File: 1746469363337.jpeg (111.3 KB, 736x1308, IMG_6841.jpeg)
No. 490341
File: 1746469829960.png (119.28 KB, 813x687, monthlyplayer2025.png)
>>490337the casket represents the death of genshin and the smile on his face is to hide the devs desperation with the cheap mondo repackage
No. 490436
>>490345I agree with the lightning in a bottle part but I don't think it was only the pandemic, even though the pandemic is why it became a lot of people's first gateway gacha. But I think it also maintained it's popularity, and that no other gacha will ever reach the same heights, for two factors. Look at the fanbase and you can see two groups.
1. People who played gacha before and who went into Genshin because it had a much nicer budget and better gameplay than what they were used to. Before Genshin on twitter the gachas I'd see dominating would be rhythm games like the idol stuff, or games like Granblue Fantasy or FGO, which is also a pretty moid dominated franchise. None of these games innovate their gameplay and their pity system can be even worse than Genshin's. So by gacha standards Genshin was already an elevated experience. It felt like a regular game.So by gacha standards it was already good. There was fanservice for the female characters but it didn't look as bad as other games so it got a lot of women interested, and cool male characters were also some of the first promoted so it got that audience too, where at first they would think they'd be treated equally unlike other games.
2. The jrpg anime fantasy audience. I think this point is more relevant to Genshin's current staying power. Genshin got the type of normie crowd who loved jrpgs. A lot of those mid budget jrpgs you used to see on handheld consoles are basically obsolete now. But a lot of women like them and that audience is still there. Genshin managed to get that audience that Square Enix tossed aside when they were too busy trying to make the new Final Fantasy more like a manly action game. So you have the Final Fantasy crowd with nothing to really play in between games. The Fire Emblem people too in between the long wait between games. And series like the Tales games which are basically kill now thanks to management. Genshin just had what it took to attract this bigger crowd that gave it success. If Genshin only attracted the waifufags or only teenagers whose only contributions to fandoms are just kinning and discourse, it wouldn't have the big fanbase of artists and writers that it does. Most good fic writers after all are grown women with jobs, not annoying teenagers or moids who only care about building harems. That's why Genshin got so huge, it has the same elements that those type of female fans like in games. Being a live service game doesn't hurt the popularity either. FOMO is huge now with how fast moving social media is, one and done canons don't build the same longevity in fandoms anymore but people love to be into the big popular thing.
All this to say this is why no gacha game can ever really be the Genshin killer. New waifu games will take incels, some husbandofags will go to otome but not all husbandofags are yumes, or just want to play a dating sim. no matter how polished it is. None of these new waifu games or new Hoyo games will ever reach the heights Genshin had because it's not just because of the pandemic, its because of the other qualities Genshin had. Dawei is too prideful and stupid to see it because he wish it was it was Honkai instead. He doesn't want to bring back the old designers or writers. He wants it to be Honkai. Making all these spinoffs and side games, trying to turn Honkai into the next MCU, none of that is going to work. The "roots" he should be going back to aren't waifus, it should be simple anime fantasy. But I bet he resents that something that isn't his baby got so popular. He doesn't care if he tanks Genshin's reputation, he's already filthy rich. He really is such a loathsome CEO. If another gacha wants to kill Genshin , they'd have to do what Genshin did but better and reach the normie audience, but it seems they all want to chase the waifu audience instead, with diminishing returns each time. Someone should make a youtube video on Genshin's downfall. I have a feeling the ending is going to be a trainwreck that ruins most people's associations with the canon just like Jujustsu Kaisen and Tokyo Revengers ending did for those series. It would be nice to finally stop seeing people praise this waifuslop incel pandering game as deep and meaningful storytelling.
No. 490569
>>490436Interesting read, and interesting that the dev team swapped at some point. Fwiw I think LADS should market itself using it's combat system more often; I had no clue it was even in the game and it's really similar to Genshin.
I also think part of the factor for the game dropping off is that for people where Genshin is their first gacha, similarly to mmos, it's really hard to invest into a new game? Especially with how generic Mihoyo slop looks nowadays. I only picked up LADS recently without knowing it was gacha, and I had a huge break inbetween where I hadn't played Genshin because HSR was coming out and it felt like Mihoyos priorities shifted. Plus a steady decline of interesting shit to do besides artifact grind. LADS has an artstyle I prefer and it's gameplay is varied enough to be engaging for the time being.
No. 490603
File: 1746540377559.webp (255.4 KB, 1080x4090, gacha-revenue-monthly-report-a…)
>>490597What annoys me the most is that Mihoyo already has two projects (one old, one new) that are specifically catered to incels and waifufags, so WHY change their omnipandering massively succesful one? Like nonna said a lot of it is Dawei's particular taste and vendetta because his own pet project and taste isn't as popular but also can a CEO have that much power that even after months and months of middling sales, lukewarm to negative reception and huge player drop they won't recorrect course? Genshin is not cheap to make and maintain, and while Star Rail is succesful, it's nowhere near Genshin's levels. ZZZ isn't a failure but I doubt they count it as anything overwhelmingly positive and yet last month a dead ZZZ patch did almost the same as a dead Genshin one… Genshin has what? 10x the playerbase? The company cannot survive with it's biggest game doing this poorly so I just don't get other why developers or even investors just anyone there isn't shaking some sense into him. Mihoyo is not a small company anymore, I doubt it's just HIS money on the line.
No. 490617
>>490603It has nothing to do with the money at all. Anyone who says it's because women don't sell is a liar. What kills me is I've seen some "woman liking" m/f shippers bragging about how husbandos don't sell too, but then they don't even realize that incels don't want their waifus shipped with other guys besides Aether, so why are even support a trend that goes against your own interests like this? I can't understand it at all.
The omnipandering is what made Genshin successful because most normie gamers don't want what these crazy incels want. Most people who want a harem or a porn game will just go play those games. Dawei is already rich so even if revenue tanks he can still do whatever he wants. They know they can bait people back by dangling older characters like carrots on a stick and the fandom will come back. The reaction to the Mond patch is exactly what he wants. They can do the cycle again in Nod Krai, only now if anyone complains about "gooner" content they'll be told to shut up because the Mond patch had men and just wait for Snezhnaya to see Childe next. People don't want to believe that the company is this manipulative but they are very well aware of trends and how to keep people thirsty and desperate so they'll accept any scraps Hoyo throws at them.
No. 490644
>>490436Yeah, people keep coping that it was all thanks to the pandemic that Genshin took off so well and while it was definitely a factor it was far from being the only one. Genshin delivered a simple premise that nobody else was doing - a high budget anime fantasy game that didn't center around gooning and had actual gameplay. As someone who has played both jrpg and gacha for a very long time Genshin filled a never before seen niche. Besides Granblue, FGO was the most successful gacha that had actual gameplay and compelling story in the past could have been classified as omnipandering, but the game went to shit because Japanese gaming companies are notoriously bad at management and tanked their flagship property in favor of that shitty Sakura Wars game that went tits up in less than a year. Genshin came out during that era (2020) and a lot of especially female FGO players transitioned to playing that.
So if some gaming company actually wanted to make a Genshin killer, they could do so easily - just make a fun, well designed world with interesting lore and a simple combat that appeals to a broad audience i.e. doesn't have 12-year old girls flashing their asses or 10 subsequent naked cowtit waifus but a balanced gender ratio and character designs that don't make you feel like a degenerate for touching the game. But
they don't want to do it. Even Mihoyo straight up ruined their cashcow franchise out of moid pride. Now producing one from scratch would be expensive, Asian incels would eat them alive, stakeholders would scoff at you and refuse to fund the project because they're all misogynistic Chinese billionaires themselves. It might be a crackpot theory but I fully believe the rumor that Mihoyo tried to intentionally sabotage Mydei's banner to keep up the lie that shirtless male characters don't sell.
No. 490655
>>490617idk that feels like a bit of a naive undertanding of how a company that became this massive works (maybe just this buying the idea of Dawei as the great incel gooner savior doesn't really make logical sense to me)
like i said, I definetly believe the change of direction that happened in Natlan was on purpose and it was Dawei's doing its not even that I dont believe Dawei himself isnt an incel trying to push his fanservice waifus or that stakeholders arent misogynist chinese billionaires but rather that what motivates stakeholders the most is always money so if the formula of change for the game is failling this miserably and for so long i don't see why they wouldn't pressure the dev team to change tactics
No. 490666
File: 1746552698142.mp4 (204.46 KB, 780x360, apronfetishprostitute.mp4)
>>490337How can OroIfa shippers, Kinichfags and Varkafags call this patch a win when apron fetish girl is still a 5* and Kinich's tragic story took 6 patches to come out?
No. 490678
File: 1746553962494.png (366.62 KB, 638x748, jhgjguvk.png)
>>490666Everyone is retarded. Hoyo can keep pumping out the most slutty, borderline pornographic female characters and women in the english speaking fanbase will still see it as some feminist victory. I have seen posts with around 30k likes dickriding hoyo because they turned a dead, misogynistic man into a half naked anime girl.
No. 490731
>>490655Hyv isn't doing as bad as you think, even if the revenue is going down. They became massive and changed tactics from what made them massive. I'm sure many defenders want to believe it's because only incels spend money but it's a lie. They can't do anything to him as long as people still spend, and unfortunately they're still making money because they know how to bait people back.
>>490666Female fans of anything are just used to eating shit. Most stories always have us as a secondary audience. People are used to eating shit from shounen fandoms anyway, it's not surprising they were so easily won back by some bait.
