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.
No. 502233
File: 1748593644861.png (21.5 KB, 587x254, brave_mhYWAde3wA.png)
Expect other male characters being teased to be 4 lmao. This is likely going to be the only 5 male character for 2026.
No. 502256
File: 1748607625422.png (1.89 MB, 2048x1024, IMG_7279.png)
I haven’t touched the hangout events in my 5 or so years of playing so I started them yesterday. They’re a nice change of pace compared to the 5star character quests.
No. 502470
>>497893Her rants sound schizo because she's Chinese and possibly using some really shitty machine translation to translate her tweets to English, she's using a lot of Chinese lingo and terminology that doesn't translate well.
>>498007She's sharing "random ass forum posts" from accounts with hundreds of THOUSANDS of followers, you're severely underestimating the power and lunacy of Chinese gachacels. You have to understand that these people live in a dystopian hellhole where escapism is their only chance of happiness, they will go insane over it.
>>498859The main characters in Honkai are the male writers' genderbent self inserts and their girlfriends are their waifus because making their self-inserts male would cuck them, that's why Honkai has so many "lesbians". And being the egoists they are seeing characters that aren't based on their self insert fantasies be so popular, much more so than their shitty Honkai crap ever was, must sting like hell. The two Kianas leak is so fucking bonkers I'm glad I quit the game back when Natlan was released.
>>501607I'm fairly sure that they'll be releasing a "reborn shota dottore" or something just to emasculate and humiliate him. No way in hell the original version will ever be playable.
No. 502590
>>502470It sounds schizo because she posts claims with no proof and blocks people for asking. I can believe Hoyo is this shitty, but you can't blame other people for not believing it with no proof. Still shilling other game companies with a worse gender ratio and blaming it all on Hoyo is crazy. In what world do games like NTE or Endfield not look like waifu slop?
>The main characters in Honkai are the male writers' genderbent self inserts and their girlfriends are their waifus because making their self-inserts male would cuck themNow this I want to read proof of. Is it about that Limegan fuck? I don't think people would ever listen to that on twitter, they see Elysia and Kiana as their lesbian goddesses. Even if there was proof in their face you'd never get the himetroons to listen.
No. 502607
>>502600she claimed to have sent in a Striking notice letter to Hoyo once the Kinich recast announcement happened. People theorize they quietly let her go and she's on damage control before she's recast.
19:27 she talks about it and mentions "oh they'll probably recast me haha"
No. 502665
>>502590>Now this I want to read proof ofhttps://www.reddit.com/r/Genshin_Impact/comments/17pnwei/nga_drama_tales_of_limengan/Time to share the post.
>And then, perhaps the most devastating connection from the Cristiano Ronaldo thing: People noticed that Yae Miko has a similar attitude as him at times denigrating writers and readers like he did in item #1 (especially considering he was recruiting back in 2018 so probably not in a low position by now)I don't know about the others but Welt is at least confirmed to be Dawei's self-insert. Fu Hua and Baiheng are confirmed to be named after two members of the staff.
No. 502688
File: 1748718600991.png (167.38 KB, 670x741, sgrgtfrj.png)
>>502470>and their girlfriends are their waifusI wonder what prevents the average woman on twitter from figuring this out. There is so much discourse around Elysia/Cyrene's sexuality lately. They are writing essays about how Elysia is a lesbian icon and a representation of womanhood, as if she is some deeply nuanced character. But just watching a single clip of her on youtube is enough to give you an aneurysm. She is literally the troon's idea of an ideal woman. Hoyoslop becoming popular among normalfags was a mistake.
No. 502777
>>502665Nta but the Limegan shit was always proven, and so is the shit with Fuhua but that is all extremely old drama from even before Genshin's release. A lot of her claims to how Mihoyo opperates currently are extremely exagerated.
Do I believe Mihoyo would buy ship hashtags so they can promote their games? Sure, that's not something ridiculous to imagine and even inciting fanwars between ships to maintain player discussion and interest levels high makes sense.
However, going from that (which would be entirely managed by the marketing team), to them specifically writing hetships as ragebait for these discussions is an insane jump and frankly unbeliavable. Pre-Dawei, Genshin simply wanted to appeal to everyone, so the writing team thought of interesting interactions that could please all kinds of fans, that's why, for example, Neuvillette has his fujobait with Wrio, ship bait with Focalors and even yumebait with the Traveler.
