Genshin Impact

[AI generated waifu]

Honkai 3 was a female only gacha with no male self insert protag (it has a faceless captain now lol) and had a lot of yuri bait which lead to westerns to push this bizarre narrative that mihoyo are super progressive lgbt allies and so are their games, while ignoring the part of hoyo has a history of sexaulizing little girls really bad and zzz artists allegedly drew some "problematic" stuff.

It's a gacha game after all and their approach to making characters is vastly different from most other media. I remember being confused by the lack of romance in genshin, to me it feels natural that a mature character like Zhongli has a wife and children. It was difficult to suspend my disbelief about all these attractive characters having no romantic history because I didn't understand waifu/husbando culture. I also found it confusing that they didn't just make Alhaitham and Kaveh canon since they're so heavily marketed.

To a company like mihoyo the characters exist to cater to demographics which means everyone has to share a community, from gay shippers to lolicons to normies to self inserters. Maybe that's why the community never seems to get along, it's too many different groups being forced together.

It's a cynical way of making characters that makes it difficult for me to get into most gacha games. It's kind of sad to think my favorite characters have to be waifus/husbandos first before they can be characters.

 

[WULULULULU]

How society didn't collapse in on itself without The Holy Endfield Church to lay fucking pipes and pour water will forever be the 8th wonder of the world.

Gacha and worldbuilding is such a farce combination. Worse than isekai worldbuilding. The story cannot be moved unless its the MC and ONLY the MC. I vividly remember a video from Youtuber Josh Strife Hayes about this phenomenon that he calls: Dead Worlds, to quote

I refer to these types of games as 'Dead World games' not because the gameplay or the playerbase is dead but because it should be based on how the NPCs act. They stand around doing nothing. Every NPC in this world would die because none of them do anything.

The worlds of these games would die without us because everyone involved is an idiot and society relies on the player to even function. The entire game is an unrealistic backdrop to the adventure the player is having. I do not feel like I am existing or adventuring through a fantasy world, because this world would never, ever, exist.

tl;dr - Everyone is a retard and YOU have to do EVERYTHING like a janny. No one is allowed to push their weight up unless YOU are involved.

It's a cynical way of making characters that makes it difficult for me to get into most gacha games. It's kind of sad to think my favorite characters have to be waifus/husbandos first before they can be characters.

Isn't that how gacha characters are developed first and foremost? Devs find a market (loli, tomboy, furry, etc), then cater to it hard via design. Character? Nah let's just find a template off our anime catalogue and copy + paste that.

 

[LucasSomething]

It's a gacha game after all and their approach to making characters is vastly different from most other media. I remember being confused by the lack of romance in genshin, to me it feels natural that a mature character like Zhongli has a wife and children. It was difficult to suspend my disbelief about all these attractive characters having no romantic history because I didn't understand waifu/husbando culture. I also found it confusing that they didn't just make Alhaitham and Kaveh canon since they're so heavily marketed.

To a company like mihoyo the characters exist to cater to demographics which means everyone has to share a community, from gay shippers to lolicons to normies to self inserters. Maybe that's why the community never seems to get along, it's too many different groups being forced together.

It's a cynical way of making characters that makes it difficult for me to get into most gacha games. It's kind of sad to think my favorite characters have to be waifus/husbandos first before they can be characters.

Characters are not allowed to have relationships or else it gets in the way of the fantasy. You must have different flavors of waifu and husbandos always avaiable for the self insert mc, but not too many flavors. Only hyper safe beautiful people and plausibly deniable lolis. At best you get like, one token canon straight couple or non standard body type and that will be their entire personality.

The irony is that the big 3 in hoyo are not even particularly good self inserts either. Aether is a short twink, Trailblazer is a garbage diving memelord and Wise is barely a self insert, to the point you can't even play him or change his name and he has a very clear canon personality. Compare them to Rover or Endmin extremely bland F tier isekai protag design.

