What's the catch?

>That’s why I wanted to ask what’s the catch?

It's a gacha. While it's free to play, free to experience and all that, they do want you to spend money. It's not necessary, but the only way to expand your roster is by interacting with the wish system.

Does missing out on characters you really wanted count? If you feel strongly about a character, not getting them after spending all your primos could feel devastating. Same with missing birthday letters from you favourite characters bc you couldn't log in on their birthdays. Otherwise, not really. It's just an amazing game with amazing lore and cool characters. 

1- the catch in my opinion is the extremely bad rewards, mainly the primogems and stuff, too much effort for low outcome
2- something i wish i knew when i started is to not use fragile resin until i am high ar lvl, and to never farm artifacts as well, only lvl up characters and use the artifacts that you get from defeating bosses that your characters need to lvl up
3- as for advice i would say enjoy and try staying away from spending money on the game, buying welkin moon or bp is not as bad, but i definitely would stay away from buying primogems directly, they are way too expensive and you will get addicted, another thing is, try enjoying the lore, it is one of the few things that i can not criticize about the game, so many new players do the mistake of skipping the lore and they get lost and start hating it, so this is something you should watch out for, the last advice is to play any character you like, do not get influenced by people who try to force you into playing meta characters only, or say that the character you are using is bad, at your stage of the game all characters are as strong as each other, the enemies are too weak, in the end game is where things change, but even then play the characters that you like, do not let anyone make you feel bad for who you want to use

>What surprises me the most is that the game is free.

Because Genshin is a gacha game where you have to gamble to obtain limited 5-star characters and weapons. Genshin earns tons of money each month for each new character they put out, and that is how they are able to keep delivering quality updates and content. The main currency is primogems which you can get though purchasing crystals from the shop, events, exploration, achievements, and quests

However, rewards are very limited, so Genshin offers a paid "welkin moon pass" where you get a daily bonus of 90 primogems a day on top of your daily commision rewards. This is their primary money maker for a lot of the non-whales such as myself. Whales, however, tend to purchase crystals from the shop and use that to convert to primogems.

But make sure to take your time playing, there's just so much content and you will be burned out if you rush through all of it at once. Have fun!

If you wont get frustrated with the hard end game content being hard, and characters being locked behind gacha, i would say this is actually a good game.

Lots of exploring to do, amazing quests that build up the lore, the characters and the emvoirement, simple with a bit of complexity, relaxing.

Events on a regular basis, new updates that add more stuff to do, things to collect, home to decorate, card game to play.

Still playing since launch, sometimes I log in just to fish, enjoy the music and scenery, it does remove some stress off my shoulders.

What can I say, have fun, and dont delve to deep in the community, just relax and enjoy your time.

its a long game

you get characters by pulling and those pulls are not easy to get outside of quest and exploring

older players can feel the the amount of pulls are not enough using free methods

so people use money to get them faster and that is when you get stuck (or at least what a lot of people feel about gatcha0

so play the game free and if you are still enjoying it in few months that is when you ask your self if you want to support the game by using your money or not

if you make calculated decisions and (or your account is lucky) you can play the game for a long time without spending any money or you can have a limited amount of money that you restrict yourself to use in the game

If you want to get the different characters when their banners are up you'll likely have to spend money. But the game does give you a lot of primogems as well so if you save you can get characters.

However, you will struggle to do end game content. Partly because you won't have a lot of characters.

Oh and there is the time sink. Artifacts which you will start farming once you are around AR45+.

The catch:

So you've met the Knights of Favonius. Think that those characters Jean, Venti, and Diluc are cool? Would be awesome if you can play them, right?

Well, gotta roll (gamble) on the gacha to get them. Jean and Diluc are on the standard banner (Which you shouldn't spend money on), but Venti is a limited. So you may have to wait many, MANY months before his banner rolls around again to have the *opportunity to pull* on his banner. Which if you haven't saved Primos, you'll have to spend money if you don't want to wait on his banner to run again.

I'm personally of the mind that I love this game in spite of its gacha system, not because. It tells some great stories, has *incredible* music, interesting combat, and beautiful vistas, unfortunately they fund the development of the game through a gambling mechanic.

I will always recommend this game so long as you have some impulse control on spending.

hope you have fun!!!
Everyone else has said the majority but i will say if you do want to be a "meta" player thats fine but dont let that get in the way of you pulling characters you actually like. Meta is always changing dont chase it too much or you'll forget to smell the flowers!

"What would you consider the main downsides of this game?"
The combat is a little bland. At first the reactions seem cool but you realize that's literally all there is to it.

It's also gacha so you can't really progress your characters fast, only through spending your resin (energy) everyday you can get stronger. Which is slow.

I don't have a gambling problem so that part doesn't affect me much.