She's very adamant about the devs hating and scrapping Scaramouche over the Nahida cat incident but then why would they design an entire summer event around him? That was a whole region after the initial backlash happened they had all the opportunity in the world to change the storyline to Traveler or someone else. And sure, we've never seen Scaramouche interact with Nahida since but also is that something as rare as she is making it out to be? How many times have we seen Yae and Ei interact after the Inazuma Archon Quest too? It took what… 3? years for us to see the first Zhongli and Venti onscreen interaction too even when it's been hinted at since 1.0
Both for the good and for the bad I think the writing team of the game is a lot less influenced by online opinion than what she says they are. The state of Natlan is entirely Dawei's influence and preference, informed with an outdated and misguided notion of the audience for Genshin, specifically.
No. 502783
>>502777deweibs also makes these claims and then blocks anyone asking for proof or saying shit makes no sense. That's what sounds schizo. Do I believe that Hoyo implies ships for anyone? No, I don't. Even with Eimiko they'll play both sides but giving heavy yuribait but still putting Aether in the bath. I don't think a company that "respects lesbians" would do something like that.
The Scaramouche claim is that Hoyo put him with Nahida on purpose to make incels feel cucked, and that I don't know or understand why they would do this. It sounds a bit too…smart…for Hoyo to be orchestrating this incel backlash just for what, to help Scaramouche get more loyal fans? It doesn't make sense. I do think they are scaling back on his appearances though. They didn't have him interact with Nahida or anyone in the birthday event. I think Scaramouche is such a mess of a character it's hard to know the difference between truth and lies when it comes to the speculation of why they did what they did.
> I think the writing team of the game is a lot less influenced by online opinion than what she says they are.I have to disagree there, they are VERY online and you can see with how HSR especially likes to run fandom jokes to the ground or give a shoutout the fandom. I do think they can change things based on what they perceive to be a market trends. I don't think the storylines are as set in stone as people want to believe.
No. 502787
>>502783>I have to disagree there, they are VERY online and you can see with how HSR especially likes to run fandom jokes to the ground or give a shoutout the fandom. I do think they can change things based on what they perceive to be a market trends. I don't think the storylines are as set in stone as people want to believe.Those are two completely different writing and dev teams tho, with different creative directions. Genshin barely ever does anythign similar and even then, making reference to in fandom jokes is one thing while changing the plot for what the audience prefers is something completely different.
I don't think the writing is set in stone, Nod-Krai existing is proof that it isn't, just that negative internet opinions over character interactions or even really sales numbers affects their plans that much. A good example is how Itto is not really a particularly liked character at all and his sales where mediocre but he still has been pushed on various events, multiple of them even outside of Inazuma.
No. 502791
>>502787Itto not being liked is news to me, my impression is that he was well received, atleast with the English fanbase. He's fun and actually has a personality so I don't mind seeing more of him.
As an aside, Ororon feels like them trying to do the same broish comedy shtick as Itto but a thousand times worse. I haven't caught up to the Natlan story yet so I don't know how he is there, but holy fuck he was annoying in the recent event. I'm actually quite curious how much was changed/lost in translation or if he's really just that insufferable.
No. 502834
>>502777>why would they design an entire summer event around himFunny you say that because he was absent for two thirds of the event and we still had more Navia & Traveler moments and Traveler in Nilou's lap.
>>502783>for Hoyo to be orchestrating this incel backlash just for what, to help Scaramouche get more loyal fans?And yet, leaks are saying Dottore will be playable. Dottore aka the convenient evil guy to pinpoint every single evil threadline from Fontaine and Sumeru to whitewash Scara and Arlecchino too. I believe the provocation angle, and I believe Dottore will be castrated or humiliated a la Capitano as a result.
No. 502851
>>502787I think Itto is more popular with the younger crowd who plays Genshin, and his CN and JP VAs are actually famous singers. He's just easy to implement because a comic relief character is actually easier for them to put in events over a lore based character. But yes, I'm sure it's also the comic relief aspect that makes It to "okay" for incels to accept.
>>502834>I believe Dottore will be castrated or humiliated a la Capitano as a result.But do you believe he will still be playable as he is or we'll get a segment? With Hyv it's hard to tell what is active malice and what's just obliviousness from the writers. Childe is a character who has only existed to be humiliated and I bet it's because CN incels don't like him because of Liyue. Zhongli's fine though, he's the leader so he gets a pass. Childe's fans are in super denial that he exists to be humiliated because they won't accept this truth about Hyv and have fallen for being suckers until Snezhnaya, they're an example of how Hyv trains people like dogs to accept shit.