>>490676People are very hype for Skirk, I bet they would forgive any shitty writing she has. She'll soften up only for Aether and people will ask why you don't want women to be gentle, why do you think they should only be warriors, as if these games let a single female playable be unpleasant to traveler.
>>490678All it took was some lazy yuribait with Furina for everyone to overlook the ugly apron lingerie. In a just world all "gacha feminists" would be mocked.
No. 490732
File: 1746562086505.jpeg (34.48 KB, 739x415, IMG_9712.jpeg)
>>490666Holy fuck I just realised they deliberately positioned the buttons on her chest to look like areolas
No. 491007
File: 1746616284024.jpeg (105.71 KB, 1141x640, GqVx4MdbgAEaHoc.jpeg)
>>490732Skirk's splash art. Is it me or is she even more naked than when we saw her in Fontaine?
No. 491008
File: 1746616307153.png (441.83 KB, 668x640, GqVyJvBaoAAcyoX.png)
For the Dahliafags: the splash art
No. 491012
File: 1746617895173.jpg (381.11 KB, 2048x2048, GqVzMWjWcAAwhKe.jpg)
>>491007Kek they stripped her of that scarf and gave her the apron fetish hooker's top.
No. 491015
File: 1746618563654.webp (143.37 KB, 800x1131, Benares_Human_Form.webp)
>>491013Benares apparently
No. 491019
File: 1746619841700.png (3.81 MB, 2114x2092, whorescoffier.png)
A better question is, will Skirk make Japenis coomers take pantyshots day 1 like Escoffier did? One of them ene noticed her whole tit was out behind the apron.
No. 491021
File: 1746619897293.webp (105.82 KB, 760x749, IMG_6878.webp)
>>491012Skirk before and after
No. 491023
>>491021>It's so much better kween is serving cuntAll they did was covering her belly and add more tit window just so coomers can do what they did with Escoffier here
>>491019 and take a look at her tits.
At least the head looks less retarded.
No. 491024
File: 1746620526178.png (914.68 KB, 702x1057, skirk.png)
It's comical how much more effort the devs put into her than any of the other recent characters. She even changes into an even sluttier bikini while she is using her powers.
No. 491026
File: 1746620912528.jpeg (245.75 KB, 746x390, IMG_6438.jpeg)
They did this wall at some event in China about popular mobile games where each red dot = like the game and each black dot = hate the game. Genshin and HSR are covered in red…
No. 491029
>>491026it was a random moid anime event and people could vote multiple times, people are taking this to mean much more than it actually does
LADS and Enstards are both covered in black too bc moids hate whenever women get anything even when they purposefully drive us out of the shared spaces so eh doubt this means anything
No. 491030
File: 1746621238787.jpg (437.01 KB, 1920x1080, GqPMyBXWUAEG4oU.jpg)
>>491008>left arm up>right arm down, palm open>one leg bent and slightly crossedThey have used this exact same pose for Phainon and Sunday too. Almost makes me believe that they have only one person who is responsible for creating the splash art for every male character ever.
No. 491032
File: 1746621304934.png (1.37 MB, 1090x854, dahlia.png)
>>491024Meanwhile, Dahlia got the most low effort, boring animations ever. They didn't even bother giving him a unique looking shield, they at least could have done something like what Diona got all the way back in 1.1. And, of course, his kit is absolutely useless. What a joke.
No. 491044
File: 1746623127264.jpeg (87.44 KB, 847x939, IMG_3361.jpeg)
Leaked model without her apron. No comments necessary, kek
No. 491052
>>491019The people saying only Natlan designs getting hate was racist keep getting more ammo because why am I seeing nothing but hype for Escoffier? This looks no better than Cantarella's design in Wuwa. Neither is Skirk. I hate how Childe fans are basically a Torjan horse to get people to care about her ass.
>>491047I hate Wuwa fans so much but I hope they come for the chef because it's crazy to complain so much about Wuwa designs but then give Escoffier a pass because "yuriii". They can make this a waifu game as long as they make people think it's yuri, which is why Honkshit fans were able to gaslight people into thinking that game was lesbian and that Kiana and Elysia are lesbians and so the characters in that game are above reproach. Because yuri.
>>491050Scrotes don't like adult women. That's why there's so many short girl models coming out and why most of them are the ML waifus. They don't like tall women as much, their pedo standards means to look young all the female characters with this model have to look as much like little girls as possible, which means their faces look ugly as fuck. Note in comparison how despite their designs are also ugly fanservice messes, the scrotes don't like Xilonen and Chasca nearly as much as they like the short girls.
No. 491053
>>491032A burst locked shield, a speed buff worse than Mika's and, to rub it in, a sword user while being HP scaling. You have to go out of your way to create such kit and animations.
And the leaks about Skirk's SQ were true, of course. Saw people already coping with "the execution might be good!" or "aren't you brainrotted for thinking Traveler helping a woman always means harem shenanigans, uh?!".
No. 491059
>>491024Her arms looks so ugly, I don't understand Chinese and Japanese obsession with anorexic bony looking arms.
>>491019Here it's the same, bony looking arms with normal rest of the body.
I'd understand if they were overall skinny characters but they have big tights, heads and boobs, the arms look really weird.
No. 491064
File: 1746627640135.png (2.52 MB, 1280x1439, skirkrenderlowres.png)
>>491024I love how they somehow got her tits bigger during transformation. She's just changing BSDM gear in the meantime kek.
No. 491066
File: 1746628447347.png (303.95 KB, 549x865, more-concept-designs-of-possib…)
>>491064She looks super generic. Varessa is probably my least favourite design but I feel like I'd be able to at least draw her approximately from memory if I had to. Skirk is just AI looking slop, like most of Honkai waifus. She looks like some scifi isekai throwaway character. She has a whale tail in some of her attacks and I feel like they should've incorporated that more into the base design, just like it was there in concept art.
Seeing her and Dahlia, I don't understand why they get memorable concept art but make it uglier and more generic versions.
No. 491069
File: 1746628665873.jpg (48.8 KB, 736x414, 383dea375f18b52ecfc57cc9c88f7d…)
>>491064Even most of these, while already overdesigned and sloppy, would be more memorable because of the tail or the crown.
No. 491112
File: 1746635034271.jpg (21.26 KB, 287x536, GqWvtVsW8AAOJeX.jpg)
>>491081Trashier than font-on titshots?
No. 491140
>>491053Leaks have Baizhu in the story quest, it's definitely real. At this stage in the game Mhy has trained its dogs well. Give them some yaoi now, a hint of a shota character with Durin, so they can be told to shut up, they got food as the rest of Nod Krai is ML harem. At this stage I wish Hoyo fujos would stop being so naive and accepting this low effort bait, but I guess because pickings are so slim in other gachas they won't leave Mhy.
>Saw people already coping with "the execution might be good!" or "aren't you brainrotted for thinking Traveler helping a woman always means harem shenanigans, uh?!".The cultists are all set to defend anything after they defended Citlali. None of these "feminists" want a woman with actual complexity anyway, they keep slurping up the same sad waifs every time. Childefags will be told they have to stan Skirk or else they're misogynists because that's his master. I can't stand this Mhy feminism. I wish more people would start shitting on Genshin the way they do Wuwa. Genshin only gets a pass because of "lore", because people think retconned hard to understand lore is peak .
No. 491155
File: 1746642555205.jpg (2.73 MB, 1001x6740, 1743068952512.jpg)
>>491140Reposting the leaks because damn, who's gonna tell Childefags?
>>491149Hoyo apparently wants to give up HI3 P2 if the patch extending length is any indication.
>>491151Some of them probably played Escoffier's quest and wrote how feminist she is because "women in the kitchen" kek.
No. 491207
>>491155Childefags are delusional and beyond saving. I haven't seen any of them actually wise up yet and realize that Mhy doesn't care about his lore and that the original plans for him are likely scrapped. People don't want to believe in rewrites in general, even though it's obvious that Fontaine and Natlan were both rewritten since it didn't fit the previous lore hints given by npcs. I don't understand why people think a gacha company cares so much about the consistent of the story when it's all about selling the next banner. Childefags took the mess that was Fontaine so I believe they'll accept him being shafted again and tell everyone to wait until Snezhnaya for something. I understand the sunk cost, it's straight up evil of Mhy to keep people waiting for so long for nothing, and with the Mond quest more people are likely to tell themselves to just wait, Albedo and Venti finally got to do something cool after five years. It's so sad.
>>491159I want to know the original plans for the story in general. No way was Skirk being a ML waifu planned, since OG Genshin was planned before this insane ML incel gamer movement. I wish people would realize the truth about Mhy. I can't take another year of people hyping up this slop as feminist and calling real women misogynist male centered cocksuckers in defend of a game for incels.
No. 491214
>>491155Once again, the Traveler is mostly passive, serving as emotional support, sparring partner, and dream visitor. Despite the soul-loss angle, the Traveler’s own personality is a blank, and their arc is secondary to Skirk’s. A stoic woman gets emotionally healed by him. And the ending is a band-aid redemption. Boring.
And also Skirk's past:
>Tragic childhood, emotionally distant mentor, internal trauma personified, magical healing through friendship.Ah yes, a literal Kingdom Hearts rip-off. Like, “The Strange Creature” that represents suppressed emotions… hm, yeah. That’s a straight-up Sora-goes-into-Riku’s-heart-to-fight-his-trauma kind of moment. And Skofungr, the boss, just wants forgiveness. There's no tension. It's like if Ansem just cried and hugged Sora. So Skirk just Genshin version of Aqua kek.
