For some reason I've been thinking about giving this game a try. A few questions:
So luckily, I just (basically) started this game recently and can provide some perspective as a new-ish player
General estimate, how long does it take to get from the very beginning to end of current content?
I've been playing a few hours a day every day for about 3 weeks now and I'm only just getting to the 'current' area of the game in the story. Now I don't advance my story quests every day but I do usually log in, do my dailies, and spend my resin (capped daily currency) on ascension materials to keep my characters leveled up. So YMMV. Keep in mind that a lot of content is gated by account level and the most efficient way to increase your account level is to spend time doing quests (both daily and otherwise) so my timetable is probably not too far from where it would actually take as a player starting now to reach current content.
Is this believed to be like tiktok? I.e. spyware for china and a notable security risk?
The game's anticheat is absurdly strong and has ring 0 access on your PC (equivalent to a device driver or your firewall). I would not recommend putting this on a PC you do actual sensitive work on at all. I don't particularly think mihoyo is a malicious actor but who knows what kind of third-party shit might exploit the Genshin anticheat.
If you have a PS4/PS5, I'd say play it on that (I play it on PS5 and it looks incredible). If you must play on PC, then just be aware of what's happening. AFAIK the anticheat doesn't run while the game isn't running but who knows.
I've heard that characters are sometimes available and sometimes not. Can they be permanently missed, or can you 'get everyone' if you hang around long enough?
There's a roster of characters that are always available on the general banner, but most characters only become available when their time-limited banner is running. Theoretically you can be locked out of a certain character forever but pretty much all of them (except Aloy from the SNOY tie-in) have reruns roughly once per year. I would definitely not recommend going into Genshin with the idea of collecting all the characters because that's a good way to make yourself broke. Find characters you like, save your gachabux for them, and whale hard when they appear.
About how much real life cash do you have to drop to get a relatively normal experience from the game?
Zero dollars. You can entirely F2P and it's not even particularly difficult to do so. Money can make certain things a little bit faster, give you access to more characters, and can buy you the BiS weapons for characters (don't do this last bit it's a scam), but all of the content in the game is easily completeable without spending a dime. Money also won't really buy you power - there's certain things you'll have to grind by playing the game to make your characters not shit regardless of how much you spend.
Does this follow the mmo paradigm where 'past' content is relatively easy to go back and complete/obtain with current stuff?
Not really. Your character level cap, weapon level cap, and available content is tied to your account level and your account level affects your 'world level.' World level governs how strong shit is in the overworld in pretty much all of the areas. So as you advance, the enemies gain more stats and levels with you. The major difference is that if you build your characters as you progress, you'll have way more options and so the game will 'feel' easier because you'll be doing bursts more often, critting more often, etc.
How strict is the meta/learning curve, specifically while progressing through the game(as opposed to an endgame meta)? Can you just play with the characters you like or do you need to look up a min/max setup to not have bad time?
The basic rule while progressing is to find a main DPS you like, get them an alright 3* weapon (a 4* weapon would be ideal) that works for them, and funnel all your resources into that character and weapon. For the rest of your team, fill it with supports and level them up as you can (keeping them around 10 levels behind your current level cap is fine while you're initially progressing). Don't build more than one DPS and don't try to min/max - the game will fuck you up.
If you get enough currency, the upcoming banner has a pretty good support to wish on (Nahida) and there's a high probability you'll get some other characters while wishing for her. Also the game will give you free characters from the story as well as just by hitting certain milestones and I recommend picking all of them up (especially Xiangling who is a fantastic off-field character).
In terms of difficulty - if you focus-build a main DPS to carry you and a support or two to complement them, then the game is actually pretty easy to progress through. You can unga-bunga a lot of content.
Personally, I've been following the shark man's guide to progression, and it's gotten me where I need to be to completely destroy the content.
