The Problem With Honkai: Star Rail's Relic System

at the very start of honai stell's launch it took pretty much no time at all for players to realize the sheer similarity between itself and ginin impact despite Stell technically being a derivative title of honai impact third and not ginin most of us came to know this title through the latter and being created by the same developer I think all of us whether subconsciously or intentionally compared the features aspects and systems of starwell to ginin to the pleasant surprise of many starwell appears to have learned from gin's experiences by refining and improving many aspects the disparity and quality of life was so pronounced that the starl Community which primarily consisted of genian players migrating over have actually started to become resentful towards Mi hoo for their blatant quote unquote favoritism wondering why such aspects weren't and still aren't important in gion while said quality of life aspects may appear minute in scope in the realm of ux design or user experience and layman's terms the smaller stuff can ironically make more of a difference in player experience than bigger stuff because on a day-to-day basis you interact with those smaller things a lot more personally I find stell's microme mechanical execution to far eclip skinin even though I do apply Miho effort to improve his Flagship title too like when they allowed us to instantly redispatch all five Expeditions at once however one of stl's macro mechanical features that's just as frustrating as if not on occasion worst in ginin is The Relic system following a near identical equipment and progression style as ginin honkai star has its own artifact system and while I and I'm sure many of you were apprehensive about seeing a famously despised equipment format also present in starl I held that hope that it wouldn't be nearly as problematic but unfortunately it kind of is today we'll be discussing all the problems of home has stell's Relic system what issues it has that mirrors genin's artifacts and what unique issues it has as stated in the beginning star's relics are almost identical to genin's artifacts at least in terms of the purpose they serve and the means of acquiring and leveling them up so for those of you who saw my GHIN artifacts video a lot of this may come off as de shja Vu and admittedly is sort of this while genin has five artifacts the flower feather time piece Goblin and headpiece starl has six types which are further divided into two groups Head Hands body feet being the first and planisphere linkr being the second second relics belong to specific sets offering additional bonuses to the player when equipping parts of the same set given there are four Cavern relics there's a two-piece bonus and a four piece bonus in addition to a two-piece bonus for the planer ornaments Cavern relics are primarily obtained in caverns of corrosion each housing two main sets although you can also acquire relics through exploration increasing a trailblaze level or by fighting echo of War bosses as for pler ornaments you can find them almost exclusively in the simulated Universe all things considered the means of obtaining relics are exactly the same as obtaining artifacts in genchi leveling them up is the same as well by consuming Relic experience items or by tossing away other relics You Can level up your relic of choice increasing his main stat every three levels will grant you a new additional substat until you have four which from then on randomly increases one of said four substats just like artifacts all six Wells have access to the same range of substats and their main stats are dependent on the type in other words mihoyo basically copy paste the G's artifacts into starl tweaked its mechanics around ever so slightly to account for star's minor differences and parameters and then change his name now the SP Spirit of fairness let's start by going over the positive aspects of hsr's Relic system what it does better than gin's artifacts I would say the most appreciated one would have to be the increased agency we have in accessing relics of choice namely through our ability to synthesize any and all of the games available relics ginin does have their own version through the artifact strong box but if I had to choose between the two star rails would definitely be more appealing for one you can only craft artifacts in the version prior to the last fully completed one in version two we only had access to four then in version three we got access to all the artifact in version one then in version 4 we had all the artifacts available from version 2 it's better than nothing but most players have already farmed copious amounts of artifacts in past versions making them not as imperative to collect on the other hand star lets you synthesize relics that literally just came out even better they let you choose which type you want as opposed to the artifact strong box randomly selecting from one of five moreover while incredibly scarce the self modeling resin lets you decide what specific main stat you want the Relic to have a quality of life feature that I desperately wish would be implemented in kinhin because farming specific Elemental damage main stack goblets is a fate worse than death this is somewhat offset by The increased cost in crafting relics as you need to salvage 10 of them to get enough fragments to craft one compared to genin which only needs three but in my opinion that's a price worth paying because it removes a layer of RNG which in theory should make the process of completing a character's relics a lot less rage inducing since there's one less thing that can go wrong in a vacuum yes it should one of the reasons everyone despises genin's artifacts is that the countless layers of R increases the probability of an artifact starting out good but turning out completely worthless the other aspect of relics that makes it feel better is the Need For Less despite starl actually having more substance anding the more streamlined nature of the forance gameplay makes getting serviceable relics less stringent keyword serviceable not optimal for example a hyperare unit like ca cares little about stats like break effect and effect hit rate as she applies no status effects whatsoever and