It's the curse of eternal live service game but it's worse in gacha because you need infinite characters. ZZZ will probably age terrible as characters are simply spawned in the world when their banner starts. Even genshin gave up and handwaves it with "they were busy offscreen but they're here now".

Characters are also not allowed to change. Noele will NEVER a knight because her entire reason to exist is to be "the maid that wants to be a knight". Fischl will NEVER grow out of being a chuni. Kaveh will NEVER leave Haitham's house. You can give Bennet a long quest of development and explain his funny gimmick is actually big world building (hoyo loves this) but he must reset back to "unlucky adventurer boy". It would be like xiangling talking about something other than food or Kaveh

I really fear the day Alice releases and how hoyo will explain her being klee's mom. Even if she has no husband, the implication is that this woman is not a virgin and had sex before already triggers many. There is this cope headcanon that Klee is a godamn clone or homunculus like albedo and man, i really hope it doesn't end up real.

 

[The Lawgiver]

I also found it confusing that they didn't just make Alhaitham and Kaveh canon since they're so heavily marketed.

They don't really get along with each other in any way that'd imply romantic shit between them. Similar weird headcanoning as Ernie and Bert minus the decades of parodies making them gay beforehand.

I really fear the day Alice releases and how hoyo will explain her being klee's mom. Even if she has no husband, the implication is that this woman is not a virgin and had sex before already triggers many. There is this cope headcanon that Klee is a godamn clone or homunculus like albedo and man, i really hope it doesn't end up real.

I really hope they don't retcon Klee's dad out of existence and instead make him another playable guy because that'd be the more reasonable option that'd also give another character for people to roll on.

. You can give Bennet a long quest of development and explain his funny gimmick is actually big world building (hoyo loves this) but he must reset back to "unlucky adventurer boy"

Fischl kind of had this too during that one timed summer quest where her fucking fake country became real as a secondhand effect of fatui experiment shit.

Anyways I don't think that a character should stop being themselves even if they have development. Scaramouche/wanderer/hat guy would be such a boring and shitty character if he was just "ah me have no memory of myself i'm nice now" like the leak shit implied it was gonna be with him.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

tl;dr - Everyone is a retard and YOU have to do EVERYTHING like a janny. No one is allowed to push their weight up unless YOU are involved.

No dude, it's the usual youtube faggot making you think basic writing tropes are bad by giving it a negative name and associating it with video games. You could make the exact same argument on the Lord of the Rings, that only the fellowship does positive changes and every one else lives in a doomed life, it doesn't magically make any subversive work on that trope be good.

You want the main character be present for every positive change because it's bad writing to have major off-screen events. Especially in gaming where you need to inform on those changes. Ditto you don't want a player to do a quest only to be told someone already did it in the meantime.

 

[Cooked Rabbit]

Gacha and worldbuilding is such a farce combination. Worse than isekai worldbuilding. The story cannot be moved unless its the MC and ONLY the MC. I vividly remember a video from Youtuber Josh Strife Hayes about this phenomenon that he calls: Dead Worlds, to quote


tl;dr - Everyone is a retard and YOU have to do EVERYTHING like a janny. No one is allowed to push their weight up unless YOU are involved.

Isn't that how gacha characters are developed first and foremost? Devs find a market (loli, tomboy, furry, etc), then cater to it hard via design. Character? Nah let's just find a template off our anime catalogue and copy + paste that.

When I first downloaded Genshin I felt a little amazed because there are so many nods to the Western esoteric tradition (like the names of demons, "Paimon" for instance, the term "hypostases," hints that astrology would turn out to be significant), and combined with the graphics, which for a mobile game are genuinely stunning, it felt like a ton of effort had been poured into the development. I have an M.A. in classics and I've done a lot of reading related to hermeticism, so I was truly excited to see how the game would develop its story. I quickly became disappointed when I realized how empty the world and development really were though. "Dead" seems accurate enough of a description. I feel the game had a chance to be something phenomenal, and it squandered it to just churn out generic waifu/husbando gacha slop.