No. 491250
File: 1746656312686.jpg (32.81 KB, 686x386, hq720.jpg)
Not sure what to think about Durin. Would prefer a tall male.
No. 491283
>>491207>People don't want to believe in rewrites in generalThis is the part I don't understand with Hoyoslurpers and lorekeks who continue to be in denial. Rewrites are not essentially bad, every published medium had to undergo rewriting and heavy editing before achieving its final state, moreso a live service game with a dynamic team.
That being said, Genshin's decisions with its major rewrites/retcons have been consistently awful. Fontaine/Natlan's rewrites were more noticeable due to the foreshadowing in Travail and ingame lore, but Inazuma deserves a lot more credit for nosediving the writing quality towards trite incel pandering shite.
No. 491297
File: 1746661527719.jpeg (Spoiler Image,164.51 KB, 1786x2048, IMG_6897.jpeg)
>>491281I was fully expecting durin to be a recoloured NPC and was pleasantly surprised. He kinda looks like concept art Dahlia.
No. 491412
File: 1746684639425.jpg (551.53 KB, 1080x1382, 1000007933.jpg)
>>491372He's even rumored to be Scaramouche's replacement so Hoyo can stay on incels' good side.
No. 491434
File: 1746688105608.jpg (23.89 KB, 640x351, b895e-16383942437880-1920.jpg)
>>491359Honestly I think Genshin is bleeding female fans. Most of the girls I played genshin with including me quit during Natlan. Strange choice to enforce this instead of trying to get half of the player base back. Genshin also now has reputation of sexy anime slop which I feel like it didn't really have during Sumeru and Fontaine. Or at least fans would try to deny it, now there's nothing to deny.
No. 491436
>>491412CN incels hate every male character indiscriminately, so I don't understand why they still bother with male characters. Inb4 they make Durin a mindless glazer like ChatGPT
>>491434That's exactly the same with me. In fact my friends quit earlier during the consecutive female banners in Fontaine but I persisted until Natlan. Chasca was the last straw for me.
No. 491557
File: 1746701831858.jpg (234.3 KB, 1667x798, 1729879779245539.jpg)
People are raging about gender wars and stuff, which fair, but at this point I think the game's underlying issues go further than that. Personally what's fucking up my motivation the most is the maps, gamemodes and the kits, and the issues with them have been only exacerbating since forever.
The news that we most likely aren't getting a summer map plus Natlan having less maps than previous nations is just ten levels of disappointment in an exploration based game. This is the biggest problem for me. It doesn't help that a lot of the new maps sin closer to coming off as guided tours. The setpieces and the vistas are incredible, yes, and there are attempts at making their gimmicks distinct and fun (Remuria being a giant musical instrument, Sacred Mountain with its dragon tech which are very cool!) but I believe they've streamlined too much and improved too little. The puzzles and the challenges continue to be more clutter rather than engaging, and a lot of the Saurian based puzzles seem to be more concerned in selling the characters that can resolve them and traverse the terrain far better by being less intrusive than the free Saurian alternatives.
I fully believe mhy's cutting down on the maps because their data shows most people don't go opening even half of the chests, but I think their solutions are a mistake - most these players aren't going to suddenly start doing world quests, and the other players that do engage with the explorations are just going to end up let down.
Then we get the proliferation of 'band-aid' characters: kits that exist to 'fix' reactions but by doing so these characters centralize the entire reaction around themselves. These have been around since Nilou, and I already worried back then, but it seems we're fully doubling down on them. The newest drama is about Skirk's dependency on Nescafe to fully come on her own. People don't seem to realize that even when mhy will pump up Skirk's number to high heavens (when, not if, let's be honest), this dependency will not abate. Every freeze based team WILL want Nescafe. Because every freeze team's numbers are going to be calculated around her now. Same as Nilou or Chevy. Meanwhile reactions like superconduct or burgeon continue being untouched, and I bet we'll get another pyro dps before a proper support for reverse melt. Physical might as well not exist. For a fanbase that proclaims how awesome and unique the reaction system is, Mihoyo has half-assed most of those reactions and refuses to fix them except by releasing specific characters that do so.
And also, the fact that old characters aren't getting their kits updated - why even roll for them unless you really really like them when they're so undertuned if not downright clunky? I'm not even going to address the kit disparity with 4*s.
And lastly the latest leaks about the new endgame mode being that one event we got which was uplifted from ZZZ is just… why. Why are they making the character start with 0 energy. This is going to fuck over more than half the roster for no reason. Every character will want a favonious weapon. 'It can be cleared anyways' some idiot will say but that's not the point. It's just unfun. An engineered annoyance. Theater has some neat ideas but have been wishy-washy when fixing its problems, and abyss is trudging along in becoming nothing but HP bloat and bosses that ask you to bypass their deliberately annoying gimmicks by using these new characters, roll for them please.
I don't know; I'm just tired. I just wanted to get all this out of my chest. Sorry for the word vomit.
No. 491562
>>491555>>491178Me too. The draw is an rpg with cute guys, which Genshin fit pretty well. There's a reason not every single female players will go to LADS. I don't understand why no company can make a regular rpg with a mixed cast and a good story. The need for every character to be a potential romance partner is what's ruining gachas. People can go play the dating games but stop trying to turn every single rpg story game into a dating sim.
>>491286>>491308Childe has been nothing but bait to stop his fans from quitting until Snezhnaya. Fontaine was the point when I realized they didn't give a fuck about him, they only care about marketing the next banner. How do they not see that the "wait for Snezhnaya" line is just building more sunk cost.
>>491372All those leaks were proven true. At this rate people who still think they were doomer or fake is lying to themselves. This company is so retarded actually. They really think they can recycle a trope from older characters onto new ones and get the same success because they don't understand how attachment to characters works. Your favorite characters are products to them. I don't know why the fandom can't understand that a gacha company will never respect their favorites the way they do. Characters will be recycled with the same motifs in hopes of porting over other fans. They even recycle old design elements, like Clorinde's for Chasca or Dahlia for Durin. I hope Scara fans won't fall for it.
No. 491574
File: 1746708603702.jpeg (183.52 KB, 1920x1080, IMG_6898.jpeg)
I wish scara made an appearance in the quest and got to hang out with albedo and durin. Made me think about the summer event and how they had Scara an artificial human (a puppet lol) save Durin. I thought it was off when all the sudden everyone was just recalling past events about halfway through the AQ. I wonder if that’s the part that got a rewrite? Like Eula had to be reminded about Albedo clone but there were other witnesses to that event too.
>>491562>They even recycle old design elements, like Clorinde's for Chasca or Dahlia for Durin. I hope Scara fans won't fall for it.Escoffier got Dahlia’s tail and Durin got Dahlia’s wings lmao.
No. 491593
>>491258>imblying this isn't for the femboyfags Moids will cope saying he's a "femboy" and then he will be another waifufied male character to the Fandom.
I knew this was going to the shitter when I saw the feminized fanart of male characters, even tall male characters, the only women left in this Fandom and that are still playing this game are those coping really, really hard, and those that are literally brain dead. Maybe a small portio hate-plays the game for the sake of seeing how the fuck is this shit going to end.
The only thing they will gain from short Durin is a few shotafags that will run away the moment they see how irrelevant are the short boys and the guys in general.
No. 491772
>>491601the way i literally just updated genshin bc the shit in nikki pissed me off so much… greediness i can take up until a point and ill forever be somewhat soft for what infold is as a company but a complete retcon of the story is too ridiculous i would genuinely rather get endless coomer banners over it
>>491562I remember the Natlan leak was from uncle 404 which was one of the very few woman uncles and she was a reputable source that had been right before, do we know where the new leaks are coming from? i dont doubt it but also anyone can just invent a leak out of a commonly held opinion
No. 491833
>>491601>>491691This is so retarded. They could fix the bugs, the dye system and not release any more 11-piece outfits, but how do you come back from reconning the story into an inferior version with shitty visuals? The shat the bed for that stupid co-op with nothing fun to do. Guess they wanted to chase the Genshin crowd because they don't promote themselves as a cozy game anymore and the new intro is something only lorefags would like.
Even one of IN's popular youtubers has quit the content creators program
No. 491864
>>491593The ones still playing are the ones still easily satisfied by the meager yaoi crumbs or hope for lore. I can't tell you how many people I saw saying they'd reinstall for Mond or for Wriolette crumbs. I think any of their yaoi will always be diminishing returns and half assed due to them always being four stars. Ifaron might get some hit tweets but it will never be super popular because of the screentime they have and how little there is to do with them in the story. The other people who won't quit are the poor Childe and Scarafags hoping for more from their arcs. They'll never leave until the very end and keep accepting shit not matter what because they think they need to wait until endgame.
>>491614I blame all the zoomers and yuritroons trying to make husbando enjoyers feel bad for liking fictional dudes. Now they have to say their favorite is really a girl and keep calling them "she" so you know they're not like an icky man. This is how you have people rooting for Childe to be turned into a girl.
No. 491872
File: 1746746477804.jpg (1.59 MB, 2000x2000, 1000033141.jpg)
>>491557I've read tieba rumours that the new maps (from Remuria onwards) are lacking compared to past patches because many of the staff were re-deployed to work on the Great Natlan Rewrite to add more female characters, remove male characters (Xblanque and Capitano were supposed to be playable but alas) and their lore/significance in the story, reduce Ororon from a 5star to 4star while promoting Citlali to a 5star, among others. And the Natlan rewrites/production were carried out in an environment that was already facing manpower shortage from massive retrenchment of interns and junior team members who were made to take the blame for tanking sales while the leads/senior management team (which consisted of ex-Honkai staff) were safe and comfy in their echo chamber to continue their stupid waifu agenda or whatever. Much of these area maps, patch-limited events and detail-heavy work were carried out by junior staff so you can only imagine how shit the production schedule became post-retrenchment. Last I heard was that each new patch was still in development up to the week before release.
