Do Genshin Impact's Elements Need A Rework?

the characters within genshin impact's roster are inextricably connected to the game's 7 elements influencing everything from their playstyles to relative performance to team compositions and functions within those steam compositions some units have taken advantage of their respective elements Universal properties to elevate their standing in the meta Chief among them being kokomi who went from one of the least popular five-star characters to a top 10 Contender overall through her compatibility with hydro and its overarching goal others have lost significant amounts of attention and viability for following a playstyle not conducive to their own Mis purposes despite their kit being designed and rounded out quite nicely otherwise like Eula and Shaw the elements send their respect to strengths have often been directly compared to one another leading to an unofficially established hierarchy that shaped our perceptions of characters overall back in version 1 Elektra was seen as one of the weakest elements in the game for being DPS oriented that was overshadowed by another DPS oriented element pyro as more units were added some elements were given more support While others were neglected resulting in some turning into the best in the game like Electro and hydro while Geo and Pyro have fallen off considerably over time having played this game since version 1. I made several discussion topics on the seven elements with my thoughts and criticism stores them but I wanted to make a more holistic video highlighting an issue I see with the game's design choices that cause more harm than good to his cast of playable units and that pertains to the elemental system in its entirety for today's video I'll be talking about a design concern I had with Genji's Elemental system which has only gotten more pronounced over time to clarify I'm not saying the current system is bad nor am I implying you're wrong for liking things how they are this is purely Food For Thought make it that what you will I began to notice this being a potential issue roughly around the time when the focus of combat shifted away from a character's individual strength and more towards a team more into strategy if we take a look at every single meta team composition in the game right now freeze vaporize taser soup aggravate Bloom National overvape melt what have you they all revolve around a specific reaction or multiple due to its name freeze teams are based on chaining hydro and cryo continuously to immobilize enemies for an indefinite period of time vaporized teams aptly make use of hydro and Pyro to maximize vaporize damage so on and so forth a positive consequence of this approach is that it streamlines the gameplay experience games with massive roster sizes or character selection can be overwhelming for players having Universal conventions like the elemental system can create some segments of uniformity between characters for example if you have a new Hydro character without even knowing what they do you can at least infer that they'll facilitate Hydro reactions to some degree furthermore it allows the player base a litmus test to use for every character a good place to start when assessing their performance and Effectiveness in combat which if in the absence of a benchmark can be rather tricky in action RP cheeks early on we were unsure as to how good a character truly was in light of there being no constant or criteria to grade units on a relative scale evidenced by the fact that tier lists in version 1 put TT in top tier while banishing till and sucrose were towards the bottom ranking early on the community had no idea what two gray characters on was damaged the most important thing healing stamina cost we didn't know after Kopi Samantha trial and error we eventually arrived at where we are today team compositions centered around reactions and that's how we've been evaluating characters thereafter thanks to this change in evaluation it enabled more consistent and accurate information to reach the broader player base which in turn made it easier to form better educated guesses on how strong a character is beyond a service level even if their own attributes were unimpressive in a vacuum they could indirectly be made more effective if they synergize with their element so the positive consequence of formulating the game around the seven elements and their reactions is that It ultimately starts and ends with them the negative consequence of this is also that It ultimately starts and ends with them or in other words there's too much focus on reactions now and less on the characters which in my humble opinion there should either be a balance or should be the other way around without integral achieving and facilitating the actions in this game more so now that danger has taken over the meta individual aspects of a character have since been relegated to little more than window dressing undermining the significance of the niche aspects to instead grade them on how well they adhere to their elements win condition while the Simplicity of those win conditions cover a broad range of applications a notable repercussion is that it's almost obligatory to meet that win conditioned to achieve favorable results thus making it far too easy to compare members of the roster to one another even if they have wildly different properties now what is that when conditioned exactly DPS the design issue I have with Genji's combat system is that the vast majority of Elemental reactions are essentially just damaged or roundabout ways of doing so there are 14 Elemental reactions in this game overload electrocharge superconduct freeze swirl burning Bloom hyper Bloomberg and vaporized melt spread aggravate and crystallize of those 14 12 of them explicitly constitute DTS in some shape or form crystallize is the only reaction in the game that does not pertain to boosting damage whatsoever while freeze technically doesn't deal any damage as well although one can make the argument that chain stunning counts as increase DPS and that you don't have to waste time touching attacks or chasing enemies how this affects the overall meta is that even though each reaction takes different elements or even different Arrangements of elements since they turn out to damage in the end they can directly be compared to one another kind of defeating their purpose of having different reactions in the first place to be fair transformative reactions are different from amplifying ones which are different from additive one once but in the grand scheme of things their usefulness is determined by how much total damage they