So, I started playing Genshin Impact
2021-Sep-09, Thursday 11:03![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dorchadas
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sashagee's pattern of getting me into interminable online games. 
On the one hand, Mihoyo obviously took the lessons of Breath of the Wild to heart. The game is an open-world RPG with a stamina bar and climbing mechanics, with gathering ingredients for healing and buff foods a vital part of the experience. There are camps of goblin-like monsters containing treasure chests. Early on there's a quest to get a gliding license. There arefourseven elementally-themed lands to explore. There are ancient ruins inhabited by robots that look like stone statues. There are environmental puzzles to solve with treasure chests as the reward. It's not post-apocalyptic but it has the same peaceful, Ghibli air, with cel-shaded art, anime designs, and beautiful orchestral music. And honestly, it looks fantastic:
I like the tactics involved in putting teams together and using their combined elemental abilities to overcome new challenges, taking advantage of combo bonuses and swapping characters mid-fight to stack up the damage. I love elemental magic systems, and this particular combination is one I haven't seen before--seven elements: Air, Earth, Fire, Water, Wood, Lightning, and Ice. There are seven countries, each worshipping a particular god and each based on an element, devoted to an ideal, and themed after a real-world culture:
Now, the bad parts.
Genshin Impact is a predatory gacha game that does its absolute best to squeeze money out of you. As with every gacha game, you get a few characters through the story but there are dozens of other optional characters that can only be obtained through gambling. You get some of the currency (called Primogems) needed to buy chances (called Wishes) through the game, but enough to make one wish every day or two--definitely not enough to be sure of getting a character that's available for only a limited time. And furthermore, there's a mechanic that seems like it's designed to reduce the heartbreak of getting duplicate characters called Constellations, where getting dupes provides bonuses to those characters, except that some of those bonuses are so powerful they take characters from average to amazing all by themselves. "To Be Cleaned," Noelle's fourth constellation makes her shield a bomb when enemies breach it, and "Must Be Spotless," her sixth constellation (of six), increases her burst attack's power by 50% and adds one second to its duration for every enemy defeated during it.
It's evil genius, in a way, that Mihoyo found a way to turn duplicate characters from a disheartening experience to another chance for grinding and thus, for money.
There are daily and weekly missions to get primogems. Achievements award primogens, as do story quests, but the fastest way to get them is just to pay, and with a 0.6% chance to roll any given five-star character, it'll take a lot of wishes to get one you want. There is a mechanically literally called Pity that guarantees a five-star character after 90 wishes without one, but of course it's not necessarily the five-star character you want. For that, you have to wish another 90 times. And then wish another thousand times or so to max out their constellation at a price of around $1100. Getting your full waifu collection is going to cost you a pretty penny or a lot of grinding. And this is just characters--of course they need weapons and accessories as well, which have to be rolled for as well.
Just yesterday I went to go fight a boss because the list of possible loot included some five-star items. I didn't get any, obviously, so out of curiosity I went to look up the drop chance and it turns out the drop chance is 0%--I need to raise my level a lot if I want to fight the version of the boss that drops those. Despite that, the game still tells me they're possible drops.
On top of all this, boss fights and dungeons are also time-gated. You need to use "resin" to claim the rewards and only get a certain amount of it per day. Unless, of course, you pay to get more.
I do like the exploration gameplay and the plot, and I'm playing becausesashagee wants to play together. But I'm casting several side-eyes at the game at the moment, and I doubt I'll be doing a lot of grinding once I finish the story. I'm not here to collect the waifus, I'm here for the plot and the worldbuilding.
Maybe I'll run a TTRPG in the setting when there's more information out about the game.
sashagee's pattern of getting me into interminable online games. On the one hand, Mihoyo obviously took the lessons of Breath of the Wild to heart. The game is an open-world RPG with a stamina bar and climbing mechanics, with gathering ingredients for healing and buff foods a vital part of the experience. There are camps of goblin-like monsters containing treasure chests. Early on there's a quest to get a gliding license. There are
I like the tactics involved in putting teams together and using their combined elemental abilities to overcome new challenges, taking advantage of combo bonuses and swapping characters mid-fight to stack up the damage. I love elemental magic systems, and this particular combination is one I haven't seen before--seven elements: Air, Earth, Fire, Water, Wood, Lightning, and Ice. There are seven countries, each worshipping a particular god and each based on an element, devoted to an ideal, and themed after a real-world culture:
- Mondstadt: Air, Freedom, Germany
- Liyue: Earth, Contracts, China.
- Inazuma: Lightning, Eternity, Japan.
- Sumeru: Wood, Wisdom, Middle-East/South Asia(??).
- Fontaine: Water, Justice, France.
- Natlan: Fire, War, pre-Columbian Central America(??)
- Snezhnaya: Ice, [Unknown], Russia.
Now, the bad parts.
Genshin Impact is a predatory gacha game that does its absolute best to squeeze money out of you. As with every gacha game, you get a few characters through the story but there are dozens of other optional characters that can only be obtained through gambling. You get some of the currency (called Primogems) needed to buy chances (called Wishes) through the game, but enough to make one wish every day or two--definitely not enough to be sure of getting a character that's available for only a limited time. And furthermore, there's a mechanic that seems like it's designed to reduce the heartbreak of getting duplicate characters called Constellations, where getting dupes provides bonuses to those characters, except that some of those bonuses are so powerful they take characters from average to amazing all by themselves. "To Be Cleaned," Noelle's fourth constellation makes her shield a bomb when enemies breach it, and "Must Be Spotless," her sixth constellation (of six), increases her burst attack's power by 50% and adds one second to its duration for every enemy defeated during it.
It's evil genius, in a way, that Mihoyo found a way to turn duplicate characters from a disheartening experience to another chance for grinding and thus, for money.
There are daily and weekly missions to get primogems. Achievements award primogens, as do story quests, but the fastest way to get them is just to pay, and with a 0.6% chance to roll any given five-star character, it'll take a lot of wishes to get one you want. There is a mechanically literally called Pity that guarantees a five-star character after 90 wishes without one, but of course it's not necessarily the five-star character you want. For that, you have to wish another 90 times. And then wish another thousand times or so to max out their constellation at a price of around $1100. Getting your full waifu collection is going to cost you a pretty penny or a lot of grinding. And this is just characters--of course they need weapons and accessories as well, which have to be rolled for as well.
Just yesterday I went to go fight a boss because the list of possible loot included some five-star items. I didn't get any, obviously, so out of curiosity I went to look up the drop chance and it turns out the drop chance is 0%--I need to raise my level a lot if I want to fight the version of the boss that drops those. Despite that, the game still tells me they're possible drops.
On top of all this, boss fights and dungeons are also time-gated. You need to use "resin" to claim the rewards and only get a certain amount of it per day. Unless, of course, you pay to get more.
I do like the exploration gameplay and the plot, and I'm playing because
sashagee wants to play together. But I'm casting several side-eyes at the game at the moment, and I doubt I'll be doing a lot of grinding once I finish the story. I'm not here to collect the waifus, I'm here for the plot and the worldbuilding.Maybe I'll run a TTRPG in the setting when there's more information out about the game.