And, just in case Paralogism gave anyone the illusion that "GENSHIN IS SO FUCKING BACK!!!", someone noted that the Mondstadt map in the quest was using an old map before the 4.3 update, i.e. the quest was developed back during Fontaine's development days/team, and not the current team who headed Floplan. It also explains where Scara/wanderer is absent in the quest. I've personally not played it (will never reinstall Genshin again), but if you did you may wish to compare the writing, staging etc production of the quest with Natlan's quests and subsequent new quests (nescafe and skirk), and form your own judgment about the state of the game.
No. 491880
>>491872I believe this, an anon on the other thread posted about how the poster for the quest was made during Fontaine.
What I do think is interesting is tho is that they considered that Fontaine's sales were poor. If Fontaine was considered a failure that justified the change of direction what is their takeaway from Natlan? It cannot be a good one, and considering they brought back a scrapped Quest line, I'd genuinely curious what this means for the direction the game will take next, if they will double down on it or try to chance things to appeal to older players.
No. 491981
>>491872Even if they're just rumors, they all line up and sound the most plausible explanations. The Mavuika glazing and waifubait was horrible to begin with, but Natlan's story was a mess even from a storytelling perspective and it very much read like a bad fanfiction plastered on something that could've been great. Like they had a full fleshed out story before someone from the Honkai team walked in, said "not enough waifus" and started cutting out plotlines and adding his personal fetishes to replace them. This isn't even the first time this has happened, it's actually fairly common in the Asian gaming industry for some producer asshole to grow a big head and just make senseless decisions to include his own waifu and everyone just needs to accept it due to the strict hierarchy. Think about how hard Motomu Toriyama was very openly simping for Lightning in Final Fantasy, and how Hideo Baba got himself fired from Bandai Namco for shoehorning his personal waifu into a game causing the entire plot to be rewritten and later from Delightworks for trying to force his vtuber waifus in. Even Da Wei made a mock wedding for him and Himeko. Moids are mentally ill about these things, they will tank a multimillion dollar franchise just to be able to force their fantasy waifus down everyone's throats.
The map proof fucking solidifies it for me though. It's sad and pathetic that they had to literally dig out an abandoned storyline to throw at the fanbase like they were dogs waiting for a bone, and even that one patch specific story caused more hype than the past six Natlan patches in total. And you'd think they'd get a clue and try to regroup and rethink their strategy, but we all know they won't. Durin will be the only male 5* of v6, we'll get maybe two 4-star males who have no relevancy nor a kit worth a shit, Skirk will be shilled aggressively before the two 5-star Kiana expies will be released, Varka will be teased endlessly to string the few cope-addicted female players along. HSR will follow the same path and possibly be used to promote their upcoming vtuber idol lineup. It's over.
No. 492013
File: 1746790957035.jpg (201.58 KB, 1087x1280, Gqf4E09WoAAYrzE.jpg)
Durin will soon be the acceptable trapfag among Chinese incels at this rate.
Picrel is an official commission that got deleted.
>>491872>>491981I still haven't played the quest but so far I can tell that slapping Gordon Ramsay's personality on EscOFfier will be funny for like, 2 seconds, before becoming Citlali number 2. And Citlali was released in 5.3, her obnoxious ML pandering was in 5.2. This is going to be like that for the entirety of 6.x with events only serving for old-school genshinfags with the occasional who-tier male character occupying the patch. Exploration feels too constrained, abyss is becoming unplayable, IT is a hassle, what is there to look after in 6.x, exactly?
No. 492048
File: 1746800022827.png (3.48 MB, 2436x1125, IMG_6924.png)
Dainleif will help us with combat in the next quest. People are calling it now saying he’s probably pyro based like how skirk is cryro. I’m not so sure if that’s true though.
>>492046I’m only referencing the fallout with the beidou player. Seems like whenever someone makes a spectacle about leaving genshin cc wuwa is almost always mentioned. So yea maybe take my word with a grain of salt.
No. 492074
File: 1746804946295.jpeg (284.93 KB, 1448x2048, IMG_7454.jpeg)
>>492048I’m so ashamed to admit it but I’m disgustingly in love with Dainsleif and have been for 5 years so there’s no way I’m leaving the this dumpster fire without at least getting him. Even when I know his kit will be revealed to be absolute dogshit there’s still some part deep inside of me that feels sick with excitement at the thought of him being playable. Sorry nonas, I wish I were strong enough to leave, genuinely.
No. 492198
>>492190Yes the traveler is not from Teyvat but the sci-fi elements just feel out of place. And as anon said
>>492190 who asked for everything to be related to honkai, as someone who never played honkai at all i have zero interest in trying to understand the lore
No. 492316
File: 1746834628815.jpg (668.38 KB, 2000x3000, aelumi.jpg)
>>492305>>492299People have had criticisms for the Traveler as a protagonist since 1.0, this is not new. Specially Aether's design was always a point of contention. While I like that Aether and Lumine are supposed to be complementary opposites and how that's integrated in their design, I think Aether is objectively worse looking than Lumine. Idk I just hate the placement and shape of his crop top and usualy oficial art give him this douchebag vibe, not really that dissimilar to the Kiritos of the world just a blonde version, while Lumine seems more of genki type. Genshin toes the line between making the Traveler a self insert and a fully realised character which will inevitably anger people because it literally just means you'll get the worst of both worlds. In some scenes/quests they are fully voiced, in other's they are not, and we know Traveler has an actual official name that is actively used by their sibling (and Dainslief? I think? it's been too long) and a lot of the "dialogue choices" are pointless but then they'll be completely voiceless to appease retarded incels who would feel too threatened by hearing a male voice in the vicinity of their pixelated wives. I'm fine with the lukewarm personality but I do wish they were just fully voiced, I hate this "sometimes yes, most of the time no" approach.
No. 492334
>>492038>Follow different main characters for each regionNTA and I haven't given this much thought before your post but you know what, this approach might actually have worked for Genshin if Hoyo had been more ambitious in their storytelling.
They reused the gacha formula of MC + childlike mascot to ease players into Teyvat's setting, and it worked well enough in engaging a massive audience, but this method got tedious and lazy with relying on Paimon to narrate everything to Traveler/us.
If they had used the Travail characters to drive the story in each nation, it will tie in nicely with the Allogenes that the game's title is alluding to. Diluc is a very conventional stoic JRPG lead so he would work well as the intro character. The Lyney/Lynette POV would be interesting as the story gradually reveals that they're Fatui agents.
As for the Celestial and Abyss plotlines (and maybe even some world quests), they could be explored via Dainsleif and it would have been a nice contrast. Having a playable Dainsleif from the start is also a great bonus instead of stringing players along for 7 years.
There's probably an AO3 fic or Reddit essay somewhere out there that fleshes out this idea, but you get the idea.
No. 492465
File: 1746859381558.jpg (102.35 KB, 917x640, GqVxqkPXoAAup6h.jpg)
Nonas I can't fucking believe I'm saying this but Skirk's design is growing on me… I can only say this because I used to play Hi3 and never took the whole space fantasy seriously, so I'm used to the aesthetic. I would pull for her if she were in Hi3, but in my Genshin? Never in a million years.
No. 492534
File: 1746873227209.png (282.87 KB, 589x447, E9j2zpybVN.png)
Normies are that close to figure out that you can't spell good writing with the starring character being a OF Vtuber.
No. 492585
File: 1746889786723.png (1.47 MB, 1071x1210, esc-onlyfans-fier.png)
Yurisisters, our new Furina girlkisser can't be that sexualized can she?
On a more serious note, not even AIslop can match that level of coomerism and retardation. In fact, I'm betting her outfit has to be AI-generated, right?
No. 494380
File: 1747140468752.webp (81.63 KB, 640x640, the-stars-fade-to-black-v0-9rc…)
Shouldn't one of her boobs be a bit obscured if she is facing away with the torso, not be longer than the front boob? Doesn't it looks like her right boob is like 2 times longer than it should be or am I tripping?
No. 494505
>>494494>Chinese gachacels were calling her a flat chested pigThey are
so cucked for giving in to these people kek
No. 494663
File: 1747184817810.jpg (42.66 KB, 1000x715, 1000165640.jpg)
>>494571Varka will look like pic related, or will get a brand new model which will be a fat model with a beard, and he will be a 4 stars that's a copy of Diluc.
No. 494688
File: 1747190502893.jpg (135.29 KB, 1000x1400, 1000016669.jpg)
>>491021>>491024can't stop thinking of Zero whenever I see this girl.
No. 494761
File: 1747199729499.jpg (38.95 KB, 301x800, 3a37de6cfc61d4189d6d5e16d1320e…)
>>494701Erina looks like a nun next to Genshin's design, kek.
No. 494917
File: 1747233418761.png (471.78 KB, 417x531, Varka_Mural.png)
>>494672It's painfully funny that
>>494663 is actually showing more skin than Capitano kek.
I stopped being hopeful about Varka once his voice was teased. He sounds like Itto 2.0, so I'm keeping my expectations low and assume he will also just be a stupid himbo with two personality traits that's used for comedy. But at least he will be a bishie, unless they retcon picrel and make him an older, uglier, bara version of what's depicted in the mural. Wouldn't surprise me.