contribute to a party therefore determining how strong that party is based on how easily that ceiling can be achieved by extension a character's value is determined by how conducive they are to reaching that damage ceiling which imposes an implicit yet austere set of rules for its members to follow and should any of them deviate from it they'll forever be at a disadvantage compared to those who don't see back in version 1 the damage ceiling of the two amplifying reaction is vaporized and melt was measurably higher than what any transformative reaction could offer causing the Hoya to buff their base damage in Elemental Mastery to level the playing field then in version 3 dangerous 2 reactions catalyzed on Bloom rates the bar further with how massive their floors were it made achieving high amounts of damage so accessible to where older units were previously valued for their personal damage output now had to deal with the rising amount of competition taking emphasis away from their own numbers since there was now a universal form of DPS on par with them those existing units weren't made worse per se but what made them good or high priority was no longer unique to just them which lowered their value relatively speaking giving characters a way to achieve good DPS numbers without having big numbers themselves allows for multiple ways to design damage dealers but that has the unfortunate outcome of making everything based on damage ironically diminishing the importance of strategy everything comes down to how much damage you can do since every major reaction in this game is composed of DPS namely reaction-based DPS characters with quirkier Unique Designs are intrinsically handicapped to some degree if those designs don't contribute to more cases of reactions Wanderer and shell are main DPS animal units but the animal element is mainly concerned with swirl namely to enhance the four elements you can swirl with it doesn't stop them from being good but it makes them depend more on their raw numbers and the backing of anyone who can increase some like thorazon dealer India are all about continuous attacking despite Pyro's main troll comprising burst damage Lisa is a slow heavy attacker with their skill even though Electro prioritizes rapid attacks overpowered and then you have characters who opt out of reactions entirely such as mono Geo teams or Divergent playstyles like physical damage in the form of Eula and racer or Brewster tank Fighters like Noel and xinyan because none of these follow the established rules of their respective elements they deal less total damage in relation to their peers which makes them far less effective and therefore less appealing is it necessarily a bad thing that reactions are primarily damaged yes and no on one hand once again it streamlines the game's experience players won't be pressure-topped for a specific element that they want damages there are many ways to deal damage so it allows them more freedom in how they approach the game but there is such a thing as too much Freedom time matchups are a common way to prevent overlap by differentiating forms of damage from each other this way you can have several moves of the same caliber and different use cases and applications Thunderbolt flamethrower Ice Beam they each have 90 base power 100 accuracy and 15 uses but the tight matchups and accompanying status effects allow them to coexist while standing out in their own ways unless the enemy has an elemental Shield like the iniquitous Baptist or directly immune to an element like the hypostasis there are no tight matches in this game Central damage is the same as pyro damage which is the same as cryo damage so on and so forth homogenizing damage can be seen as either a good or bad thing but a personally believe it does more harm than good even with the indirect Buffs Alexa got via hyperboom and aggravate it's hard to find reasons to use cutting or sign out as not only are they competing with riding Shogun Fishel and Nikko but they're also competing with every other damage sourced in the game I'll hate them Hotel yeah everyone so despite being powerful characters in their own right relatively speaking they actually aren't there's not enough differentiation between elements because they're all damage Genji's reactions have to do more than just damage or there needs to be more systems in place to distinguish one type of damage from another otherwise as more and more units come out it's gonna get increasingly more likely that they Eclipse a massive portion of the roster or be made relevant on release because they're being eclipsed by an existing character it's too easy for a select handful of top 2 characters to basically hog all of the attention on account of covering so many bases even the ones they theoretically shouldn't in recent iterations of spiral Abyss nahida has had over a 90 pick rate attributed to dendro's floor being so high her being the best at applying financial and denture reactions being unconditionally the best in the game since nothing is something to dentro and most other reactions do nothing but damage either so many people used her because it was so much more convenient to rely on reaction DPS than any alternative to make matters worse freeze would have been the only reaction that could stand apart from hyperblomer aggravate but since dendro deals affected damage to hydroshields it even beats out freeze in this department although freeze does come with the benefit of stunning enemies preventing them from doing anything I like nahida but I feel like we've gotten to a point where it's simply far too likely for a character to monopolize party slots with how much coverage reactions have an argument used against this point goes something along the lines of if you're not forced to use top tiers you can just use not to use them and play non-talk tiered characters that is true but let me make it perfectly clear there's a difference between players having to make a conscious choice to not do something and the game necessitating it yes you can make the game more challenging by imposing a bunch of restrictions on yourself but that places the onus on the player to intentionally hamstring themselves to quote unquote enjoy the game that's bad game design it should be an option for players to those additional challenges on themselves this shouldn't be a requirement by implementing more layers to the game's combat engine it simultaneously mitigates the influence of power creep while retroactively buffing other characters to be more useful one thing I love about genshi's character design is that conceptually no two units do the exact same thing