Genshin Impact

[AnimeFangirl]

Kokomi in the water looks like Star Sea Whale from Love Nikki.
https://lovenikki.fandom.com/wiki/St...sea_Whales.jpg

The video had zero content other than Kokomi splashing and prancing around. No enemies, no numbers, no attacks, no nothing. Now I remember why I avoid watching these things.

[Diluc]

Abyss floor 11 is how Mihoyo promoting Kokomi for us.

You get the damn healer or your team dead. Meanwhile my Barbara is half baked build.

[Marina2]

Originally Posted by AnimeFangirl

Kokomi in the water looks like Star Sea Whale from Love Nikki.
https://lovenikki.fandom.com/wiki/St...sea_Whales.jpg

The video had zero content other than Kokomi splashing and prancing around. No enemies, no numbers, no attacks, no nothing. Now I remember why I avoid watching these things.

Each *5 character will get 3 PVs. What you are looking for will be in the the third one.

[AnimeFangirl]

Originally Posted by Diluc

Abyss floor 11 is how Mihoyo promoting Kokomi for us.

You get the damn healer or your team dead. Meanwhile my Barbara is half baked build.

Cheaper and faster to build a Barbara, Qiqi, Bennett, Jean or Diona than waste primogems on Kokomi. The latter three are also very useful in other ways. Her abyss utility is just a bonus for people who want her regardless. Of course I'll be pleasantly surprised if she turns out to be a great unit outside of the healing, but I'm not holding my breath.

[Diluc]

Anyone following the drama?


This is turning to be cold war between Mihoyo vs Community now.

I am also pissed off with Mihoyo arrogancy but i am not on verge to drop the game for now.

[Klashikari]

The drama is just an accumulation of frustration the community had over time since Mihoyo doesn't really do much to address the known issues.
But I believe it really went downhill with everything around the anniversary period, which include the content of 2.1 and their actions outside of the game

1) Anniversary rewards: they are pretty minimal when you consider how much Mihoyo reaped within a single year. Putting the 10 fates aside (which should be considered as rewards of the Moonchase event, which is related to IRL Autumn festival), we got something like 100 primogems (40 from gift, 40 from going through your theather, 20 from sharing) which is not even half of what you get from a single maintenance compensation.
Even if someone were to argue that Moonchase is for the anniversary instead, it doesn't make sense for its rewards to be even lower than lantern rite, since the anniversary is logically more important than CNY, and that event would count for 2.

2) Lack of actual celebration for it: aside of that web app, there isn't anything related to the anniversary. For some reason, there isn't even any basic FOMO stuff like special namecard/avatar/glider. Not even a simple spending event that would incite such mood. There isn't even simple thank you mail, short world quest or limited time event like halved resin.

3) Inazuma rushed: self explanatory. The general plot is fine, but the execution was really questionable, which really gives the impression they wanted its main plot to be over by the time the anniversary happens

4) Raiden and Kokomi banner debacle: tied to the previous point. Raiden and Kokomi timing are really questionable. Considering how they implemented the topup refresh at the start of the patch, while the anniversary reward are gradually distributed over a week much latter, it is obvious that
-They didn't want people to hoard more primogems by releasing Raiden before Kokomi (which doesn't make sense in term of the plot: you would expect interactions with the resistance first, not with Raiden).
-They blatantly incite people to spend money for Raiden considering the timing of the topup refresh
-Raiden major power spike is a much earlier constellation than usual (C1 and C2 are usually QoL or slight gameplay change, not a complete +40% damage increase)
-Kokomi's kit is awkward and pretty underwhelming for an important character

5) The content creator event drama: in a nutshell, they made an event for content creator, except that you only had 10% chance to get a welkin moon while the rest get 100k mora. Not only a welkin moon is barely $5 which is far less than what an artist could ask for a commission or what's needed for an actual costume (handmade or premade), but chances are low AND the consolation prize is not even worth 40 resins

6) Mihoyo implementing around 40 hashflags for Genshin. While it is very unlikely they paid 1m a pop, they very likely spent like 5-6 figures for them. It is baffling they spend so much money on simple PR instead of showing some good will in-game.

