Genshin Impact

[dragon1412]

Originally Posted by Marcus H.

And regarding competitors, considering that China is having a shitfit over online gaming, expect widespread delays on gacha game releases for the next year or so.

That is probably only apply for China though, I mean, both Korea and Japan do have their own lineup in development.

Originally Posted by AnimeFangirl

Super feel this one. I wouldn't play Genshin if it wasn't single-player. Mihoyo has nothing to fear from other competitors unless they're single-player as well. All the people I know who play Genshin IRL are busy professionals. They don't have time for guilds, raids, Discord, weekly point targets, arguing with no-life team members and all the other drama that comes from MMOs and team-based games.

I think this is pretty much the common sentiment among those who leave MMOs and even among those who stay, I remember an interview before with some game developers 2 or 3 years ago admit that large raid and dungeon is no longer a thing simply people don't have the time for it and hating to find teams with under requirement gears and knowledge.

Originally Posted by relentlessflame

I honestly don't think that's likely the reason. They spend a ton of money on marketing initiatives that are based on an element of surprise and being able to control the message, and then they have beta testers who are breaking their legal contract and sites like this one that are stealing their IP and profiting off of it (5 figures, by their own admission). It really doesn't have to be anything about capitalizing on monopoly, or making dolphins spend more through banner blindness, or whatever. It can simply be because (and in my experience usually is because) someone at the very top is frustrated by these leakers breaking the rules and tells the legal department to do something about it.

There are plenty of other reasons to keep future developments close to the vest: maximizing the marketing value of immediate call to actions, coordinating timed reveals with media partners, avoiding the perception of "promises" when development situations change, and so on. But people have really fixated onto this one theory as if it's the unified theory of everything companies do, and while it may well be "a" factor that's considered sometimes, it's just way too over-simplistic to attribute everything to one single reason. While it's good for people to be suspicious of corporate motives and aware of the manipulative elements of various business models, there's a risk of it turning into conspiracy theories and paranoia too.

Like i said before, it's more like half and half situations, I still think the majority of the reasons is to encourage dolphins spending, But this could also be a kind of promotions for companies with IP looking to collab. Again, the main reasons where i saw it is just profit in my eyes, And, like you said, simply might because someone get frustrated by people breaking the rules. But I also noted it before that this is more because MHY spend so much money and effort to hunt leakers, despite this is entirely on MHY, If they don't want leaks, they can simply opt to choose internal beta testers, but they decided to cut cost and gone to public for testers, so from where I see it, they should have expect leaks coming with their choice.

[Sheba]

Seems the leaks business is not a black and white issue. While MHY would have liked more impulse spending from the low spenders, they certainly dont appreciate when people spills the entire content of a patch, especially the story bits. Sp, in that light, the action of MHY makes sense. Otoh, some leakers really wanted to help people making informed decisions over who to pull for, but the attitude of Honey shows it's far from altruistic, and some were doing it for the $$$ and the clout.

And that's the tip of the iceberg.

[AnimeFangirl]

Originally Posted by relentlessflame

Popular characters will still be popular, even if announced well in advance, as we see right now with Raiden Shogun (and despite the mixed messages about her place in the meta), and those that surround anticipated characters suffer somewhat, but the game still benefits from building hype about new characters a lot more than they would by not building hype -- as we see with both the Shogun and Ayaka.

This will probably change as the roster increases and as mediocre units like Yoimiya continue to be released. Those who pull for waifus and husbandos will not be deterred, but those who already have solid teams will wait for others to pull and test characters first.

[GDB]

Originally Posted by relentlessflame

Popular characters will still be popular, even if announced well in advance, as we see right now with Raiden Shogun (and despite the mixed messages about her place in the meta), and those that surround anticipated characters suffer somewhat, but the game still benefits from building hype about new characters a lot more than they would by not building hype -- as we see with both the Shogun and Ayaka.

Reminder that Ayaka had absolutely zero hype from mihoyo beyond the one image they released early/mid version 1.5. The entirety of her hype came from early CBT leaks.

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by AnimeFangirl

This will probably change as the roster increases and as mediocre units like Yoimiya continue to be released. Those who pull for waifus and husbandos will not be deterred, but those who already have solid teams will wait for others to pull and test characters first.

Well, yeah; this was going to happen anyway. Gacha games always have new players joining, in addition to those pulling for their favorites, but over time people start waiting for tier lists to know who the essential units are. And in this game, given that the banner period is so long, there's a lot less pressure than some other gacha games (where a limited banner may only appear for a few days and then is gone for 6+ months).

Originally Posted by GDB

Reminder that Ayaka had absolutely zero hype from mihoyo beyond the one image they released early/mid version 1.5. The entirety of her hype came from early CBT leaks.

