How are people so calm about powercreep?
Let’s start with the fact that Genshin is my first gacha. I’ve been playing since version 1.0, and basically, from the beginning, I’ve only ever bought the Welkin Moon and the Battle Pass a few times.
However, the recent powercreep is starting to weigh heavily on me. I can’t even imagine how people feel who spent significant money on C6 characters, only to have them deal lower DPS than the new C0 units.
On one hand, I understand that the market changes—it's like buying a TV, where a new, better model comes out a year later for the same price. BUT! The difference is that a company doesn't sell last year’s TV, which can no longer play new resolutions, at the same price as the new one.
It shocks me how easily people accept that Hoyo is unable to maintain some level of balance, keeping the difference between units within, say, +/- 20% DPS at C0 and the same at C6. I understand that some units should be stronger than others based on the lore, but immersion doesn't matter here; it's simply a case of 'the new stuff must be better.' Given the profits Hoyo makes, this inability to balance characters is inexcusable, and the people responsible should be held accountable.
How is it that players agree to these practices so easily? I assume this is how every gacha works and people just let themselves be cheated by these tactics, but to me, it is honestly shocking.
However, the recent powercreep is starting to weigh heavily on me. I can’t even imagine how people feel who spent significant money on C6 characters, only to have them deal lower DPS than the new C0 units.
On one hand, I understand that the market changes—it's like buying a TV, where a new, better model comes out a year later for the same price. BUT! The difference is that a company doesn't sell last year’s TV, which can no longer play new resolutions, at the same price as the new one.
It shocks me how easily people accept that Hoyo is unable to maintain some level of balance, keeping the difference between units within, say, +/- 20% DPS at C0 and the same at C6. I understand that some units should be stronger than others based on the lore, but immersion doesn't matter here; it's simply a case of 'the new stuff must be better.' Given the profits Hoyo makes, this inability to balance characters is inexcusable, and the people responsible should be held accountable.
How is it that players agree to these practices so easily? I assume this is how every gacha works and people just let themselves be cheated by these tactics, but to me, it is honestly shocking.
Commentaires
Despite how much people will come onto reddit and bitch every Abyss or Stygian reset, the endgame doesn't reward enough for casuals to care and good players will know how to use what they have to succeed.
It's also not a competitive game.
People don't care because there is no real reason to care.
Whales/tryhards/lucky pullers can have their moments of glory. But even if they have something like that exclusive Natlan nameplate, there's no way they'll be able to flaunt it to my face anyways as I don't interact with others.
Also, the event for the Miliastra maid costume NOT being a stressful zero-sum PVP event like the previous (winners gain points while losers lose theirs lmao) is a welcome change.
Ifa with Ineffa, Kazuha and Escoffier/Citlali is really fun too.
I complain about it in every survey.
I no longer spend money on the game like I used to.
But I can also still clear everything except dire onslaught pretty easily so it could be worse.
If there is difficult content that hurts your feelings. The normal reaction is to stop doing it. When you step on a lego and it hurt you, you lift your foot away from it. F2P games are for masochists.
\- The game is free. Those who don't want to keep up with it just drop it.
\- The powercreep is nowhere near as bad as other games Hoyo made.
\- The game is heavily casual. And casuals don't really care about these things.
\- The game is dead easy (with the exception of Stygian Dire). People with mildly decent skills could clear all endgame contents with what they have even since 1.x. I haven't failed to use 1.x only characters to clear any Abyss since Ganyu's release (of course, with the exception of Dendro check).
yeah Im not clearing SO lvl 4 or 5 but... so what? my artifacts will be worse? Ive lived without that damn feather for 5 years by now, having less of it doesnt make me fear anything(you could call me \*fearless\* hehe)
the game allows me to care about who I like so yeah, good for the whales and spenders in general AND good for a random like me.
