Forgotten Characters - Why Genshin Impact CANNOT Abandon Them

an unfortunate long-term consequence of gacha games is the inevitable oversaturation of its roster being a genre known for releasing new characters in an ever expanding pool combined with the absence of Bounce updates like we see in other games what ends up happening is eventually there will be a sizable advancement in either power or capacity between generations of units that ultimately render the Old Guard obsolete it's understandable why they go down this path the primary source of Revenue sustained by most scas is new content the fancy new toy with a fancy new gimmick that helps you take on the fancy new boss financially they have a clear to keep releasing new stuff no matter how much old stuff there is or no matter how necessary it might be and as I always like to say for them to incentivize players to actually go after these new characters said characters have to present a new mechanic or gameplay element that the player base at larges had either limited or no access to at that point or they have to perform current tasks at a greater level of efficiency hence the two terms feature creep and power creep after enough time there becomes a noticeable difference between the new characters and the old prompting players to from a practical point of view discontinue usage of the latter category either for the sake of necessity or to account for opportunity cost kchi is different though unlike the majority of gachas or players by and large view characters as nothing more than it means to an end sentimental value and personal attachment towards characters run deep within the community questionably so players are extremely loyal to their respective favorites even if in relativity they rank among the lower tiers of the meta though a Fontaine haven't given us our biggest leaping power yet that divide between the old and the new is getting more conspicuous with every version leading us to this video I wanted to have a discussion over the uncertain future of old characters and the difficult challenge facing hoo in regards to how they can continue releasing new content while preserving the current stuff we already have kinchin impact has fundamentally reinvented the gacha genre in way formerly never attempted from exclusively mobile titles to the rather simple gameplay formula to something as complex and comprehensive in scope and experience as AAA big box titles this game has single-handedly elevated the standards and expectations of gacha games with companies including more voice acting higher quality artwork and animations and even expanding more on their marketing and branding to emulate the scale of ginin gachas are no longer a niche category of gaming like they were in the 2010s they've officially entered the mainstream while hoyo has deviated off the beaten path with his Flagship title kinhin still aderes to the general idea of gachas namely in that it continuously releases new content and thus new characters to go along with it but unlike other games whose new characters and classes are really obtainable gas Institute a price tag onto every addition making players have to consider the cost of acquiring them which can either be the time or money conducive to including them in their roster in other words even though genin maintain a difficulty steing low enough to accommodate a wide selection of characters they're still forced to play into the notion of new cast members being in some way shape or form better or more enticing than what players currently have right now with them finally making an effort to produce new endgame content in recent times as evident by the new imaginar and theater game mode time will tell if that pressure grows all the same though ginin is a gacha title he tries his best to stand out as something more and one way they do that is via characters longtime gacha players can all agree that the rate of new characters being released is considerably slower than most other gachas who frequently pump out upwards of half a dozen new additions per month that's cuz hoo tries to do more than just make new units at the sake of making them every character anding impact has a story a background some kind of personal involvement within the greater Mythos of tat more than just their gameplay and place in The Meta these units have a presence in the world a personality a voice actor an identity every member of the cast with the exception of this one random person is connecting with others which is what gives the game more substance than other gachas where characters just exist to be chosen for battle essentially Ki makes it personal by putting a lot of effort into every character hence why players are so attached to their favorite units they have the same level of detail and attention as anime characters and you know how much us weeps love our wuss and US Bandos being that SM this is still a video game not a visual novel while the game tries as best to give equal attention to everyone they're ultimately a for-profit company it makes more financial sense to release new characters over giving attention to older ones we're almost 4 years into the game and for better or worse many of the old units have been fighting against the test of time for a long while now remarkably multiple version one units have managed to stay relevant and even dominant this entire time characters like child Shing shanling benett jungi and Fel are still priz picks to this day despite not having received any particular direct upgrade aside from maybe official lenro but she was already one of the best four stars in the game additionally though gotas are not exactly known for giving much attention to old characters buying Universal systems several of them have gotten indirectly buffed with the inclusion of new characters either offering a new play style to them or compensating for their inherent flaws thanks to Faron and sh sh has experienced a second lease on life being one of the most effective teams in the game to this day another member of the LI Trio Hut has repeatedly found ways to prevent himself from falling off through both new units and Universal systems duuk has become decently strong with the Advent of shenyun providing his massive base damage on plunging attacks they use as well on the support side of things genene R from a neshi not average