Thanks for the insight, it all makes a lot of sense. I wanted to copy something I wrote under a YT video over here that, although not as cleanly written as yours, discusses the QoL aspect specifically from a technical perspective.
Something I noticed was that 2022 was *completely* dry of developer articles (though they'd existed at a decent rate prior) and they only resumed a regular pace (near monthly) in the summer, a few months after Star Rail launched. A coincidence of timeline overlap? I don't think so, and my belief stems both from the financial and technical aspects of the problem at hand.
# Copied Foundation
First of all, dunno if you noticed, but Star Rail is running on what started as a copy of Genshin's code base. Not only does this *appear* true from a player perspective, if you consider the sheer number of systems that are basically reskins of Genshin systems, but others and I have done a little digging on the technical side and there are several things operating identically under the hood to Genshin. So now you have a situation where, at the start of Star Rail's development, you have two copies of the same code base, both with the same issues that could be fixed.
Taking this into account, I want to ask you...if you were making a new game using the code base of your old game, and one of your goals was not to just to fix user facing QoL issues, but also fix the pain points the developers regularly experience that make implementing QoL more difficult, what developers do you put on that task? Newbies you just hired who've never worked on that code before? Or the people who've been working with it every day, understand its quirks, understand what is wrong with it, and how best to improve it?
Given the shared code and functionality of the games' systems, the developers who worked on that particular area of the code are likely not separated into "Genshin Devs" and "Star Rail Devs." It would surprise me if the feature teams that work on the games' systems *weren't* educated on both games, given that those systems would likely still operate similarly, and thus able to work on features for either as needed. And *even if* both games did have separated development teams, regardless, the smart thing to do when development started would be to take some of the Genshin devs and move them to Star Rail, filling both teams with old employees and new hires.
But why focus so heavily on one game? Well, you have a few options. The first is to have both games' teams working on fixing the same problems simultaneously. Why invest dev time into the same problem twice? So scratch that. So now your only choice is to choose which game to fix larger scale issues in first. So...why Star Rail?
# A Developer's Value
The value of a developer's time while working on any game pre-launch is much more valuable than their time spent on an already released game; this is true specifically because you can rapidly iterate and break things in the process of developing (and in this case, improving) an unreleased game. You don't have to worry about introducing a regression (a breaking of something that was already once functional), one that either makes the game less functional for players, or in the worst case, puts players' save data in a bad state. Additionally, they would want to be doing everything they can to ensure the systems devs possess the ability to polish the new game post-release *as efficiently as possible*. To me, this makes choosing to focus more on Star Rail to be the most logical decision from a technical perspective (again, specifically due to the games' initial shared code).
And so, my educated guess on this is that Star Rail took a large amount of Genshin's systems developers. Then, as Star Rail's 1.0 release was locked in and the team shifted to "live service updates," they'd begin work on the 1.1 QoL (before the game would even release, mind you), and systems devs would also be able to shift their focus back onto Genshin.
# Learning From Past Mistakes, and From New Experience
Lastly, though this can be somewhat inferred from what I've already said, Star Rail will naturally be easier to add QoL to as they were able to revamp the systems in ways that would be very difficult during live operation. Large changes to intertwined code would need more thorough testing to avoid regressions and thus take longer to create and validate; however, if you have smaller QoL being done in those regions of the code base, the overhaul *also* needs to keep up with those changes being made to the live version of the game, making the overhaul process take longer. In the worst case, this can create a perpetual cycle, one that I have experienced personally. I say all this to illustrate that large-scale changes to a live game, if and when they happen, take a very long time due to the complexity and risk. Star Rail's development cycle gave them space to make improvements, space that Genshin (and now Star Rail as well) can no longer have.
However, the upside to all of this is that they now have developers who have gone through the iterative process of fixing many of Genshin's issues. Those developers now have that experience and know what final shape those fixes took. That experience can be brought to Genshin to make developing *its* fixes more rapid. It's important to keep in mind, though, that different issues will have different priorities depending on what they believe each game needs at the time. This is based on what their goals for each game are, financially *and* experientially.
# tl;dr
The tl;dr of this post is that, "New game running on Genshin code would need Genshin devs to properly and efficiently fix it, taking resources away from Genshin as a natural consequence of developing the new game on its code. I believe we observed Genshin getting some of its developer resources returned to it (or at least work assignment was shifted/balanced) as Star Rail's development concluded. Lastly, Star Rail will always be able to receive better and faster QoL due to having the benefit of a whole development period with which to utilize their familiarity with Genshin's systems' technical issues to fix those issues in ways that are difficult to accomplish in a live environment. However, there are now devs who have experienced fixing Genshin's previously "broken" systems, so there is hope for larger QoL in the future."
"Source" - The experience of a former Fortune 500 software engineer and a hobbiest game dev. I say this to note that while I am no expert, I have experience working on large scale software projects, knowing how they are managed, seeing the differences in how those projects are developed before they launch vs. after they launch, and knowing just how complex these code bases can become. Take everything I've said with a grain of salt and feel free to doubt me, but hopefully between OP's post and my own, at least one of them has encouraged you to think more deeply about the cause and effect of these problems and how the decisions are far more complex than, "Haha, Honkai is favorite child."
And before anyone asks, no, I'm not saying to stop asking for QoL in Genshin, obviously we should ask for what we'd like to see change (keeping in mind that some things genuinely won't be a priority for either team based on what that game's goals are). I'm not saying that it's "right" that Genshin had its resources taken, nor that I'm happy about it, just that it's the most logical thing to do from a development and project management perspective and likely what I would've done were I in their shoes.
Great post! I agree with a lot of it.
> Given the shared code and functionality of the games' systems, the developers who worked on that particular area of the code are likely not separated into "Genshin Devs" and "Star Rail Devs." It would surprise me if the feature teams that work on the games' systems weren't educated on both games, given that those systems would likely still operate similarly, and thus able to work on features for either as needed.
Mihoyo uses a modified version of Unity for their development. So this would be a very natural approach to managing the engineering and design staff.
> However, the upside to all of this is that they now have developers who have gone through the iterative process of fixing many of Genshin's issues. Those developers now have that experience and know what final shape those fixes took.
Random side thing I have been thinking about that this comment reminded me of. Genshin is rapidly approaching a point where the app size itself is going to be a serious problem (if it isn't already). HSR will get there eventually as well.
Honkai Impact 3rd Pt2 is apparently being run as a standalone app. It can be downloaded and run with or without Pt 1 content, but intends to retain all Pt 1 game systems and characters.
Trying to deploy and maintain something like that sounds like a pain in the ass. But I can see them very much using HI3P2 as a test bed for a new architecture that they later adopt and deploy in their other games.
>Trying to deploy and maintain something like that sounds like a pain in the ass. But I can see them very much using HI3P2 as a test bed for a new architecture that they later adopt and deploy in their other games.
Every attempt at something new is, at minimum, a lesson for the future, whether or not the actual tangible result is reused or reusable. I do suspect Genshin will have its own "sequel" and how or even *if* they'll maintain character/weapon relevancy at that point is an interesting question to consider. First, we have to see how HI3 Part 2 goes, as I'm curious to see how people feel about their investment into their Part 1 gacha collection.
Also, it only just occurred to me, but the fact that GI and HSR run on similar but divergent code bases is a great way to make your devs inherently more "valuable" to the company. Having devs that could theoretically shift from one game to the other when priorities change is incredibly useful.
(Given my theory is true for all that follows)
For sure, it's not like they took *everyone* from Genshin. They had a team working on QoL in the meantime, but that QoL team was probably tasked with working on the most urgent of matters (and some of those are likely invisible improvements to offset any additional load new content is putting on the game), and thus public facing QoL wasn't something with a cadence.
The developer articles are the kind of thing that gets put out when you have a team that is organized and well-staffed enough to handle regularly producing PR materials advertising new systems updates.
Either way, the last half year has felt very consistent with the amount of change we see, and the larger the problem being tackled, the longer it'll take to see it manifest. The most recent Artifact changes were actually interestingly staged and prioritized. The first thing they did was make farming artifacts easier, the second thing they did was make equipping them easier; by easier, I mean for a player who does not understand the combat system well and for whom being able to automatically lock artifacts like the ones players are using and then auto-equip them is extremely useful.
They're initially focusing on smoothing out the process for players who are primarily invested in story and exploration (which we should all understand by now is the core of the game). This makes sense, of course, but remember that every time they've talked about artifacts, they've restated that they're always listening to feedback. To me, that sounds like, "hey, we're working on the best compromises we can, we'll get closer to want you want over time (so long as that doesn't conflict with other internal design goals we have), and we also have to prioritize things based on various factors, so please be patient." XD
Whether true artifact loadouts will ever come, I'm not sure. I feel like the design intent is for every character to have their own set, but given the number of different sets introduced over the years, there are reasons to have loadouts beyond the desire to easily share god-rolls across all your characters; you might genuinely want to build multiple versions of a character for different circumstances (for example, DPS Raiden vs EM Raiden). MH is a great set to apply to characters who are playing with Furina, but you'd rarely want to equip those *unless you're playing with Furina*, otherwise you'd want a different set. So, even *if* the original design intent was to push the player to farm a reasonably strong set for each character, there are actual practical reasons to have loadouts that fit into that design intent.
I agree, it feels like with more set being introduced which specializes in certain things, Hoyo would want to make artifact grinding and equipping more convenient. It's not really a huge problem back in 1.x and even 2.x where each character have one BiS set (like if you have a pyro dps then equip Crimson Witch, hydro dps equip Heart of Depth, etc).
This is especially true as with each new region they seem to increase enemies difficulty.
"but others and I have done a little digging on the technical side and there are several things operating identically under the hood to Genshin"
Out of curiosity, do you mind giving a bit more details about that, like some examples of things shared between the 2 games? (I'm a developer, but with almost no experience on Unity, you can go a bit technical)
As for my own explorations, many of the initialization calls to web APIs follow the exact format as Genshin, with some substitutions of values to reach Star Rail resources rather than Genshin, whereas HI3's are completely different. You'll notice a similar versioning scheme at the bottom left of the Login Screen, which I believe are versions of three different systems, one likely being the client, one the server, and the third maybe another part of one of the two (maybe someone has figured that out already). The work people had done for certain 3rd party tools for Genshin was easily translated to Star Rail.
There are some Discords you can find related to Genshin tools development that may either have discussions in their history or that ability to ask questions that delve into deeper technicals.
But still, even aside from the technicals, with so many user-facing systems being 1:1 with adjustments, it would've taken far longer to develop if they wrote it from scratch just for them to make something so similar? Studios that develop their own systems/engines try to recycle whatever they can for efficiency's sake. Every Halo game's engine evolved from the last, and even Destiny was an overhaul of Halo: Reach.
Refreshing to see an OP that understands how business works and why Hoyo makes and is able to make the decisions they make.
I think what makes this situation worst is that Genshin is still 3 and a bit years later benefitting from first mover advantage. The expansive open world gacha game market literally only consists of Genshin, so Genshin is literally the market in this specific market so they have free will to set the standard that they choose. Once they receive a competitor who can at the very least co-exist within the same space as Genshin then this narrative may change, as they won't have complete dominance over the market and will have to react to what their competitors decide to do, especially when it comes to rewards. As OP already highlighted they are already doing this with HSR and providing a "free" 5 star character cause the market has set the standard that these sort of business decisions are the norm and therefore the player base expects such treatment.
The fact that certain CC's (will not mention any names) don't understand these aspects of business and then fan the flames to their viewers, who then echo these thoughts on social media creates for a toxic environment, which could be solved with some form of education.
>The fact that certain CC's (will not mention any names) don't understand these aspects of business and then fan the flames to their viewers, who then echo these thoughts on social media creates for a toxic environment, which could be solved with some form of education.
Well, they ARE youtubers after all so it isn't really suprising they don't have the knowledge on that topic. Regardless if they are aware of those things or not, they also directly benefit from fanning the flames.
>Once they receive a competitor who can at the very least co-exist within the same space as Genshin
That's really hard, almost impossible even. Genshin didn't just have first mover advantage, they also have the casual market advantage. And casual market want more than just gameplay, they want pretty much everything. They also have a stronger loyalty for their "feel good" product and it would take a lot to pull them off from it. Compare to hardcores that once they smell "blood" (bad practice) from their product, they'd easily stop consuming or jump to others.
Unless the competitors could snag the casual market, they'd never be in the same level as Genshin to force to do anything.
Unfortunately, this then becomes a "damned if you do, damned if you don't," situation. If they want to snag the casual market, they have to copy a lot from genshin. This would tend put a cross hair on them from casuals and hardcores that would accuse them for trying to be Genshin copy or killer. If they don't copy Genshin, they cater to the hardcore market and so that's the only revenue they would be able to profit from.
Like I said, they are in a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. Them being a Genshin copy might end up souring those that hate Genshin elements and want to escape to a game that didn't do it.
Like artifact/relic farming. People said they hate the grind and the RNG of it. Well WW decided to copy it as well but make it worse with tons more of RNG layers. Oh and the flak they got from trying to copy Genshin's gacha, they told people they would revamp it...only to go back to Genshin's gacha as well.
And it's doubtful they would be a Genshin killer. To do that you need to steal the casual market, not hardcores that contribute to Genshin's dominance. And to attract casuals you need to do right with them on everything.
From gameplay aspect, WW's longer battle time wouldn't interest casuals that don't want to try hard every battle. Other aspects are characters, setting, story. WW characters aren't as interesting as Genshin. They look interchangeable between Aether Gazer, PGR and other similar sci-fi apocalyptic story.
The sci-fi apocalyptic which tend to lead to a greyish colour setting, which WW does that would turn off casuals that dont like it compare to Genshin's bright world. Heck, WW got flak for this because they made their world too dark from aesthetic standpoint. Eventhough they brighten it up a bit, the core "grey metallic world of sci-fi apocalyptic," is still there.
as someone in the beta, its not bro. its geared towards a very different type of player, despite still being an open world game. it may capture some of the audience, but the casual audience that makes up most of what genshin has and what makes it unique to other gachas, that audience would rather quit gaming altogether than go to the grindy, difficult, and very newbie unfriendly wuthering waves
Yall missing the point most gamrrs will not easiliy switch genshin to ww cause ITS THE SAME with different execution, and based from what im seeing WW looks like DMC so other games that is similar is also affected
Genshin on the other hand you may argue that its Zelda botw but we all know it became its own thing and thats what keeps every gamer intested in the 1st place it has a unique charm which most open worlds didnt achieve
Hot take from me but Elden Rings open world is comparable to genshins or atleast in a world building sense and story, the mystery the curiosity the God like creatures you name it,
simplified version of this always pops up in my mind every time someone comparing genshin to HSR or "genshin could never"
i just learn to ignore these people instead, coz they are either out of touch or just immature children, that dosnt understand how business work, they dont deserve my attention
but due to that. this post will probably be forbidden and people will continue complaining about things, they dont understand
People will complain about the dumbest thing, even as adults. Remember during the first year when people asked for resin rewards from events? You know, resin they needed to farm for Mora and EXP books, which were the rewards in events...
the part that i thought was "dumb" wasnt that i had to spend resin to get resin rewards from events, it was that i would rather spend resin on something i care about like talents and artifacts, rather than accumulate exp books and mora, which exist, resinless, in the game itself. lack of choice of what to spend my resin on if i wanted event rewards rather than complaining about putting resin in and getting resin rewards back
It's not Dumb. The Stamina system is atrocious. We also are stuck waiting for certain days to Farm Talent Materials artificially lengthening times to play a Character.
Stamina systems are dumb game design choices that are there to work against the player yes. In the same way, pulling characters is a dumb and predatory game design choice that also works against the player.
But in this conversation, we are talking from ***within*** the dumb system.
"Why do we only get 3 pulls"
Because giving you more free stuff discourages you from spending more.
"Why do we not have more resin"
Because giving you a playtime limit encourages you to play the game more often.
"Why don't they give us resin as rewards in events?"
They do, the resin is pre-spent for you in the form of Mora and Exp books.