Grinding

For starters, most of the 5-star characters are more powerful in combat and/or feature movement modes that make exploration easier than what you get with the free characters and other 4-start characters.

Additionally, the game does a great job of making you become emotionally invested in characters and giving brief teasers of how those characters play. This is to tempt you into the gacha aspect of its monetization (i.e. gambling to see if you can win that character). Additionally, each character has a best-in-slot weapon that has its own gacha system to acquire.

Oh and there are also synergies between characters so that if you get one they might only reach their full potential if you also have their favorite support (e.g. Nefer & Lauma, Flins & Ineffa, etc.)

The other main monetization methods are the battle pass, which grants rewards that ease the time spent farming materials to level-up characters and weapon, and now they've also added Millastra Wonderland which \[I believe\] has its own separate battle pass.

As far as other gotchas? Probably just the time-sink and instilling FOMO (fear of missing out) to get you to open up your wallet.

the catch is this is a Gacha Game.. if youre not careful your wallet maybe in danger... but if you can resist the temptation of of opening your wallet for specific characters then its a good game specially if you want to delve into the story and lore of the game.

Everyone has different opinions. So I say it's time.

You have to pay for limited currency if u want more and more characters. It's also a "gamble" instead of a fixed chance, so you might end up spending more or less according to how you take it.

Honestly it's not that bad if you don't want absolutely every character, the free currency generally covers it for me. Also it kinda requires you to regularly play if you want to get free limited currency which can count as a catch too.

Gacha for characters and their weapons.

Only spend your primogens on limited character wishes, never on standard wishes.

There are so many quests, take it slow and enjoy yourself - you aren't going to quickly get through the main quest in a short ammount of time so don't try.

You can play the whole story without spending any real money.

If you are like those pokemon master's with the "gonna catch em all" mindset , you will have to spend some $$$.

But if you have good self control, then you can probably play the game with minimum interaction with the gacha part(some people even save hundreds of thousands primo while being f2p)

I'd say the catch is the gatcha system. Wanting a character you meet in the story and then having to save / wait to get them, can be frustrating,

But it is worth it for all the amazing content we have in this game—and will continue getting.

Resin restriction for farming artifacts and certain materials. Also fomo for characters but this is 1 of the friendliest f2p games I've played when it comes to story and exploration. You dont need to be super powerful to enjoy almost everything they game has to offer and they give you a good amount to work with as f2p. Only issue is timed lore events you missed but you can look it up online. Tbh fomo is the biggest thing like missing out on characters you wanna play with, outfits, end game primogems (currency for pulling but u get a lot in other ways) and some free useful materials but nothing that'll stop you from playing all the 5 years of content

Sounds like you may be a bit unfamiliar with gacha games.

There’s a lot of content (characters & weapons) locked behind the game’s “wish” system. Thankfully you can earn the currently needed to obtain this locked content in-game and aren’t forced to spend money in order to get limited time things. Primogems are what you are after. Every 160 primogems grants you one wish. Every 10 wishes guarantees you a 4 star item (character or weapon). Every 90 wishes guarantees you a 5 star character. Every 80 wishes guarantees you a 5 star weapon. There are different “banners” for 5 star characters or weapons. You almost never have to go all the way to 80 or 90 wishes to get a weapon or character as there is an intricate “pity” system that gradually ups your odds the more wishes you spend, but I have found on average it takes around 150-160 wishes to “guarantee” your desired character. This is because 5 star banners have a 50/50 system where you can “win” or “lose” to a different 5 star character or weapon instead of the one you were targeting.

I tell you all this because, once you understand how the wishing system works, then you can set expectations.

With a medium amount of effort, you should be easily able to accrue 50 wishes per patch- or every 6 weeks- without spending any money. This means, that as a Free to Play (F2P) player, you should be able to guarantee a 5 star character every 3 patches on average. Twice a year the game gives out extra gifts for Lantern Rite (Chinese New Year) and the Anniversary of the game’s lunch (around September/October). A F2P player can get around 80 wishes then as well as a free 4 star/5 star selector. Lantern Rite is going on this patch, so it’s a good time to get going!

Obviously there are ways to spend money and earn primogems faster. Welkin Moon is the most economical, but requires you to log in every day for 30 days to receive 100% of the primogems. It only cost $5 and gives about 20 wishes. Outright buying “Genesis crystals” - no idea why they named it that. It’s a 1 - 1 trade for primogems- can get very expensive, but you can use them right away.

Anyway, once you set your expectations with the gacha system, it isn’t such an awful thing, but if you have a problem with FOMO have a need to collect everything, then people can easily spend thousands of dollars before they know it on gacha games. That’s why Gacha gets a bad rep.


Outside of the gacha system, Genshin really becomes a daily grind trying to max out your characters once you reach the endgame, Adventure Rank 55-60.

