Behind the Mechanics: What the Genshin Battle Designer Shared at Genshin FES
My English skills are not very good, so I use AI to translate Chinese text into English.
### (Raiden Shogun & Venti Design Insights)
At Genshin FES Day 3, a battle designer (known to CN players as “Jige”) shared several design stories behind character mechanics.
Rather than focusing on numbers or balance, he talked about **why certain characters are designed to fight the way they do**.
Two examples stood out in particular.
---
## 1. Raiden Shogun: Energy Recharge as the Return of Ambitions
Many players know that **Raiden Shogun’s Elemental Burst** allows her, while in the Musou Isshin state, to restore Energy to her teammates through her Normal Attacks.
According to the designer, this mechanic was never meant to be just a balance decision.
In Genshin Impact’s lore framework:
* **Visions represent human ambitions**
* **Elemental Bursts are the manifestation of those ambitions**
After the conclusion of Raiden Shogun’s Archon Quest, Ei comes to realize something crucial:
the sword left to her by her sister — **Musou Isshin** — was not meant to enforce a static “Eternity,” but to **carry the ambitions of the people forward**.
This idea is directly reflected in her gameplay:
* She unleashes her own Elemental Burst
* Then, through her attacks, **returns Energy to her allies**
* Mechanically, she is redistributing the very resource that represents ambition
In other words, Raiden Shogun is not just consuming ambition as an Archon —
she is **returning it to others**, allowing those ambitions to continue flowing.
Her strength is not portrayed as domination, but as **circulation**.
---
## 2. Venti: Power Gained by Spending Time Itself
When Venti received new design adjustments, some players felt that extending his Burst’s cooldown looked like an unnecessary nerf.
At FES, the designer explained that this change was **thematically intentional**.
In later story content, Venti is implied to have exerted immense power in relation to **the Mare Jivari**, an act that came at an enormous cost and left him weakened for a long time.
The design philosophy behind his updated mechanics is simple:
> If Venti borrows greater power, he must pay a price.
That price is **time**.
In gameplay terms:
* While Venti remains on the field and uses Normal Attacks
* The duration of his Elemental Burst is extended
* But so is its cooldown
The idea is that Venti is **overdrawing his future time** in exchange for temporary strength.
This theme is further reinforced visually:
* The Anemo sigil that appears during his attacks resembles a **clock face**
* The projectile effects resemble **clock hands**
Symbolically, Venti is not just firing arrows —
he is **casting fragments of time itself** to sustain his power.
### (Raiden Shogun & Venti Design Insights)
At Genshin FES Day 3, a battle designer (known to CN players as “Jige”) shared several design stories behind character mechanics.
Rather than focusing on numbers or balance, he talked about **why certain characters are designed to fight the way they do**.
Two examples stood out in particular.
---
## 1. Raiden Shogun: Energy Recharge as the Return of Ambitions
Many players know that **Raiden Shogun’s Elemental Burst** allows her, while in the Musou Isshin state, to restore Energy to her teammates through her Normal Attacks.
According to the designer, this mechanic was never meant to be just a balance decision.
In Genshin Impact’s lore framework:
* **Visions represent human ambitions**
* **Elemental Bursts are the manifestation of those ambitions**
After the conclusion of Raiden Shogun’s Archon Quest, Ei comes to realize something crucial:
the sword left to her by her sister — **Musou Isshin** — was not meant to enforce a static “Eternity,” but to **carry the ambitions of the people forward**.
This idea is directly reflected in her gameplay:
* She unleashes her own Elemental Burst
* Then, through her attacks, **returns Energy to her allies**
* Mechanically, she is redistributing the very resource that represents ambition
In other words, Raiden Shogun is not just consuming ambition as an Archon —
she is **returning it to others**, allowing those ambitions to continue flowing.
Her strength is not portrayed as domination, but as **circulation**.
---
## 2. Venti: Power Gained by Spending Time Itself
When Venti received new design adjustments, some players felt that extending his Burst’s cooldown looked like an unnecessary nerf.
At FES, the designer explained that this change was **thematically intentional**.
In later story content, Venti is implied to have exerted immense power in relation to **the Mare Jivari**, an act that came at an enormous cost and left him weakened for a long time.
The design philosophy behind his updated mechanics is simple:
> If Venti borrows greater power, he must pay a price.
That price is **time**.
In gameplay terms:
* While Venti remains on the field and uses Normal Attacks
* The duration of his Elemental Burst is extended
* But so is its cooldown
The idea is that Venti is **overdrawing his future time** in exchange for temporary strength.
This theme is further reinforced visually:
* The Anemo sigil that appears during his attacks resembles a **clock face**
* The projectile effects resemble **clock hands**
Symbolically, Venti is not just firing arrows —
he is **casting fragments of time itself** to sustain his power.
Commentaires
Glad to know that that's confirmed at least.
His long slumbers are the price he pays for using Istaroth's power.
So its intersting even seeing the devs talk about this. Why? Because these kinds of things get rediculed by gamers if the mechanic doesnt feel right or feels BAD/Nerfed.
You just expose your game design to prioritize basically fluff vs game balance. So again, its interesting they talk about this like this because game designers traditionally do not want to expose how they think about these things since it opens everything up to criticism. Or interpretation fo their words.
There was nobody released that does majorly offield elemental burst damage besides xingqiu 2 (yelan) Or that could fill up the remaining 5s of bennett uptime well enough to be worth using raiden, especially because hypercarries did shit damage before mavuika, so going fully raiden hyper or otherwise square pegging the round hole like trying to fill up the off time with someone that doesn't use bennett, like kokomi.
So for the entirety of raiden's time, her only synergistic team has been "raiden national" since xiangling and xingqiu were some of the only characters that could effectively make use of her kit.
Durin is the only character released since yelan that does majorly offield elemental burst damage, and he still needs like 40% ER to be able to burst every rotation, so if you can cut out those then that's like 5 more substats you can put towards damage stats.
I doubt that it's a particularly good team by today's standards but yeah
* **Elemental Bursts are the manifestation of those ambitions**
Damn. Stygian Onslaught's so miserable, characters lose ambition dealing with it.
I mean, come on, zero people had "elemental bursts are manifestations of ambition" on their card.
The gameplay should service and be inspired by a narrative. The better it does that, the more it plays into the fantasy of the setting.
It’s very good practice to start with a narrative space and design from there. This informs patterns of design and good gameplay emerges from that.
Spreadsheet game design works, but it’s often not fun or compelling on its own.
>This idea is directly reflected in her gameplay:
Ok, now do Jahoda.
I mean, give her an actual combat design.
We have been using AI for translation for a really long time as well, so what's the issue with that.
Thanks for sharing and the translation!
I guess Skirk fuels her ambitions by watching people get frostbitten, Klee fuels people ambitions with orbital lazor strikes, and Varesa and Flins are just bipolar.
If you nees to explain a joke, it's a bad one.