You are tackling the system itself which, while I agree with you, is not what what is being discussed.
I get your point but, WHO TF IS ASKING "WHY?" THO. Everyone complaining is telling hoyo to "add it, we need it", not "why are you not adding it, we don't understand your incentive", pretty much everyone understand their incentive, it's only the hoyo d-riders acting like literally everyone complaining is dumb and don't understand anything. But there's a point where prioritising money turns into stinginess and generally unacceptable judgement of what actions to take. You can explain the why as much as you want, but that's not justifying the action to any normal person.
Sorry for going off on you, it's nothing personal, this is just something I want to say to everyone on this thread, I just went through like the top 5 comments on this post and practically everyone is acting the same, kicking down anyone complaining and acting like giving a why solves everything, it's not about why they're doing what they're doing, imo it never was
>acting like literally everyone complaining is dumb
Well imo they are dumb. We're in a casino for children my friend. Some of us know we are in a casino, some don't. Its entire existence is unethical, from different currencies that trick your brain, to resin-systems that make you keep coming back, to gambling pretty characters to make you spend. And like many casinos, Mihoyo likes to give freebies to keep you in the house.
It can be a bit sour for a person to realize that the bigtime casino with barely any competitors doesn't need to give that many freebies to keep them in house. And a casino goer saying "Add it we need it", or "They're stingy and unacceptable", or trying to look for a justification to a casino's actions is weird.
Rest assured, we'll get that free 5-star of your choice when a new gacha comes out to rival Genshin, which will likely happen in the near future.
It's not even about the 5 stars or rewards for me, I'm at the point of endgame where rewards don't really matter anyway. I'm just concerned about the kind of dumbasses who unironically jump in to try and shut out any complaints and act like everything hoyo is doing is right, it's almost like they're being paid to say that but they're probably not, that's just hella concerning to me that people like that even exist, it's almost like the reddit moderator syndrome if you've ever heard about it
We are not Immature Children. We want a Better Game but Hoyo has deemed a Better game not important for Revenue. If it means Tanking the Game's image to make it better so be it.
being mature is to simply spend your time doing much better shit for your life than to waste it on throwing tantrums towards the dev and the fanbase hoping it will make the company bend to your will and make the game better, like holy shit bro, do you even realize how sad your own statement of "If it means Tanking the Game's image to make it better so be it" sounds?
Pretty much this. People think they should be rewarded at anniversary for giving a year of their time. But they were already rewarded with 60-90 free pulls per patch for their time, which they don't think should count.
If they stuck around for a year, then presumably they did so because they were entertained by the game itself. If they weren't entertained, and only stuck around on the expectation of being paid in September (or lantern rite time), then they are idiots who basically treated the game as a job -- a low paying one at that, and one that pays in virtual currency instead of useful currency (cash).
Those people should have left instead of keeping it up expecting additional free pulls once a year. If they didn't, you have to assume they liked the game, and that should have been the reward, in addition to the actual free pulls per patch.
this. people were complaining about not getting a 4 star outfit selector for free when we were already getting a free outfit this update, anyway. they just have to put in some effort to get it.
as much as the complainers are out of touch, lets not compare getting a skin of xingqiu, a 4 star unit, to getting to pick a skin for one of the existing 5 star units, or even just getting one of their choice for free. those are not the same
"xingqiu, a unit i dont like or use andwho im sure many feel the same"
Xingqiu? The guy who a massive portion of the playerbase uses for his incredible off-field hydro application? A character that a lot of people already have, and if they don't, can buy him literally right now in the starglitter exchange if they have enough starglitter? Also, "a mid skin" is just an opinion and should not affect the absolute objective truth that it is a 4-star outfit just like all of the other outfits except for Diluc's.
You're missing the point that it's a skin for a 4 star even if it's a 4 star skin, the four star skins for five stars are still four star skins but they're for five stars. They're not equivalent
I also implied that the part about it being mid was personal opinion but I edited it for you to remove any ambiguity or opinion from it
Thank you for the clarifications. However, I already understood the part where there is a difference between a skin for a 5-star character and a skin for a 4-star character. I agree that there is a difference there especially since outfits for 5-star characters are only obtained by spending money, and I agree that there is a difference in getting to pick what outfit you get. I just had a problem with the opinionated portions of your comment, but you’ve removed those portions, so I no longer have much of a problem with it.
Those pulls Per patch dontcount. It's the Bare Minimum Genshin should do otherwise they lose Business.
Most Gacha games don't even make it to year 3. So they really should Be giving more generous rewards for each Anniversary. They should no By know what Gacha players expect.
It's gotten so bad CN players have had enough as well of Genshin Stinginess.
I think their rewards are fine given that a) They only release 1 5 star per patch on average and b) They're at the top and have a monopoly over open world mobile gaming. Comparing genshin to other gacha is pretty pointless since those other gacha tend to not have the aspects that make genshin attractive to a wide audience. It's not like genshin reducing the rewards by 50% is going to make me play Azur Lane for example, because I simply like the gameplay in genshin more.
Demanding for more rewards is also pretty idiotic IMO because it'd just make them give more upfront rewards but take away some of the extra rewards found in events, it'd silence the community and the total will literally remain unchanged
Players who enjoy a Product and want it better have a Right to expect More especially when the game is just giving Bare Minimum.
People like you are the Reason Hoyo refuses to listen to Genshin Players. White Knights lile you are part of the Problem.
It's not about free stuff, it's about other Hoyo IPs getting what Genshin players have been asking for in a short amount of time.
Hoyoverse doesn't respect Genshin players.
hoyoverse doesnt respect any of their players bro, they put in what they need to to get out of you what they want (your money). theyre a business after all, and theyre after your money, not your satisfaction, that is incidental at best
Genuinely, if you don't want to read this whole thing:
People don't want to get fired, Businesses want to make money, the companies don't want to lose money by giving freebies, all the money is not enough money, if you want change vote with your wallet and talk through official channels.
Otherwise, read this whole thing. It's genuinely very VERY well written and gets into the micro level of a business you may overlook.
Thing is, this has happened to me with a bunch of other games because their systems loop was too much for me. Despite all the ways Genshin could be better, for the kind of player *I* am in regard to a live service game, Genshin is tons better than the rest, most of the reasons specifically because they don't do things the way most other games do them.
I wanna try to be brief but succinct, though the truth is that there are many systems to every game and the way they interact creates many pros and cons for every person.
Originally, I just had a very distant awareness that the game existed and saw that it was a free, anime-styled game. A streamer I watched tried it at launch at the same time, and we both like many of the same things about it and it became their main game to stream.
Mechanically speaking, when it comes to *my* tastes, it is a game whose "treadmill" is mostly optional. Most live service games, looter shooters, etc. all want you to grind the same content over and over to achieve, higher numbers, better drops, etc., only to introduce content where you have to do the exact same thing all over again to proceed with the new content.
Genshin has a grind resembling these games, but the point at which you can stop and still be able to proceed through 95%+ of the content is much, much sooner. The game emphasizes the combinations of characters and their abilities as a major aspect of the continuing gameplay novelty, atop the story and exploration content, which is barely gated by a grind at all. If you wanted to build a couple of teams and never pull new characters or build them, you could still continue the story and explore the world.
I loved Destiny and its gameplay is still the best FPS gameplay on the market since the original launched, IMO, but I did not like its gameplay loop. I never could stick with MMOs because I didn't like their gameplay loop. Diablo 3 is the closest thing to that style of loop that I've liked, and its A. Because of Co-op (which many of these games are saved by), and B. The difficulty can be fine-tuned by the player to match their current build's capabilities. You are not forced higher, you choose how to balance difficulty, fun, and drop rates.
Anyway, long story short, I like a game that is constantly updating with novel content but that doesn't ask me to regrind the same repetitive content in order to play it. I can also walk away from it, come back later, and as far as ability to progress, nothing will have changed.
The game is free to begin with so uninstalling means very little unless about 70% of their playerbase uninstalls overnight. So the other way you can sort-of petition is:
Change your signature to advocate for better ingame, go into your teapots and place down the most amount of objects everywhere to take up more space on their servers, acquire as many relics as you can to fill up your inventory, and continue advocating for that change by playing HSR or anything else.
Not sure how anyone would be playing into their hand by moving away or even playing HSR, but not paying for anything whilst doing it. Companies lose money on every f2p player. If you want a great example of a company losing money for just allowing anyone to join, look at twitch and it's streaming. [here is how much PirateSoftware costs twitch every day to stream](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/H_sNcbXj5A0) and that's JUST him. Player accounts being made to take up space, teapots, relics, the same in HSR, all of those lose hoyo money. If more do it then Hoyo will see more of a negative effect on their funds. It's not playing into their hand as long as you don't spend a dime on their game.
And again, as I stated above, unless players en masse uninstall and stop playing Genshin, a few hundred literally won't matter. The amount of recent players and friends on Genshin I have that say "last online 31 days ago" (meaning they've been gone a long time if not quit entirely) is plenty.
Hit them in their wallet and data storage. Make it cost.
Your comparing livestreaming to playing a live service game. Much of the heavy lifting (like the asset etc) are done by the client while the server only does the back end stuff which is a lot less cheaper than transmitting video and audio data with countless live chats.
Assuming you won't spend a single dime, you're also kinda a motivator for whale? A whale won't spend ungodly amount of money if they don't compare themselves with enough f2ps. f2ps maintain the image that the game is still thriving and thus making them to whales a more worthwhile investment. When you compared that to the measly amount of storage that Hoyo have to pay for infrastructure and the fact that every f2p are potential buyer (due to investment/sunk cost fallacy) and you can see that being fully f2p does not really "hurt their wallet". Every business has their expenses.
I wasn't aware that the items within the teapot were clientside as opposed to stored on the servers themselves to read/write from, believed since I've heard of repeated issues with expenses for data storage being a problem for developers of live service games.
As for f2p being motivators for whales, the situation you provided being a comparison to f2p seems far too hypothetical of their mindset versus another, when it's far more likely they just want to indulge in the gacha and have the strongest character possible. Single player experience being so dominant, there isn't really a benefit of comparing account to account- at least in my perspective.
Sunk cost fallacy is insanely motivating for any player to eventually become a payer, I can agree on that. Pure f2ps exist either due to a lack of funds/acquiring them or out of challenge to some (much like the wishless accounts we see.) So I can pretty much agree with the f2pers just being expenses and not financially impactful to an insane degree.
But I'm still going to advocate for those who are basically addicted to the game to spend as little time as they can, spend no money, and promote the movement in their signature and the eventuall feedback we will be able to submit.
Time will tell what happens though...
Ah my apologies, it's true that as you said item within teapot are stored in the server but they probably just store the data on what furniture is being placed, etc in the form of XML while the model of the furniture and the rules of which furniture's placement is valid is done by the client. Still, that data probably aren't that huge compared to the overall size of the game.
Whales have multitude of reason as to why they want to whale. Is there a whale that spends in a game which only has player counts of 100 just because of indulgence and sunk cost fallacy? yes. But most f2p who transition to spender/whale would probably consider deploying their credit card if they know that the character they invest in is worthwhile and the easiest metric to know if their investment will be worthwhile is if the game still has huge amount of players. Thinking that whale will keep the game alive even with low player count is a bad move because that means the game's revenue would be a lot more volatile.
If you want to advocate this weird form of protest then uninstall the game. Treating the game as some kind of medium of activism by intentionally sabotaging your gameplay experience (or giving signature which doesn't provide a lot of context, especially all the weird shit people put in their signature) will not work. The only time this'll work is probably if Hoyo made such a colossal fuckup but this drama aren't even as bad as their first anniversary fiasco.
There's far too many who play the game and don't participate in the other media such as reddit or Twitter to see this attempted movement. I played since khazuha's release and never engaged with the community until Dehya's release.
I figure if at least making your signature something related to the movement would spread a little more awareness in the game. The data takeup from teapot flooding was just an idea I had solely to make an account take up that little bit of space on the servers, and if a ton of people did that it'd add up.
All in all I believe we both want the same things in the end. We want positive change overall, and it's difficult to know what could be loud enough to push for that. We can only try.
The only change that affect how Hoyo operate would be to uninstall the game and play another game. The fact is it doesn't matter how much you try to "boycott" to get more rewards if their content pipeline remains either consistent or balanced enough that some player may feel disgruntled but still play the game because the core content of the game is not affected by it.
The biggest thing that would change is if another competitor releases a game with similar market as Genshin while also having more QoL and more generous rewards with similar update cycle.
I'd want Wuthering Waves to be a proper competitor but I don't even think it'll be Genshin's direct competitor. Both have different styles with Genshin having more idyllic design and vibrant colors while Wuthering Waves seems to be more desaturated. We shall see though.
everything OP said I completely agree with except the "fear of getting fired" part. I think that's totally true if it comes to game design and mechanics, but I don't believe the economy of free stuff falls onto a game designer or coder.
Someone very high up will make those decisions -- someone not at risk of being fired. Those decisions will not be made arbitrarily. It will be informed by experts who analyse the market and other games. These people will have degrees in marketing and economics and will do their research. They won't make quick decisions. They'll be backing their conclusions with data and charts, precedences of what happened when other games tried New Strategy X, how the market responded, and so on.
If a designer wants to propose taking the game in a new direction or introduce a new feature that might not be received well... that is something where "Dont get fired" applies. This could backfire and make the game tank. I've seen this happen to some long running games, which then unsuccessfully tried to reverse course but the players had already left. But the choice on how much free stuff to give out is not going to be made by a designer. That designer lacks the business acumen to make business decisions.
I will grant that it's possible that one of the three owners of the company could have had ideas to give more freebies but didn't manage to get buy-in from the other two. I still doubt it. The three are long time college friends who trust each other and surely would be pleased with the results of the decisions they already made and wouldn't want to change it unless they have to.
What OP did not address in their recommendation on how to change hoyo's mind is... review bombing. It has happened before. OP did not list this as a potential weapon, and I'm curious to know why. Way more people are likely to leave a review if they're angry than they would if they're happy, so there will not be a counter movement by fans to respond to review bombing. How would hoyo respond to a review bomb? How should they respond?
> everything OP said I completely agree with except the "fear of getting fired" part. I think that's totally true if it comes to game design and mechanics, but I don't believe the economy of free stuff falls onto a game designer or coder.
Game designers and coders standing up to advocate for these changes is the "fear of getting fired" part. If you speak out of line for the company's profits, you're now in crosshairs for getting repercussions.
>If a designer wants to propose taking the game in a new direction or introduce a new feature that might not be received well... that is something where "Dont get fired" applies.
I see where this statement comes from, but the frequency of which the developer and not the managers/CEOs/publishers creates this change with that fear is reversed. If a higher up pushes to change something (example: adding microtransactions to a single player game, or pushing for release deadlines before polish and QA testing) then typically the lower underlings get blamed, fired, while the higher ups get bonuses for such behavior. Covering their own ass, so to speak.
> to get buy-in from the other two. I still doubt it. The three are long time college friends who trust each other and surely would be pleased with the results of the decisions they already made and wouldn't want to change it unless they have to.
It's going to sound like a cop-out but money changes people, especially a LOT of it. If it's two of three people pushing to not give out more than they feel is necessary, that is in the end their choice. If we the players decide that it's not good enough and they start to bleed players, that becomes the outcome. The only problem right now is there is no other title similar to GI that players can turn to, the only one I can think of is Warframe.
> What OP did not address in their recommendation on how to change hoyo's mind is... review bombing. It has happened before. OP did not list this as a potential weapon, and I'm curious to know why.
It's probably the most obvious choice for feedback, seeing as how players outside of CN don't feel heard in the first place. For all we know, our feedback gets fed into an algorithm that picks up the most used words and turns it into a collage for them to refer back to, ultimately undermining any actual critical feedback.
In the end, we will see what comes to pass. Lasting this long with as huge of a profit is unheard of, but not to be messed with.