break effect while technically useable is ultimately negligible realistically the only stats of interest for her are crit rate crit damage attack and speed for some units they can get by on just about anything supports can have entire pieces of only HP and defense there's no energy recharge or Elemental Mastery substats in this game I know when it comes to substat optimization tryhard players make mountains out of mle Hills by propagandizing that if an artifact doesn't have at least 40 CV and two good substats is garbage but practically speaking Relic optimization feels less demanding than artifacts when it comes to substats the turn-based nature of starl implies that supports can go entire battles without dealing any damage whatsoever so you don't have to care about building damage on them at all whereas in Gin many supports are instrumental when it comes to maximizing DPS from that perspective i' say star's Relic system comes off better both intrinsically and extrinsically but having said that it begs a question how can stell's Relic farming experience be just as bad as skinin the answer is where it takes a step forward in some areas it takes a step back in others for all the FL we give genin's artifacts the one thing it does well is let us choose an off piece every artifact set has five parts but as far as set bonuses go at cap out at four meaning you can choose an artifact from a different set and still acquire the four-piece bonus considering the sheer abundance of RNG associated with artifacts it's actually in your best interest to hold on to pieces from sets you wouldn't care much about as if in the event it rolls Godly substats you can save that as a future off piece in starl however there's no luxury for an off piece if you wish to obtain the four-piece bonus or two-piece two-piece all four Cavern relics must match their set both planer ornaments must come from the same set too non-negotiable so while technically They removed an element of RNG through Relic synthesis it's been replaced by another possibly worse element of RNG that you're completely forced to farm for specific relics this opens up the possibility of you spending even more time farming for a character assuming you're aiming for perfect or near perfect optimization then you would engin it on account of not only having to farm a total of six different relics as opposed to five but not being able to off piece any of them so not only do you have to get the right main stat not only get the right substats not only get the right substat upgrades and not only get the highest upgrade roles but you have to get them all on a certain Relic meaning you can't get lucky on another Relic set and then import it over as an off piece add in the fact that you have to to trade in 10 relics to synthesize one even though you get to choose what piece you want and it will likely take on average much more time and much more trailblaze power to gear up a single unit it's most conspicuous when talking about pler ornaments being unable to use an off piece with fantastic substats for say Quantum damage on CA because you have no choice but to either go glam moth or rudal into Arena means that 30% crit value Quantum damage in a SoDo orb is practically worthless imagine having the best quantum spirit in the world with perfect sub stats and everything crit damage crit rate speed and percent attack but but it's on a bog architect sphere it really sucks not having an off piece relics on especially for players who are trying to optimize their characters experientially it's convenient that we have Auto Battle to do the farming for us but being stuck on a single character for long stretches of time without reaching like 90 or even 85% optimization gets tiresome quickly in genin within a couple months or so I can usually finish up a character 8 months later though and I still haven't finished working on cila or uan who came out back in May or I guess technically I have but they keep releasing new sets that are more optimal on them so I have to to reform and repeat the process all over again speaking of new releases that brings us to our next problem with starl approaching version 2.0 players have been comparing the games made in Voyage to genin and one thing that came to mind right away was how many more units they released for starl both four and five stars looking at this graphic on screen it's a pretty big difference but more characters means more units you have to equip which means more farming compounding the significance of being forced to land six out of six more than just characters are The Relic sets themselves in version one gin only had 16 artifact sets starl when combining the planer ornaments with Cavern relics has 28 they have the same number of Cavern relics as genin's artifacts of 16 but the additional relics they have to farm through pler ornaments makes it take that much more time true you get four immersi a week for free to use in the simulated universe but that only gets like what eight ornaments sometimes they can take over 100 spheres and or Ling ropes for a perfect pair an extra 8 a week is nowhere near sufficient also yes I'm fully aware that unlike genin's 8 Minute per restent refresh rate starl charges one Trail blaz power every 6 minutes but once again taking into account that we essentially have to farm one and a half times the number of relics and starl given there are six and you can't have a single off piece it's going to just take a lot more time to finish one character and Star's rate of new characters coming out means there just isn't enough supply of energy to keep up with the demand for relics speaking of farming efficiency with the way each cabin of corrosion and some Universe well this setup you're only really farming at about 50% efficiency ging has several artifact domains where both sets are in high demand OSF and shimawa blz Strayer and heart of death golden troop and Marshall SE kill the dreams and deep with memories to name a few but in starl there aren't that many Caverns or worlds that are two Relic sets that you realistically are trying to get both of at the same time perhaps long ofice disciple and traversing hacker space but if you're farming Genius of brilliant Stars any piece you get from guard of weaing snow