I wonder if they set it up to make fans also resent Scaramouche since Scaramouche was woobified to hell and got this amazing backstory treatment to make people like him and has his actions washed away and nobody remembers it enough to be angry at him, he's just at school now. While the devs have to throw Childe in jail for a crime he didn't commit and have him humiliated by other characters. Any Childe fan who believes they're going to address this by Snezhnaya is fooling themselves. It has nothing to do with Genshin having "gray morality". Incels just don't like him and want to see him humiliated.
No. 502927
File: 1748802063328.jpeg (737.52 KB, 1179x1427, IMG_4490.jpeg)
Never doubting the doomer nonas again.
No. 502972
>>502870Because Dawei is an incel himself! And the board probably believes having extremely sexualized characters and dickriding the male protag will save the sinking ship that Genshin became after they sabotaged it on purpose after Star Rail's release.
This is not Mihoyo bending their will to schizo online incels, it's very much a direction introduced by Dawei during the production of 5.X as it's his prefered way to make games in general. They don't think male characters sell that much, and Genshin is doing worse and worse numbers by the day.
They tried to nerf Neuvillette twice, one right after his release and then once again in Natlan. That's not because incels hate him, it's because Neuvillette is literally the strongest character in the game and overpasses game mechanics since his multiplyers are so high. The second attempt was probably because they hoped enought time had passed to avoid backlash.
The 'scaling back' on Scaramouche's appearances are unconfirmed rumours about him being in current Archon Quest which make no sense for anyone who actually played the quest, which had a very purposeful focus on Mondstadt as a whole and the characters that come from the city. Why would the right hand man of the Dendro Archon who is actually from Inazuma even be there? There's no reason, we barely even see Durin in the quest.
Again, the Natlan story was heavily changed by Dawei's new creative direction, that's clear, my argument is that I don't think he's bending his will to incels but rather just doing whatever the fuck he likes with the game, which includes the shitty waifus and killing off fan favorites for nothing. Incels don't really like Mavuika either, they are generally pedophiles who like the girls with the 'teen' model more, and yet the whole region was dickriding her. Why? Because Himeko is literally Dawei's favorite character in Honkai so he forced the team to make a story completely around her, made her the Mary Suest character to ever Mary Sue and gave her a stupid broken kit. The killing off of Capitano/Xbalanque was probably even to avoid them overshadowing Mavuika, and when it was looking like her sales would look ridiculously low for an Archon they released the first ever double banner release with her dedicated support in the story of the game. Those were not decisions to appease incels, they were made to appease Dawei.
No. 503016
>>502927ngl i would doubt THIS leaker because last time they said iansan would come out in 5.1 and they're notorious for posting fake leaks based off guessing/popular opinion.
I believe Dottore will appear in Nod-Krai. Shiroha, is a reliable hsr leaker and i trust them.
No. 503275
File: 1748918020554.jpeg (Spoiler Image,753.74 KB, 1125x1346, IMG_7346.jpeg)
Spoilers for new Dainslief/Archon quest
No. 503293
File: 1748924981419.jpeg (1.5 MB, 1920x1080, mxap8p9zqm4f1.jpeg)
they need to update dainslief's model asap
>>503275directly face the sustainer??? no mention of skirk whatsoever?? how reliable is this lol
No. 503381
File: 1748950949149.jpeg (Spoiler Image,2.13 MB, 2003x1119, IMG_7349.jpeg)
>>503275>>503293Here’s a leaked image from the quest which confirms one of the plot points.
No. 503391
File: 1748952784689.png (2.56 KB, 369x301, IMG_3138.png)
>>503293No the fuck they don’t, shut the actual fuck up before the incels hear your retarded take and end up botching my perfect husbando before he releases
No. 503393
>>503381why tf would they release skirk, a character that has ties with the abyss since the conception of the entire game, and not put her in the archon quest of her release? genuinely what goes on in their heads
or is the xxx we fight with her??
No. 503400
File: 1748955814399.jpeg (808.2 KB, 989x1591, IMG_7350.jpeg)
Watch her replace Ororon
No. 503549
File: 1748995671947.jpg (413.74 KB, 670x672, 0093128391928383.jpg)
The amount of dickriding that people will do for this game is insane.
No. 503558
File: 1748997007624.png (751.7 KB, 1050x614, 156854565678.PNG)
I'm so glad Natlan is ending so this era of gaslighting can finally be over. People keep ignoring that these characters are Honkai expys. She isn't Hoyo's take on a Aztec/Maori/ect Goddess that unfortunately got whitewashed in the design process. She's their already light skinned OC, shoved into the game. At the very least she might be Japanese/Asian.