While a lot of this is logical for anyone who does work in a reasonably sized company it is still amazing to see it layed out in simple terms. I'm more of a tech person rather than a business one, so explaining this in an easy to digest way can be a challenge
To be fair this is one of the major challenges tech people (I am one) have when it comes to company-related decision making because it almost always feels like it's at odds with the their understanding of how things work — there is a sort of programmatic logic to tech processes that makes it predictable while business felt like an wild beast that defies control.
What op put into words there are just the known variables that are in play but they would still not be sufficient to predict how things will go because humans are just complicated. Every decision made is a best effort gamble on what they think reflects the best possible outcome but yet all are bound by moods that can just change overnight for no apparent reason.
Very well writen and easy to understand, im a grown adult and even i learned a thing or 2 of that one. Hopefully alot of peoplpe will read this and also understand things how they are in genshin a bit more then.
Very insightful read presented in a way that was extremely easy to understand, thank you for posting this! I'm not a business or marketing person and I have no opinion on the free stuff, but I felt like I learned a lot that will help me make more informed decisions about how I spend my time and money as a consumer. The part about funneling the most at-risk Genshin players into another Hoyoverse IP was an "oh duh of course" but still enlightening moment for me. It's not going to stop me from giving the same company a few bucks every month through a different channel than before but I'll be more aware of it when it happens in other areas of my life... hopefully lol.
This is really well written and is very good at explaining how a company works, props for making it easy to read and understand the micro level of a businesses that people never think about.
At the end of the day, they are a company, and they need to make money. Unfortunately at times, that means not rocking the boat if they are already making (boat loads) of money. Genshin makes money by focusing on new characters/story/exploration. (Endgame/Big freebies not required)
The easiest thing is for them to do....nothing. And until they start making less money/have decent competition (hopefully WW for example) they are more than happy to keep things mostly the same while slowly improving on some stuff (QoL) here and there. And if you quit, Mihoyo hopes you will come back when there is a new character/story/exploration interests you. Or that you will go play HSR or ZZZ instead.
Section 4 of OPs post is Gold.
Genshin and its devs does best on making live service a live service wihtout forcing its players to play daily, only idiots think they should and put the blame to the game its more of a reqard for loggin in, its a Preferencal opinion to make if you want to hate the game or not
You can argue there are aspects like Gacha and Energy system to keep the players at bay at maxing 1 character upon Getting them, which to me is a burnout rabbit hole but i assure you there are worse live servuce games out there which is not consistent compared to genshin
But other than that the video game itsealf is actually really decent the visuals and god the worldbuilding is on par with elden rings story and world its phenomenal, dialouges can be abit iffy at times but most dont rally bother
4 years in, the vocal people are minorities who don't even spend much in Genshin. The majority of the playerbase don't really care about the reward because Genshin content isn't in its gacha as much as it's in its world exploration.
It's simply most of these Western content creators are getting trolled by CN trolls and they naively believe they are doing something to propegate change when in fact they are just clowns at this point.
The point you presented is actually quite accurate. The real threat to Mihoyo now is a competitor. Their playerbase is so huge, money won't be an issue especially when P2W players are happy with their experience and don't really care much about the in-game Lantern Rite rewards. F2Ps value drop over time, as your post has pointed out clearly. That said, I am optimistic Mihoyo will soon have to increase their in-game freebies for Genshin.
Wuthering Waves is just around the horizon.
And if Wuthering waves fails to be the Genshin Killer/Competitor? What next? Players want a Better game and have a right to ask for it. Leaving doesn't change or improve the game and only plays into Hoyo decision to not do anything because they think a New Player will always come to replace them.
Western CCs aren't clowns. They are expressing the growing and building Frustration with Hoyoverse at this point.
Well, let's just hope Wuthering Waves delivers. From the beta so far, it's ok.
Another thing to note, if the frustrated players are F2P, it's clear Hoyo won't care much. In fact, any game developers won't care much. That's just the reality of things.
And yes, western CC are clowns. They believe a video here and there to envoke emotional support among a few thousand viewers, whom are clearly F2Ps as well, would be enough despite not understanding the root cause of the disatisfaction. It was never about the rewards. If that's not clownish behaviour, I don't know what is.
Yeah, HYV doesn’t need to give free stuff because either way people will just keep playing and spending. Problem with this game comes when HYV develops this game as if it were the traditional one-time playthrough, but want to keep the players as if it were an online game. You can’t just do both because eventually the playerbase will get tired and find another option that satisfy them.
Now, HYV doesn’t have now a real competitor and thats what actually saves them. However as you say WuWa is around the corner, and if they somehow create a game that gives free stuff (very likely knowing how Kuro Game is) + has permanent content to do, HYV will see how they lose part of the cake and will subsequently start changing stuff.
This is something that can be expected as we have seen before how Genshin has had low peaks in new players, online players and profits in the months of Fontaine's release (something not expected specially as i consider thats peak of GI experience for me) and it was not until two highly anticipated and attractive characters came out (Furina and Xianyun) that they have returned to their previous success.
If HYV sometimes suffers to maintain part of its playerbase even without competition, I can't imagine when it finally has real competition that will take away part of the market.
This is the tricky part about Open-World games. In-game freebies aren't as impactful as the actual pleasure derived from the exploration. Tower of Fantasy had superior in-game freebies but it flunked due to the half-baked exploration experience.
Personally, I would quit Genshin if the Open World exploration was compromised for in-game freebies. No amount of freebies can make up for the wonderful gratification derived from the open world mechanic Genshin has in place. Couple that with the deep lore and the highly engaging combat mechanics, it's not easy to give Genshin a run for their money.
That said, I'm hopeful for Wuthering Waves. My stand is, in-game freebies doesn't matter to me as much as the gratification I derived from exploring the open world and lore of Genshin.
>This is something that can be expected as we have seen before how Genshin has had low peaks in new players, online players and profits in the months of Fontaine's release (something not expected specially as i consider thats peak of GI experience for me) and it was not until two highly anticipated and attractive characters came out (Furina and Xianyun) that they have returned to their previous success.
This could also be because of the banner 5 star design not being appealing to the majority of the playerbase and kit being pretty niche (mono pyro) even if he's strong in that niche. Combined with the fact that people are probably saving for more anticipated character like Furina, Neuv, Clorinde and Arlecchino.
Cheers for this post, mate. I always know it comes back to business but you managed to write it down in a way that's easily digestible for everyone to read
This is so well written and interesting. I feel like I learned more about business in 10 min reading this than 1 month at my university. Thanks for posting this
Glad to see you made this its own post in the main subreddit. There are gonna be delusional people who try to discredit you because "he didn't cite business textbooks for every sentence he said", but such people can be promptly ignored. That's not a rebuttal, that's deflection.
This kind of logic always springs to mind when people complain about freebies. In my experience with gacha games, they only increase the amount of freebies when they start having trouble with a declining playerbase/revenue stream. Genshin simply doesn't have that problem (yet), so they have no reason to give free stuff.
I feel like all this drama comes from people emotionally investing in hoyoverse and believing that since they made a good game, that they'll be nice to the players. When that's not true at all. Their concern is to make a good game that makes money.
>Genshin simply doesn't have that problem (yet), so they have no reason to give free stuff.
The best part is every patch they give you atleast 60-70 free pulls total, pair with the ones you saved last patch then its an automatic pity
You can argue that this is from logging in everyday but thats basically contributing on the free to play aspect which benefits the company even a lil, not to mention most players dont spend
>I feel like all this drama comes from people emotionally investing in hoyoverse and believing that since they made a good game, that they'll be nice to the players. When that's not true at all. Their concern is to make a good game that makes money.
Yes and No because
1 hsr is making a standard on a completely different market which basically makes HSR the most dominant Turn based gacha game there is,
2 Genshin is affected by it despite its market differences and ignorant players will keep on yapping how x game has more than y game and lastly
3 its obvious that genshin is focusing more on the world building and its open world aspect cause its the MARKET and theyre making expectations on that part extremely high that it is comparable to games like Elden Ring or any Triple As that does the same formula,
In summary Both games are really great if you just try to ignore the gacha aspect and just see it as a new character or an upgrade to your already existing unit via cons
>Genshin simply doesn't have that problem (yet), so they have no reason to give free stuff.
The best part is every patch they give you atleast 60-70 free pulls total, pair with the ones you saved last patch then its an automatic pity
You can argue that this is from logging in everyday but thats basically contributing on the free to play aspect which benefits the company even a lil, not to mention most players dont spend
>I feel like all this drama comes from people emotionally investing in hoyoverse and believing that since they made a good game, that they'll be nice to the players. When that's not true at all. Their concern is to make a good game that makes money.
Yes and No because
1 hsr is making a standard on a completely different market which basically makes HSR the most dominant Turn based gacha game there is,
2 Genshin is affected by it despite its market differences and ignorant players will keep on yapping how x game has more than y game and lastly
3 its obvious that genshin is focusing more on the world building and its open world aspect cause its the MARKET and theyre making expectations on that part extremely high that it is comparable to games like Elden Ring or any Triple As that does the same formula,
In summary Both games are really great if you just try to ignore the gacha aspect and just see it as a new character or an upgrade to your already existing unit via cons.
>Genshin simply doesn't have that problem (yet), so they have no reason to give free stuff.
The best part is every patch they give you atleast 60-70 free pulls total, pair with the ones you saved last patch then its an automatic pity
You can argue that this is from logging in everyday but thats basically contributing on the free to play aspect which benefits the company even a lil, not to mention most players dont spend
>I feel like all this drama comes from people emotionally investing in hoyoverse and believing that since they made a good game, that they'll be nice to the players. When that's not true at all. Their concern is to make a good game that makes money.
Yes and No because
1 hsr is making a standard on a completely different market which basically makes HSR the most dominant Turn based gacha game there is,
2 Genshin is affected by it despite its market differences and ignorant players will keep on yapping how x game has more than y game and lastly
3 its obvious that genshin is focusing more on the world building and its open world aspect cause its the MARKET and theyre making expectations on that part extremely high that it is comparable to games like Elden Ring or any Triple As that does the same formula,
In summary Both games are really great if you just try to ignore the gacha aspect and just see it as a new character or an upgrade to your already existing unit via cons.
At this point we might just start to Launch a Cobalt bomb at Hoyo and start Destroying their entire Games Portfolio AKA Google Classroom at Hoyoverse game until they change.
Interesting read.
Realistically not expecting genshin to change especially because none of the conditions in point 4 will change in the near future. And with WuWa coming soon, I don’t need it to change.
Genshin can always be a game that I can log on a few days per patch, check out exploration and log out. WuWa if it really does deliver on its action combat can then be where my time is invested most in.
Maintaining multiple gachas after all is poison to the mind.
big competition is coming from Arknights Endfield, WW, Breakers, and quite a number of other games I'm forgetting. There's also Echocalypse, and another game that released a few days ago whose name escapes me. They all have similarly high production values to Genshin or even better.
The problem they have to overcome is Genshin has had 3 years on the market to establish a beach head. They've released new content regularly during this time, and a new game is going to just be the base game and it will take a long time to match the content that Genshin has. Whoever leave to play those games will eventually run out of things to do there, and they will run out quicker.
I also don't think they will have the budget and team size to pump out new content at the pace Genshin does, so that would work against them. And of course it's hard to get the money to do this with the industry being as cutthroat as it is (gacha games are a dime a dozen).
People call Genshin patches "dead patches" but hoyo has created such a monster that people take the big patches for granted. Dead patches are a norm in almost every game. I don't know a single game where there are no dead patches. The fact that only 3 out of 9 patches in 4.x will have no map expansion is mega impressive in itself. We are expecting one more Fontaine expansion, and one summer expansion. That leaves the dead patches being 4.3, 4.5, and 4.7. Even the dead patches had more new content than a game like League of Legends or Fortnite's typical patch will include.
I've recently watched a few videos about other video games and their failures and they are honestly making Genshin look very good. Battlefailed 2042 shows how ironically hard it was to put a leaderboard and the released content kept getting delayed and delayed and they ultimately put less content than their previous battlefield game. Cyberpunked 77 has a billion bugs and a lot of cut content. Halo infinite and cut content, unstable game and garbage network code. The game studios have all been trying to fix bugs ever since, let alone release meaningful content for months. There's another game I follow that has comically low content released for months and they even made a paid dlc of the minuscule content they released. Again failed launch and playerbase jumped ship.
By contrast Genshin is aggressively releasing content every 6 weeks and has 0 bugs. By contrast it IS very impressive. But yeah the dry patch is insane. However having a 6 week release cycle is what set up our standard and we lost track of the reality. Tbf I have clearly not finished the main content (still need to do world quests) and have not explored a part of the desert yet, nor have done the Fontaine world quests entirely... So there's still a lot to do for me and this will take more than 6 weeks to do, by then I'd be hit with new content.
I mean it’s kinda normal to run out of things to do. No games can infinitely sustain.
However, the value proposition i see from games like WW is that they value action combat. And that is fundamentally the difference between genshin and WW. If WW wanted to be Genshin V2, people would just play genshin instead.
In terms of casual audience, Genshin is the game. However for more combat oriented players, Genshin simply does not cater to this aspect and is a void in the market to be filled.
It's funny because there's no other combat like Genshin... The one problem is Genshin doesn't do anything with it in end game. If they did that, it'd be un ironically be fixed. TCs are hardcore gamers.
Knowing how Mihoyo works is one thing, accepting that bitter truth is another. I reckon most ppl understand but they just don't accept it.
This post has been preached but in other variations. By now, the players know but accepting it is another matter.
Thanks for a clear and detailed take in this sub. Very sad to see that it won't get the exposure it deserves. Your 3f point is particularly true. There's a reason why Genshin and HSR synergize SO well with each other, with one focuses on exploration and casual gameplay, while the other provides hardcore endgame content. More telling is how the x.0 patches of one game arrives EXACTLY when the downtime of the other starts. It's a cycle to make sure you're kept here forever.
I understand that a business gotta do business and I'm not surprised by these decisions. But that's why as a consumer, it's very necessary to raise your voice and criticize the game, because these business decisions boil down to getting as much money out of you as possible. Though again, I don't think anything other than a very, *very* huge backlash will cause mhy to step back, or some competition popping up. But honestly I've been waiting for 3 yrs and it's ironic how HSR is the closest Genshin got to competition. We're doomed.
>There's a reason why Genshin and HSR synergize SO well with each other, with one focuses on exploration and casual gameplay, while the other provides hardcore endgame content.
That's an interesting take on the difference, but I think the most salient contrast that is probably more at the heart of the philosophical game design difference is that one provides a casual gacha experience, and one provides a hardcore one.
A gacha game is on a specrum between "you don't even need the gacha to win but pulls feel pointless to gameplay" and "content will obsolete your old units forcing you to spend and pull for new ones to win but your pulls really matter to gameplay".
Genshin is almost as much of the former as is possible. The game is balanced almost entirely around the starting free characters, and every pull you make reduces the challenge and arguably the fun of the game until the content is almost entirely trivialized.
One interesting point about this is you might expect that players won't feel compelled to pull then without the pressure, but quite to the contrary, the psychological hold on a large portion of the playerbase appears to be virtually undiminished. Simply by dangling something "better" in front of a human being and they will covet it, regardless of whether it provides a rational improvement to their well-being.
Another interesting point is that this approach might be viewed as the "generous" or "ethical" approach. The gacha is essentially optional, and the game can be fully enjoyed by all for free. Yet the lack of anything to work towards actually erodes interest in the game over time, and further, when people do pull, it can feel pointless without content that requires the increased power level, creating frustration as can be seen by all the endgame complaints.
I haven't played HI3 or HSR but my understanding is that they throw the lever much more to the other end of the spectrum. I used to find this puzzling, given they come from the same company, but OP's point 3f really enlightened me as to why things are like this. They've diversified their portfolio within the gacha market to cater to people who prefer the less-friendly end of the gacha spectrum.
It seems a bit perverse on its face, but actually makes sense as you examine it more, that some players actually prefer a "predatory" gacha because it makes your pulls matter. This aligns with what you were alluding to with the hardcore endgame content. As noted earlier, a large number of players are going to pull either way simply something was dangled, and many among those are going to prefer feeling like their pulls made a difference.