I really enjoy obtaining new characters and trying them out in all sorts of teams. There is so much to experiment with team comps and reactions and buffing and finding what works. The game has never been more user friendly. So much information is available today that wasn’t there in the beginning. But the game is designed to discourage obtaining a new character and immediately maxing them out. They want you to tweak them a little bit every day/week, but when you get that perfect piece, usually the difference is noticeable and feels pretty rewarding.

The burn out can be real after a year or so of playing. I keep thinking that I’m going to need a break pretty soon. Might take a month or so off during 6.4. Just got a few characters and want to get them all built before I stop though. It’s very habit forming, but can also be only 15 minutes out of your day, so it’s not a crazy time consuming game.

Hope you have a great time in your journey through Teyvat!!!

The Catch is a 4 star polearm that you can craft from fishing in Inazuma. It is very good for Xiangling.

🤪

The catch is Gacha... while you can enjoy everything... literally everything free to play, but Gacha is where you lost your money, each Character CAN not must cost about 80$ and there a plenty of them. You can also farm the "primogem" but it takes ages to get enough for quaranty 5 stars. Between 8000 and 12000 is a good spot for almost quarantied.

Depends what you want from the game

If you look at it like a single player story-driven open world game, there's no catch really, it's a massive high quality game with lots of things to do, the only downside is you'll eventually catch up with content and have to wait like most of us for new map expansions and quests.

If you care about the characters and combat aspect, the catch is that it's a gacha game. So you have to use lootboxes to obtain new characters, meaning if you're a person with an addictive personality, you're at risk obviously. And while the game does give plenty of currency for free, it's not enough to get every character. The game is very much playable for completely free though, you just have to manage your expectations and focus on specific characters while skipping others. And it's an easy game, so if you're not into the whole collecting characters thing, there's not much pressure to engage with it.

There is no catch, ignore limited characters and just play for the game quality and story.

I really like the game and is a day 1 player, it has brought me so much joy for so little cost, I spend $5/month on the welkin pass. I always have more than enough to get the limited characters I want.

Not trying to be rude or anything but Im sorry bro but I hope you have watched better animes than fricking SAO and the Rising of the shield hero 💀

Anyways, the "catch" is that it is a gacha game, some ppl find the game so good that they want to throw money at it violently(the better case) and some do that cuz they fell for the FOMO/gambling addiction(the worse case) and some cant throw shit cuz they are broke(like me) but at least they can spread the word that, well, the game is good lol



No but like seriously tho, watch Violet evergarden or Steins;gate, great ones imo

It is a genuinely amazing game, but it is also a trap. The game is designed to keep you playing regularly for years and years, and to make you fear missing rewards and chances to get/improve characters, because they don’t want you to stop playing.

The game gives you a limited amount of free Primogems (the resource you use to pull characters and weapons, as well as power ups for those), and everything is designed to make you want to pull characters and make them stronger. The story, the characters, the challenges and the gameplay, the marketing outside the game, everything is designed with that purpose.

The banners where you get characters and weapons are time limited. If you miss a character it will return eventually, but some may not return for years, especially older ones. There is RNG for obtaining the things you want, because they want you to run out of Primogems and spend money, and they want the lucky pulls people enthusiastically share on the web to make you want to pull yourself hoping to get lucky.

The developers of this game make an enormous amount of money with this tactic, lots of people who spent thousands of dollars, even tens or hundreds of thousands. Some are rich, others don’t but they lack self control. However there are also lots of people with great self control who didn’t spend anything and enjoyed everything this game has to offer for free.

Imagine if in real life you found a city full of wonderful things, but designed by people who want to spill you of all your money. This is what this game is. However, if you have enough self control you might not have any issue, and playing a game like this can be a precious experience from which you can learn to improve your self control, and learn to defend yourself from the predatory tactics that are being used.

The tiers are basically:

F2P: You'll have enough pulls for a 5 star character every 2-3 patches.

Welkin and/or Battlepass: You'll have enough pulls for a 5 star character once a patch.

Buys crystal top-ups: You'll can pull for as many limited characters as you're willing to spend for.

I've been playing since 1.0 and I've still never spent for crystals. I do consistently buy Welkin because it's a good value, I think the game is nice enough to deserve $5 from me given that I'm a gainfully employed adult, and it's easier to plan pulls based on beta leaks than having to plan based on much less solid leaks. The game has had some power creep issues in the last couple years, but the world is beautiful, the events are fun, the story is great, and none of that is at all gated by money. Only the most difficult endgame modes are gated by which characters you pull, and there are certainly people who clear even that content with good artifacts and expert gameplay.

The catch is that characters and especially weapons become expensive if you want them all. So if you don't want to spend to much, you'll have to be more selective.

Gambling