7) People learning that Youtubers get something like 10-15k Primogems. Not only it makes little sense for them to give so much to those guys who already get their money back through monetizing their videos, but it is also dubious they ask in the primogem mail that the content creator shouldn't reveal its content to other people. That's nothing new, but people seeing tectone getting 15k recently sure doesn't help.

8) Very little to no communication from the devs, making the fanbase wondering what's their future plan. Will people have to wait 1 year for Sumeru? What's the midterm direction of the game? Do devs actually have points they will address? Dev talk are really rare now.

9) "Censorship": on various platforms such as reddit or their official discords, mods are actively suppressing negative opinions regarding the anniversary.

10) Actually doing nothing on the day of the anniversary proper.



I probably forgot other things, but that's a lot of things, so the anniversary fiasco pretty much ignited people's pent up frustration to a record high so yeah.

[belatkuro]

And Mihoyo just did something. New mail right now in Asia Server. 400 primos and a new glider, supposedly the one mentioned in the 2.1 patch notes that's gonna be in a bundle and sold in a later date. Now it's given for free and the mail is 1/4, meaning more rewards on the way. Why is it given 2 days after the anniversary? But the 1/4 on the mail kinda leads to the online concert on the 3rd. Preplanned or damage control?

Either way, I'm just neutral on the drama. On one hand it's chaotic and somehow pathetic when the review bombing supposedly also affected different games. On the other it was all an accumulated frustration of various issues to Mihoyo and Genshin and this was the breaking point. Seeing all the frustration sort of calmed me down instead. No point in joining the drama when there's enough people getting angry. I have better things to do than be angry but yes, I agree that the anniv rewards were really disapppointing as well as the radio silence they did. They really could have done better like a free 4 star, more rewards and a special banner to spend on. They could have topped the Lantern Rites rewards since it's their 1st anniv but the rewards for the anniv are less than an event that happened during CNY. I have no energy to devote to this community outrage when I can just do other stuff that's productive. So I was just silent throughout the drama. Still though, the gifts right now is kind of a step in the right direction. Whether they take more than just that step or just step back once again remains to be seen. I'm still watching the outrage but I want to do other things other than see a community burn Melty Blood is coming out today yo.

[Klashikari]

It is definitely some desperate damage control. They could easily spread those rewards into 5-6 mails to match the anniversary and the concert. Yet, they didn't do that and it was distributed only 2 days after the actual anniversary of the game.
Additionally, the fact they had to hastly change the glider name makes the ordeal even more obvious, moreso that the glider appearance doesn't match the new name at all.

[GDB]

If it isn't the KFC glider, they still aren't fulfilling their old promises, let alone atoning for any of their new nonsense.

[larethian]

Mihoyo can't just remove "reviews"/"ratings" from playstore at least. they are removed because of playstore policy violation; either via auto-algorithm or reporting, and seen as bot-spam/fake/etc. But the drama is interesting for me watching from the sidelines

[Marcus H.]

A lot of stupid statements have been thrown around on Reddit from both sides... and they think that Mihoyo would open their communication channels after major issues during the livestreams. We already have three EN VAs (Barbara, Aether, Diluc) and one CN VA (Kokomi) harassed before.

I don't really have an opinion regarding anniversary rewards, but at this point people are just looking for something to get angry at and it's downright irresponsible outrage now.

[Tactics]

The meltdown through various community is hilarious I couldn't help but to talk about it as well.
To see a gaming app on Play Store got bombed to the point it rating fluctuated from 3.6 to 1.7 to 2.4 within 24 hours is gold.