The CBT was never under NDA -- people were expressly allowed to stream it. They explicitly acknowledged the community's existing hype for her when they showed off the character in the live stream.

It's not like they don't understand the value of hype. But that doesn't mean that people who sign a contract can decide on their own when it's fine to break it.

Originally Posted by dragon1412

If they don't want leaks, they can simply opt to choose internal beta testers, but they decided to cut cost and gone to public for testers, so from where I see it, they should have expect leaks coming with their choice.

It's not like they don't have internal QA -- they absolutely do. But it's still valuable to have input from players as well, because they give different kind of feedback than internal or contracted teams would give and can give a preview of the market reaction for things.

And I'm sure they expected "some" leaks. But that doesn't mean they're going to be okay with it when it goes too far, many people are breaking their contracts all the time, and entire websites are making good money profiting off it. There's a limit to how much they're willing to look the other way, and I don't see how that's at all surprising. It may well be that the end-effect of all this is to change the beta program and limit what they can see/test, but I really don't think that benefits either them or the playerbase.

[Klashikari]

Originally Posted by Marcus H.

Banner blindness will only affect Day 1 rollers. Each featured banner lasts three weeks. In addition, there's no incentive to rolling as soon as the banner hits. Most reasonable people would just delay their rolls when in doubt. Also I do not want to promote conspiracy theories about Mihoyo's "leaker hunt decree" as a sign of greed; they are simply doing what they are entitled to do as a company with a valuable piece of intellectual property.

Originally Posted by relentlessflame

I definitely have seen gacha games that rely on banner blindness (GBF is a great example), but the banner cycle in this game is so slow and predictable so far that I doubt that's an essential driving factor that has a huge impact on revenue. Popular characters will still be popular, even if announced well in advance, as we see right now with Raiden Shogun (and despite the mixed messages about her place in the meta), and those that surround anticipated characters suffer somewhat, but the game still benefits from building hype about new characters a lot more than they would by not building hype -- as we see with both the Shogun and Ayaka.

I think there are much more nuances when it comes to banner blindness. Case in point: Eula. I don't know about you, but a lot of people were considering rolling on Venti or Tartagli rerun until Eula's leaks were spreading like wildfire, which made people shift decision in some case.
Ayaka and Raiden cases were not the norm because the former was known ever since CBT while the latter was more or less hyped due to her status/role in the story. In comparison, completely new characters like Eula and Yanfei cannot be predicted whatsoever. Without those leaks, it was very likely that some F2P/light spenders could have indulged themselves in the reruns then get caught offguard by the completely new characters.

Of course, there will be always new characters at some point, but if you know their appearance/lore/kit weeks/months in advance, it is much easier to make a decision regarding the ongoing banners, so less likely to make a purchase. They can actually decide which banner to skip depending on the order and expected amount of free primogems obtained during that period. That's exactly why Leaks in gacha are really bad for business because while whales will most likely spend money every time there is a new banner, it isn't exactly sustainable. Rather, managing to incite F2P/low spenders/dolphin to open their wallet at crucial times is definitely something most companies would like to succeed for obvious reasons. And obviously, converting them into dolphin or whales is also an interesting prospect.
Reruns are not exactly the most predictable thing either (Tartaglia being the very first rerun character was the weirdiest decision they could make if you ask me), so it isn't just the identity of new characters that can shift sales. It is also certain timing too. Just look how long it took for Tartaglia compared to Ganyu. At some point, you can't exactly predict when reruns of more recent characters like Hu Tao or Eula will happen since MHY has been a bit inconsistent when it comes to banner order and implementation of new characters.
Consider the opposite example of Eula's case: what would happen if people know exactly when Hu Tao will be rerun slightly before Yoimiya's banner? They could make a better decision if they should roll on Yoimiya's banner since "Hu tao rerun might be really late considering there are still Albedo, Ganyu and Xiao". But that reasoning can be completely ignored if leaks about the future banners are known. Now, that person can work on a potential primo roadmap and decide if they can afford rolling on Yoimiya or should simply wait for Hu Tao who might come out right after Kokomi. Banner blindness doesn't only affect character assessment but also decision based on whether they should wait for the rerun or roll for the ongoing banner.


As for Honkai, I believe people in this thead do not have the full picture.
Honkai doesn't really have any enforcement against leaks simply because their rotation has been solely relying on 1 non farmable S-rank valkyrie (equivalent to Genshin 5*) every even patches, and a 1 A-rank valkyrie (4* character) every odd patches. I will spare you the details, especially given the weird changes the game will get in 5.2, but the bottomline is that Honkai community openly talk about beta content because there is absolutely no NDA going on. If anything, the devs take note of the feedbacks so there is like 3 beta relases for a given patch in average. The difference is that Honkai is far less forgiving for F2P since Honkai is far more competitive than Genshin when it comes to end game. So from my perspective, they don't really have issues with information going out because the business model is already more enclined towards dolphins and whales.
In comparison, Genshin follows mobage gacha standards regarding new content information, so they focus on the hype and other tricks for their business model.