No. 503574
File: 1749001028226.jpeg (657.89 KB, 1125x1859, IMG_7365.jpeg)
Bennett skin coming with mare Jivari. We’re eating good
No. 503625
>>503574So she's supposed to replace Ororon because God forbid the incels need a male unit in their teams?
That's the easiest skip ever for me then. They can pry my C6 Ororon from my cold, dead hands.
No. 503642
>>503592No summer event was confirmed in the Nod Krai livestream, I think
>>503574I will genuinely get the Yelan skin if it fixes her face and its not too coomery. Not like I would have to spend any money on it anyway since I have extra of the premium currency from the years of welkin I used to get and saving that shit for a future 5* skin for another male character like Diluc's…
No. 503743
File: 1749048626766.png (10.18 MB, 2550x3624, GerT7vWbsAMx_nG.png)
>it's September 2025
>Nod Krai releases
>writing goes back to being Sumeru/Fontaine's quality level, male characters have a lot of plot relevance
>5 star support Durin releases in 6.0
>5 star DPS Varka releases in 6.1
>5 star healer Dottore releases in 6.4, but it's some pussified fragment I can't pretend like we will get playable evil Dottore even in this hyper optimistic scenario kek
>another random tall male 5 star releases between 6.5 and 6.8, and he has the sluttiest male design known to date
>all of them are meta
>we get some male 4 stars, at least one of them is good
>leakers all agree that Dainsleif is going to come out in early 7.x
>Capitano revives and is teased or leaked to release in Snezhnaya
>Varka/Capitano gets shipteased like crazy
>Durin has a crush on Lumine, but we also get Durin/Wanderer and Durin/Albedo interactions
>Childe gets a skin and plenty of yume content, plus he stops being a pathetic loser
>the new waifus don't look or act like the Natlan whores, at worst they are Clorinde-tier sexualized
Would you come back?
No. 503785
>>503755I mostly included the bit about Childe because 1. he's one of the most popular male characters, and 2. the character assassination he underwent to glaze Skirk shows how little HYV cares about its female players.
>I want the story to actually move and the real problem with Genshin is how slow the story actually progressesNot sure if this is even possible. All gacha game stories move at a snail's pace, because once the story ends, the company stops making money. I wonder which regions we will get after Snezhnaya, since there is no way they'll allow the story to wrap up in only a year or two.
No. 503791
>>503781I agree, I didn't like how Xiao felt in his last appearance for example. I don't need or want characters to be for me, I want the story to just progress and to allow characters to interact without them needing to worry about incels freaking out. I don't think any character should be reduced to being for the bland self insert.
>>503785Yumebait will not fix the issues with Childe's character, they tried it and it's not going to stop him from being a joke. Some bait isn't going to solve the problem when they can't let him and Skirk have a completely platonic relationship or even interaction. I see the point about how the story does need to move slowly, but even in other games something at least happens in the meantime. With Genshin it doesn't feel like it's worth the wait for older characters to develop or have a lore reveal anymore. More yumebait isn't going to fix that problem. After Snezhnaya there will be Khaenriah and then who knows, they already registered for a sequel but if this is how they're making the game now I wonder how many people will actually sign up for it. I have a bad feeling about the end of Genshin. I think it might be made as unsatisfying as possible to get people to play the sequel since they operate on sunk cost.
No. 503804
>>503743>>Varka/Capitano gets shipteased like crazyAs much as fujobait makes me happy, I feel like hyv always ends up turning one character into an accessory for the other. I have not touched genshit in ages, but this dynamic is painfully obvious in shart rail. These days Ratio barely exists outside of mentioning “that gambler” in every appearance. Even his nendo is referencing the final victor lightcone because he is not popular enough to sell on his own. I feel it's even worse in Mydei's case. He had only five lines in the last patch, all revolving around Phainon and that alone was enough for fujos to declare how much hyv cares about the ship. This is probably the first protag x rival ship where the rival
>is irrelevant>dead before the protagonist's character arc even starts>only exists as the protag's cocksleeve in fanartsMydei’s story was genuinely interesting back in 3.1 but ever since then, his only purpose has been to exist as shipbait. They just keep putting him and Phainon together in one scene in random promo materials on youtube or throwing in vague hints that fujos can then blow out of proportion as Phaidei content. It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Mydei deserved better. I know it is never going to happen, but I wish hyv would at least try to give the less important person in a ship more to work with than just existing as a prop for the other.