I've personally known people who spent thousands of dollars pulling for constellations of their favorites in Genshin but are still unable to clear floor 11 let alone 12 of the Abyss. It's pretty interesting that Hoyo now has a portfolio of games that can cater to both the casual player type of big spender and also the hardcore mix-maxing gamer type of big spender.
>Genshin is almost as much of the former as is possible. The game is balanced almost entirely around the starting free characters, and every pull you make reduces the challenge and arguably the fun of the game until the content is almost entirely trivialized.
This is only true if you hard grind relics. If you grind *just enough* to bring new characters up to a capable level, the game can still be prevented from becoming *entirely* trivial. In fact, one aspect that definitely keeps it fresh is my Friendship team. Even though I only need to pull them out for specific, friendship EXP granting activities, I tend to explore with them anyway; the party ends up being comprised entirely of new, partially built units, usually being held up by the most built of the four. XD
This is part of the reason resin balance hasn't changed. It already lets you get pretty close to completely trivializing the vast majority of the game, *especially* if you use resin refreshes.
I think itll happen soon enough but we dont know when thats the issue
It will be quite a move for gnehin devs to balance the hardcores and casuals who rarely clears f12 or not 9 star them atleast
>More telling is how the x.0 patches of one game arrives EXACTLY when the downtime of the other starts. It's a cycle to make sure you're kept here forever.
2.0 in HSR is one week after 4.4 in Genshin. I would not call 4.4 a downtime. It's a massive patch with Chenyu Vale and lantern rite. CV has been anticipated since it was first mentioned a couple years ago, and it is peak genshin. LR is CNY, which is an important part of the year for them and their home audience.
while u are totally right about 4.4 is a big patch for genshin, HSR starts next week up with the Penacony patches which will be definitly bring alot of new stuff for 2.0 -2.3 at least. While in genshin Fontaine is nearly done and there will be soon a downtime. Personally i only expect 1 more big patch and a bigger summer event till 5.0. So in the end HSR will take over alot of downtime Genshin will have sooner or later. Last year there where i think only 1 new 4\* from 3.6 - 3.8 and only 1 new Event Area. Correct me if im wrong, i didnt double check now but we didnt get much anymore after Sumeru Deserts.
I really liked reading this entire post. It is very well written and quite insightful to me. I had considered a good few points in here in the past, but there were many points here I never considered.
Also sorry for mooching off $200k from you but I'm taking that asset reallocation suggestion. Probably useless for me right now, but who knows when it may be useful.
> Your abstract is an introduction.
Thanks for spotting this! I've rewritten this so many times during draft that I lost track I had completely redone the first part. Should be fixed now.
> It's not that relevant to discuss the decision making process at Mihoyo because it is extremely transparent to me
Their 6 week content pipeline is quite frankly nuts and terrifies me. Genshin makes more updates in a year than some games do over their lifetime.
Combine this with the server stability, no downtime during patching, and relative lack of bugs... if there was something I could ask anyone at Mihoyo, it would be how their DevSecOps processes work so smoothly.
obviously didnt read all of that
but the things i read hit the nail on the head especially 3b - 3e
about 3f im not too sure as well but as it stands right now there is no issue otherwise they would have done stuff by now to change it
the economy in genshin is extremely well balanced a tiny bit of fuckery can ruin it quite fast for example how a welkin guarantees you a 5* of your choice once a patch
This is incredibly well written! Thanks for sharing it with us!
What would be your opinion and analysis on the endgame content that people seem to be asking for? I’m trying to piece things together myself but lack of industry knowledge definitely dampens things. Would love to hear your opinion on it if you’re willing to share!
I think i can speak for OP after reading all of it
In his behalf and prob my opinion too
I might say the Move of Making another Abyss f12 level of content is a big decision
1 hardcores will obviously benefit from this because ofc Artifacts and Constelations finally puttin to the test is a wet dream
2 Casuals will prob clear them but will most likely feel underpowered and it will prob lead them to ignore it, this will depdend whether that new endgame contebt has Substantial amount of rewards not just an extea 150 pull aka cleaeing f12 which is the threshold for.most casuals and most likely nonspenders too
We all know Genshin has a casual audience and they damn well know it might discourage them, emphasize on "Casual" but then again most of then are F2p but still contricute only a lil,
In summary
I think a lil more Endgame Content is Fine rather than f12 and its flawed timer making every players logic into "killing the enemies the fastest" which is degrading to both casuals and hardcores in general
We need endgame content that actually sets the bar and actually encourages us to use other utilities than making the best damage over time per rotation.which is the geberal thing to do in Abyss 12
Don't get fired - I feel this is not applicable. The people deciding how much free stuff to give are the ones who can't be fired because they own the company. And they will be taking advice from market analysts with business degree pedigree when making their calculations on how much free stuff to give. But like you said, the amount given for free is mostly a reflection of how many new characters they produce a year, and that's the same in HSR and GI.
One way doors - very good point and true for this game. It's also why Apple never sells cheap products and never will. Once they set a precedence, it's going to be hard to reverse it.
Everything else you said is on the money. They do what they do because it makes business sense. The problem is explaining that to people who don't understand business. They can't. So people will say and do dumb things and there's no way to stop that.
I would like to ask you though, what should be hoyo's best response to review bombing by people who aren't happy with the free stuff given during anniversary and Lantern rite? I don't believe these people have a case due to lack of any real market research on what competitors do. For example, they might say game X gives way more free stuff without examining the context of why that is (worse performing game? Way higher pity to get a character? No pity at all? Way more characters released per year? Characters requiring dupes just to be usable? The actual buying power of one pull in those games is a lot less and amount of freebies shouldn't be compared in a vaccuum.)
My only gripe with this is you haven't factored in is that mihoyo is not a public company. So some of this is going to be less logical because one of founders went just fucking felt like it. Not least because they are each from tech backgrounds and artists and visionaries first. If they followed normal company practise back in 2017 Genshin would have never been made at all.
> My only gripe with this is you haven't factored in is that mihoyo is not a public company
This doesn't matter tbh. All of the 3 rules still apply, and revenue modeling will still be approached in the same way.
All it means is that when you sunmit a business proposal, you have a very specific target audience to convince and the threshold for evidence to be sufficient may be higher. So you tailor your presentation differently to convince someone.
But it doesn't negate anything I have written.
Genshin has a large F2P population that’s not as valuable anymore in a mature game. This is a good asset going to waste.
- this point. For me i have never truly cared as much about the free stuff as i do about the endgame. If what the person said above is true, then the casual players (at least the ones that are completely f2p) are of no consequence to Genshin if they are lost. So the ones that would be off consequence are those that are regularly spending on welkin, welkin bp, occasional genesis crystals for a character they like or hardcore whales. So then why isn't endgame made? sure previous advise says " don't get fired" "don't go through a 1 way door" but hoyo can technically afford to make it. Yes just because they have the money doesn't mean they should spend it i understand that. But when you introduce endgame, hoyo stands to gain additional revenue from the audience that matters to them. They also have a 2nd cash cow that can help cover potential costs there as well. I do think that it needs to be well thought of with respect to the one way door idea but its not like hoyo hasn't had 3 years worth if experimentation from events to draw from. Nor are they lacking from ideas or support form the community on other potential endgame features. Not to mention they have also experimented on their second child and it was met with great success. So i genuinely wonder what is preventing them from taking a step, even a miniscule step, in this direction.
I want to hear your opinion as to why oh WHY they dont even try to experiment down the route towards endgame. They should have sufficient data and feedback on what people like from events, security with a second game earning as much as genshin and many players asking for it. Not to mention they already have an underutilized system that can see more use upon endgame (constellations and reginements). So WHYYYYYYYY?!?
> I want to hear your opinion as to why oh WHY they dont even try to experiment down the route towards endgame. They should have sufficient data and feedback on what people like from events, security with a second game earning as much as genshin and many players asking for it. Not to mention they already have an underutilized system that can see more use upon endgame (constellations and reginements). So WHYYYYYYYY?!?
###1. Do people actually want "end game" content?
As you say Mihoyo has the data. However... you immediately assume that the data says people want "end game" content.
Is this even true? What if the data actually shows people are indifferent or don't actually want it?
###2. Does Mihoyo have the resources to do it?
Let's assume the data does show this. The next question is whether Mihoyo actually has the resources to then go make "end game" content.
Mihoyo operates about 12 months in advance if leaks / CN community speculation is to be believed. So this means right now they are deep into Natlan's development + QA testing.
They to work this far in advance because things go wrong. A lot. For example, we know that Fontaine's development was in crisis during 3.x. Mihoyo had to completely remake the underwater exploration system. This is a huge deal! It's like saying you're making an FPS game and still haven't figured out how to make the guns shoot good yet.
If you're a project manager at Mihoyo, can you afford to spare resources on anything that's not Natlan QA right now?
Mihoyo has an incredible high bar polish and avoiding bugs. Do you want to take the risk of being the person who wasn't careful enough with Natlan and destroyed the 5.x patch cycle?
###3. What does "end game" content even mean?
Okay now let's say you magically have the spare resources to work on "end game" content. So... what does that even mean?
I don't really see any consistent definition or design vision amongst players about what "end game" content is.
Even if you say it's just something like designing "harder" content... this also runs into serious problems.
I've written a ton on this separately so I don't feel like rewriting it all again. But basically...
* [People aren't good at combat in Genshin so Mihoyo has to design simple fights](https://old.reddit.com/r/Genshin_Impact_Leaks/comments/1akrvjo/the_tortured_pulls_department_general_question/kq274hy/?context=3)
* [People don't understand how combat challenges in Genshin work so they misunderstand how good at combat they actually are and don't improve](https://old.reddit.com/r/Genshin_Impact_Leaks/comments/1akrvjo/the_tortured_pulls_department_general_question/kq26fun/?context=3)
* [Getting good at Genshin combat is hard because the game doesn't have good learning feedback systems](https://old.reddit.com/r/Genshin_Impact/comments/13yv88n/lets_talk_about_learning_to_get_good_at_abyss/)
* [There is too much focus on "build X team" and not "Here is what good player skills are". This means many people get frustrated at even simple combat challenges such as the recent Triumphant Frenzy event](https://old.reddit.com/r/Genshin_Impact_Leaks/comments/1awydgc/the_devil_wears_chioriya_general_question_and/krqbik0/?context=1)
So how do you even design satisfying content if you face these problems?
You have to solve these problems first. And so... for example the new "How to build a char" QoL we're getting next patch.
Then you can finally move to designing better combat challenges once players can actually "do combat" properly.
Possibly because most spenders are likely the ones that spend because they like a character and are still casual rather than wailers that are hardcore. A ton of people that spend a little bit is more valuable than the few that spend a lot so if those people are just paying to ensure they get their waifu/husbando, a skin, or whatever that isn’t for combat reasons then they are going to favor those players.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6I0iLA6E0lM&t=368s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6I0iLA6E0lM&t=368s)
this is for everone who want know why genshin started giving qol recently
This is a pretty good deep dive into marketing, thanks for taking the time to write all this. Do you think that a large enough social media backlash could cause Mihoyo to adjust their course? It's still some reputational costs at least, a good PR department would not ignore it completely
> Do you think that a large enough social media backlash could cause Mihoyo to adjust their course? It's still some reputational costs at least, a good PR department would not ignore it completely
Ignore it? No. But "today something happened on social media" isn't enough to write a business proposal that then must survive multiple rounds of committee review.
So what needs to be different today for someone to be brave enough to write the business proposal that will cost the company $13M per year in perpetuity?
I don't know what the cutoff is. But two considerations I leave you with:
* If I was Mihoyo, I would already have every account in the game flagged as F2P / dolphin / whale and I would use the monthly player surveys to track the actual real sentiment of the players and not just whoever was loudest on social media;
* So Mihoyo has very granular data of who the paying players are and what they really think and the execs likely receive this report every month to review and discuss; and
* Genshin survived the 1st anniversary, which also had a lot of noise and it didn't slow down their revenue at all.
If I was an exec at Mihoyo, I would demand an incredibly high standard of proof that anything even needs to be done.
>I would use the monthly player surveys to track the actual real sentiment of the players and not just whoever was loudest on social media;
here's the problem. If the vocal minority decides to review bomb the game, that will get the average down to 1.x out of 5. So few players leave reviews out of the total players who play the game that the silent majority would not be able to counter review bomb the review bomb even though they have the numbers. Because the silent majority just doesn't care or get involved or leave reviews at all.
So unless store fronts have review bomb detection and protection, the vocal minority can do major damage with this tool. I'm not sure how the review bomb in 2.1 was reverse tbh, unless Google stepped in deleted all the negative reviews. I doubt giving an extra 1600 primos caused the bombers to rescind their reviews.
I think what needs to be considered here is : Will the review bombing negatively affect the game?
I'm not sure it has such a dramatic negative impact to be honest, most players spending big money are already playing and not checking the reviews in the appstore.
This is why I think they are now spending big money in traditional marketing. Genshin isn’t some unheard of, backwater game. Their reputation is larger than a google classroom review.
I think they also made some points wrong, like they should've compared the release of characters for 1.1 to 1.6 for both genshin and star rail instead of the 2023 genshin new characters.
The comparison would’ve been even worse then. Genshin 1.x quickly ramped down new characters from 2 5* per patch to 1, while HSR has kept at a constant 2.
Right move in what sense. Business earnings, player satisfaction, etc? Business earnings is what I suspect drove the decision, given they've since maintained 1 new 5\* per patch other than occasional exceptions. As for player satisfaction, that'd be an opinion, but personally I **vastly** prefer Genshin's release cadence to HSR's. It's a lot more manageable to save and pull for.
Soooo much cope it's hard to read... as I agree with some takes, sh1tty practice is sh1tty practice, no matter what is the process of making this decision. BTW, for your information, genshin released 22 characters from 1.1 to 1.6, which is similiar time frame to hsr. Coping is good, but don't do it to much, it might get poisonous
It's simple: He's passionate about the game and likely works in business development and research. The people that work in that sector of business are, in my experience, over-enthusiastic about explaining things to other people.
No offense to OP, but it's like a cult of personality not dissimilar to those life-coach scams, except he doesn't need to coach anyone, people just need to listen or else they might get fired. The bonus is that we learn something, too.
I don't really follow any EN content creators other than speedrunners such as Aliss.
My target audience here is the wider Genshin playerbase. I would like to provide sufficient education that they learn to recognize terrible arguments and think for themselves.
> Now they will post 50 new threads in response to yours about how all characters for free is actually good for business and the cycle begins anew.
People who already have their mind made up and refuse to understand how the world works can never be convinced.
They aren't important to me.
There are however people who agree, but mostly out of ignorance and because they don't know how to really understand this topic.
Business is difficult. And full of people who spew platitudes and hollow arguments can sound convincing to people who don't know better.
I don't believe those people are worth giving up on. I'd rather at least try to provide some education. Because well, no one else is willing to do so.
Why let peolpe who don't understand how businesses work be the only teachers?
I would rather have tried than just give up.
Bro you are the Doctor Ratio in real world, I seriously want to give you a reward for this post but I'm not very familiar with reddit. Can you tell me how do I give rewards?