I didn't play the game but come across their content creator advertisement when skimming through social media.
Reading it really made me wanted to facepalm, like, seriously? A million dollar revenue game currently in anniversary that managed to pique Nikkei attention and advertised up to South America unable to treated their participant better than local VTuber artwork contest done by Hololive and Nijisanji? Love how you can sort how experienced someone in gacha games just by reading the comments; looks like Genshin is first gacha game for a lot of people.

Nothing much to say but maybe a reminder that a new Mihoyo game, Honkai Star Rail is currently on development.
Back then when Genshin in development (around time there's advertisement with Mihoyo staff talking about what inspired them to made Genshin IIRC) Honkai 3 got back-to-back limited units, limited weapons and limited stigmata (in FGO terms, its Craft Essences) banner that well-known as requirement for either optimal build or top scorer in leaderboard-- on top of free resource drought to encourage whale for mats.

Leak indicates they're reusing assets from Honkai 3 and Genshin but surely doesn't mean they don't need extra money; my guess Mihoyo currently wanted to monopolize action game market ASAP so likely (after looking at Klashikari's points) there won't be significant advance until they're sure Genshin playerbase score certain level of revenue. Probably reason behind their current decision making in regards to this game.

[Klashikari]

Originally Posted by Marcus H.

A lot of stupid statements have been thrown around on Reddit from both sides... and they think that Mihoyo would open their communication channels after major issues during the livestreams. We already have three EN VAs (Barbara, Aether, Diluc) and one CN VA (Kokomi) harassed before.

Imo, I believe it is actually the opposite: they should have made proper communication channels to minimize potential collateral damage with fans going apeshit. Of course, players could already express their grievances to the official Twitter and Facebook account, but since those social media accounts rarely post actual dev related stuff, I assume people are just looking for the next punching bag instead.

The bottom line is that Mihoyo shouldn't have neglected the dev Q&A after 1.5. In fact, the direction shift since 1.6-2.0 is definitely made things worse overall.

Originally Posted by Tactics

Leak indicates they're reusing assets from Honkai 3 and Genshin but surely doesn't mean they don't need extra money; my guess Mihoyo currently wanted to monopolize action game market ASAP so likely (after looking at Klashikari's points) there won't be significant advance until they're sure Genshin playerbase score certain level of revenue. Probably reason behind their current decision making in regards to this game.

The problem is that Mihoyo actually has the monopoly when it comes to F2P anime open world RPG. So right now, it really seems like Mihoyo is trying their best to push the limits of their business model. They gained an explosive popularity with Genshin, attracting normies and gacha virgins which do explain their gigantic revenues from the western market. But now that the honeymoon period is long gone, it isn't surprising even the less experienced people about gacha notice the cracks in the system, leading to such outrage.

[serenade_beta]

I have no idea what is going on since I don't play the game, but someone (like the good old internet always does) went about mentioning the ruckus on the Azur Lane reddit, so I did get to burn some time watching the weird show going on.
They say Japanese players like to complain, so official Youtube videos tend to close comments to the JP videos, but I always felt that the Western audience was worse when they turn into a mob. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Sheba]

The youtubers who hyped up the anniversary more than necessary have certainly not helped. The worst offenders are those who compare Genshin anniversary #1 with other gacha's last anniversaries. A more intellectually honest comparison would have been comparing with the FIRST anniversaries of concurrent gacha games. You'd soon find out those are not as generous on their FIRST anniversaries as others made them to be

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by Sheba

The youtubers who hyped up the anniversary more than necessary have certainly not helped. The worst offenders are those who compare Genshin anniversary #1 with other gacha's last anniversaries. A more intellectually honest comparison would have been comparing with the FIRST anniversaries of concurrent gacha games. You'd soon find out those are not as generous on their FIRST anniversaries as others made them to be