Also feathers for me are lowkey arse im batting like 1/12 on rerolling something good
I got Skirk and escoffier core that with my furina just owns everything, then recently we got venti buff pog, then I got c2 Varesa while going for c6 chevy and iansan(iansan is still c5)
the rest is the rest and I can deal with different content by swapping some cores or making furina carry a whole side
But yeah nice teams great stuff. I lost 50 50 on Varesa on my alt so my Furina kinda homeless right now
> I can’t even imagine how people feel who spent significant money on C6 characters
Frankly, power creep is probably beneficial to whales, even if a few individual whales might not like it.
Whales (as a group) don't whale because they just care that much about the gameplay. Whales whale as a way to show off.
If there was never any power creep, the normies would catch up to their power level eventually and they'd be less special.
Power creep ensures that only the people who keep whaling can have all the best stuff.
The issues with powercreep come if it's UNCONTROLLED, which it isn't in genshin. Genshin is very much playable with even several years old characters.
If you don't want to deal with powercreep, don't play a live service game that has to keep people interested in the new stuff for YEARS.
> I can’t even imagine how people feel who spent significant money on C6 characters, only to have them deal lower DPS than the new C0 units
That was their DECISION and they KNEW this would happen sooner or later. Luckily in genshin it took several years for it to even start being noticeable.
>It shocks me how easily people accept that Hoyo is unable to maintain some level of balance
They're actually extremely good at balancing. Mavuika could be argued to be a mistake but aside from her the powercreep in this game was managed VERY well.
>Given the profits Hoyo makes, this inability to balance characters is inexcusable, and the people responsible should be held accountable.
And what exactly are you demanding here?
Like I said, new characters NEED to be stronger than old characters, if not then they're simply "not worth" pulling for. This is a death sentence for a gacha game unless they have some other way of selling characters (which genshin really doesn't).
> I assume this is how every gacha works and people just let themselves be cheated by these tactics
This isn't even a gacha specific thing. Most games that have regular new content experience regular powercreep. And people generally WANT IT too. For example monster hunter franchise these days has the occasional new monster or quest released every now and then and every time that happens people are excited to see what new gear will be available and if it'll be better than what's currently available.
See Varka lol
Mavuika set a new ceiling and it took a big jump, yes, but every new DPS since then has been lower than that or about the same now with Columbina's release.
As bad as powercreep looks to a Genshin only player, those of us that have played other gacha games are aware that it could be MUCH worse.
At least in Genshin, you can wheelchair everyone up to clear 99% of content (that 1% being stygian onslaught fearless+, which doesn’t even give primogems). Your C6 Raiden may be woefully powercrept by C0 Flins, but at least she can use his very same team to clear.
Genshin also isn’t a competitive game (there is no true PvP that gives rewards). Units being powercrept doesn’t matter as much if they can still clear content that gives primos (they very much can).
In some other games, older units are just straight up unusable PNGs sitting in your inventory. Several of them also have PvP too where your clears matter, so you are more incentivized to actually pull for new units.
that is genshin, not as bad as other gachas
On the otherhand I dont find the Abyss or IT too difficult its moreso a build and character/roster check imo. Not interested in Stygian
Also they are a business at the end of the day and the gane is free
People aren't chill, every day there's a popular post about powercreep. Reddit is almost known to care about it more then some other social media
Not that hard.
Already got more entertainment out of this game than my whole Steam library.
Personally, as a somewhat casual player who cares more about story and exploration than endgame, the "powercreep problem" doesn't really affect me. I'm still running around with teams primarily made up of several year old characters and enjoying myself. I don't feel like I'm required to pull for new characters just because they're the new meta thing. I pull for characters I like story/personality/aesthetics-wise. "This character can solo Abyss and get me 36 stars" or whatever just...doesn't enter into it.
I suspect there are far more players like me than there are those who wring their hands over powercreep and as long as that's the case or as long as those who wring their hands but still play the game/spend money/pull the new characters anyway...Hoyo has little incentive to make any changes.
A lot of people who don't care are casual players who don't even engage with endgame - people who clear D3-D4, don't even full-star Abyss, etc. Of course they don't care - it's like I don't care about old vs new character models, the VA strikes, etc. but it's a big deal to a lot of people. Then you have people who would defend the endgame and powercreep under any circumstances - whether there is 0 powercreep or Mavuika levels, whether there's 0 shill or "instantly lose unless you have the banner character". There are a lot of people who will never criticize the game, ever.