No. 503813
>>503804I'm a fujo too but I agree. I think it's a result of Hyv not wanting to make the yaoi too "in your face" to not piss off the incels, along with not wanting to make too many male characters that prominent. Phaidei is probably the closest out of all the yaoibait where they can be individuals in the beginning, but Hyv really struggles with maintaining that. I think it's the result of them putting more effort into one character (Phainon, Aventurine) and the other not so much. They would struggle actually making a yaoi that hits the plot beats people like in other stories where both guys are equally present in the story, because they just can't make two guys both the movers and shakers of a plot.
But I also don't think much of their yumebait either. I think when characters have to revolve around a self-insert they also lose some flavor. In my opinion the writing issues with Hyv games in general go beyond the bait. Now all characters feel calculated exactly for a specific reaction, to fit a popular trope rather than moving the plot or being a character first. I know all characters are products in gacha but a good writer would at least be able to hide that and I don't think there's good writers like that present at Hyv. You'll get better writing with npcs and world quests because they don't have to worry so much about selling them.
No. 503886
>>503813I agree. I think only Zhongli and Childe were the only ship where both were five stars where both had their own lore relevant to the world and were at least part of the archon quest. But I also notice that in both Genshin and HSR they get cold feet now with making any fujobait too story relevant.
>>503811 Renheng lost a lot of steam with me when I read Limmegan's comments. I don't think these writers care about keeping any consistency with relationships and it shows in the writing. I get the impression with Hoyo shipping everyone wants to be the next Kiamei or Bronseele but the writers don't have enough of a vision for that. Shipping would improve if people stopped trying to aim for some for of canon "validity" because these writers truly don't care.
This is why I don't think any form of "bait" for a male character, fujo, yume, etc, is going to change anything. I miss early Genshin where they clearly did want to bait some shippers, but it never felt as lazy as it did with the past event that felt more like a "here's your bone, now shut up and buy our merch, women". It won't change all the issues with the story itself. How they will retcon or fuck over a character just to sell another one. With this current writing team I don't want any bait with anyone because the writing is just so bad. Now that we know what they're like anything they try to do to keep some female players invested looks like the desperate ploy that it is.
No. 503901
>>503893The obsession with proving which ship is canon and less
problematic is definitely a hoyo thing. Its why hoyo can get away with delivering dogshit as long the most popular ship gets appeased.
No. 503909
>>503868So would I. Yumebait didn't stop Childe from being a joke and written like ass in Fontaine. I can tell when writers don't care about a character and just lay on the pandering to keep people from leaving. It's cheap.
>>503906Because the fanservice is cheap. Only a few might have real arcs, but that doesn't mean that yumebait makes a character better. Yumebait didn't make Kinich worth it when they gave him fuckall screentime in the actual aq. They can have Alhaitham and Kaveh show up in Sumeru and have Sethos pop up to tell you how canon his otp is and I still wouldn't be happy because it feels cheap now. The writers have changed since early Genshin. I'm not happy with waifubait not because I need it to be characters I'm attracted to. I hate the waifubait because the female characters are completely defanged in a way that needs to sell and they make it obvious. The early characters were tropey but it was less so because Hyv wasn't as plugged into the fandom.
No. 503925
Falling for the Hoyoverse astroturfing and getting upset at possible yumebait when the entirety of the past threads have been complaining about them abandoning their female playerbase is so funny to me, nonnas, come on.
>>503908>>503913Xiao, Kazuha, Ei and now Hu Tao have genuine arcs too, Xiao was probably even the first one to even get one in the game.
However, I dont think we can pan this shit on the new team, this has been an issue with Genshin since the start, where characters would have set ups which would either never be followed through or take literal years.
Hu Tao's arc starts with her story quest, gets no set up even in the events she appears in, and got concluded in the last Lantern Rite.
Xiao's starts in the Liyue Archon Quest, we see yearly progression every Lantern Rite and gets concluded in the Chasm Archon Quest. After that we still see him making little strides in progression in Lantern Rite, like the shrine he made for his adeptus friends or actually going to Liyue for Lantern Rite or that one off Mondstadt x Liyue event with Venti.
My point being: its all over the place since the start, and part of it is because the game insists on not making character variants and older characters sell less and less as they age so making an update surrounding an older character is slated to be seen as a waste of resources unless the character steals another's spotlight, takes place on a event or sets up even more future characters like they did with Scaramouche in the summer event or now with Albedo in Paralogism.