That being said, I believe Mihoyo has been quite unabashed when it comes to said business model. Characters announcement have been done only because leaks were quite persistent thanks to clout chasers (You can't deny leakers agenda in Genshin cases considering the blatant drip tactics + obvious advertisement to their kofi/patreon and whatnot). Additionally, not only Raiden was released really early plot wise, but topup bonus were reset on patch release whereas anniversary rewards are scheduled "normally".
As such, it is hard not to conclude that they are trying their best to control the hype at their advantage when it comes to high profile characters, even if it means that some characters like Yoimiya get revealed too early for their own good. That and giving more reasons to spend money (be it because of earlier bonus or late freebies).


Honestly, this whole mess is an ugly and plain shade of grey like Sheba stated. There isn't really any good guy in that conflict, although when you look at their agenda, I frankly think the leakers were much worse than Mhy. Leaking the entire content of 2.0 after Mhy sudden teaser announcement for Ayaka and Yoimiya was the most childish and asinine thing to do. If you add their behaviour after the early leak of Eula patch by "Big Boss", there is no doubt they are vultures as well. And now, when you consider that Honey revenues from their genshin website amounted to 5 digits in USD per month, I can imagine the other leakers got a very nice "exposure money" too.

[Tactics]

I didn't play Genshin because of my experience with Mihoyo in Honkai, but with how this discussion expanded within games community (particularly gacha section, thanks to Genshin popularity) and when I saw how things developed here turned out there's some misinformation happens here, let me explain some of it.

First, banner blindness in GBF is not entirely true.

Cygames been included hint of who is the next playable character and what they capable of (through seiyuu talk, events, schedule and their own 4-koma).
So anyone within the game community should already have a gist of who the new character. Surprise only happen occasionally and that's often within calculation as well (Shion, a Fire DPS with good Fire weapon, before Fire-themed guild wars, or Tikoh, first in-universe character voiced by Yoshino Nanjo, a healer in element with a lot of healers, got good character story currently one of characters with most requested rate-up after playerbase skip her on her debut banner).

Back then leak also happened to GBF and affect decision of high-end players considering there's guild war in the game.
Their approach to the problem is Kimura Yuito, the director, personally approach leakers and made agreement that allowed leak is only weapon arts and weapon type.
With Cygames actively giving character hint following that, leak gradually became less desired but to extreme min-maxing player that care about securing weapon type option.

Second, you can easily find Honkai leaks on YouTube is true.

However mind that Honkai environment is all about being competitive.
As a result, their high-end players hardly give a damn about whether a new character functional on its own or not because min-maxing is all that matters.
Their dolphin + whale population also easily more significant than F2P (as shown by huge difference between CN and SEA server) so there's no harm about leak as active feedback works in favor of both sides. Mihoyo wanted whatever they thrown sell, whales wanted whatever they got competitive.

My take here considering my experience is that Mihoyo expecting Genshin fanbase to do the same as Honkai fanbase.
No need to ask, just roll for them, don't forget to spend because Genshin is unique and only one. They're agitated because leak hindered them to reach that state; its actually funny that both sides not even tried to play smart about it. As mentioned by dragon1412, in Mihoyo part if leak really an issue they can start hiring internal testers. In leakers part, they actually can escape with simple fact by playing 'not all of our leaks are true', but somehow they consider themselves to be the reason why Genshin is successful so all that Patreon and Kofi is normal. LOL.

[dragon1412]

^ This, To be fair, both Leakers and MHY have their issues in this and I can hardly say one is better than the others, I don't know much about the leakers consider themselves the reason Genshin to be successful thing, since I mostly get leak from reddit and I'm pretty much only interest in new characters to control my F2P primos. But from where I see it, MHY just want to cash in Genshin unique status as much as possible before competitors start to appear in the market.

Ayaka and Raiden case like many said, is fairly unique, Raiden was the central character and Ayaka has been around since CBT, look at Yoimiya banners would make a better view on the leak vs blindness thing.

[Marcus H.]

That is probably only apply for China though, I mean, both Korea and Japan do have their own lineup in development.

Didn't deny that, but the big hitters from Mihoyo's own "home turf" would have been a bigger challenge to their monopoly. It may be just me, but I feel like Japan and Korea have to step up more than China if they want to compete with Genshin. Korea hasn't released enough gacha games (only Counter:Side comes to mind), while Japan seems happy enough to make "lightweight" games that earn them money or games that rely too much on an existing franchise or fanbase. Genshin was born out of a multimillion-dollar risk. Only a risk (or passion) of that scale can make something like Genshin.