No. 495409
Why does hoyo believe they're gonna make durin a better yumebait than scara? Yumes liked scara for his edgy, mean personality, durin is portrayed as being too baby-like which is cute, but not enough to have yumes flock to him.
>>492013 if this is durin's official design then yeah he does look adorable and of course I'll roll for him, but I wouldn't call this husbando material. Giving dahlia a proper design similar to his concept art, backstory and exaggerating his teasing, mischievious vampire personality would make him way better husbandobait than current durin.
No. 495772
>>495661I stole it
from a reddit post that did say it was officially commissioned, along with the splash art I replied to, I don't trust it as it seems too good to be true. Would be nice if if were because I don't like the jacket/sleeves in the splash art among other things, but he also looks a lot like Arlecchino's bus boy than someone from Mondstat.
No. 495858
>>495603He looks much better here but the design is too good, especially the rib-looking bowties. No way Mihoyo actually puts out a good design in 5.x
He will probably look like an NPC or overdesigned mess. Mark my words.
No. 495916
File: 1747412156158.jpg (337.14 KB, 2075x1195, GqmrKKBWcAAfzPQ.jpg)
I finally played Parologism and I know we're in a negative funk with the game and I do hate nuGenshin but I loved the quest nonnas… Felt like the perfect conclusion for Albedo's arc and I loved the cutscene for the Hexenzirkel Trial and then, of course, the city sized Alchemy Circle. As an Albedofag since 1.1 I really couldn't have hoped for better for his character conclusion in the game, from the recital of the alchemy incantation, the allusion to festering and the creation of life, some brief stunts in Dragonspine with Durin's heart and finally seeing both his office and the locked door in the Mondo library… Genuinely one of my favorite quests in the game.
Kind of sad we couldn't get to see Gold, but her closeness to Albedo (and Albedo's consideration for Alice, Klee and Durin as part of his family) felt very present through the quest. It's nice to see what his answer for the question Gold proposed to him was and I think his character progression was very visible through the events he's been a part of (tho, I would argue, he's never felt like a true outsider from Mondstadt at all, but I guess that's part of the point because by that point Alice had already meddled for him and Klee to become close and safe guarded).
My only complaint was that I wish I could have watched it in EN instead of JP because I genuinely think Khoi Dao is the best VA for Albedo personally (and alse he calls Alice 'Aunt Alice' in the english script vs the a lot more impersonal 'Alice-san' of the JP one and I'm clearly partial for their cute family unit). Anyway this was the perfect Swan Song and I feel more confident about dropping the game now, I'm sad Childe and Scaramouche will never get this treatment because incels will always ruin anything good but I'll take what I can get and dip.
No. 495917
>>495916Nonna, please tell me everything, I stopped playing because the game just isn't working on any of my devices and seeing how everything has also turned to shit made me not want to make any effort to play it at all.
But I'm an Albedofag, so I want to know what happened to him.
No. 495954
>>495883>Why is it so hard for people to understand that women want to play games that aren't romance/dress up/farming sims too?women are mentally and socially cucked and will look at bouncing boobied baby voiced panty shot waifu characters and convince themselves it's a feminist
toxic yuri girlboss play.
No. 495986
>>495917Nonna, I really recommend at least watching someone play it on Youtube (and also Ashikai released a video about it, I haven't watched it yet but I imagine it's good since she's also an Albedofag).
But basically
the quest starts out with the Traveler and Paimon going to Mondstadt for the Windblume festival that happens every year but when we arrive there we notice that no one is really felling all that festive. Kaeya was looking for us bc he knew we would visit during Windblume as always and he asks us to go to the Headquarters of the Knights since there's some urgent business. There, we meet with the other captains of the Knights and Jean informs us that Albedo is under trial for muder and unlawful disposal of human remains. Hertha accused him after obtaining two witnesses that saw Albedo at night carrying a large bag that seemed to contain a body. Due to some other evidence presented Dahlia and Jean decide Albedo is guilty. After the trial, we find Venti and Dahlia (Dahlia knows Venti is Barbatos… I'm actually not sure if I like this detail actually, I think it would be more fun if it was a Hu Tao or Rosaria situation where we know that he knows and that he knows that we know that he knows but no one actually speaks it outloud).
We go back to the Knights and there Jean and Kaeya asks us to investigate Albedo as an independent agent since he asked for a retrial, so we're given access to the 2nd floor of the Knights of Favonious and also Albedo's office (!!!!) so we go there and investigate his table mostly (Sucrose's table is also there, there's nothing special in it but I thought it was super cute they added it). In his table we find a vial with residue in it (I think this vial is the one from his Story Quest), a letter, two books, one talking about how Festering is an energy that can be counteracted and, in a hidden cabinet, reports from Albedos experiments marking 3 points on a map: near the Mond gate, near Dawn Winery and in Dragonspine. We go to the Dragonspine one and find a hole with claw marks in it that was covered by snow. By then it's not really clear what happened but since Albedo's retrial is close we decide to trust him and just report our findings to Jean. During the retrial Albedo starts to explain what happened when suddenly another Heartha appears in the courtroom.
This was one of the coolest parts actually because it tied with the last Dragonspine event, but what is explained is that the Heartha that accused him is essentially a fake that took the place of the real Hertha just like Subject Number 2 and Subject Number 3 did with Albedo. Slowly, monsters from Dragonspine started to kidnap and substitute Mondstadt citizens that ventured into Dragonspine. By making Hertha unstable and nervous during Albedo's public trial, they managed to corner and reveal every 'fake' that was slowly integrating into Mondstadt - it's somewhat confusing but this happened because the fakes inherited Durin's will to replace Albedo as Gold's child. After dying, Gold still had a form of counsciousness or will and he was upset at being abandoned by Gold and being seen as a failure as a son in comparison to Albedo, just like the subjects in the event, so he desired to kill and replace him, so that Gold would choose Durin instead.
Essentially, the trials were a ploy made by the Knights as a way to lure out the fakes who were, together with a hoard of monsters from the Abyss, trying to find a way to make Mondstadt unstable and do an all out attack. We leave the courtroom and find the city under siege but the Knights and the Church already had prepared for it. Barbatos gives a blessing of the wind to the city which summons wind currents that acted as a barrier and also a way to help the communication/transport between the Knights and then we go with Albedo through the city to check on each of the weak points. This part was actually extremely nostalgic because we got to play as a bunch of old Mond characters, including some kaeluc crumbs. Anyway they go back, all the monsters are killed and Mondstadt is saved. All this time, MiniDurin was actually hiding in Albedo's office waiting to be turned into a human. We go out to Dragonspine again with Albedo to get Durin's heart, and there Albedo explain properly why he wants to do it. He says that as an homunculus he's been unique in this world and in a way, once Durin turns human, they will be brothers and family, that just like Gold, he wants to achieve the impossible for the sake of cultivating life itself as a way to better the world and doesn't really see it as him becoming god-like.
For that, Albedo then requests a Conferencia Tripartite, which is a sort of council between the Knights, Barbatos and the Hexenzirkel that Varka created for whenever Mondstadt is faced with a looming crisis. We go to the secret big room in the library, where we meet Alice and Albedo explain his thesis that Durin soon would be totally restored and when that happens Mondstadt would be in grave danger. He thinks that MiniDurin's purity could counteract the Festering in Durin's body, and that would maintain a balance that allowed him to retain a human form. Alice agrees with letting him do it but first he needs to defeat a challenge made by the Hexenzirkel. The fight is super cool and there's a genuinely gorgeous cutscene (the BEST part is the Traveler SPEAKS!!!! ACTUAL DUBBED SENTENCES!!!).
Anyway, skip ahead to the day they decide who the Windblume Star and what the Windblume of the year is and Venti wins lol and he chooses Cecilias as his Windblume, so he performs a song which acts as a distraction (along with fireworks) for Albedo performing the transmutation ritual which encompasses the entire city. The transmutation was successful and Durin turns into an artifical human. At the end, we meet with Albedo to say our goodbyes and he speaks about how he felt disconnected from his humanity when Alice and Gold first left him in Mondstadt, he tells us that Gold was not always 'mad' and that she has finally eaten the heart of Naberius, which means she now governs over Life itself (also probably the reason Albedo wasn't/won't punished for doing what he did, considering it's Gold that would preside over it now), it seems like that's something a little bit bittersweet but that he knew she would ultimately make that choice. He makes a really pretty speech about how his final farewell mission was to "Find the truth and meaning of this world" and that he knew that there's a gap between his personhood and the world, and in that gap lies life itself, the bonds we make with friends and, specially, with family (Alice, Klee, Gold and now Durin). His answer to Gold's riddle is life, to continue living and enjoying the bonds he has made because of it, that while he's unique, every life form in the world has some sort of uniqueness to it so it doesnt mean he needs to be separated and alone so now, just like his mother, he became the gardener from the story. No. 496074
File: 1747436572408.jpg (62.56 KB, 736x747, 1000167030.jpg)
>>495986God,
nonnie that's so fucking cute, Albedo is truly amazing, I'm glad they didn't completely forget about him.
If anything, I'm surprised they're kind of "closing" or "finishing" character's stories, I guess they noticed that they had to give, particularly him, a closure so they can focus on the big titty waifus, but that they had to do it right or it would end in a total mess, or maybe they just had the ideas right there and decided to just use them so they can throw at us the baby immortal dragon boy.