is practically garbage or if you're farming Hunter of glacial Forest any eag to other relics you get are also garbage it's even worse in Sim Universe most people farming for Salo don't care about bellach Architects or if you want spy vwac you don't care about Kingdom of Bandit Tru glammo and pentacon are a decent combo but even then mono element teams are still pretty Niche so more often than not you're only really vying for one Relic set of the two which means all pieces of the other set you get are just a waste in addition relics and Stell tend to focus on very specific aspects of gameplay compared to ginin whose artifacts are more General and all purpose the Cav relics for the most part do a decent job trying to fit that general purpose if your character has a ton of follow-up attacks then Ash blaz and Grand Duke is the way to go if you're playing an HP scaling attacker then longevous disciple the planer ornaments though can get very specific there are several that give Chris Celestial differentiator in salotto and rudal in Arina but the effects that follow are greatly dependent on the character's main method of attacking if you're big on basic attacks and skills then rudant if your character spans followup attacks and ultimates and saloda if you have a front loaded sweeper then differentiator although right now no one builds that set since there are three different types of Cris sets you can't really take one or two POG champ Relic Pairs and pass the Mira DPS units because they all use different ones there's not one planetary set that you can farm for 10 different units I can see that artifacts are also specific in kiin all them needs guilded dreams Shogun needs the OSF sha needs Vermillion net needs maral what have you but bearing in mind that you can still upgrade other units thanks to that oneoff piece you're allowed to have you don't have to completely reform an entire new set for a character if something better comes out prior to Ash blazing U and Mains one for a band of sizzling Thunder since that was really the only set they could use on him now they have to reform an entirely New Relic set they can't maintain a single one of the previous relics consequently all the time they spent on the lightning set is practically gone unless a new lightning unit comes out who can take his spot you really give his H Downs to Kafka either because she uses prisoner in deep confinement point being it takes more resources and therefore more time to invest in a unit in starl at least in terms of relics on one hand it's easy to get units off the ground and that you don't have to mold for substats nearly as much as you do in Gin but on the other the investment ceiling of starl is a lot harder to achieve due to there being more relics you have to farm not being allowed an off piece Relic sets being more specific in the strength they give thus making it harder for you to Simply import relics to new characters therefore having to farm brand new ones and finally HSR releas releasing new characters very quickly severely punishing players that either didn't build correctly or simply got screwed by bad RNG one significant difference between starwell and gin that I'm noticing is the increased name for unit diversity in Gin unless the enemies you're fighting have an immunity to your team's main Elemental damage you can pretty much brood force your way through everything in the game with a single team and star all you sort of can't you need to have a wider selection of units geared up and battle ready for whatever content you're taking on even if you have silver wolf trying to fight enemies with units not corresponding to their Elemental weaknesses can make the difference between winning and losing a fight especially end game not to mention the arrangements of enemies you have to fight some attackers may be Gods against a single enemy but complete trash against groups of four and five and vice versa whereas ining even a single Target attacker can clear waves of enemies at times you might end up having to settle for less optimal stuff just to have enough trailblaze power to gear up your other units which can be very dissatisfying I don't want to necessarily make a hard statement that one game is worse than the other in terms of relics or artifacts they both suck but in my personal opinion farming for artifacts on gin feels a bit more tolerable than relics and star purely because I only have to farm four artifacts and can get away with an off piece while star I have to farm six for casual players who don't care too much about getting perfect optimal sets it may not be much of an issue to you but being a hardcore player myself and also a perfectionist it's something that grinds my gears a lot I understand that Stell is still a young game and we haven't had the years and years of trailblaze power like we did res in and gin to get through that initial hurdle of upgrading but if starl continues to release new characters and new relics at the rate that they are I feel like players might get overwhelm and constantly be behind schedule starl has a plethora of quality of life improvements that ginin doesn't have but I find myself disliking The Relic system more even though it has a few improvements what do you guys think though do you agree or disagree with my points let me know in the comments down below apart from that that's going to be it for today so if you enjoyed the video I'd appreciate it if you could leave a like And subscribe don't forget to follow me on Twitter at varsam join my Discord server and check out my other H Karo 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

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Keywords: genshin, genshin impact, vars genshin impact, genshin why no one plays, genshin impact gameplay, genshin discussion, genshin impact analysis, mihoyo, hoyoverse, honkai star rail, hsr, star rail, honkai star rail 2.0, star rail 2.0, honkai star rail penacony, star rail relics, star rail relics guide, star rail relic system, star rail relics explained, hsr relics, honkai star rail relics, the problem with honkai star rail, the problem with relics, hsr relics suck, hsr best relics

Id: MMB-r2Htr6M

Length: 14min 28sec (868 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 06 2024