People who play endgame combat for the combat itself absolutely care, and especially long-time players, because it's been going off a cliff for the past 1-2 years, and it's a shame. I talk to other speedrunners and challenge runners (any player who plays to optimize gameplay) a lot, and there is a near unanimous agreement in the community that the endgame direction has tremendous wasted potential, because the design for shill has gone so far to encroach on the design for actual fun.
I think if you went on Youtube Stygian/Abyss clears, especially the more impressive ones, and ask the uploader how they like the current state of powercreep/shill in the game, you'll get negative answers almost overwhelmingly.
The game is super easy and 99.9% of the game can be played with whatever characters. Now, if the rewards for Fearless Stygian were, say, 30 rolls, then yes I would probably be complaining about the power creep. As it stands right now, the rewards that you get for clearing that "powercrept" 0.1% of the content are garbage even for free to play players to even bother with that. Whales who want to compete over getting 20 second clear as opposed to 23 second clear will spend money regardless. Overwhelming majority of players don't care about it.
Otherwise literally makes no difference to me whether it takes 5 seconds to kill an enemy or 3 seconds.
Exploration got powercrept, but then again it makes me appreciate the older, simpler times more, where I actually had to run around and explore things. Like, I remember the first time I got to that crab island in the top right corner of Mondstadt that's not showing up on the map. Using Amber and stamina food, discovering something like that was like an achievement. Nowadays it's just Varessa press E, Xilonen press E, Chasca press E and zoom zip zap around the map.
tl;dr f2p, never cared about it never will unless hoyo starts doing things like locking up story or maps behind gacha.
* Creep isn't as bad as in other Gachas. Honkai Star Rail is a good example.
* Endgame is "meh" at best in Genshin. You can grab like 80%+ of the rewards facerolling easy mode with \[whatever\] teams. The rest is not worth the effort. Leave it to the hardcores that like that stuff.
* Even ancient teams roflstomp everything outside of endgame, with maybe the exception of Local Legends.
* Lots of people actually WANT new chars to increase power to make them seem "worth it". Even if that is an illusion, because Hyv will bloat up HP to compensate. Sadly, most players lacks the intelligence to recognize that nothing actually changes except the numbers getting bigger on both sides.
Frankly: there isn't much reason for the average player to really give a shit.
Yet. Wait until creep gets bad enough for normal, non endgame content to be affected.
You can become numb to anything.
Why did they start getting aggressive with power creep a few years after being kind? You have to look at the history of the game. It launched as a first mover. There was no gacha game like Genshin in 2020. Others started making clones but those took years to make. So Genshin had the market to themselves, and topped the charts, hitting 100M+ sometimes. Now that competitors are here, and the economy is bad, those numbers are a thing of the past, and they no longer regularly top the charts. This is when they had to pivot their business model and embrace power creep because the decline would have been a lot worse if they didn't. It's a brutal market now. They're salvaging what they can. If that's what it takes to continue getting quality new areas to explore, I'm ok with losing one dust of enlightenment in the worst case scenario. I haven't missed out on a primogem reward in years.
At the same time though, there's just no point in complaining about something that won't be fixed lol. Made my peace during Fontaine, so it is what it is.
power creep is inevitable, that's 100% fact. but if it's slow enough, i can accept it.
meta unit needs to last at least 1 year minimum.
power creep at unacceptable rate? HSR !!
Any game that uses a F2P model needs to balance their game so that F2Ps can more or less keep up.
As much as Genshin fans love to dunk on HSR for having crazy power creep, they still give enough free pulls for F2Ps to keep up.
- they want their favourite character to be the strongest in the game. So that they can feel superior to other players. They are okay with characters not powercreeping except their own favourite.
- they routinely dunk on old characters ( and their fans), since they are not performing that great. A great example is the recent buff to razor and raiden.
- people who obsess over meta wants powercreep.
In short, the powercreep is trend following the market. After companies want money.