No. 496109
>>495947There's no hope for gacha no matter what. Women are used to eating shit, be they fujos, yumes or even himejoshis, because most of the media that gets budget and marketing is always going to be made by moids for moids. Women have been used to being second class citizens in anime when it comes to shounen dominating and eating crumbs from those series because things made for and by women do not get that promotion anymore. So they're used to it when it comes to games. Himejoshis are used to only getting yuri from gooner slop so they need to cope by calling it feminist. I'd say otome yumes have it the best right now but if you're a yuri fan who wants something that isn't gooner in a gacha then good luck outside of r1999, and if you're a fujo you probably have nothing in a high budget joseimuke except Hoyo.
Gachas just going down the shitter. China has too many incel devs running all the big games. The only games that could be safe from them are smaller games but they're 2d card battlers so not open world if you want open world and 3d characters. Japan is stuck in the stone age with gachas since the old boomers running their industries don't want to innovate and most of their joseimuke now feels like a cheap cashgrab that exists to sell some music CDs before it EOS in six months. The West will absolutely never make a gacha game, or any anime game at that, with pretty husbandos. They're too obsessed with morals to make fun personalities and they think that everyone needs to be into ugly men for ~diversity~ so you'll never see any "twinks" since they hate that. The future is bleak and it's why I think the rats won't leave the sinking ship that is Genshin Impact until it gets really bad only because there's nothing out there to fill the void that Genshin Impact filled for a lot of female gamers.
No. 496160
>>496070I wish more Childefags would wise up and realize how fucked they're getting by Hoyo. Even other men have gotten more screentime and lines than he is. I think people just assumed fans being vocal and desperate for some lore means he has so much game presence.
>>496152This might also be why it's better for a male character to not be that tied to any big lore or plot reveals. It also helps that Alice and Gold are offscreen npcs and Klee doesn't have the obsessed incel fans that Nahida has. I feel like the best treatment a male character in this game can have now is to either be tied to a female characters incels don't care about, or just be fujobait.
No. 496356
File: 1747482796254.jpeg (2.48 MB, 3000x6048, Untitled design.png.jpeg)
I don’t know how much more of this I can take, nonas.
No. 496405
File: 1747495795250.jpeg (204.37 KB, 2048x1198, IMG_3303.jpeg)
I miss him so much… I want to see my favorite sexy chinaman back. Lantern Rite isn't enough…
No. 496472
File: 1747508738324.png (453.43 KB, 1080x1405, skirks horrid kit.png)
>>494380her kit is so restrictive that players are gonna have a hard time using her. no idea why mihoyo thought this was a good idea.
she needs a pure hydro/cryo team to have her multipliers. Even then, what can she do? they don't buff or fix the cryo element at all. she's just a mess.
No. 496540
File: 1747516092224.jpg (2.11 MB, 5120x2880, 762996.jpg)
I picked up the game after a while and I'm actually having a bit of fun! I hadn't realised how much I missed the earlier parts of the game. I really loved the story and characters (obviously pre-Natlan) and before I stopped playing I was in the middle of logging the game's lore in my binder, and fleshing out the details for me to create my own theories or predictions. I also had written up files for each character which included their backstory, role in the story and all the meta stuff like artifacts/weapons/constellations etc. I already decided I want to continue where I left off, I'm excited about it! I'm trying to ignore my grievances with many of the newer updates so I can preserve my love and nostalgia kek.
No. 497328
>>497290I think LADS and IN are so much stingier than Genshin tho, specially after you're done with early game. There's nothing to farm in LADS other than what is essentially their version of the Abyss, and exploration in Infinity Nikki gives the same amount of rewards as Genshin except there's like half the amount of chests and new areas take months to release.
Also, yeah, it's been confirmed that the 6.X patches will take place in Nod-Krai, Snezhnaya was postponed to release mid to late 2026
No. 497808
>>497463If you are F2P, you get between 66-85 pulls per patch in Genshin. A patch is 1,5 months, and that doesn't count the primos that are included in new maps with exploration.
If you buy the Aurum Pass in LADS, you get between 35 to 42 pulls per month in LADS, that's without the events but most events will only give you 300 dias max if ever (most events gives you pulls for the current banner that expire and turn into standard wishes afterwards). It's even worse if you're F2P, since it gives you between 15 to 22 pulls per patch and does not renew ways to farm for more dias at all.
In Infinity Nikki, if you have the Monthly Gifts, you get 88 pulls per patch, and if you're F2P, you get 66 pulls per patch. A patch in IN lasts a month. New maps are super rare and the latest one is empty and has no new treasures to farm for more currency.
The soft/hard pity in LADS is 10 lower than genshin, but genshin gives almost double the revenue, while to get a full 5* outfit in Nikki you need between 180/210 pulls depending on how many pieces of outfits each one of them have. Basing it purely on dailies/events, Genshin is objectively more generous than both.
No. 497893
File: 1747768362186.jpg (56.71 KB, 1024x539, 1747767115838164m.jpg)
I used to think deweibs is one of us but many of her schizo rants make me feel that she has been placed by hoyo to stir shit up. I hate Elysia and Phainon because they are getting the golden child treatment while other characters just exist as fodder material to hype them up. What do you mean that anyone who hates these devpets are incels. So we should just accept every character that is not an hi3 expy getting treated as shit. Feels funny how she keeps indirectly capping for hoyo while shifting all the blame on incels when hoyo is just as bad for bending the knee to those fuckers.
No. 497931
>>497816Would never happen in the West. The moids hate pretty boys so much they even had to be changed into uglier dudes when some jrpgs came over to the West. Even Square stopped doing pretty boy leads in Final Fantasy just to get the game that Western cred. Look at most Western indie games, they can't make pretty boys worth a damn. They don't want to either. Majority of people active in that space do not like women who are into pretty anime men, as you can see from the constant "male centrism" whining.
>>497893I'm beginning to think this way too only because of how incoherent their rants are. They seem to echo incel talking points about how they are definitely intended to be a couple and that Hyv is definitely doing this to make incels mad. I CAN believe their point about Hyv using hate as advertisement and to build loyalty and sunk cost. That seems true.
To be fair, I don't think that screenshot is saying you have to like them. It's just explaining a tactic that Hyv uses. They mentioned a similar thing with Firefly. Hyv shilling her so hard and knowing that even some other waifufags hate her, but they know that hate will make her fans more loyal to her. It's like they're causing people to "trauma bond" with their characters. I would say the same thing applied to Scara too. People were unhappy with the retcon tree, the news of incel outcry came out fairly fast, and now people feel they have to defend his writing to not get lumped in with those guys.
I do think deweibs is also delusional for acting like games like NTE and Ananta aren't incel focused. If anyone tries to correct them they cry "hoyoshill". But really the ads for both those games are all waifus with only one dude in site so I don't understand them trying to act like these games are a potential haven from incel pandering devs. Almost makes me wonder if they're trying to stealth shill Netease or something.
No. 498007
>>497931>>497893I started to think her mindless rants are grating but specially her sneak shilling of Netease and Tencent is what annoys me the most. Anyone who knows anything about gaming knows how fuck ass evil and awful those two companies are, literally the EA of East Asia.
I hate Mihoyo (and specially) under Dawei's supervision too and clearly Infold is showing it's claws now but at least both of them are legit developers that at least started to do it for the love of the industry somewhat.
I also think she puts way too much weight on whatever some psycho chinese incel says on random ass forum posts. I dont think Mihoyo pivoted the direction for Genshin because of the stupid fucking Scaramouche cat incident, I think they did it because Dawei's retarded ass took charge and that's what he likes, and because investors are dumb they believed it would work to make Genshin rank in money even tho the audience for the game is known to be different.
No. 498020
>>498007It seems like she almost agrees with them in a way, with saying that Hyv shouldn't be letting Scara have talked to Nahida and that they wanted this. It's possible she might know more since she did reveal she worked for them once, take that with a grain of salt though.
I do know the review bombing after 4.8 is true and Dawei is basically a moron. I can almost get her shilling these bigger companies to a point, it's true if they attract more "normies" the way EA and other companies do in the West, they'll pander less to incels because it can make them lose money. Dawei being able to tank Genshin because he's mad at the older creators and wants his Honkai Mary Sues in there is something that I do wish he'd be told to knock off. They probably believe Natlan's revenue is tanking because the waifus weren't sexy enough.
But yeah I don't understand shilling games like NTE when they have gooner foot fetish bait and only one guy in the trailer. How is this not pandering to incels? As much as I despite Hyv, they got people in early and until they actually delete every male from all their games, their male characters will still have a hold on gacha players. Who are people going to pick, Walmart Sunday from NTE, or the original they already know from Hyv? Hyv also has the benefit of still having some more normal fans who are still into the games and fandom. Wuwa has become incel central on twitter, and I bet Ananta and NTE will be the same. In terms of big budget games, Hyv fandom is still the only place where you can find some normal people unlike the much higher ratio of incel moid to regular person shitholes like Wuwa cultivated. So that's another reason there won't be a full mass exodus to these other gachas yet from anyone who isn't a gooner incel.
No. 498145
>>497931>>497932Isn't Lies of P pretty well received among western audience? And P is the twinkiest Soulslike protagonist that has ever existed.
It's not as anime styled as Fire Emblem or Genshin tho, but atleast it proved that normies don't really mind playing as a pretty boy as much as the internet led you to believe.
No. 498177
>>498063The feminism issue with CN games and Western games are different. That's more the point. You won't see pretty looking boys in a Western game by Western devs because people look down on women who like that anime aesthetic. All the female characters will need to be pretty but the men won't be because straight men in the West don't like that. Look at the difference between the men and women in that Expedition 33 game for an example.