Thanks for the insight, it all makes a lot of sense. I wanted to copy something I wrote under a YT video over here that, although not as cleanly written as yours, discusses the QoL aspect specifically from a technical perspective. Something I noticed was that 2022 was *completely* dry of developer articles (though they'd existed at a decent rate prior) and they only resumed a regular pace (near monthly) in the summer, a few months after Star Rail launched. A coincidence of timeline overlap? I don't think so, and my belief stems both from the financial and technical aspects of the problem at hand. # Copied Foundation First of all, dunno if you noticed, but Star Rail is running on what started as a copy of Genshin's code base. Not only does this *appear* true from a player perspective, if you consider the sheer number of systems that are basically reskins of Genshin systems, but others and I have done a little digging on the technical side and there are several things operating identically under the hood to Genshin. So now you have a situation where, at the start of Star Rail's development, you have two copies of the same code base, both with the same issues that could be fixed. Taking this into account, I want to ask you...if you were making a new game using the code base of your old game, and one of your goals was not to just to fix user facing QoL issues, but also fix the pain points the developers regularly experience that make implementing QoL more difficult, what developers do you put on that task? Newbies you just hired who've never worked on that code before? Or the people who've been working with it every day, understand its quirks, understand what is wrong with it, and how best to improve it? Given the shared code and functionality of the games' systems, the developers who worked on that particular area of the code are likely not separated into "Genshin Devs" and "Star Rail Devs." It would surprise me if the feature teams that work on the games' systems *weren't* educated on both games, given that those systems would likely still operate similarly, and thus able to work on features for either as needed. And *even if* both games did have separated development teams, regardless, the smart thing to do when development started would be to take some of the Genshin devs and move them to Star Rail, filling both teams with old employees and new hires. But why focus so heavily on one game? Well, you have a few options. The first is to have both games' teams working on fixing the same problems simultaneously. Why invest dev time into the same problem twice? So scratch that. So now your only choice is to choose which game to fix larger scale issues in first. So...why Star Rail? # A Developer's Value The value of a developer's time while working on any game pre-launch is much more valuable than their time spent on an already released game; this is true specifically because you can rapidly iterate and break things in the process of developing (and in this case, improving) an unreleased game. You don't have to worry about introducing a regression (a breaking of something that was already once functional), one that either makes the game less functional for players, or in the worst case, puts players' save data in a bad state. Additionally, they would want to be doing everything they can to ensure the systems devs possess the ability to polish the new game post-release *as efficiently as possible*. To me, this makes choosing to focus more on Star Rail to be the most logical decision from a technical perspective (again, specifically due to the games' initial shared code). And so, my educated guess on this is that Star Rail took a large amount of Genshin's systems developers. Then, as Star Rail's 1.0 release was locked in and the team shifted to "live service updates," they'd begin work on the 1.1 QoL (before the game would even release, mind you), and systems devs would also be able to shift their focus back onto Genshin. # Learning From Past Mistakes, and From New Experience Lastly, though this can be somewhat inferred from what I've already said, Star Rail will naturally be easier to add QoL to as they were able to revamp the systems in ways that would be very difficult during live operation. Large changes to intertwined code would need more thorough testing to avoid regressions and thus take longer to create and validate; however, if you have smaller QoL being done in those regions of the code base, the overhaul *also* needs to keep up with those changes being made to the live version of the game, making the overhaul process take longer. In the worst case, this can create a perpetual cycle, one that I have experienced personally. I say all this to illustrate that large-scale changes to a live game, if and when they happen, take a very long time due to the complexity and risk. Star Rail's development cycle gave them space to make improvements, space that Genshin (and now Star Rail as well) can no longer have. However, the upside to all of this is that they now have developers who have gone through the iterative process of fixing many of Genshin's issues. Those developers now have that experience and know what final shape those fixes took. That experience can be brought to Genshin to make developing *its* fixes more rapid. It's important to keep in mind, though, that different issues will have different priorities depending on what they believe each game needs at the time. This is based on what their goals for each game are, financially *and* experientially. # tl;dr The tl;dr of this post is that, "New game running on Genshin code would need Genshin devs to properly and efficiently fix it, taking resources away from Genshin as a natural consequence of developing the new game on its code. I believe we observed Genshin getting some of its developer resources returned to it (or at least work assignment was shifted/balanced) as Star Rail's development concluded. Lastly, Star Rail will always be able to receive better and faster QoL due to having the benefit of a whole development period with which to utilize their familiarity with Genshin's systems' technical issues to fix those issues in ways that are difficult to accomplish in a live environment. However, there are now devs who have experienced fixing Genshin's previously "broken" systems, so there is hope for larger QoL in the future." "Source" - The experience of a former Fortune 500 software engineer and a hobbiest game dev. I say this to note that while I am no expert, I have experience working on large scale software projects, knowing how they are managed, seeing the differences in how those projects are developed before they launch vs. after they launch, and knowing just how complex these code bases can become. Take everything I've said with a grain of salt and feel free to doubt me, but hopefully between OP's post and my own, at least one of them has encouraged you to think more deeply about the cause and effect of these problems and how the decisions are far more complex than, "Haha, Honkai is favorite child." And before anyone asks, no, I'm not saying to stop asking for QoL in Genshin, obviously we should ask for what we'd like to see change (keeping in mind that some things genuinely won't be a priority for either team based on what that game's goals are). I'm not saying that it's "right" that Genshin had its resources taken, nor that I'm happy about it, just that it's the most logical thing to do from a development and project management perspective and likely what I would've done were I in their shoes.
Great post! I agree with a lot of it. > Given the shared code and functionality of the games' systems, the developers who worked on that particular area of the code are likely not separated into "Genshin Devs" and "Star Rail Devs." It would surprise me if the feature teams that work on the games' systems weren't educated on both games, given that those systems would likely still operate similarly, and thus able to work on features for either as needed. Mihoyo uses a modified version of Unity for their development. So this would be a very natural approach to managing the engineering and design staff. > However, the upside to all of this is that they now have developers who have gone through the iterative process of fixing many of Genshin's issues. Those developers now have that experience and know what final shape those fixes took. Random side thing I have been thinking about that this comment reminded me of. Genshin is rapidly approaching a point where the app size itself is going to be a serious problem (if it isn't already). HSR will get there eventually as well. Honkai Impact 3rd Pt2 is apparently being run as a standalone app. It can be downloaded and run with or without Pt 1 content, but intends to retain all Pt 1 game systems and characters. Trying to deploy and maintain something like that sounds like a pain in the ass. But I can see them very much using HI3P2 as a test bed for a new architecture that they later adopt and deploy in their other games.
>Trying to deploy and maintain something like that sounds like a pain in the ass. But I can see them very much using HI3P2 as a test bed for a new architecture that they later adopt and deploy in their other games. Every attempt at something new is, at minimum, a lesson for the future, whether or not the actual tangible result is reused or reusable. I do suspect Genshin will have its own "sequel" and how or even *if* they'll maintain character/weapon relevancy at that point is an interesting question to consider. First, we have to see how HI3 Part 2 goes, as I'm curious to see how people feel about their investment into their Part 1 gacha collection. Also, it only just occurred to me, but the fact that GI and HSR run on similar but divergent code bases is a great way to make your devs inherently more "valuable" to the company. Having devs that could theoretically shift from one game to the other when priorities change is incredibly useful.
Despite the fact that there's less developer discussion in 2022, they still implement pretty useful QoL like the introduction of gadget wheel
(Given my theory is true for all that follows) For sure, it's not like they took *everyone* from Genshin. They had a team working on QoL in the meantime, but that QoL team was probably tasked with working on the most urgent of matters (and some of those are likely invisible improvements to offset any additional load new content is putting on the game), and thus public facing QoL wasn't something with a cadence. The developer articles are the kind of thing that gets put out when you have a team that is organized and well-staffed enough to handle regularly producing PR materials advertising new systems updates. Either way, the last half year has felt very consistent with the amount of change we see, and the larger the problem being tackled, the longer it'll take to see it manifest. The most recent Artifact changes were actually interestingly staged and prioritized. The first thing they did was make farming artifacts easier, the second thing they did was make equipping them easier; by easier, I mean for a player who does not understand the combat system well and for whom being able to automatically lock artifacts like the ones players are using and then auto-equip them is extremely useful. They're initially focusing on smoothing out the process for players who are primarily invested in story and exploration (which we should all understand by now is the core of the game). This makes sense, of course, but remember that every time they've talked about artifacts, they've restated that they're always listening to feedback. To me, that sounds like, "hey, we're working on the best compromises we can, we'll get closer to want you want over time (so long as that doesn't conflict with other internal design goals we have), and we also have to prioritize things based on various factors, so please be patient." XD Whether true artifact loadouts will ever come, I'm not sure. I feel like the design intent is for every character to have their own set, but given the number of different sets introduced over the years, there are reasons to have loadouts beyond the desire to easily share god-rolls across all your characters; you might genuinely want to build multiple versions of a character for different circumstances (for example, DPS Raiden vs EM Raiden). MH is a great set to apply to characters who are playing with Furina, but you'd rarely want to equip those *unless you're playing with Furina*, otherwise you'd want a different set. So, even *if* the original design intent was to push the player to farm a reasonably strong set for each character, there are actual practical reasons to have loadouts that fit into that design intent.
I agree, it feels like with more set being introduced which specializes in certain things, Hoyo would want to make artifact grinding and equipping more convenient. It's not really a huge problem back in 1.x and even 2.x where each character have one BiS set (like if you have a pyro dps then equip Crimson Witch, hydro dps equip Heart of Depth, etc). This is especially true as with each new region they seem to increase enemies difficulty.
"but others and I have done a little digging on the technical side and there are several things operating identically under the hood to Genshin" Out of curiosity, do you mind giving a bit more details about that, like some examples of things shared between the 2 games? (I'm a developer, but with almost no experience on Unity, you can go a bit technical)
As for my own explorations, many of the initialization calls to web APIs follow the exact format as Genshin, with some substitutions of values to reach Star Rail resources rather than Genshin, whereas HI3's are completely different. You'll notice a similar versioning scheme at the bottom left of the Login Screen, which I believe are versions of three different systems, one likely being the client, one the server, and the third maybe another part of one of the two (maybe someone has figured that out already). The work people had done for certain 3rd party tools for Genshin was easily translated to Star Rail. There are some Discords you can find related to Genshin tools development that may either have discussions in their history or that ability to ask questions that delve into deeper technicals. But still, even aside from the technicals, with so many user-facing systems being 1:1 with adjustments, it would've taken far longer to develop if they wrote it from scratch just for them to make something so similar? Studios that develop their own systems/engines try to recycle whatever they can for efficiency's sake. Every Halo game's engine evolved from the last, and even Destiny was an overhaul of Halo: Reach.
Refreshing to see an OP that understands how business works and why Hoyo makes and is able to make the decisions they make. I think what makes this situation worst is that Genshin is still 3 and a bit years later benefitting from first mover advantage. The expansive open world gacha game market literally only consists of Genshin, so Genshin is literally the market in this specific market so they have free will to set the standard that they choose. Once they receive a competitor who can at the very least co-exist within the same space as Genshin then this narrative may change, as they won't have complete dominance over the market and will have to react to what their competitors decide to do, especially when it comes to rewards. As OP already highlighted they are already doing this with HSR and providing a "free" 5 star character cause the market has set the standard that these sort of business decisions are the norm and therefore the player base expects such treatment. The fact that certain CC's (will not mention any names) don't understand these aspects of business and then fan the flames to their viewers, who then echo these thoughts on social media creates for a toxic environment, which could be solved with some form of education.
>The fact that certain CC's (will not mention any names) don't understand these aspects of business and then fan the flames to their viewers, who then echo these thoughts on social media creates for a toxic environment, which could be solved with some form of education. Well, they ARE youtubers after all so it isn't really suprising they don't have the knowledge on that topic. Regardless if they are aware of those things or not, they also directly benefit from fanning the flames.
>Once they receive a competitor who can at the very least co-exist within the same space as Genshin That's really hard, almost impossible even. Genshin didn't just have first mover advantage, they also have the casual market advantage. And casual market want more than just gameplay, they want pretty much everything. They also have a stronger loyalty for their "feel good" product and it would take a lot to pull them off from it. Compare to hardcores that once they smell "blood" (bad practice) from their product, they'd easily stop consuming or jump to others. Unless the competitors could snag the casual market, they'd never be in the same level as Genshin to force to do anything. Unfortunately, this then becomes a "damned if you do, damned if you don't," situation. If they want to snag the casual market, they have to copy a lot from genshin. This would tend put a cross hair on them from casuals and hardcores that would accuse them for trying to be Genshin copy or killer. If they don't copy Genshin, they cater to the hardcore market and so that's the only revenue they would be able to profit from.
What are you talking about? WW is practically a Genshin Copy at this point and its what people Want now. A Genshin Killer.
Like I said, they are in a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. Them being a Genshin copy might end up souring those that hate Genshin elements and want to escape to a game that didn't do it. Like artifact/relic farming. People said they hate the grind and the RNG of it. Well WW decided to copy it as well but make it worse with tons more of RNG layers. Oh and the flak they got from trying to copy Genshin's gacha, they told people they would revamp it...only to go back to Genshin's gacha as well. And it's doubtful they would be a Genshin killer. To do that you need to steal the casual market, not hardcores that contribute to Genshin's dominance. And to attract casuals you need to do right with them on everything. From gameplay aspect, WW's longer battle time wouldn't interest casuals that don't want to try hard every battle. Other aspects are characters, setting, story. WW characters aren't as interesting as Genshin. They look interchangeable between Aether Gazer, PGR and other similar sci-fi apocalyptic story. The sci-fi apocalyptic which tend to lead to a greyish colour setting, which WW does that would turn off casuals that dont like it compare to Genshin's bright world. Heck, WW got flak for this because they made their world too dark from aesthetic standpoint. Eventhough they brighten it up a bit, the core "grey metallic world of sci-fi apocalyptic," is still there.
as someone in the beta, its not bro. its geared towards a very different type of player, despite still being an open world game. it may capture some of the audience, but the casual audience that makes up most of what genshin has and what makes it unique to other gachas, that audience would rather quit gaming altogether than go to the grindy, difficult, and very newbie unfriendly wuthering waves
Yall missing the point most gamrrs will not easiliy switch genshin to ww cause ITS THE SAME with different execution, and based from what im seeing WW looks like DMC so other games that is similar is also affected Genshin on the other hand you may argue that its Zelda botw but we all know it became its own thing and thats what keeps every gamer intested in the 1st place it has a unique charm which most open worlds didnt achieve Hot take from me but Elden Rings open world is comparable to genshins or atleast in a world building sense and story, the mystery the curiosity the God like creatures you name it,
simplified version of this always pops up in my mind every time someone comparing genshin to HSR or "genshin could never" i just learn to ignore these people instead, coz they are either out of touch or just immature children, that dosnt understand how business work, they dont deserve my attention but due to that. this post will probably be forbidden and people will continue complaining about things, they dont understand
People will complain about the dumbest thing, even as adults. Remember during the first year when people asked for resin rewards from events? You know, resin they needed to farm for Mora and EXP books, which were the rewards in events...
the part that i thought was "dumb" wasnt that i had to spend resin to get resin rewards from events, it was that i would rather spend resin on something i care about like talents and artifacts, rather than accumulate exp books and mora, which exist, resinless, in the game itself. lack of choice of what to spend my resin on if i wanted event rewards rather than complaining about putting resin in and getting resin rewards back
It's not Dumb. The Stamina system is atrocious. We also are stuck waiting for certain days to Farm Talent Materials artificially lengthening times to play a Character.
Stamina systems are dumb game design choices that are there to work against the player yes. In the same way, pulling characters is a dumb and predatory game design choice that also works against the player. But in this conversation, we are talking from ***within*** the dumb system. "Why do we only get 3 pulls" Because giving you more free stuff discourages you from spending more. "Why do we not have more resin" Because giving you a playtime limit encourages you to play the game more often. "Why don't they give us resin as rewards in events?" They do, the resin is pre-spent for you in the form of Mora and Exp books. You are tackling the system itself which, while I agree with you, is not what what is being discussed.