 

[Clancee]

You can give Bennet a long quest of development and explain his funny gimmick is actually big world building (hoyo loves this) but he must reset back to "unlucky adventurer boy".

The fact that they couldn't come up with a better reason for his bad luck besides "He's away from his homeland plus Mare Jivari and ley line fuckery" just so they could keep his bad luck gimmick never sat right with me.

That's just how gacha writing is, I guess.

 

[RIPRhongoBongo]

Downloaded Star Rail yet again, picked Adventurine as my welfare unit. Backlog of 27 tickets and what do I get? Trash

 

[Seminar]

If i understood correcly prize pools is different for each player so what rewards did you get on ZZZ ?


And for the existing discussion about the world yeah it is pretty big shame how world seems rather dead (no npcs traveling around except rare few) and shit like that but i guess it is like that in every live service game if i remember correcly. (im thinking of mmos like WOW and shit like that)

 

[Amaranthy]

Characters are also not allowed to change. Noele will NEVER a knight because her entire reason to exist is to be "the maid that wants to be a knight". Fischl will NEVER grow out of being a chuni. Kaveh will NEVER leave Haitham's house. You can give Bennet a long quest of development and explain his funny gimmick is actually big world building (hoyo loves this) but he must reset back to "unlucky adventurer boy". It would be like xiangling talking about something other than food or Kaveh

I feel like honkai 3rd, star rail and arknights fixed that problem with SP/Alter units, they're the progression of the character so they can give them more development

 

[DenseDeerFather]

Played more of Star Rail's story and Sparxie has grown on me. She truly is the final boss of the shithead influencer,
siccing her fans on you, fostering parasocial relationships, problems with law enforcement, a giant fucking ego. She's an utter bitch but I like her.

Please do not neuter her.

I do also like that her JP name is an anagram for Sparkle's JP name.

Hanabi.
Hibana.

Plus the fun fact that Hibana, depending on the character used, means Spark.

To a company like mihoyo the characters exist to cater to demographics which means everyone has to share a community, from gay shippers to lolicons to normies to self inserters. Maybe that's why the community never seems to get along, it's too many different groups being forced together.

The extremely low barrier to entry also helps. Plus golden timing. So you're right that this massive melting pot of demographics results in retarded infighting.

 

[Daddy's Little Kitten]

All this time you assholes couldn't get to Wuling because you couldn't pour some water? What do you mean we need to turn these water wheels by aligning the pipes so that water falls on them? You mean you have the pipes rigged to turn if you hit the rotating poles they're attached to, and you couldn't hit them yourself?

 

[LucasSomething]

Fischl kind of had this too during that one timed summer quest where her fucking fake country became real as a secondhand effect of fatui experiment shit.

Anyways I don't think that a character should stop being themselves even if they have development. Scaramouche/wanderer/hat guy would be such a boring and shitty character if he was just "ah me have no memory of myself i'm nice now" like the leak shit implied it was gonna be with him.

Fischl is in this wacky spot where if you go by her playable version and voice lines alone the girl is 100% chuuni but if you track all her events it implied she's way more mature and she's just kayfabing for fun.

Not saying characters have to be someone else but when your existence is a one dimensional gimmick, which is the case of many 4*, it forces them into staticness. Sayu for example is stuck forever as a "ninja girl with growth defficiency". Hoyo can make up a sad lore reason for her but in the end they'll never change her model or voice lines. It's the curse of making too many characters, some have to be disposable filler.

I feel like honkai 3rd, star rail and arknights fixed that problem with SP/Alter units, they're the progression of the character so they can give them more development

These alter gachas usually have very obvious favouritism that warps the problem in the opposite direction, where it's clear that only the popular ones are getting them and there will be lazy reasons.

btw we are getting anaxa and hyacine skins in genshin

 

[Amaranthy]

These alter gachas usually have very obvious favouritism that warps the problem in the opposite direction, where it's clear that only the popular ones are getting them and there will be lazy reasons.

