
Even so…Genshin's rebrand from combat-centered to story-centered would have been okay IF they would have done something like Dark Souls and began to weave relevant storyline INTO the various other aspects of their game. Sort of like how Dark Souls tells it's story through gameplay and exploration. I think the first Golden Apple came close to this with a feel for exploration and an evolving storyline or realization of the history of the place through the exploration.
It's such a shame. Like Skyrim, it has all the tools but unlike Skyrim, there's no Nexus for creative evolution.
The big flaw i see with genshin's progression in terms of gameplay is that it is absolutely horizontal without even so much as a vertical blip.
I encountered a similar issue when playing guild wars 2, an mnorpg with horizontal focussed progression… but they do it right, maintaining as much balance to not invalidate older content and innovating on things with newer content adding mechanical depth and takes some switching mentally that after you hit lvl 80, you enter a new progression system that is account wide mainly built around addional functuons (gliding, mounts fishing etc) and achievement hunting. But regardless of the horizontal progressionat that point there is enough variation and changes to things for everyone to still find value regardless of their prefered content type.
I'm noticing that by comparison the only 'end game' progression from guild wars 2 you could find a proper comparison in genshin would be 'legendary hunting' getting all or as many of the legendary items as possible which would compare to getting every character in genshin and maxxing everything on them… which can be fun for some, but to have super expensive ingame items and stuff just to have them would feel pointless at some point (think having more legendary weapons and armour than any character could use, weapons that are so far off-meta you would be in a different game alltogether, that sort of stuff) even with completionist stuff, there comes a point where it becomes tedium fir tedium's sake.
If anything, genshin needs to look at other mmorpg's (not guild wars 2 because that would lead to a double down on the current issues) take a look at how WoW and FFXIV, BDO and ESO have built progression and improvements into their core gameplay.
I know it sounds stupid to advise a singleplayer rpg to take design qeues from mmorpgs, but for genshin there is no better tutor for how to improve progession and endgame because a blend of horizontal and vertical is ideal. And with the core monetization genshin has, it has more to gain from taking endgame design ideas from mmorpgs than from say, skyrim or witcher. With genshin needing that player retention to earn money,they need a measure of mmorpg endgame progression. Not all of that progression is goid, but it does still beat the current state of 'no progression'.
wouldn't worry too much. that's gonna happen eventually.
if FGO did it after all this time, MHY is gonna catch onto it soon enough.
While adding further progression could be helpful, they need to fix current progression first to make it less grindy. I've been playing for 3 years now and still few of my DPS characters have artifact setups I'm happy with (i.e. I still can't 36 star abyss) because I only have a few hours each day I can play, so it takes 1-2 weeks for me to get a new character to lvl 70 or 80, and then most of the time I have between farming for ascensions and talents is wasted on bad artifacts.
Artifacts and Resin NEED a MASSIVE update and improvement,bc its suck when you're stuck at a lvl where you're unable to defeat an enemy quickly, especially in abyss,also they should rlly make domains much easier for us,bc i LITERALLY hate the ley lines that makes us weak,like i just wanna be done farming the domains and go on exploring and doing quests,but its literally impossible nowadays,bc i constantly have to farm the same domains and it takes wayy to much time,especially when i f up my rotations,like if y'all want the game to be harder than go petition for a hard mode for your enjoyment,but me and most players just want a normal or peaceful mode. Genshin rlly misses out on those things,they should rlly take notes from Minecraft, especially the concepts.
Kind of stupid that your character can only be level 90 however the enemies can be level 95-100 so were capped at 90 seems fair
This is directionally correct, but also very very wrong in diagnosing the core of the problem.
Progression is very important, however, adding a new system on top of existing progression systems does not equal more progression. You've just added more power and powered up the enemies to compensate. In other words, adding lv100 and a 2nd elemental skill is simply an indirect nerf to your existing characters. It's not even powercreep, because you can get them back to where they were in effectiveness, you've just forced a chore on players.
The real problem with the game is an utter and complete lack of playable content.
The story going from ~3h for all of Mondstadt to ~10 hours for 4.1's story ALONE is not a small issue to address on the side, it is the main issue, because that story time is thoroughly cannibalizing the gameplay.
Those are 10 hours of dialogue with no playable or interactive elements.
Go back to 1.0, look at the way the story is structured. Every story beat, every objective, most chests in the world, domain unlocks, etc. are all gated by combat encounters which are balanced for the kind of power you're supposed to have at that point and feel challenging and rewarding to beat as a result.
In 4.1 there are zero combat encounters. Zero. None.
Nouvilette's story quest is the first in the game where you're not given the character as a trial in a domain to test him out, because the story has no combat, you just watch him be sad for a couple hours.
Look at the ending of the first Liyue arc, you fight Tartaglia, then he summons Osial and you have a massive fight with hordes of Fatui agents on top of the Jade Chamber while Osial bombards you with water bombs and the Adepti shoot at it with Geo laser cannons, there are like 6 or 7 fully animated cutscenes that look stunning including using the Jade Chamber as a nuke, and it all happens in about 30 to 45 minutes. It takes less time to do all that than it takes for you to enter the fortress of Meropide in 4.1.
The archon quests aside, it has been 3 years and all there is to do in the game is Abyss which is about 10 minutes of gameplay, twice a month for not even a 10-pull a month. I've been beating abyss with the same 2 teams for the past year. I also haven't pulled for a year because all the characters have been either unreasonably weak, ugly or boring to play.
The exploration experience has become terrible, first because of puzzles clearly designed to waste your time rewarding you with one of 300 Common Chests, second because other than the primogems there is nothing valuable in those chests for someone who isn't new to the game. How about some 5* artifacts in those chests?
Other than those 2 things, what is there to do in Genshin?
People aren't burned out, it's just that nothing cool ever happens.
It's not like Mihoyo doesn't know how to solve this issue, they've done it perfectly well in both of their other games. The game is just making enough money from social media popularity alone that they don't care if a year of character banners sells below their standard, or if a couple million people quit the game and go play something else.
The game will have to be an inch from death before they decide to do something.
Personally I feel at this stage more progression still wouldn't be meaningful. We can't measure progression out over the game's narrative progress and have any goal to build towards until the actual narrative progress is all there. If we do see higher limits it's best left to a "New Game Plus" mode – and that's already a requirement for the game's long-term survival because we really need a way to replay storylines and event content far more than we need a way to see numbers get higher. Too many MMOs have proven that prioritizing reward over play ultimately leads to needing to trim the play to get new players more rapidly to where the game's actually being built. That way of thinking poisons the entire game over time.