People are just acting like "well, because you're rich you can afford to be generous" but they don't really understand anything about how anniversary marketing actually works. The generous gifts some gacha games offer (especially as they get older) are not really costing them anything; they're the lure to get people back in the door to spend. Companies like Cygames make more money during anniversaries than basically any other time of year because people showered with gifts are primed to spend (and they always have an abundance of carefully-timed bundles and promos that can only be obtained via paid currency while they shower people with free currency). Here, yes, MiHoYo was very light on the rewards, but they also weren't trying to lure people into spending in any particularly unusual way, except if you count the Raiden Shogun banner, I guess. The goods were getting now were apparently supposed to be a bundle sold as a souvenir from the free concert, so now it looks like they're even foregoing that. So in net, unlike most other Gacha games, this really will end up just being about giving stuff to the players -- although players already gave back a record-breaking amount on Raiden Shogun's banner, so I'm sure no one will complain.

Anyway, the real problem with this whole situation is that the "anniversary rewards are bad" rioters completely overshadowed all the more "serious" complaints there were, so MiHoYo's reaction was just to give candy to the crying babies. Now the people who actually *weren't* that mad about that but really wanted them to address other things are like "wait, but this wasn't actually about the anniversary rewards!" even though a lot of people thought it was. They were just focused on getting people as riled up as possible with a simple and easily-understood flashpoint, but without properly channeling that around a clear and and more comprehensive message. I personally don't feel as passionate about some of the other issues people are so mad about, but I think the way this blew up didn't work out the way they hoped.


On this, though...

Originally Posted by Klashikari

9) "Censorship": on various platforms such as reddit or their official discords, mods are actively suppressing negative opinions regarding the anniversary.

A lot of this (maybe not all) was just normal moderation in line with the rules against spamming, and honestly no different than we mods would probably do here if people started that kind of mob. People are very quick to yell "censorship" all the time, and when they're mad about something they don't want to obey decorum... but it had definitely gone beyond "negative opinions" when the "censorship" (moderation) kicked in. People were creating duplicate threads or spamming identical emotes or drowning out other legitimate conversation just to be disruptive, and that's no longer just "negative opinion" territory. People were purposefully breaking the rules to make a point, and then acting like victims when the moderators did their job in enforcing the rules.

Again, not saying it was *all* this, and maybe some of the cases we could debate specifics, but a lot of it was the consequence of bad behavior rather than "bad opinion," and plenty of negative opinions were actually still being discussed as long as it was within the rules.

[serenade_beta]

Originally Posted by relentlessflame

Anyway, the real problem with this whole situation is that the "anniversary rewards are bad" rioters completely overshadowed all the more "serious" complaints there were, so MiHoYo's reaction was just to give candy to the crying babies. Now the people who actually *weren't* that mad about that but really wanted them to address other things are like "wait, but this wasn't actually about the anniversary rewards!" even though a lot of people thought it was. They were just focused on getting people as riled up as possible with a simple and easily-understood flashpoint, but without properly channeling that around a clear and and more comprehensive message. I personally don't feel as passionate about some of the other issues people are so mad about, but I think the way this blew up didn't work out the way they hoped.

A lot of this (maybe not all) was just normal moderation in line with the rules against spamming, and honestly no different than we mods would probably do here if people started that kind of mob. People are very quick to yell "censorship" all the time, and when they're mad about something they don't want to obey decorum... but it had definitely gone beyond "negative opinions" when the "censorship" (moderation) kicked in. People were creating duplicate threads or spamming identical emotes or drowning out other legitimate conversation just to be disruptive, and that's no longer just "negative opinion" territory. People were purposefully breaking the rules to make a point, and then acting like victims when the moderators did their job in enforcing the rules.

Again, not saying it was *all* this, and maybe some of the cases we could debate specifics, but a lot of it was the consequence of bad behavior rather than "bad opinion," and plenty of negative opinions were actually still being discussed as long as it was within the rules.