healing support to one of the best in the game courtesy of the hydro archon unique interactions with health manipulation finally necessitating the acting grandmaster's team wide healing I'm saying all this because I don't want to impli that all of the old units are facing the same situation and it's also to highlight one of the ways in which hoyo can remedy that very situation it's true that compared to other gachas Kenshin has done a much better job maintaining the relevance of his older characters and based on what version four has proven they're making a concerted effort to allow as much of the early Generations on board as the game continues to advance in power and feature GP the sad part is they can't allow all of them many of genin old units have been hemorrhaging market share going from high value targets to almost entirely non-existent among top or even high performing teams it's kind of nostalgic to think about back in the day units like Mona and YULA were some of the best in the game by virtue of their staggering damage output especially in the realm of single instance attacks this was during a time when Landing 400 500 Cas was considered an achievement but nowadays you see people doing that on the regular it's not quite as impressive as it used to be granted much of what made them so popular back then was that there was no one else but them it's easy to believe Mona placed among the top of her class when all she had to contend against was bar brushing to un child and bear in mind this was before child International game tenway and Bara found n with the nilu teams looking at the present day when we have units like nuu kokami finina net and yellan Mona's position within the hydro cast looks a lot more modest circumstantially things have also been spiraling for her cryo hasn't been doing all that well since version 3 and being an exclusively freeze oriented support by extension that makes Mona not do so well either it's debatable whether she's even used for vaporiz anymore what with there being so many better facilitators of that kind of play style similarly Ula was also once the bell of the ball when she came out at 1.5 she was a very strong Contender relative to the cast but once again there was hardly much competition to begin with sha ganu Hut child coaching and diluk none of which had their perfected teams at that point in time again though circumstantially the physical Niche has received virtually no concrete improvements to their cast pretty much since then causing Ila to fall off in value greatly over time despite still technically being the strongest physical damage dealer in the game while several elements have that one character who can facilitate a hyper car team shinho for cryo faran for animal kuosa for Electro and Goro for giio the physical elements doesn't really have anyone like that only a few token buffers here and there like Rosaria and Ma so YULA has been more or less mooching off of universal Buffs like riding shogun's Elemental burst enhancement or freeness damage H there are other day one units who may have never really been the best but were serviceable to some extent certainly enough to make them worth pulling for these days however you'd be hard pressed to find any reason to use them at all one of the most forgotten characters in ginin would have to be albo albo was always marketed as a jack of all trades master of nons support having a bit of everything across the board and dealing a fair bit of damage himself he found gainful employment as a third Geo character foro and goo supplementing both of them with extra energy and meeting the their Geo party requirement outside of that there were a few Niche interactions of them running alongside Jung and hun teams purely for lack of any alternative or C4 Alo running with Shaw but in almost every team where he was usable or okay in he's been effectively replaced by someone else B discarded him the instant KAS came out sha threw him away for faran and even within mono Chio teams CH is considered a more DPS oriented quick swap for that team the main reason you used albo and mono Geo was because he was the only viable third Geo character but now there's someone with a more focused role than him albo was always an okay choice not the best one but with every possible team he could fit into gaining more efficient slots opportunity costes kicked him out of every situation he could potentially be used in Clay is another example of a character who was by all accounts a respectably serviceable unit despite a rather clunky play style though it wasn't very high profile she had pretty good success in monop pyro versions 2 and three if you chose to go that route the main problem is that Shang Ling Bennett and kaha were high demand units who could be put to better use in other teams which is why not many people talked about Mono pyro CLE even though it was actually fine when Lenny came out though she was completely superseded executing on monop pyro far stronger and more comfortably now CLE surprisingly High pyro application made her a potential candidate for for V priz teams with finina but we're running into the same issue again where finina and by extension the support superare with her can apply to many characters I'm pretty sure even guming can rival CLE with enough investment although they are technically in different niches I'm aware that the likes of Lenny Hut gaming and such don't directly compete with CLE because CLE is more of a half carry half team support kind of character who likes to enable her team very similar to I guess like child even so she was still affected somewhat negatively from the Resurgence of pyro in version 4 by no means are the list of all characters in demic to just five stars four stars are troubled by this even more with characters like Chong Yu Nang Yan racer and so on having basically zero presence in the meta as we know it it's a strange turn of events for some old characters the addition of new units and systems turn to be a blessing for them giving characters like duuk jeene Noel sha King and Hut a second or even a thirdly Sun Life meanwhile for other old characters the addition of new units and systems was the final nail on the coffin taking away what little semblance of opportunity cost characters like Ula albo CLE and Mona had I do want to clarify that in terms of strength I'm not saying