I don't think you can really say that about arknights, anyone whos plot relevant gets one, and their stories often connected to the main story to show how much they've grown between then and now

 

[The Lawgiver]

Fischl is in this wacky spot where if you go by her playable version and voice lines alone the girl is 100% chuuni but if you track all her events it implied she's way more mature and she's just kayfabing for fun.

It'd be funny if they eventually give her an actual reason for acting that way as in like actual plot relevant super powerful type shit. I mean we already have the weird implication of her literally WILLING A TALKING BIRD INTO EXISTENCE even without all the timed event and character quests. It's one of those things I rambled about before where Oz seemed kinda loosely tied to the whole shit with the thunderbird to some extent. Even trivia and wiki pages bring up how they look similar to each other despite it never getting brought up.


There's also oddly an interesting bit of how seirai island (where the bird was fucking killed after it's rampage) is kind of stuck in an eternal thundering twilight.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

These alter gachas usually have very obvious favouritism that warps the problem in the opposite direction, where it's clear that only the popular ones are getting them and there will be lazy reasons.

Pretty much all the Gacha I play has alters and I'd say only Heaven Burns Red has blatant favourism with some characters having 7 alts, and others only 3. The annoying thing is that it's self perpetuating since the popular characters get more of the spotlight so more people would whale for them, while the ones on the bottom pole remain unpopular due to lack of content.

 

[Dollar Store Sentai]

My son came back to Honkai and apparently won some draw thing and got like 200 tickets. Then pulled Evernight and her light cone in 20 pulls. Don't know how much he's bullshitting, but it annoys me

 

[LucasSomething]

Not all alters and forms in gachas are built equal tho. Some are meant to be in-universe lore developments and others and others are just "costumes", either way it will tie into marketing and money making thus favouritism. If multiple units have 7 alts then i expect half of those to be stuff like "bride dress version" and "summer version".

Unless your story follows a small cast in the first place so you have the same girls getting new forms which was the case of honkai 3 and i think a few others. But even HI3 was full of bias and eventually created new groups and made them playable with single forms, who may or may not come back or be forgotten. HI 3 also would straight up make up imaginary units like griseo who doesn't fight canonically and her moveset was made up for one non canon event (one of the first i played).

Genshin doesn't really work with new forms (outside traveler) because it's too tight with it's world buildinging and lore for that. If you asked the genshin team why there is no "Electro delusion Childe" (used to be a popular theory), they would probably say Childe is a single person so it would make no sense to have 2 childes. I don't think we'll ever see alts in genshin.

Star Rail so far has been very tame with SPs and they make sense lorewise but i'd argue a third dan heng was pushing it and planarcadia has allegedly high amount of new forms of very popular characters (sparkle, blade, aventurine, himeko, silver wolf, etc). I'm sure there will be an excuse for them, but idk if it will be a good one and if it will become a trend every new planet. With 4* going unofficially extinct, they might.

It's part of the curse of infinite content pipeline.

 

[HX-2]

Wise is barely a self insert, to the point you can't even play him or change his name and he has a very clear canon personality.

Well, if that's the case then he's been MIA throughout 2.x and replaced by generic martial arts manhua protagonist, which is fitting because the waifei arc is really just another shitty martial arts manhua, complete with the deus ex machina powers (they didn't even bother to hind it lmao) and generic evil bad guys

Backlog of 27 tickets and what do I get? Trash

not sure what you expected otherwise from a Mihoyo game. anyways Shaoji sends his regards

My son came back to Honkai and apparently won some draw thing and got like 200 tickets. Then pulled Evernight and her light cone in 20 pulls. Don't know how much he's bullshitting, but it annoys me

tell him it's not too late to quit.

 

[Troon Whisperer]

Reinstalled HSR so I can claim all the free shit, filled out the survey and called them all greedy kikes then promptly uninstalled again. Once I'm good and bored I'll return to experience the story.