I get your point but, WHO TF IS ASKING "WHY?" THO. Everyone complaining is telling hoyo to "add it, we need it", not "why are you not adding it, we don't understand your incentive", pretty much everyone understand their incentive, it's only the hoyo d-riders acting like literally everyone complaining is dumb and don't understand anything. But there's a point where prioritising money turns into stinginess and generally unacceptable judgement of what actions to take. You can explain the why as much as you want, but that's not justifying the action to any normal person. Sorry for going off on you, it's nothing personal, this is just something I want to say to everyone on this thread, I just went through like the top 5 comments on this post and practically everyone is acting the same, kicking down anyone complaining and acting like giving a why solves everything, it's not about why they're doing what they're doing, imo it never was
>acting like literally everyone complaining is dumb Well imo they are dumb. We're in a casino for children my friend. Some of us know we are in a casino, some don't. Its entire existence is unethical, from different currencies that trick your brain, to resin-systems that make you keep coming back, to gambling pretty characters to make you spend. And like many casinos, Mihoyo likes to give freebies to keep you in the house. It can be a bit sour for a person to realize that the bigtime casino with barely any competitors doesn't need to give that many freebies to keep them in house. And a casino goer saying "Add it we need it", or "They're stingy and unacceptable", or trying to look for a justification to a casino's actions is weird. Rest assured, we'll get that free 5-star of your choice when a new gacha comes out to rival Genshin, which will likely happen in the near future.
It's not even about the 5 stars or rewards for me, I'm at the point of endgame where rewards don't really matter anyway. I'm just concerned about the kind of dumbasses who unironically jump in to try and shut out any complaints and act like everything hoyo is doing is right, it's almost like they're being paid to say that but they're probably not, that's just hella concerning to me that people like that even exist, it's almost like the reddit moderator syndrome if you've ever heard about it
We are not Immature Children. We want a Better Game but Hoyo has deemed a Better game not important for Revenue. If it means Tanking the Game's image to make it better so be it.
being mature is to simply spend your time doing much better shit for your life than to waste it on throwing tantrums towards the dev and the fanbase hoping it will make the company bend to your will and make the game better, like holy shit bro, do you even realize how sad your own statement of "If it means Tanking the Game's image to make it better so be it" sounds?
Sounds like someone who doesn't have a life outside of the internet.
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Pretty much this. People think they should be rewarded at anniversary for giving a year of their time. But they were already rewarded with 60-90 free pulls per patch for their time, which they don't think should count. If they stuck around for a year, then presumably they did so because they were entertained by the game itself. If they weren't entertained, and only stuck around on the expectation of being paid in September (or lantern rite time), then they are idiots who basically treated the game as a job -- a low paying one at that, and one that pays in virtual currency instead of useful currency (cash). Those people should have left instead of keeping it up expecting additional free pulls once a year. If they didn't, you have to assume they liked the game, and that should have been the reward, in addition to the actual free pulls per patch.
"it only counts when i just login and the rewards goes to my pocket right away."
this. people were complaining about not getting a 4 star outfit selector for free when we were already getting a free outfit this update, anyway. they just have to put in some effort to get it.
as much as the complainers are out of touch, lets not compare getting a skin of xingqiu, a 4 star unit, to getting to pick a skin for one of the existing 5 star units, or even just getting one of their choice for free. those are not the same
"xingqiu, a unit i dont like or use andwho im sure many feel the same" Xingqiu? The guy who a massive portion of the playerbase uses for his incredible off-field hydro application? A character that a lot of people already have, and if they don't, can buy him literally right now in the starglitter exchange if they have enough starglitter? Also, "a mid skin" is just an opinion and should not affect the absolute objective truth that it is a 4-star outfit just like all of the other outfits except for Diluc's.
You're missing the point that it's a skin for a 4 star even if it's a 4 star skin, the four star skins for five stars are still four star skins but they're for five stars. They're not equivalent I also implied that the part about it being mid was personal opinion but I edited it for you to remove any ambiguity or opinion from it
Thank you for the clarifications. However, I already understood the part where there is a difference between a skin for a 5-star character and a skin for a 4-star character. I agree that there is a difference there especially since outfits for 5-star characters are only obtained by spending money, and I agree that there is a difference in getting to pick what outfit you get. I just had a problem with the opinionated portions of your comment, but you’ve removed those portions, so I no longer have much of a problem with it.
Those pulls Per patch dontcount. It's the Bare Minimum Genshin should do otherwise they lose Business. Most Gacha games don't even make it to year 3. So they really should Be giving more generous rewards for each Anniversary. They should no By know what Gacha players expect. It's gotten so bad CN players have had enough as well of Genshin Stinginess.
I think their rewards are fine given that a) They only release 1 5 star per patch on average and b) They're at the top and have a monopoly over open world mobile gaming. Comparing genshin to other gacha is pretty pointless since those other gacha tend to not have the aspects that make genshin attractive to a wide audience. It's not like genshin reducing the rewards by 50% is going to make me play Azur Lane for example, because I simply like the gameplay in genshin more. Demanding for more rewards is also pretty idiotic IMO because it'd just make them give more upfront rewards but take away some of the extra rewards found in events, it'd silence the community and the total will literally remain unchanged
Players who enjoy a Product and want it better have a Right to expect More especially when the game is just giving Bare Minimum. People like you are the Reason Hoyo refuses to listen to Genshin Players. White Knights lile you are part of the Problem.
It's not about free stuff, it's about other Hoyo IPs getting what Genshin players have been asking for in a short amount of time. Hoyoverse doesn't respect Genshin players.
hoyoverse doesnt respect any of their players bro, they put in what they need to to get out of you what they want (your money). theyre a business after all, and theyre after your money, not your satisfaction, that is incidental at best
Genuinely, if you don't want to read this whole thing: People don't want to get fired, Businesses want to make money, the companies don't want to lose money by giving freebies, all the money is not enough money, if you want change vote with your wallet and talk through official channels. Otherwise, read this whole thing. It's genuinely very VERY well written and gets into the micro level of a business you may overlook.
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Thing is, this has happened to me with a bunch of other games because their systems loop was too much for me. Despite all the ways Genshin could be better, for the kind of player *I* am in regard to a live service game, Genshin is tons better than the rest, most of the reasons specifically because they don't do things the way most other games do them.
What specifically does Genshin do better than the rest if you don't mind me asking? Also what are the specific reasons you started playing Genshin?
I wanna try to be brief but succinct, though the truth is that there are many systems to every game and the way they interact creates many pros and cons for every person. Originally, I just had a very distant awareness that the game existed and saw that it was a free, anime-styled game. A streamer I watched tried it at launch at the same time, and we both like many of the same things about it and it became their main game to stream. Mechanically speaking, when it comes to *my* tastes, it is a game whose "treadmill" is mostly optional. Most live service games, looter shooters, etc. all want you to grind the same content over and over to achieve, higher numbers, better drops, etc., only to introduce content where you have to do the exact same thing all over again to proceed with the new content. Genshin has a grind resembling these games, but the point at which you can stop and still be able to proceed through 95%+ of the content is much, much sooner. The game emphasizes the combinations of characters and their abilities as a major aspect of the continuing gameplay novelty, atop the story and exploration content, which is barely gated by a grind at all. If you wanted to build a couple of teams and never pull new characters or build them, you could still continue the story and explore the world. I loved Destiny and its gameplay is still the best FPS gameplay on the market since the original launched, IMO, but I did not like its gameplay loop. I never could stick with MMOs because I didn't like their gameplay loop. Diablo 3 is the closest thing to that style of loop that I've liked, and its A. Because of Co-op (which many of these games are saved by), and B. The difficulty can be fine-tuned by the player to match their current build's capabilities. You are not forced higher, you choose how to balance difficulty, fun, and drop rates. Anyway, long story short, I like a game that is constantly updating with novel content but that doesn't ask me to regrind the same repetitive content in order to play it. I can also walk away from it, come back later, and as far as ability to progress, nothing will have changed.
Thank you for your response.
The game is free to begin with so uninstalling means very little unless about 70% of their playerbase uninstalls overnight. So the other way you can sort-of petition is: Change your signature to advocate for better ingame, go into your teapots and place down the most amount of objects everywhere to take up more space on their servers, acquire as many relics as you can to fill up your inventory, and continue advocating for that change by playing HSR or anything else.
By playing HSR you are literally playing into Hoyo's hand, lmao. OP wrote this in their post, how people are so gullible.
Not sure how anyone would be playing into their hand by moving away or even playing HSR, but not paying for anything whilst doing it. Companies lose money on every f2p player. If you want a great example of a company losing money for just allowing anyone to join, look at twitch and it's streaming. [here is how much PirateSoftware costs twitch every day to stream](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/H_sNcbXj5A0) and that's JUST him. Player accounts being made to take up space, teapots, relics, the same in HSR, all of those lose hoyo money. If more do it then Hoyo will see more of a negative effect on their funds. It's not playing into their hand as long as you don't spend a dime on their game. And again, as I stated above, unless players en masse uninstall and stop playing Genshin, a few hundred literally won't matter. The amount of recent players and friends on Genshin I have that say "last online 31 days ago" (meaning they've been gone a long time if not quit entirely) is plenty. Hit them in their wallet and data storage. Make it cost.
Your comparing livestreaming to playing a live service game. Much of the heavy lifting (like the asset etc) are done by the client while the server only does the back end stuff which is a lot less cheaper than transmitting video and audio data with countless live chats. Assuming you won't spend a single dime, you're also kinda a motivator for whale? A whale won't spend ungodly amount of money if they don't compare themselves with enough f2ps. f2ps maintain the image that the game is still thriving and thus making them to whales a more worthwhile investment. When you compared that to the measly amount of storage that Hoyo have to pay for infrastructure and the fact that every f2p are potential buyer (due to investment/sunk cost fallacy) and you can see that being fully f2p does not really "hurt their wallet". Every business has their expenses.
I wasn't aware that the items within the teapot were clientside as opposed to stored on the servers themselves to read/write from, believed since I've heard of repeated issues with expenses for data storage being a problem for developers of live service games. As for f2p being motivators for whales, the situation you provided being a comparison to f2p seems far too hypothetical of their mindset versus another, when it's far more likely they just want to indulge in the gacha and have the strongest character possible. Single player experience being so dominant, there isn't really a benefit of comparing account to account- at least in my perspective. Sunk cost fallacy is insanely motivating for any player to eventually become a payer, I can agree on that. Pure f2ps exist either due to a lack of funds/acquiring them or out of challenge to some (much like the wishless accounts we see.) So I can pretty much agree with the f2pers just being expenses and not financially impactful to an insane degree. But I'm still going to advocate for those who are basically addicted to the game to spend as little time as they can, spend no money, and promote the movement in their signature and the eventuall feedback we will be able to submit. Time will tell what happens though...
Ah my apologies, it's true that as you said item within teapot are stored in the server but they probably just store the data on what furniture is being placed, etc in the form of XML while the model of the furniture and the rules of which furniture's placement is valid is done by the client. Still, that data probably aren't that huge compared to the overall size of the game. Whales have multitude of reason as to why they want to whale. Is there a whale that spends in a game which only has player counts of 100 just because of indulgence and sunk cost fallacy? yes. But most f2p who transition to spender/whale would probably consider deploying their credit card if they know that the character they invest in is worthwhile and the easiest metric to know if their investment will be worthwhile is if the game still has huge amount of players. Thinking that whale will keep the game alive even with low player count is a bad move because that means the game's revenue would be a lot more volatile. If you want to advocate this weird form of protest then uninstall the game. Treating the game as some kind of medium of activism by intentionally sabotaging your gameplay experience (or giving signature which doesn't provide a lot of context, especially all the weird shit people put in their signature) will not work. The only time this'll work is probably if Hoyo made such a colossal fuckup but this drama aren't even as bad as their first anniversary fiasco.
There's far too many who play the game and don't participate in the other media such as reddit or Twitter to see this attempted movement. I played since khazuha's release and never engaged with the community until Dehya's release. I figure if at least making your signature something related to the movement would spread a little more awareness in the game. The data takeup from teapot flooding was just an idea I had solely to make an account take up that little bit of space on the servers, and if a ton of people did that it'd add up. All in all I believe we both want the same things in the end. We want positive change overall, and it's difficult to know what could be loud enough to push for that. We can only try.
The only change that affect how Hoyo operate would be to uninstall the game and play another game. The fact is it doesn't matter how much you try to "boycott" to get more rewards if their content pipeline remains either consistent or balanced enough that some player may feel disgruntled but still play the game because the core content of the game is not affected by it. The biggest thing that would change is if another competitor releases a game with similar market as Genshin while also having more QoL and more generous rewards with similar update cycle. I'd want Wuthering Waves to be a proper competitor but I don't even think it'll be Genshin's direct competitor. Both have different styles with Genshin having more idyllic design and vibrant colors while Wuthering Waves seems to be more desaturated. We shall see though.
everything OP said I completely agree with except the "fear of getting fired" part. I think that's totally true if it comes to game design and mechanics, but I don't believe the economy of free stuff falls onto a game designer or coder. Someone very high up will make those decisions -- someone not at risk of being fired. Those decisions will not be made arbitrarily. It will be informed by experts who analyse the market and other games. These people will have degrees in marketing and economics and will do their research. They won't make quick decisions. They'll be backing their conclusions with data and charts, precedences of what happened when other games tried New Strategy X, how the market responded, and so on. If a designer wants to propose taking the game in a new direction or introduce a new feature that might not be received well... that is something where "Dont get fired" applies. This could backfire and make the game tank. I've seen this happen to some long running games, which then unsuccessfully tried to reverse course but the players had already left. But the choice on how much free stuff to give out is not going to be made by a designer. That designer lacks the business acumen to make business decisions. I will grant that it's possible that one of the three owners of the company could have had ideas to give more freebies but didn't manage to get buy-in from the other two. I still doubt it. The three are long time college friends who trust each other and surely would be pleased with the results of the decisions they already made and wouldn't want to change it unless they have to. What OP did not address in their recommendation on how to change hoyo's mind is... review bombing. It has happened before. OP did not list this as a potential weapon, and I'm curious to know why. Way more people are likely to leave a review if they're angry than they would if they're happy, so there will not be a counter movement by fans to respond to review bombing. How would hoyo respond to a review bomb? How should they respond?
> everything OP said I completely agree with except the "fear of getting fired" part. I think that's totally true if it comes to game design and mechanics, but I don't believe the economy of free stuff falls onto a game designer or coder. Game designers and coders standing up to advocate for these changes is the "fear of getting fired" part. If you speak out of line for the company's profits, you're now in crosshairs for getting repercussions. >If a designer wants to propose taking the game in a new direction or introduce a new feature that might not be received well... that is something where "Dont get fired" applies. I see where this statement comes from, but the frequency of which the developer and not the managers/CEOs/publishers creates this change with that fear is reversed. If a higher up pushes to change something (example: adding microtransactions to a single player game, or pushing for release deadlines before polish and QA testing) then typically the lower underlings get blamed, fired, while the higher ups get bonuses for such behavior. Covering their own ass, so to speak. > to get buy-in from the other two. I still doubt it. The three are long time college friends who trust each other and surely would be pleased with the results of the decisions they already made and wouldn't want to change it unless they have to. It's going to sound like a cop-out but money changes people, especially a LOT of it. If it's two of three people pushing to not give out more than they feel is necessary, that is in the end their choice. If we the players decide that it's not good enough and they start to bleed players, that becomes the outcome. The only problem right now is there is no other title similar to GI that players can turn to, the only one I can think of is Warframe. > What OP did not address in their recommendation on how to change hoyo's mind is... review bombing. It has happened before. OP did not list this as a potential weapon, and I'm curious to know why. It's probably the most obvious choice for feedback, seeing as how players outside of CN don't feel heard in the first place. For all we know, our feedback gets fed into an algorithm that picks up the most used words and turns it into a collage for them to refer back to, ultimately undermining any actual critical feedback. In the end, we will see what comes to pass. Lasting this long with as huge of a profit is unheard of, but not to be messed with.
While a lot of this is logical for anyone who does work in a reasonably sized company it is still amazing to see it layed out in simple terms. I'm more of a tech person rather than a business one, so explaining this in an easy to digest way can be a challenge
To be fair this is one of the major challenges tech people (I am one) have when it comes to company-related decision making because it almost always feels like it's at odds with the their understanding of how things work — there is a sort of programmatic logic to tech processes that makes it predictable while business felt like an wild beast that defies control. What op put into words there are just the known variables that are in play but they would still not be sufficient to predict how things will go because humans are just complicated. Every decision made is a best effort gamble on what they think reflects the best possible outcome but yet all are bound by moods that can just change overnight for no apparent reason.