>>498145It was, but Lies of P also wasn't HUGE huge, and it being a Soulsike probably helped. It's trying to get this in anime style games that's now become difficult, and yes, the anime style distinction matters here. It's men who want women out of anime game spaces. Because of Dawei there's nothing to replace what people enjoyed about Genshin since every new gacha game is following suite.
No. 498204
File: 1747840070969.webp (70.71 KB, 587x623, IMG_3345.webp)
>>498145Every male streamer I saw would just stick the donkey head on him so they wouldn't have to look at his cute face.
No. 498224
>>498204Men are such losers holy shit lol.
>>498212People are just desperate for a turn based game like old Final Fantasy since 16 wound up being ass. But I also gave that one a pass when I see the dudes have to be grizzled up guys but the women are all youthful and pretty. It's the same shit in every Western game. All games are either like this or they're becoming goonerbait shit now. I don't want to be stuck with only indie dating sims or farming games. It's hard not to feel like the gamergate moids won in basically every country now.
No. 498531
>>498515It's called actual writing. I know we've all been infected by whatever schitzo virus plauges gacha gamers, but most people are okay with and enjoy romance in regular stories between attractive characters. The problem is that gacha characters are not characters, they are products. They fit certain tropes to appeal to specific people. Think for a moment. They don't have last names, controversial opinions, the capacity to antagonize each other, parents, crushes, anything. This is because they are made to SELL first and foremost. A girl from BlueArchive will never talk about having a crush on a classmate, or her parents, or her preference in men. Because that would curb appeal. In media where the characters are not perfectly formulated in a lab products, nobody is gonna scream about their waifus being stolen because there was never a waifu. And even if people are mad, most would label them as insane. Even then, cannon love interests have never once stopped true selfshippers. It rarely stops anyone in real life!
If a expertly written gacha game came out right now with 50/50 hot guys and girls who on occasion explicitly dated (from the beginning), absolutely nothing would happen. Incels/crazy yumes wouldn't play in the first place due cause of mixed gender, regardless of "cucking". At most a few of them kick up a stink for a month and move on. But the vast majority of normies who are 80% of the market would not start a Korean style gender war because Joe and Sarah kiss on screen. Maybe seeing how nobody was bombed over this will make some people unclench their cheeks. This will probably never happen in this climate but is plausible if any real writers join the fray.
No. 498535
>>498525ntayr but you answered your own question, I dont think its as easy to brush off FGO as getting away with it bc of the series history, specially considering a lot of the pairings are new too. Fire Emblem Heroes is the same, people actively enjoy romance in their stories, even in ones where the MC is the designated self insert.
This is not even about romance, literally just tell a good story, deluting character interactions because mentally ill weirdos will complain if X gets too close to someone from the opposite gender is retarded and ruins any sort of actual storytelling possible.
No. 498564
>>498550But then why do silent protags and audience surrogates exist? What separates the chrono
trigger mc from a character like Aether? Aren't most MCs inserts by the nature of them being at the center of the narrative? Or at least the main pov? I'm sorry if I'm overthinking this because so many nonnas write in ways that boggle my mind.
No. 498683
>>498560I think because its Vocaloid and was already announced as mixed that it didn't attract these incels. Japan has their incels too, see the Bang Dream incident, but they can do mixed games and people are happy as long as no ships are confirmed. That's also why Japan can have yuribait and fujobait in general games. I do know joseimuke in Japan can have both yumebait and fujobait without committing to either and while people do fight, it doesn't seem to be as intense as CN where yumes and fujos cannot coexist. Though I think that's changing since people are getting more extreme.
>>498564Those games aren't gacha first of all so it doesn't compare. Link for example is a silent mc and of course moids will be weird about him, moids are weird about everything. But that's also much different than a self insert being the expected standard for a game.
>>498621A lot of these ML incels seem mindbroken by not being catered too. I see Sumeru credited for their breakdown. They saw a few male banners per patch, they saw fujobait, they saw a popular male character like Scaramouche be popular with women and that made them seethe, and they thought he was cucking them from Nahida. The moids into the lolis and shorter girls are also more insane than people who like the tall ladies. This made them become so extreme. There's even some of these ML extremists who hate FGO and call it a "cuck" game because not every female servant is for them, because they're m/f ships and fujo ships. I will even see some of these MLfags support lads only to fit their "all gacha games should be about characters who want to date me" agenda, even though they hate women. That's how insane the self insertion shit has become. They don't want yuri, they don't want yaoi, they don't want het that doesn't involve the male mc. Which means no character can speak to another character who isn't their relative without them freaking out. There's no way to have a good story in a game when this is the audience.
No. 498821
>>498794< I knew some guys turned off by protags who could talk or had a personality of any kind
Yes and these guys suck. Everyone needing protagonists to be "relatable" and "literally me" and "for immersion" is why most people engage with stories in such infantile ways and throw tantrums because the mc must be literally them. Fuck that. This shit is literally why gacha has become the moid infested industry that it is now and it's not a replacement for real games and real stories at all.
No. 498862
>>498859Nonna please provide context what are you even talking about? I went to look on the official twitter and for leaks and there's nothing about Kevin in Genshin.
Also, its not that Kevin is Phanes, but that Phanes os Kevin. Kevin was a character in Honkai Impacto 3rd, which Phanes is rumored to be a expy off.
No. 500203
File: 1748199993614.jpg (89.47 KB, 887x556, 1744241389048.jpg)
>>498859>this Kevin motherfucker is probably Phanes.I have seen this theory too and it pisses me off. Why can't they come up with original characters instead of shoving expies from a game nobody other than incels and yuritrannies care about. Mini rant on Phainon - I hate how this guy has absolutely ruined my enjoyment of hsr. And I say this as someone who was defending him from incel backlash in 3.0. So far, not a single male in the game has received the kind of dickriding this dude is getting, just because of his status as the Kevin expy. This makes me incredibly annoyed. The more I compare other males from hsr/genshin with him, the more frustrated I feel.
Childe has very much been removed from Skirk's story so that they can prop her up as Aether's waifu. Meanwhile this dude is getting heavily shipbaited with the Elysia expy to the point where all his goals and motivations revolve around her. It feels that no matter how beloved a male character is among fans, it will never ever matter if he is not an expy from hi3. They all deserve so much better than this shit game.
Also any character being a Kevin expy is basically a death sentence because Kevin is the most uninteresting character ever. He feels like he was pulled straight out of an incel's idea of a 'cool' male. Even Phainon suffers from this. He has nearly 2000 lines of dialogue yet still manages to be painfully bland with zero personality, who needs to be tard wrangled by a woman. I can only wish that Phanes being Kevin is just a crack theory that never sees the light of day.
No. 500256
>>500203There was leak that Phanes is actually Kiana - Kevin is genderbent Kiana who I also think is a boring character, even though this is blasphemy in Hyv fandom. Kevin is worse though because you can tell he's a self insert for a straight writer who made him have manpain over a Mei variant, because straight men can only write one plot for their self inserts.
>Why can't they come up with original characters instead of shoving expiesBecause Dawei can't handle his Mary Sues not being the most popular. Genshin was supposed to be different and he doesn't like that so the old staff left and now its all Honkai people.
>Childe has very much been removed from Skirk's story so that they can prop her up as Aether's waifuPeople will still defend this. Childefags will still be coping about Snezhnaya because the loreists will gaslight them into accepting shittier treatment. The feminist crowd will defend Skirk's writing and pretend it's not waifubait. If you notice, most of the big accounts tend to be run by the 18-22 year old crowd who defend waifus from being called "bait" like their life depends on it. They deny that characters like Ayaka/Nilou/Citlali are all bait, they think you're just hating on nice girls who want friends. They can't criticize the tropes used to make them appealing to incels because most of these people are "kins" and think they are nice girls so Citlali is literally them so if you hate Citlali you hate them and you are misogynist.
I hate to say it but Hyv being more subtle with their waifubait compared to Wuwa which is very obvious also makes it much harder for the fanbase to criticize. Genshin having years of being more normal meant that fans will excuse anything. Wuwa's fandom become full of incel moids instantly so people can actually see how bad the writing is. With Genshin there's still denial because Hyv played the long game.
No. 500411
File: 1748235395487.jpg (916 KB, 1079x2783, 1000008040.jpg)
>>500256Just the way they cape for incels and honkaishit tells me everything I need to know. Imagine feeling the need to protect the fat girl fetish from ebol """misogynistic""" husbando enjoyers.
No. 500535
>>500411Varesa is not even fat. I wish incels would bully these people if they want all the fujos out so badly. Unfortunately Genshin is still the normie game and all the real
toxic incels went to Wuwa, and these cowards will never have the guts to go after incels the way they do fujos and other women in fandom.
No. 500568
File: 1748271463888.png (81.72 KB, 676x372, 29875935829478439430492.png)
Ok deweibs is definitely a corpo shill. She only just hates Hyv and blames them but Hyv is not why these other companies should be bending the knee to incels. A game that refuses to show male characters because they're scared of incels is still a game that panders to incels. They shouldn't be excused for this.
No. 500643
>>500256>you can tell he's a self insert for a straight writer who made him have manpain over a Mei variantI am just sick of Hoyo creating this specific variant of men who need to be tard-wrangled by a woman. Elysia, Mei for Kevin, Guizhong for Zhongli, Focalors for Neuvi, and now Cyrene for Phainon. At least Neuvi and Zhongli are still very endearing, but I wish they would stop writing this brand of character who needs to get dogwalked by a woman to develop emotions.
Kek so Phanes might be Kiana. I can totally see them giving away that role to their golden child. I wonder which important role will Elysia steal.