[dragon1412]

I think many of the new title is on the side of taking risk though, I mean, Project SF2 in Korea and Blue protocol in Japan is definitely a big investment rather than just lightweight. To be fair, MHY would still have some advantage in China is their home turf and gaming spending habit in CHina, but having big name competitor will definitely taking a lot of their player base.

[Tactics]

Originally Posted by Marcus H.

Didn't deny that, but the big hitters from Mihoyo's own "home turf" would have been a bigger challenge to their monopoly. It may be just me, but I feel like Japan and Korea have to step up more than China if they want to compete with Genshin. Korea hasn't released enough gacha games (only Counter:Side comes to mind), while Japan seems happy enough to make "lightweight" games that earn them money or games that rely too much on an existing franchise or fanbase. Genshin was born out of a multimillion-dollar risk. Only a risk (or passion) of that scale can make something like Genshin.

Its not happy enough but difference on consumer preferences.
Back then I had a talk with each of my Japanese and Chinese colleague about their mobile game preferences.

I asked my Japanese colleagues, why game like Puzzle & Dragon and Monster Strike are extremely popular compare to Honkai that is very popular in SEA.
He answered "At our age (me and him BTW), we live a busy life, so we prefer something that can be played with one hand. On whim, while waiting on station, on train until arrive at destination. Just like light novel; easy to understand, pause anytime, anywhere, with simple spec requirement also granting degree of progress enough to serve as topic when players met with each other, be it intended or coincidence."

Meanwhile my Chinese colleagues, when I asked about Honkai popularity in CN, he found it difficult to explain past "It got waifu and flashy action, oh, getting high score is fun too.".
During that time, he's kinda pissed off his waifu moveset not flashy enough. Last year IIRC, Mihoyo released his waifu alt. with flashy destructive moveset and fairly meta for long time. Following that he can talk about it for month (character design, min-maxing it, whether he can bypass some stage with her meta-ness, how many he need to spent for copies so he can experience her at full power, like that).

I guess that explained why CN can have mobile games like Genshin, Honkai, Punishing Gray Raven or Devil May Cry Mobile.
Its just different demand, and Japanese themselves when it comes to 'full package' games will going to Playstation (FF VIIR, Tales of Arise, Street Fighter V, Dragon Quest, etc.) or PC (Apex Legends, Train Simulator, etc.)

[Marcus H.]

That's interesting, as it aligns with the popular idea in Genshin that "China plays for the meta, Japan plays for the waifus/husbandos".

[MeoTwister5]

Originally Posted by Marcus H.

That's interesting, as it aligns with the popular idea in Genshin that "China plays for the meta, Japan plays for the waifus/husbandos".

Meta is transient. Waifu/Husbando is forever.

[Klashikari]

Originally Posted by Marcus H.

That's interesting, as it aligns with the popular idea in Genshin that "China plays for the meta, Japan plays for the waifus/husbandos".

It is partly because of that, but the biggest difference is how it became even more difficult for working adults to have time for actual gaming in Japan. As such, the important point is that game controls must be suitable for mobile. That's why a huge chunk of JP genshin community sticks with playstation, simply because it isn't exactly practical to do dailies and other activities on phone during commuting and breaks at your workplace since most companies are still against remote work in Japan.
It doesn't always involve meta or not. It is just that gaming habits in Japan dramatically shifted for years and there isn't much developers can do in term of controls, so they basically focus on the visual assets, interface, Seiyuu and whatnot. And it goes without saying that the budget for mobage is still pretty ludicrous mostly because they go all out with high profile guest illustrators, marketing and so on.

That's also why the switch is incredibly popular in Japan, because it is the only gaming console that alleviate the space and timing issues Japanese had for ages.

[Marina2]

Kokomi PV come out early than usual.

YouTube

https://youtu.be/ppH4inCNdPE

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[Diluc]

Look like the leakers are not dead yet. Someone just released Kokomi leak in twitter

[dragon1412]

They were never dead to begin with. The whole hunt happen way back in 1.2=1.3. And most of the time the community freak out whenever the leakers go underwater to avoid the hunt and after the new beta test leak surge back as normal.

[relentlessflame]

Realistically, I don't think MiHoYo is in any way expecting they will kill *all* leaks altogether, but just remind people of the weight of their contract and perhaps deal with sites that directly profit from hosting leaks. It's like when copyright holders go after major piracy sites and the like -- they know they're not going to stop everything, but they'd like to make it a bit harder.

[AnimeFangirl]

In China this is called "killing the chicken to scare the monkeys."
I know this because I read waaaay too many Chinese web novels during the lockdown.

[Marina2]

Very beautiful trailer.

YouTube

https://youtu.be/Jj9lJWoanLA

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