Totally happens way too often
Smash Bros, Pokemon... At that point, there is nothing else you can do but enjoy the fools making fools of themselves, perhaps because they only have negative effects on their cause

Companies like Cygames make more money during anniversaries than basically any other time of year because people showered with gifts are primed to spend (and they always have an abundance of carefully-timed bundles and promos that can only be obtained via paid currency while they shower people with free currency).

Like I always say, Cygames is only good at making money (everything else sucks, so...)

[Tactics]

Originally Posted by serenade_beta

They say Japanese players like to complain, so official Youtube videos tend to close comments to the JP videos.

AFAIK Japanese players are pretty chill about it.
Even seiyuu that known for spending a lot of money on Genshin like Tomoaki Maeno, Takahashi Rie or widely-known gacha freak like Yuuki Aoi hardly show any sign of criticism, let alone complaint (part of it probably because they're voicing characters there). Reading various Japanese message boards I guess its combination of being used to such treatment from various gacha games and collector mentality still running strong there.

Safe to say with how widespread the bombing happened, its more of damage control to protect JP playerbase that rarely goes out of JP videos for commenting.

Originally Posted by Sheba

A more intellectually honest comparison would have been comparing with the FIRST anniversaries of concurrent gacha games. You'd soon find out those are not as generous on their FIRST anniversaries as others made them to be

This kind intellectual comparison only true in case both sides are the first game ever made by the company.

Genshin is Mihoyo sixth games, with reminder that their fifth games main server is pool of whales capable to tank a portion of Genshin development cost.
I didn't know the exact anniversary gift value but argument, "If they going this far with the marketing, they should already done their homework and research" is valid;
Then again, probably their research show, "People are willing to pay and accept whatever we threw in Honkai so Genshin should be no different, no other games do the same, not to mention global scale!"

I can only relate to content creators part--
To think they're celebrating anniversary like that after all fan-animation and anime modification in YouTube that barging in to my video recommendation as if Genshin advertisement not disrupt the screen enough.

[Sheba]

I dunno, from a dev pov, it's a matter to not give too much or they'd have to raise the next ones in the next anniversaries. Just a reminder that FGO players in JP didnt get a free SSR until late in the game's life, and it was mostly limited to those who were already in the drawing pool (so no free Jalter). Also they still dont have a pity system, which means those 100ish + 100ish (from livestreams) quartz may not even give you anything for show (I speak from personal experience).

MHY is completely not without blame, I mean giving 100 primos to winners of fanart contest, when those artists could easily commission their time and skill for 4 digits sums? Seriously. And yes, the silence on the developer side also not helped. (also heard that on the China side, there is ongoing holidays. It's like having Blizzard having a riot on the player side on thanksgiving).

But the collateral damage from the community's anger, review bombing of unrelated games AND harassment of people like voice actors, is a taint that will paint the community as manchildren for the years to come. Well, on the global (Europe and Americas) side. I just dont know about CN and JP.

PS: I am far from a gacha virgin. I have tried my best to keep my head cool about it AND tried to tell people to walk away a bit and try to get a better understanding. Some were reasonable, others had nothing but venom to spite.

[GDB]

Originally Posted by Sheba

I dunno, from a dev pov, it's a matter to not give too much or they'd have to raise the next ones in the next anniversaries. Just a reminder that FGO players in JP didnt get a free SSR until late in the game's life, and it was mostly limited to those who were already in the drawing pool (so no free Jalter).

However, they have had a guaranteed SSR every anniversary, and every New Years (except the first, I believe, since it was barely half a year old at that point). And those usually contain limited units, though it's hard to zero in on the one you want specifically.

Further, FGO's first anniversary lowered the pull cost by 25%, gave out 20 free pulls, and introduced grailing. Plus the other minor things like materials, half AP for a while, increased level up chances, etc.

And note that was 5 years ago.

And yes, the silence on the developer side also not helped. (also heard that on the China side, there is ongoing holidays. It's like having Blizzard having a riot on the player side on thanksgiving).

Didn't know they've had holidays since 2.0 started. That's quite impressive.