these four are the same CLE especially is still very strong if you can put up with their gameplay it's just that in regards to their situations they're in the same poat as mentioned at the beginning of the video Power and feature creep were guaranteed to happen it's an eventual and inevitable outcome for games that periodically release new characters for other gachas players are fine with this because characters are just the means to an end but for gin the thought of units becoming lost of time is much more serious hoy's aware of this they know that every unit has a loyal fan base no matter how small and so they have to accommodate for that by giving all of them at least some attention people have been getting frustrated by units like cave not having gotten a rerun realistically there's no benefit to giving him a rerun due to how weak he is but they have to because of what genin represents to its players furthermore they have to ensure that every character no matter how old or how Niche still has a place where they're either best in slot or good enough to contend with everyone else the moment a character no longer has something to be part of they become forgotten and neglected which is bad for a game built upon fostering attachment from character to character and character to player this will only become more and more difficult to maintain over time unless they decide to give us a four-party spiral abys or something ridiculous like that trying to give every character just enough opportunity cost value becomes impossible at a certain point but we're not there yet which brings me to the final topic how can we give these characters more value again while not ideal the most applicable solution would be forced necessity forc necessity is a practice of contriving a scenario that explicitly Demands a character with a specific play style for example over in the game blue archive there was a unit named shiso who all things considered was really freaking garbage she was a bad support unit all around however for a while at least shiso is actually obligatory for you to perfectly clear one of the raid bosses shoo thanks to her ability to summon a cover blue archives version of a geoc construct essentially that completely shut down one of the boss's main mechanics I equit blue archive back in Spring of 2023 so she likely got officially powerc but that's an example of what hoyo can do for genin to try and bring some of these units back to relevance H karo's already been doing something similar with all of his different game modes and different cycle blessings necessitating you to have a wide variety of units geared up to handle all the various combat scenarios you'd come across without say pure fiction Hera and humano likely would have been lost to time something they could do to make Alo valuable for instance is to create a boss who generates massive earthquakes that deal huge damage which can only be avoided by being Airborne so vent's Elemental skill letting you hover in the air or wander levitation or El's elevator thingy propping you up above the ground can be counters for that they can obviously make youa Stronger by creating a boss that negates all Elemental damage forcing you to rely on physical attacks to take them out these hypers specific scenarios can artificially inflate a character's usability by targeting mechanics that only they and maybe a few other units have of course that approach in in of itself has a few drawbacks new players are free to plays who don't have that many characters will find these contrive mechanics extremely unfair and predatory pressuring them to both for specific characters that they don't even enjoy playing or using just to enable them to clear this one thing so if they want to go down this route they'll have to create free to play Solutions again that's one option they can take in addition they can always try to go the indirect buff approach by say making free solvan again forona giving actual physical support for Ula or finding some random way to make pyro Catalyst uses overpowered but if in one K's roster reaches triple digits that becomes untenable as there are too many units to account for while some simultaneously pushing the ceiling on a unit's capability all that's to say I'm morbidly curious as to what will happen come version 5 and later version 6 I've always Champion the notion that no character is unusable that you could clear all the game's content with even the quote unquote bottom tier units but I also emphatically stress the idea of opportunity cost even if a character is viable if there's so many Stronger Faster cheaper efficient or versatile options out there at a certain point by aside there is zero reason for a player to want to use the fourth fifth or sixth best option in other gotas no one really cares if a mid or low tier character gets lost to time if they're not useful they're not useful simple as that but ginin is different hoyo cannot abandon anyone no matter how weak they are if they do players will become dissolutions they have to give everyone reruns they have to give everyone some kind of attention because that's the kind of game genin is it's all about the characters if they abandon them that will actively damage the reputation of the game what do you guys think do you believe there's a solution to keeping all existing units relevant while releasing new characters I implore you to share in the comments for now if you enjoy the video you like And subscribe if very much appreciated don't forget to follow me on Twitter at varsam join my Discord server and check out my other discussion videos if you haven't yet but till next time thanks so much for watching and I look forward to seeing you again soon take care [Music]

Channel: Vars II

Views: 63,485

Keywords: genshin, genshin impact, vars genshin impact, genshin why no one plays, genshin impact gameplay, genshin discussion, genshin impact analysis, mihoyo, hoyoverse, genshin impact version 1, genshin impact old characters, genshin impact original characters, genshin impact klee, genshin impact power creep, genshin impact eula, genshin impact mona, genshin impact albedo, genshin impact old units, genshin impact forgotten characters, genshin impact version 5, genshin impact natlan

Id: ueGUsjy1_mE

Length: 14min 35sec (875 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 13 2024