people brought up how Sino feels like a five-star racer citing their equal pension for a Relentless attack a Razer is a physical damage dealer and great sword user while Sino is Electro and the polar inducer putout differs from d-look despite both of them being on-field pyro damage dealers because one is more concentrated damage while the other has significantly better area coverage even Dia is different from d-loop thanks to a mitigation and unique ultimate Noel anito are different in spite of both of them being greats or Geo uses one is all damaged the other is a Bruiser too often is one character better than another in every conceivable way with no chance of redemption for the weaker one but in genshin even Amber has something only she can do that no other prior Union can but none of that matters because reactions Make the World Go Round And all reactions are Universal forms of damage I know that damages the first and foremost aspect of an action RPG and that your overall goal is to kill the enemy but that doesn't mean you can't make things more interesting we shouldn't have to compare the relative strength of pyro to Geo to Electro to cryo to animal to hydro to denture they should all be strong in their own ways that's how you properly design class-based combat fortunately it's not impossible for them to rectify this they don't have to completely overall the game's current engine every element already has a niche to it it just needs to be expanded upon pyro is all about power with most of its members focusing on pure Force cryo units have elemental bursts that last on the field for a long time like shinho Diana ganyu Rosaria Kaya and whatnot Geo units are all about strength in unity increasing empower the more Geo units you have and their defense to offense conversion they can also add non-combative reactions that play into those themes some theories people have a denture before it came out was the idea of combining hydro and dendro for a healing reaction something I had in mind was to combine a lecture with animal to give your party an attack and movement sleep up simulating being sped up by electricity pyro used to be special for being the big damage element in the past but now that every element statistically damage it will be called to distinguish each element for different functions the Hoyle already laid the foundation for a comprehensive and sophisticated yet intuitive gameplay experience and every character has something within their moveset that can stand out they just had to tap into it but of course for them to do so they have to create content that necessitates that kind of diversity and I actually think they're fully conscious of this which gives me a bit of Hope the iniquitous Baptist enemy and sumeru has a face where he rotates through three of four different types of shields pyrochrial Electro and hydro this is probably the first enemy in the game who's designed around multiple elements and forces you to bring corresponding ones to take him down it's not much but it's a start apart from introducing new enemies that mandate certain conditions to be meant to easily take them down I still think they should give more properties to every element so that it doesn't just boil down to application I do feel like adding a tight matchup shot alone even a rudimentary one would do wonders power units dealing bonus damage to cryo and dendro units electrodealing bonus damage to hydro and animal units to you doing bonus damage to pyro and the electro Hydro doing bonus damage to pyro animal doing this damage too I don't know what wind would be strong against but you get the point the absence of weaknesses is what makes some of the elements overpowered weaknesses offset strengths and keep them in check there are small occurrences where Elemental weaknesses do happen the details Escape me right now but maku kenkey one shot two if you're affected with a specific element I think it might be pyro I can't remember we use Elemental reactions against our opponents so it stands to reason that opponents should be able to liberally on my dad use reactions against us on that note increasing the complexity of the elemental system would open the door for Niche characters to shine if we have a domain that inflicts a ton of damage but only lets you bring pyro and Electro characters instead of just defaulting to Jong LI or getting spam healed by kokomi it actually gives you a half decent incentive to bring Dia or senior who are your pyrotanks quote unquote or for a lecture you can dust off your Beto and make use of a Counter-Strike attack and damage reduction no longer is it just about who is the best pirate one shot first or who can apply Electro the fastest it's about survival and proper team building which is how gen Xin should be in fairness there are restrictions like this some bosses do mess with your ability to use a specific reaction for example the Thunder manifestation boss has a permanent electoral Aura preventing you from using vaporize in exchange it means you can abuse the crap out of spread and want them to take that approach and apply to most of the game or the entirety of it if possible all in all while Gangsta's current Elemental system has his Pros I feel like the globalization of damage so to speak makes it rather difficult for units with more gimmicky or non-standard kits to find ways to shine I get that you can make the choice to not use the best characters but it would be healthier if the game imposed those challenges on you rather than you having to do it yourself that about sums up everything I want to say regarding elements whether you agree or disagree with my stance on it I hope I at least offered some food for thought but as always if you enjoyed the video it would be great if you love to like and subscribed don't forget to follow me on Twitter at forestware and join my Discord server and check out my other discussion videos if you haven't yet for now though thanks so much for watching and I'll see you again soon in the next one take care thank you [Music]

Channel: Vars II

Views: 67,199

Keywords: genshin, genshin impact, vars genshin impact, genshin why no one plays, genshin impact gameplay, genshin discussion, genshin impact analysis, mihoyo, hoyoverse, genshin elements, genshin cryo, genshin hydro, genshin geo, genshin dendro, genshin electro, genshin pyro, genshin anemo, genshin impact 4.0, genshin impact furina, genshin impact fontaine, genshin impact elements, genshin elements explained, genshin elemental reactions, genshin impact game

Id: l4YQAAbR9bE

Length: 15min 24sec (924 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 05 2023