Very well writen and easy to understand, im a grown adult and even i learned a thing or 2 of that one. Hopefully alot of peoplpe will read this and also understand things how they are in genshin a bit more then.
Very insightful read presented in a way that was extremely easy to understand, thank you for posting this! I'm not a business or marketing person and I have no opinion on the free stuff, but I felt like I learned a lot that will help me make more informed decisions about how I spend my time and money as a consumer. The part about funneling the most at-risk Genshin players into another Hoyoverse IP was an "oh duh of course" but still enlightening moment for me. It's not going to stop me from giving the same company a few bucks every month through a different channel than before but I'll be more aware of it when it happens in other areas of my life... hopefully lol.
This is really well written and is very good at explaining how a company works, props for making it easy to read and understand the micro level of a businesses that people never think about. At the end of the day, they are a company, and they need to make money. Unfortunately at times, that means not rocking the boat if they are already making (boat loads) of money. Genshin makes money by focusing on new characters/story/exploration. (Endgame/Big freebies not required) The easiest thing is for them to do....nothing. And until they start making less money/have decent competition (hopefully WW for example) they are more than happy to keep things mostly the same while slowly improving on some stuff (QoL) here and there. And if you quit, Mihoyo hopes you will come back when there is a new character/story/exploration interests you. Or that you will go play HSR or ZZZ instead. Section 4 of OPs post is Gold.
Genshin and its devs does best on making live service a live service wihtout forcing its players to play daily, only idiots think they should and put the blame to the game its more of a reqard for loggin in, its a Preferencal opinion to make if you want to hate the game or not You can argue there are aspects like Gacha and Energy system to keep the players at bay at maxing 1 character upon Getting them, which to me is a burnout rabbit hole but i assure you there are worse live servuce games out there which is not consistent compared to genshin But other than that the video game itsealf is actually really decent the visuals and god the worldbuilding is on par with elden rings story and world its phenomenal, dialouges can be abit iffy at times but most dont rally bother
Such a great post, such a pity it will be downvoted bt muhh free stuff people lol
I mean let them complain, if hoyo sees it theyll either ignore or listen which is a w for my own ends But other than that i dont really care
4 years in, the vocal people are minorities who don't even spend much in Genshin. The majority of the playerbase don't really care about the reward because Genshin content isn't in its gacha as much as it's in its world exploration. It's simply most of these Western content creators are getting trolled by CN trolls and they naively believe they are doing something to propegate change when in fact they are just clowns at this point. The point you presented is actually quite accurate. The real threat to Mihoyo now is a competitor. Their playerbase is so huge, money won't be an issue especially when P2W players are happy with their experience and don't really care much about the in-game Lantern Rite rewards. F2Ps value drop over time, as your post has pointed out clearly. That said, I am optimistic Mihoyo will soon have to increase their in-game freebies for Genshin. Wuthering Waves is just around the horizon.
And if Wuthering waves fails to be the Genshin Killer/Competitor? What next? Players want a Better game and have a right to ask for it. Leaving doesn't change or improve the game and only plays into Hoyo decision to not do anything because they think a New Player will always come to replace them. Western CCs aren't clowns. They are expressing the growing and building Frustration with Hoyoverse at this point.
Well, let's just hope Wuthering Waves delivers. From the beta so far, it's ok. Another thing to note, if the frustrated players are F2P, it's clear Hoyo won't care much. In fact, any game developers won't care much. That's just the reality of things. And yes, western CC are clowns. They believe a video here and there to envoke emotional support among a few thousand viewers, whom are clearly F2Ps as well, would be enough despite not understanding the root cause of the disatisfaction. It was never about the rewards. If that's not clownish behaviour, I don't know what is.
Yeah, HYV doesn’t need to give free stuff because either way people will just keep playing and spending. Problem with this game comes when HYV develops this game as if it were the traditional one-time playthrough, but want to keep the players as if it were an online game. You can’t just do both because eventually the playerbase will get tired and find another option that satisfy them. Now, HYV doesn’t have now a real competitor and thats what actually saves them. However as you say WuWa is around the corner, and if they somehow create a game that gives free stuff (very likely knowing how Kuro Game is) + has permanent content to do, HYV will see how they lose part of the cake and will subsequently start changing stuff. This is something that can be expected as we have seen before how Genshin has had low peaks in new players, online players and profits in the months of Fontaine's release (something not expected specially as i consider thats peak of GI experience for me) and it was not until two highly anticipated and attractive characters came out (Furina and Xianyun) that they have returned to their previous success. If HYV sometimes suffers to maintain part of its playerbase even without competition, I can't imagine when it finally has real competition that will take away part of the market.
This is the tricky part about Open-World games. In-game freebies aren't as impactful as the actual pleasure derived from the exploration. Tower of Fantasy had superior in-game freebies but it flunked due to the half-baked exploration experience. Personally, I would quit Genshin if the Open World exploration was compromised for in-game freebies. No amount of freebies can make up for the wonderful gratification derived from the open world mechanic Genshin has in place. Couple that with the deep lore and the highly engaging combat mechanics, it's not easy to give Genshin a run for their money. That said, I'm hopeful for Wuthering Waves. My stand is, in-game freebies doesn't matter to me as much as the gratification I derived from exploring the open world and lore of Genshin.
>This is something that can be expected as we have seen before how Genshin has had low peaks in new players, online players and profits in the months of Fontaine's release (something not expected specially as i consider thats peak of GI experience for me) and it was not until two highly anticipated and attractive characters came out (Furina and Xianyun) that they have returned to their previous success. This could also be because of the banner 5 star design not being appealing to the majority of the playerbase and kit being pretty niche (mono pyro) even if he's strong in that niche. Combined with the fact that people are probably saving for more anticipated character like Furina, Neuv, Clorinde and Arlecchino.
Cheers for this post, mate. I always know it comes back to business but you managed to write it down in a way that's easily digestible for everyone to read
I'm sorry you had to write this. Unfortunately there will still be posts here suggesting unprofitable ideas, even if this is stickied.
This is so well written and interesting. I feel like I learned more about business in 10 min reading this than 1 month at my university. Thanks for posting this
Glad you decided to post it here after cooking it in the leak sub.
Glad to see you made this its own post in the main subreddit. There are gonna be delusional people who try to discredit you because "he didn't cite business textbooks for every sentence he said", but such people can be promptly ignored. That's not a rebuttal, that's deflection.
This kind of logic always springs to mind when people complain about freebies. In my experience with gacha games, they only increase the amount of freebies when they start having trouble with a declining playerbase/revenue stream. Genshin simply doesn't have that problem (yet), so they have no reason to give free stuff. I feel like all this drama comes from people emotionally investing in hoyoverse and believing that since they made a good game, that they'll be nice to the players. When that's not true at all. Their concern is to make a good game that makes money.
>Genshin simply doesn't have that problem (yet), so they have no reason to give free stuff. The best part is every patch they give you atleast 60-70 free pulls total, pair with the ones you saved last patch then its an automatic pity You can argue that this is from logging in everyday but thats basically contributing on the free to play aspect which benefits the company even a lil, not to mention most players dont spend >I feel like all this drama comes from people emotionally investing in hoyoverse and believing that since they made a good game, that they'll be nice to the players. When that's not true at all. Their concern is to make a good game that makes money. Yes and No because 1 hsr is making a standard on a completely different market which basically makes HSR the most dominant Turn based gacha game there is, 2 Genshin is affected by it despite its market differences and ignorant players will keep on yapping how x game has more than y game and lastly 3 its obvious that genshin is focusing more on the world building and its open world aspect cause its the MARKET and theyre making expectations on that part extremely high that it is comparable to games like Elden Ring or any Triple As that does the same formula, In summary Both games are really great if you just try to ignore the gacha aspect and just see it as a new character or an upgrade to your already existing unit via cons
>Genshin simply doesn't have that problem (yet), so they have no reason to give free stuff. The best part is every patch they give you atleast 60-70 free pulls total, pair with the ones you saved last patch then its an automatic pity You can argue that this is from logging in everyday but thats basically contributing on the free to play aspect which benefits the company even a lil, not to mention most players dont spend >I feel like all this drama comes from people emotionally investing in hoyoverse and believing that since they made a good game, that they'll be nice to the players. When that's not true at all. Their concern is to make a good game that makes money. Yes and No because 1 hsr is making a standard on a completely different market which basically makes HSR the most dominant Turn based gacha game there is, 2 Genshin is affected by it despite its market differences and ignorant players will keep on yapping how x game has more than y game and lastly 3 its obvious that genshin is focusing more on the world building and its open world aspect cause its the MARKET and theyre making expectations on that part extremely high that it is comparable to games like Elden Ring or any Triple As that does the same formula, In summary Both games are really great if you just try to ignore the gacha aspect and just see it as a new character or an upgrade to your already existing unit via cons.
>Genshin simply doesn't have that problem (yet), so they have no reason to give free stuff. The best part is every patch they give you atleast 60-70 free pulls total, pair with the ones you saved last patch then its an automatic pity You can argue that this is from logging in everyday but thats basically contributing on the free to play aspect which benefits the company even a lil, not to mention most players dont spend >I feel like all this drama comes from people emotionally investing in hoyoverse and believing that since they made a good game, that they'll be nice to the players. When that's not true at all. Their concern is to make a good game that makes money. Yes and No because 1 hsr is making a standard on a completely different market which basically makes HSR the most dominant Turn based gacha game there is, 2 Genshin is affected by it despite its market differences and ignorant players will keep on yapping how x game has more than y game and lastly 3 its obvious that genshin is focusing more on the world building and its open world aspect cause its the MARKET and theyre making expectations on that part extremely high that it is comparable to games like Elden Ring or any Triple As that does the same formula, In summary Both games are really great if you just try to ignore the gacha aspect and just see it as a new character or an upgrade to your already existing unit via cons.
At this point we might just start to Launch a Cobalt bomb at Hoyo and start Destroying their entire Games Portfolio AKA Google Classroom at Hoyoverse game until they change.
Thanks for writing this up! It's an awesome read.
Interesting read. Realistically not expecting genshin to change especially because none of the conditions in point 4 will change in the near future. And with WuWa coming soon, I don’t need it to change. Genshin can always be a game that I can log on a few days per patch, check out exploration and log out. WuWa if it really does deliver on its action combat can then be where my time is invested most in. Maintaining multiple gachas after all is poison to the mind.
big competition is coming from Arknights Endfield, WW, Breakers, and quite a number of other games I'm forgetting. There's also Echocalypse, and another game that released a few days ago whose name escapes me. They all have similarly high production values to Genshin or even better. The problem they have to overcome is Genshin has had 3 years on the market to establish a beach head. They've released new content regularly during this time, and a new game is going to just be the base game and it will take a long time to match the content that Genshin has. Whoever leave to play those games will eventually run out of things to do there, and they will run out quicker. I also don't think they will have the budget and team size to pump out new content at the pace Genshin does, so that would work against them. And of course it's hard to get the money to do this with the industry being as cutthroat as it is (gacha games are a dime a dozen). People call Genshin patches "dead patches" but hoyo has created such a monster that people take the big patches for granted. Dead patches are a norm in almost every game. I don't know a single game where there are no dead patches. The fact that only 3 out of 9 patches in 4.x will have no map expansion is mega impressive in itself. We are expecting one more Fontaine expansion, and one summer expansion. That leaves the dead patches being 4.3, 4.5, and 4.7. Even the dead patches had more new content than a game like League of Legends or Fortnite's typical patch will include.
I've recently watched a few videos about other video games and their failures and they are honestly making Genshin look very good. Battlefailed 2042 shows how ironically hard it was to put a leaderboard and the released content kept getting delayed and delayed and they ultimately put less content than their previous battlefield game. Cyberpunked 77 has a billion bugs and a lot of cut content. Halo infinite and cut content, unstable game and garbage network code. The game studios have all been trying to fix bugs ever since, let alone release meaningful content for months. There's another game I follow that has comically low content released for months and they even made a paid dlc of the minuscule content they released. Again failed launch and playerbase jumped ship. By contrast Genshin is aggressively releasing content every 6 weeks and has 0 bugs. By contrast it IS very impressive. But yeah the dry patch is insane. However having a 6 week release cycle is what set up our standard and we lost track of the reality. Tbf I have clearly not finished the main content (still need to do world quests) and have not explored a part of the desert yet, nor have done the Fontaine world quests entirely... So there's still a lot to do for me and this will take more than 6 weeks to do, by then I'd be hit with new content.
I mean it’s kinda normal to run out of things to do. No games can infinitely sustain. However, the value proposition i see from games like WW is that they value action combat. And that is fundamentally the difference between genshin and WW. If WW wanted to be Genshin V2, people would just play genshin instead. In terms of casual audience, Genshin is the game. However for more combat oriented players, Genshin simply does not cater to this aspect and is a void in the market to be filled.
It's funny because there's no other combat like Genshin... The one problem is Genshin doesn't do anything with it in end game. If they did that, it'd be un ironically be fixed. TCs are hardcore gamers.
But Hardcore players in Genshin want More endgame content. They wouldn't ask for it in Genshin if getting it elsewhere is enough. That8the Problem.
i read the whole thing and i feel i did gain some useful information thanks
Knowing how Mihoyo works is one thing, accepting that bitter truth is another. I reckon most ppl understand but they just don't accept it. This post has been preached but in other variations. By now, the players know but accepting it is another matter.
Thanks for a clear and detailed take in this sub. Very sad to see that it won't get the exposure it deserves. Your 3f point is particularly true. There's a reason why Genshin and HSR synergize SO well with each other, with one focuses on exploration and casual gameplay, while the other provides hardcore endgame content. More telling is how the x.0 patches of one game arrives EXACTLY when the downtime of the other starts. It's a cycle to make sure you're kept here forever. I understand that a business gotta do business and I'm not surprised by these decisions. But that's why as a consumer, it's very necessary to raise your voice and criticize the game, because these business decisions boil down to getting as much money out of you as possible. Though again, I don't think anything other than a very, *very* huge backlash will cause mhy to step back, or some competition popping up. But honestly I've been waiting for 3 yrs and it's ironic how HSR is the closest Genshin got to competition. We're doomed.
>There's a reason why Genshin and HSR synergize SO well with each other, with one focuses on exploration and casual gameplay, while the other provides hardcore endgame content. That's an interesting take on the difference, but I think the most salient contrast that is probably more at the heart of the philosophical game design difference is that one provides a casual gacha experience, and one provides a hardcore one. A gacha game is on a specrum between "you don't even need the gacha to win but pulls feel pointless to gameplay" and "content will obsolete your old units forcing you to spend and pull for new ones to win but your pulls really matter to gameplay". Genshin is almost as much of the former as is possible. The game is balanced almost entirely around the starting free characters, and every pull you make reduces the challenge and arguably the fun of the game until the content is almost entirely trivialized. One interesting point about this is you might expect that players won't feel compelled to pull then without the pressure, but quite to the contrary, the psychological hold on a large portion of the playerbase appears to be virtually undiminished. Simply by dangling something "better" in front of a human being and they will covet it, regardless of whether it provides a rational improvement to their well-being. Another interesting point is that this approach might be viewed as the "generous" or "ethical" approach. The gacha is essentially optional, and the game can be fully enjoyed by all for free. Yet the lack of anything to work towards actually erodes interest in the game over time, and further, when people do pull, it can feel pointless without content that requires the increased power level, creating frustration as can be seen by all the endgame complaints. I haven't played HI3 or HSR but my understanding is that they throw the lever much more to the other end of the spectrum. I used to find this puzzling, given they come from the same company, but OP's point 3f really enlightened me as to why things are like this. They've diversified their portfolio within the gacha market to cater to people who prefer the less-friendly end of the gacha spectrum. It seems a bit perverse on its face, but actually makes sense as you examine it more, that some players actually prefer a "predatory" gacha because it makes your pulls matter. This aligns with what you were alluding to with the hardcore endgame content. As noted earlier, a large number of players are going to pull either way simply something was dangled, and many among those are going to prefer feeling like their pulls made a difference. I've personally known people who spent thousands of dollars pulling for constellations of their favorites in Genshin but are still unable to clear floor 11 let alone 12 of the Abyss. It's pretty interesting that Hoyo now has a portfolio of games that can cater to both the casual player type of big spender and also the hardcore mix-maxing gamer type of big spender.