>Childefags will still be coping about Snezhnaya because the loreists will gaslight them into accepting shittier treatment. Childefags have to be the most delusional of the bunch. I kinda feel sorry for them. It is annoying how defensive Hoyofags are over their sloppa. I have seen women on /vg/ keep defending this trash. If you question anything you get called a falseflagger or even worse, a tranny. There is not even a single popular fan theory that turned out to be true but Hoyo slurpers will keep moving goalposts. That’s just how it is.
>they think you're just hating on nice girls who want friendsI see this discourse nearly every day on Twitter. The idiots who would defend the one note shounen love interest in the name of feminism have all moved over to hoyoslop. Just change their genders and nobody would call them just friends. These vermins are beyond delusional. I don’t know why they get so defensive over Chinese gacha of all things.
>With Genshin there's still denial because Hyv played the long game.Pretty much. Idiots who realize Wuwa is for incels still defend Hoyo for some reason. It is still retarded to me because both are two sides of the same coin but the other side is so bad they have somehow convinced themselves that hyv is their ally.
No. 500672
>>500643>I am just sick of Hoyo creating this specific variant of men who need to be tard-wrangled by a woman.It's such a boring and honestly sexist trope. The woman dies for the guy's manpain and people hype up the ship. Somehow the "gacha feminists" never talk about how sexist it is when they're trying to praise Hoyo women.
>Childefags have to be the most delusional of the bunch. I kinda feel sorry for them. It is annoying how defensive Hoyofags are over their sloppa.Lorefags are to blame for this because they will never admit that Hoyo retcons or changes storylines to sell a banner. Their entire purpose is to argue as if the story is set in stone and act like they have "media literacy" when all they're doing is buying the flimsy in-universe justification for these retcons. Just like how they deny that Arlecchino was changed and Crucabena was pulled out of the company's ass. I feel bad for Childefags because they have been baited by his lore since day 1 and keep being told to not leave until Snezhnaya and it's all a matter of being patient, so they don't complain because again, these "lore" accounts manage to shut people up. It's gotten to the point where I saw some Childefags thinking he'd be a Kevin variant, because this is the only way a character can be important. They have to be a fucking Honkai variant. Just like Scaramouche gets claimed as a Mei variant. You can't criticize this because Honkai is considered this sacred cow game full of lesbians and why do you hate lesbians coming to G
enshin and saving the day, you misogynist?
>I see this discourse nearly every day on Twitter. The idiots who would defend the one note shounen love interest in the name of feminism have all moved over to hoyoslop.I still see them defending one note shounen slop female characters. I think fandom based feminism has been washed for a long time. People want to defend what they like as something feminist because they can't justify liking it otherwise, or they think that female characters are like real girls and they're defensive because they project onto them. They think not liking the safe generic waifu personalities means you hate them because they're "nice girls, just like Nilou and Ochako and Sakura".
> Idiots who realize Wuwa is for incels still defend Hoyo for some reason. Because Wuwa is less subtle but Hoyo is the master when it comes to the boiled frog technique. The girls are all ML but not all of them, so they get fooled because Escoffier isn't so they can claim she's for yuri so Hoyo is not an incel company anymore. Hoyo is skilled enough at baiting at all sides and they threw a small bone for the male enjoyers which is why they look better in comparison with other gacha companies. Other companies being more blatant is why Hoyo can get away with this for so long.
No. 500908
>>500842Sorry but I think you underestimate how mentally ill the genshin/hyv playerbase and hyv devs are. I don't get the Scara/Nahida ship either, but that shit went viral on NGA and Tieba during 3.3 leaks almost immediately. Hyv (and other CN companies) spends tons of money on buying internet trolls/bots to bridgade CN communities/forums so it's not farfetched to believe they'd have a hand in pushing the cuck narrative and it eventually metastasised into EN fandom.
>I think unless Dawei steps down people are never going to have faith in Genshin.Personally I'd never trust another game from Hyv. At the end of the day I have to accept that their core leadership team (and not just Dawei) is composed of honkaicels who simp for tacky mary sues. I've played HSR as well and it's clear as day that the company only sees female gamers as moneybags.
No. 500954
>>500908>Hyv (and other CN companies) spends tons of money on buying internet trolls/bots to bridgade CN communities/forumsIs there actual proof of this that's not from deweibs? I'm sure they know and don't care, but actual proof of them actually hiring trolls and incels? At least shit like misogynist writers like Limeggan were documented not just by deweibs.
>the company only sees female gamers as moneybags.I agree with this but I think every company is like this, either they see female players as merch buyers or they just don't care. I don't even trust "female game" companies like Infold, it's clear they know they can be as greedy as they want only due to lack of options. Gacha in general is a mess right now and sadly I don't think anything is really going to change it since all the big games are too scared to alienate incels.
No. 500969
File: 1748352056412.jpg (30.48 KB, 1087x754, 1746599732722.jpg)
>>500954Nta but I read on /hsrg/ that hoyo buys ship tags on lofter around the patch in which the ship gets baited. Right now, they have bought all the tags containing the term 'Phaidei' and are viewbotting them, even the irrelevant ones. They bought Wriolette and Neuvithesley tags around 4.1. During 4.2 they bought the Neuvifuri tag. But they stopped buying tags for this ship after 4.2, and Neuvillette and Furina also stopped interacting in-game. Apparently they are still pushing the Wriolette tag. They have also bought tags for Renheng and Kafblade. They do this for many ships. I wouldn't put it past them to use scummy tactics like buying trolls/bots for engagement farming.
No. 500972
File: 1748352294144.png (29.23 KB, 624x160, 9183859394985181994.png)
People will do anything to defend this ML shit now. It's revealing that the biggest defenders of Citlali are all teenagers who probably never played gacha before Genshin, don't know the industry, and defend Citlali because they think "she is literally me, she's just a shoujo girlie, if you hate her writing you hate me for being a girl who likes romance". Of course you can find a way for the ML trope to "make sense", that's what the writers want. It can never be criticized as long as these kinning types keep spinning dislike of the trope as misogyny.
No. 501237
File: 1748392240178.jpg (36.08 KB, 400x400, plshoyo.jpg)
i just want to c6 my husbando, this is the likely the last time he'll even be featured on a banner. i used my bogo deal and i was able to get him to c1 at least, but it's not enough. so hard being a poorfag yume
No. 501258
File: 1748396422076.jpeg (238.98 KB, 1432x1432, IMG_7824.jpeg)
>>501251Make crackships and just have fun, nonna! I have endless fun with these characters, they're very much sandbox to me.
No. 501311
>>500954No there are no documented/compiled proof unlike lmg the narcissistic retard. These are all assumptions and theories from CN hoyohaters/hoyocritics/"hoyo insider intel" that have been floating around, so probably all schizo conspiracies no different from moids and deweibs.
But considering that
>buying "internet water army" is the business norm in China, not just in gaming but for every business/product/content creator/celebrity trying to go viral>hyv known to dump millions into pr and advertising>new/empty/fake-ish profiles replying to hoyo-negative posts on weibo, xhs, douyin, nga, tieba etc. that tries to steer conversations towards more hoyo-positive light in robotic/half-hearted manner >random "uncles" popping up with sus leaks of "exciting upcoming content" in genshin whenever interest wanes and players complaints increase>dawei/devs admitting that they monitor communitiesIt's really not that hard to imagine that a group of deranged, 2d manhating moids could easily orchestrate a campaign to fuck over scara's release just so they could use the momentum to push their larger goal of anti-males in genshin and eventually turn genshin into honkai impact 4.
Also, apparently neuvillette's first rerun was also fucked over. CN socmed started trending "neuvillette's rerun flopped" before CN iOS ranking even updated. Was I there? No. Did it really happen? Idk. Did hyv really paid trollfarms to trend this shit? Who knows. But CN shills fucking up like this is quite common. And some dev(s) on the team evidently had a grudge against neu by making his face uglier/fatter than the previous model leaked in the The End batch leaks, and then fucking him over AGAIN in 4.8.
So, yes, maybe they really do hate male characters over there.
>TLDRNo proof, playing genshin has made me a schizo
No. 501328
File: 1748420920995.png (3.76 MB, 1400x1406, 17039024443567.png)
>>501258Nta but based. I miss the days when Childe used to get shipped with anyone and everyone from Teyvat.
No. 501572
File: 1748459354935.webp (67.1 KB, 1399x1000, IMG_4245.webp)
Leakers announced playable Dottore (electro), Varka (anemo) and Durin (anemo) in 6.X, how do we feel?
No. 501595
>>501572>electro>anemoWow no fucking way, hoyo is releasing not one not two but
three 5-star T0 meta male characters in the cryo region
No. 501651
File: 1748469304399.jpeg (62.82 KB, 640x684, IMG_7254.jpeg)
>>501613You can tell by Capitano’s capeless design he was intended to be playable. We were robbed.
No. 501690
File: 1748474426549.jpeg (306.44 KB, 931x1520, leak60.jpeg)
>>501572This is the full leak and it was made by Shiroha which seems to be one of the most reliable leaker for HSR, including all the rarities for the characters in the Amphoreus trailer
I belieb
No. 501701
>>501613I buy that too, which is why I'm not trusting these leaks so early in the game. Back then people also thought Arlecchino was going to be evil and die, that Sandrone would show up in Fontaine, and that Columbina would be in Natlan.
Off topic but I also believe Fontaine was obviously rewritten. Remember when people were leaking that the plot was about a class divide? I can believe that and that it was cut. Arlecchino was already meant to be more antagonistic before she became playable. People blame Neuvillette for why Fontaine was bad but I think the rewrites actually had less to do with him and more to make the waifus look better.