No. 503927
>>503913It's the "all games must be ML or else it's cuckshit" that's ruining gacha now. I want characters to be able to interact without the writers having to hold back because some schizo will sperg out over thinking they're being cucked, and I will include some yumes in this too.
>>503925People weren't praising their shipbait either. Not all female players are yumes or even like the way they write yumebait in the game, that's the point. I don't care about yumebait if a character's writing is already ass and they're already shafted. Male characters don't need to exist in the game for me to want to imagine dating them, or else I would really just go play otome. People don't stick with these gachas because they want to date all characters, aside from the incels not even all female character fans want them to be for a harem.
But yes, these characters did have arcs and the problem with Genshin is a lot of old characters had setup that couldn't pay off for years, but it's now a problem when ity doesn't feel worth the wait. Hu Tao I wasn't happy with, since you mention her, since it relied on ML pandering with the traveler. You're right about the problem being that they don't know what to do with older characters unless they can sell, but then this is why I don't think yumebait or shipbait would fix these issues.
No. 503944
>>503928It's always been my schizo theory that the Scaramouche retcon has less to do with him and more to do with the developers having absolutely no fucking idea on how to handle a Ei and Scaramouche eventual confrontation and waiting to avoid it at all costs. Its not like most of Sumeru knew wtf Scaramouche was up to and considering most of the shit he did was in Inazuma him being the weird protege of the Dendro Archon would have been enough to implement him with other Sumeru characters. This also comes from them completely defanging Ei too, which started with the collective gaslighting over her somehow not being responsible for the civil war in her country despite literally having absolute control to now just completely avoiding the fact that she just let Scaramouche to rot in a prison the second he was born bc he had feelings.
>>503927I agree, I think the major issue is this hypersensitivity to incels claiming something will cuck them the second the world doesnt revolve around them. Hu Tao's arc also disappointed me, it was actually one of the arcs I had been excited about since her release and maybe it was always a pipedream but I always thought that her arc would have concluded better with her death in comparison to Xiao which I think gets more poignant if he survives. Seeing it turn into generic ML shit was annoying.
No. 504083
>>503925Cheap yumebait isn't some huge win for female players, it's literally mihoyo throwing scraps to the ground to shut women up so that they can push out 10 prostitute waifus in peace. I also fully agree with
>>503927 , obsessive yumes are a part of the wider problem making it so that literally everything has to be a character sucking the MC's dick/clit. We've reached a point where characters are forbidden from even talking to the other characters because that's "cucking" the player, how many times has this very thread had schizo anons having meltdowns because their husbando had voicelines with someone else? Most of the yumebait in the game tries way too hard to the point it feels inorganic and forced (because it is) either way, I just want a balanced gender ratio with interesting and attractive male characters, female characters to have outfits that aren't literal lingerie, a story that actually pays off instead of throwing another khaenri'ah curveball and consistent QOL updates.
No. 504094
>>503937Yeah there was a time when people found it awkward how much Ayaka was into the traveler and how the game forced you to take her out on a date, now it's the norm for every new female character to be MLbait. It honestly wasn't until the recent years that people into ML turned more aggressive and demanding, starting with things like incels having schizo rage moments over Scaramouche and Nahida and yumes losing their mind over Childe talking to Yoimiya. I feel like the popularity of LADS and Wuthering Waves (especially the latter since Mihoyo's staff are confirmed to be obsessed with the game) both aggravated the ML obsession exponentially and Genshin had to compete, but fumbled the bag completely with how they portrayed Childe in Fontaine and how absolutely retarded Citlali turned out to be. Them trying to ape WW's incelpandering is like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, Genshin's world and tone just wasn't built for that kind of purpose.
>>503966This. With the amount of money Mihoyo generates and the amount of extensive research they put into the different regions complete with concerts and big event live streams, why shouldn't we expect the plot of the game correspond to the budgetary value of the entire franchise? Genshin's world is pumped full of lore and worldbuilding to the point people gave up following it because everything kept getting delayed and retconned, so it's not like they're not interested in putting their ideas into the game.
No. 504144
>>504083Exactly. Cheap yumebait didn't stop Childe from being shafted in Fontaine, now it's even more blatant to me they threw it in to shut people up so he could still be a joke, offscreen for most of it, and unable to even interact with Skirk during the first time we saw her. The people who made a big deal about him talking to Yoimiya are why he barely gets to be in the story so to me obsessive yumes aren't something I'd want a character to have. Most people just want a balanced ratio because it makes a story feel like an actual story, the world feel like a world with people in it, a thing Genshin was doing.