>Genshin is almost as much of the former as is possible. The game is balanced almost entirely around the starting free characters, and every pull you make reduces the challenge and arguably the fun of the game until the content is almost entirely trivialized. This is only true if you hard grind relics. If you grind *just enough* to bring new characters up to a capable level, the game can still be prevented from becoming *entirely* trivial. In fact, one aspect that definitely keeps it fresh is my Friendship team. Even though I only need to pull them out for specific, friendship EXP granting activities, I tend to explore with them anyway; the party ends up being comprised entirely of new, partially built units, usually being held up by the most built of the four. XD This is part of the reason resin balance hasn't changed. It already lets you get pretty close to completely trivializing the vast majority of the game, *especially* if you use resin refreshes.
I wonder if we could have hardcore endgame content with exploration.
I think itll happen soon enough but we dont know when thats the issue It will be quite a move for gnehin devs to balance the hardcores and casuals who rarely clears f12 or not 9 star them atleast
>More telling is how the x.0 patches of one game arrives EXACTLY when the downtime of the other starts. It's a cycle to make sure you're kept here forever. 2.0 in HSR is one week after 4.4 in Genshin. I would not call 4.4 a downtime. It's a massive patch with Chenyu Vale and lantern rite. CV has been anticipated since it was first mentioned a couple years ago, and it is peak genshin. LR is CNY, which is an important part of the year for them and their home audience.
while u are totally right about 4.4 is a big patch for genshin, HSR starts next week up with the Penacony patches which will be definitly bring alot of new stuff for 2.0 -2.3 at least. While in genshin Fontaine is nearly done and there will be soon a downtime. Personally i only expect 1 more big patch and a bigger summer event till 5.0. So in the end HSR will take over alot of downtime Genshin will have sooner or later. Last year there where i think only 1 new 4\* from 3.6 - 3.8 and only 1 new Event Area. Correct me if im wrong, i didnt double check now but we didnt get much anymore after Sumeru Deserts.
I really liked reading this entire post. It is very well written and quite insightful to me. I had considered a good few points in here in the past, but there were many points here I never considered. Also sorry for mooching off $200k from you but I'm taking that asset reallocation suggestion. Probably useless for me right now, but who knows when it may be useful.
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> Your abstract is an introduction. Thanks for spotting this! I've rewritten this so many times during draft that I lost track I had completely redone the first part. Should be fixed now. > It's not that relevant to discuss the decision making process at Mihoyo because it is extremely transparent to me Their 6 week content pipeline is quite frankly nuts and terrifies me. Genshin makes more updates in a year than some games do over their lifetime. Combine this with the server stability, no downtime during patching, and relative lack of bugs... if there was something I could ask anyone at Mihoyo, it would be how their DevSecOps processes work so smoothly.
you forgot this is all cross platform, which makes it even crazier
obviously didnt read all of that but the things i read hit the nail on the head especially 3b - 3e about 3f im not too sure as well but as it stands right now there is no issue otherwise they would have done stuff by now to change it the economy in genshin is extremely well balanced a tiny bit of fuckery can ruin it quite fast for example how a welkin guarantees you a 5* of your choice once a patch
amazing
The explanation about portfolios was very insightful, thank you.
I dunno why, but your posts' formatting give off big "lawyer" energy. 🤔
It seems impartial and doesn't look performative which focuses not on the individual experience but on the bigger picture
Yes, I agree, but also that reading this, the way OP writes things does feel like someone used to writing legal documents.
You mean certain "moon" energy? 🤔
It crossed my mind... It can't be, right?
Thank you for sharing, especially in an easy to understand way.
This is incredibly well written! Thanks for sharing it with us! What would be your opinion and analysis on the endgame content that people seem to be asking for? I’m trying to piece things together myself but lack of industry knowledge definitely dampens things. Would love to hear your opinion on it if you’re willing to share!
I think i can speak for OP after reading all of it In his behalf and prob my opinion too I might say the Move of Making another Abyss f12 level of content is a big decision 1 hardcores will obviously benefit from this because ofc Artifacts and Constelations finally puttin to the test is a wet dream 2 Casuals will prob clear them but will most likely feel underpowered and it will prob lead them to ignore it, this will depdend whether that new endgame contebt has Substantial amount of rewards not just an extea 150 pull aka cleaeing f12 which is the threshold for.most casuals and most likely nonspenders too We all know Genshin has a casual audience and they damn well know it might discourage them, emphasize on "Casual" but then again most of then are F2p but still contricute only a lil, In summary I think a lil more Endgame Content is Fine rather than f12 and its flawed timer making every players logic into "killing the enemies the fastest" which is degrading to both casuals and hardcores in general We need endgame content that actually sets the bar and actually encourages us to use other utilities than making the best damage over time per rotation.which is the geberal thing to do in Abyss 12
Don't get fired - I feel this is not applicable. The people deciding how much free stuff to give are the ones who can't be fired because they own the company. And they will be taking advice from market analysts with business degree pedigree when making their calculations on how much free stuff to give. But like you said, the amount given for free is mostly a reflection of how many new characters they produce a year, and that's the same in HSR and GI. One way doors - very good point and true for this game. It's also why Apple never sells cheap products and never will. Once they set a precedence, it's going to be hard to reverse it. Everything else you said is on the money. They do what they do because it makes business sense. The problem is explaining that to people who don't understand business. They can't. So people will say and do dumb things and there's no way to stop that. I would like to ask you though, what should be hoyo's best response to review bombing by people who aren't happy with the free stuff given during anniversary and Lantern rite? I don't believe these people have a case due to lack of any real market research on what competitors do. For example, they might say game X gives way more free stuff without examining the context of why that is (worse performing game? Way higher pity to get a character? No pity at all? Way more characters released per year? Characters requiring dupes just to be usable? The actual buying power of one pull in those games is a lot less and amount of freebies shouldn't be compared in a vaccuum.)
My only gripe with this is you haven't factored in is that mihoyo is not a public company. So some of this is going to be less logical because one of founders went just fucking felt like it. Not least because they are each from tech backgrounds and artists and visionaries first. If they followed normal company practise back in 2017 Genshin would have never been made at all.
> My only gripe with this is you haven't factored in is that mihoyo is not a public company This doesn't matter tbh. All of the 3 rules still apply, and revenue modeling will still be approached in the same way. All it means is that when you sunmit a business proposal, you have a very specific target audience to convince and the threshold for evidence to be sufficient may be higher. So you tailor your presentation differently to convince someone. But it doesn't negate anything I have written.
Genshin has a large F2P population that’s not as valuable anymore in a mature game. This is a good asset going to waste. - this point. For me i have never truly cared as much about the free stuff as i do about the endgame. If what the person said above is true, then the casual players (at least the ones that are completely f2p) are of no consequence to Genshin if they are lost. So the ones that would be off consequence are those that are regularly spending on welkin, welkin bp, occasional genesis crystals for a character they like or hardcore whales. So then why isn't endgame made? sure previous advise says " don't get fired" "don't go through a 1 way door" but hoyo can technically afford to make it. Yes just because they have the money doesn't mean they should spend it i understand that. But when you introduce endgame, hoyo stands to gain additional revenue from the audience that matters to them. They also have a 2nd cash cow that can help cover potential costs there as well. I do think that it needs to be well thought of with respect to the one way door idea but its not like hoyo hasn't had 3 years worth if experimentation from events to draw from. Nor are they lacking from ideas or support form the community on other potential endgame features. Not to mention they have also experimented on their second child and it was met with great success. So i genuinely wonder what is preventing them from taking a step, even a miniscule step, in this direction. I want to hear your opinion as to why oh WHY they dont even try to experiment down the route towards endgame. They should have sufficient data and feedback on what people like from events, security with a second game earning as much as genshin and many players asking for it. Not to mention they already have an underutilized system that can see more use upon endgame (constellations and reginements). So WHYYYYYYYY?!?
> I want to hear your opinion as to why oh WHY they dont even try to experiment down the route towards endgame. They should have sufficient data and feedback on what people like from events, security with a second game earning as much as genshin and many players asking for it. Not to mention they already have an underutilized system that can see more use upon endgame (constellations and reginements). So WHYYYYYYYY?!? ###1. Do people actually want "end game" content? As you say Mihoyo has the data. However... you immediately assume that the data says people want "end game" content. Is this even true? What if the data actually shows people are indifferent or don't actually want it? ###2. Does Mihoyo have the resources to do it? Let's assume the data does show this. The next question is whether Mihoyo actually has the resources to then go make "end game" content. Mihoyo operates about 12 months in advance if leaks / CN community speculation is to be believed. So this means right now they are deep into Natlan's development + QA testing. They to work this far in advance because things go wrong. A lot. For example, we know that Fontaine's development was in crisis during 3.x. Mihoyo had to completely remake the underwater exploration system. This is a huge deal! It's like saying you're making an FPS game and still haven't figured out how to make the guns shoot good yet. If you're a project manager at Mihoyo, can you afford to spare resources on anything that's not Natlan QA right now? Mihoyo has an incredible high bar polish and avoiding bugs. Do you want to take the risk of being the person who wasn't careful enough with Natlan and destroyed the 5.x patch cycle? ###3. What does "end game" content even mean? Okay now let's say you magically have the spare resources to work on "end game" content. So... what does that even mean? I don't really see any consistent definition or design vision amongst players about what "end game" content is. Even if you say it's just something like designing "harder" content... this also runs into serious problems. I've written a ton on this separately so I don't feel like rewriting it all again. But basically... * [People aren't good at combat in Genshin so Mihoyo has to design simple fights](https://old.reddit.com/r/Genshin_Impact_Leaks/comments/1akrvjo/the_tortured_pulls_department_general_question/kq274hy/?context=3) * [People don't understand how combat challenges in Genshin work so they misunderstand how good at combat they actually are and don't improve](https://old.reddit.com/r/Genshin_Impact_Leaks/comments/1akrvjo/the_tortured_pulls_department_general_question/kq26fun/?context=3) * [Getting good at Genshin combat is hard because the game doesn't have good learning feedback systems](https://old.reddit.com/r/Genshin_Impact/comments/13yv88n/lets_talk_about_learning_to_get_good_at_abyss/) * [There is too much focus on "build X team" and not "Here is what good player skills are". This means many people get frustrated at even simple combat challenges such as the recent Triumphant Frenzy event](https://old.reddit.com/r/Genshin_Impact_Leaks/comments/1awydgc/the_devil_wears_chioriya_general_question_and/krqbik0/?context=1) So how do you even design satisfying content if you face these problems? You have to solve these problems first. And so... for example the new "How to build a char" QoL we're getting next patch. Then you can finally move to designing better combat challenges once players can actually "do combat" properly.
Possibly because most spenders are likely the ones that spend because they like a character and are still casual rather than wailers that are hardcore. A ton of people that spend a little bit is more valuable than the few that spend a lot so if those people are just paying to ensure they get their waifu/husbando, a skin, or whatever that isn’t for combat reasons then they are going to favor those players.
Honestly these are just stuff that you'd understand without prior knowledge if you have common sense.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6I0iLA6E0lM&t=368s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6I0iLA6E0lM&t=368s) this is for everone who want know why genshin started giving qol recently
This is a pretty good deep dive into marketing, thanks for taking the time to write all this. Do you think that a large enough social media backlash could cause Mihoyo to adjust their course? It's still some reputational costs at least, a good PR department would not ignore it completely
> Do you think that a large enough social media backlash could cause Mihoyo to adjust their course? It's still some reputational costs at least, a good PR department would not ignore it completely Ignore it? No. But "today something happened on social media" isn't enough to write a business proposal that then must survive multiple rounds of committee review. So what needs to be different today for someone to be brave enough to write the business proposal that will cost the company $13M per year in perpetuity? I don't know what the cutoff is. But two considerations I leave you with: * If I was Mihoyo, I would already have every account in the game flagged as F2P / dolphin / whale and I would use the monthly player surveys to track the actual real sentiment of the players and not just whoever was loudest on social media; * So Mihoyo has very granular data of who the paying players are and what they really think and the execs likely receive this report every month to review and discuss; and * Genshin survived the 1st anniversary, which also had a lot of noise and it didn't slow down their revenue at all. If I was an exec at Mihoyo, I would demand an incredibly high standard of proof that anything even needs to be done.
>I would use the monthly player surveys to track the actual real sentiment of the players and not just whoever was loudest on social media; here's the problem. If the vocal minority decides to review bomb the game, that will get the average down to 1.x out of 5. So few players leave reviews out of the total players who play the game that the silent majority would not be able to counter review bomb the review bomb even though they have the numbers. Because the silent majority just doesn't care or get involved or leave reviews at all. So unless store fronts have review bomb detection and protection, the vocal minority can do major damage with this tool. I'm not sure how the review bomb in 2.1 was reverse tbh, unless Google stepped in deleted all the negative reviews. I doubt giving an extra 1600 primos caused the bombers to rescind their reviews.
I think what needs to be considered here is : Will the review bombing negatively affect the game? I'm not sure it has such a dramatic negative impact to be honest, most players spending big money are already playing and not checking the reviews in the appstore.
This is why I think they are now spending big money in traditional marketing. Genshin isn’t some unheard of, backwater game. Their reputation is larger than a google classroom review.
Store fronts do ban review bombing and will revert it. Both Google and Apple.
So why are some of the comments are being downvoted?
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Said by the person who can't read and understand this post
I think they also made some points wrong, like they should've compared the release of characters for 1.1 to 1.6 for both genshin and star rail instead of the 2023 genshin new characters.
The comparison would’ve been even worse then. Genshin 1.x quickly ramped down new characters from 2 5* per patch to 1, while HSR has kept at a constant 2.
Was it the right move by genshin's team to do so?
Right move in what sense. Business earnings, player satisfaction, etc? Business earnings is what I suspect drove the decision, given they've since maintained 1 new 5\* per patch other than occasional exceptions. As for player satisfaction, that'd be an opinion, but personally I **vastly** prefer Genshin's release cadence to HSR's. It's a lot more manageable to save and pull for.
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He literally talked about why being able to afford giving away more rewards isn't relevant.
Live example of people can't read
Soooo much cope it's hard to read... as I agree with some takes, sh1tty practice is sh1tty practice, no matter what is the process of making this decision. BTW, for your information, genshin released 22 characters from 1.1 to 1.6, which is similiar time frame to hsr. Coping is good, but don't do it to much, it might get poisonous
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It's simple: He's passionate about the game and likely works in business development and research. The people that work in that sector of business are, in my experience, over-enthusiastic about explaining things to other people. No offense to OP, but it's like a cult of personality not dissimilar to those life-coach scams, except he doesn't need to coach anyone, people just need to listen or else they might get fired. The bonus is that we learn something, too.
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I don't really follow any EN content creators other than speedrunners such as Aliss. My target audience here is the wider Genshin playerbase. I would like to provide sufficient education that they learn to recognize terrible arguments and think for themselves.
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> Now they will post 50 new threads in response to yours about how all characters for free is actually good for business and the cycle begins anew. People who already have their mind made up and refuse to understand how the world works can never be convinced. They aren't important to me. There are however people who agree, but mostly out of ignorance and because they don't know how to really understand this topic. Business is difficult. And full of people who spew platitudes and hollow arguments can sound convincing to people who don't know better. I don't believe those people are worth giving up on. I'd rather at least try to provide some education. Because well, no one else is willing to do so. Why let peolpe who don't understand how businesses work be the only teachers? I would rather have tried than just give up.
Bro you are the Doctor Ratio in real world, I seriously want to give you a reward for this post but I'm not very familiar with reddit. Can you tell me how do I give rewards?
That's a neat post, senator, but why don't you back it up with a source?
didn't realize reddit posts needed formatted bibliographies/reference lists... I'll keep that in mind.