>>504094>It honestly wasn't until the recent years that people into ML turned more aggressive and demandingThis more than anything is what's ruining gacha right now. The ML obsession doesn't work if you're trying to tell an actual story, if you're trying to actually be anime BOTW but with gacha and longterm lore. Early Genshin was not perfect, but it was simple and even though every character had to be on good terms with the traveler, it didn't feel like it was a requirement to stick in ML bait moments. I don't want characters to be written like shit and then the writers go "here's a moment of yumebait!" as if that makes up for it. I don't want them to do half-assed fujobait like Ifa and Ororon where one of the guys is barely in the aq and most of the ship's "content" is only in events and not part of the aq itself. I want strong characters who can interact and be part of the plot in an organic way, and where a ship can form due to the strength of their personalities, just like how ships used to be. I don't want Hyv to give me some set up tropes and tell me what to ship, I just want a story and then the fandom can take it from there. Because yeah, this?
>Them trying to ape WW's incelpandering is like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, Genshin's world and tone just wasn't built for that kind of purpose. It doesn't work in this game. That's why no one gives a fuck about Wuwa lore or the characters long term because it's just about collecting waifus. Now gacha devs only listen to extreme people who want every single game to be ML and if it's not ML they think it's bad, and you just can't tell a story with a world and lore if every character needs to be a dating sim trope for the self-insert. This is why the game's becoming ass. I think some people know it too, even though Escoffier still looks like shit, she was still better received than someone like Mizuki because they took a break from the ML shit this time. Shame she still looks ugly as sin.
No. 504236
>>504083>how many times has this very thread had schizo anons having meltdowns because their husbando had voicelines with someone else?I just think it's disingenuous to pretend this isn't an issue with the fandom overall, fujos throw just as many fits whenever a male character has an important relationship with a female character too (ie see the anaxa/aglaea fights still going on rn in HSR and we've had our own fair share of those in genshin too, in Fontaine there were endless debates about Neuvillete/Focalors/Wriothesley)
this sort of polarizing behaviour has infected every aspect of fandom culture, or at least, fandom culture that is insurgent with gacha games but that doesn't mean neither we or the devs should bow down to it
No. 504259
>>504236Imo this just shows how
toxic shipping of any kind has become. Honestly, while there have always been crazy shippers around, the entitlement of yumes/fujos/himes that every franchise constantly caters to them has not only ruined fandoms but franchises as a whole. People nowadays gobble up the cheapest, laziest slop; they're happy as long as they get their regular fix, regardless of how uninspired it is. It’s honestly put me off shipping, especially in Genshin. The only ships I still engage with are rarepairs no one would ever claim are canon. They're automatically so much more chill and more often have better, more creative fics too.
No. 504303
>>504269>Fujos aren't a driving force directing Mihoyo's decisions, and neither are yurifags. While they get miniscule pandering, they're still a barely noted niche. I'm sorry, but that's simply not true. Before they even introduced a ML in Honkai 3rd (which was years into the story), the entire game was yurifag pandering. Introducing male characters into Honkai at all was actually a very hated decision by a significant part of their incel fanbase back then, and a lot of their fujo pandering was born to take the heat off that choice. It's also silly to pretend that fujos didnt use to be one of their main target audience, at least just as much as yumes, before the shift in Natlan, every region has their designated BLbait, sometimes actually multiple BL baits, and everyone could see that male characters in Star Rail/early Genshin often come in 'pairs'. Are the idles that Kaveh/Alhaitham or Yae/Ei have in reference to each other supposed to be taken as 'minor' pandering? Is Dr Ratio being unable to say anything outloud ever without mentioning Aventurine or even his own nendo having a reference to him minor too?
No. 504383
>>504236I don't know why you need to make it a fujo vs yume thing when people have also said that the shipbait is also poorly written. We're just giving reasons why some of us do not want some characters reduced to mere yumebait either. Even more so because at least yumes do have a quality game to play in LADS, if fujos want something that's conducive to m/m shipping in a high budget game Hoyoslop really is all there are. And yes, shippers are crazy, we all know that, but that is the entire point of how the ML extremism and the lazy way Hyv baits now are bad for the overall story.
>>504259This is what I do miss. Early Genshin DID have shipwars and toxicity, no one is denying that, but it became worse now because whenever a character is released people ask if their shipbait, and if they have no "assigned" ship then they must be MLbait, and if they're MLbait and interact with another character it's Hyv cucking you and you must raise hell. I think this state of affairs is bad.
>>504277To be honest I don't think merch collabs mean anything. If anything it proves how these companies will use characters for merch but not actually give them something substantial in the story,
>>504303I think arguing about who gets the most scraps is pointless and what Hyv wants. Ultimately their goal is to bait everyone and leave them unsatisfied. Even with some of their baits, how much of it affects the story? It is true Ratio has no character outside that ship, but this proves that the ship is inconsequential to the story and that they don't bother fleshing everyone out because they won't do that unless they want a character to really sell. Kaveh and Alhaitham probably can get as much bait as any yaoi can get in Genshin precisely because Kaveh is a four star and neither of them are probably relevant to the lore or endgame. Even Yae and Ei got thrown in the bath marketing with Aether, Hyv doesn't give a fuck. As much as they get such praise for yuri, not one yuri ship in HSR actually affects the story. They're limited in some trailers but nobody's relationship actually affects the plot, if you removed it very little would change. Even their big yuri Honkai expy goddess Elysia is most likely going to be used to get people to fight about ships, which should be the nail in the coffin of "Hyv cares about lesbians" once and for all.
Basically: Hyv doesn't ultimately care and it's playing into their hands to argue about who gets the most in merch or pandering events when the real target audience are still incel moids. The writing problem going beyond who gets what, it's a company issue but I do believe that this polarized "all gacha games should be ML, it's a matter of which side wins" is why the story will get worse because treating characters interactions like this math problem where people can or can't interact based on what will or won't set off a group of people is bad for stories. It's bad period whenever showrunners listen to a vocal fanbase, but in gacha it's much worse because of the amount of money involved in this hobby.
No. 504504
File: 1749165290951.jpg (71.14 KB, 630x236, 0218310385829104.jpg)
This guy does nothing but dickride Genshin, it's hilarious.
Genshin is the only game where people will defend no actions having any real consequences or meaning to the plot. It's hard to care about anything that happens in the archon quest when everything has to go back to events. Watch them find some way to make Celestia a waifubait place too.
No. 504687
>>504383Even Chinese players are saying that the ML extremism started getting worse after 2023 which coincidentally also lines up with the release of WuWa and Snowbreak removing all male characters. Characters having relationships with each other barely affects the story as you said (and even the lesbian ships can easily be made into coomfodder for men whenever necessary, like the Inazuma bath event), but characters being forced to be obsessed with the main character and
only interacting with them is absolutely going to cripple the writing because you can't create an immersive, credible world where everyone is just a sex bot with no real ambitions.
I would say that their decision to pander to MLfags first and foremost would have them crash and burn like any other company that decided to make self-obsessed sex pests their main market would, but Mihoyo pushed Genshin so aggressively for years that now they're too big to fail. They practically have a monopoly on gacha in China leaving their competitors in the dust in regards to their revenue streams and sink ungodly amounts of money to keep it that way. So even though they're bitching and moaning about Natlan and Amphoreus flopping, they can still keep making Da Wei's vision for an incel heaven come true and everyone will still keep paying.
No. 504708
File: 1749205483487.png (1.91 MB, 1220x2400, 1000004948.png)
>>504662Watch the retards on Xitter mental gymnastics this into being feminist somehow kek
No. 504733
File: 1749208736328.png (562.38 KB, 573x997, 131633.png)
>>504714What do you mean anon? This is absolutely the same as jiggle physics tits that are barely covered.
No. 504755
>>504277That's the trick Hyv wants you to fall for. It's merch outside of the game, but in the game in the actual aqs themselves no yaoi matters. Who knows, they also probably want fujos to fight each other about who's ship gets "acknowledged" now too. Any annoying social phenomenon you see in the fandom is most likely deliberately encouraged by the company because their method for keeping people engaged with their games is ragebait and spite, not actual good storytelling.
>>504687This is the big issue dragging the story and why "what if we give some ML to the female players sometimes" isn't the solution. I don't want the male characters I do like to become cringey y/n fanfiction suave doms. I want the story the game promised in the beginning. This entire movement doesn't sound good for the future of gacha if gacha is now the replacement for those mid budget rpgs that used to be on handheld. Mobile gaming replaced a lot of those because they're cheaper and more accessible and Genshin promising a real story like a real rpg and not just being a png collector is why it blew up. The only reason a lot of people won't leave, besides sunk cost fallacy, is that the game is actually fun to play and looks better compared it to its competitors. They won't crash and burn for it only because Hyv is a master at playing the long game. Look how people will say Wuwa's outfits for the waifus are ugly but still defend abominations like Escoffier.
I think gaming is going through a dark period like anime now. In Japan mixed gachas like FGO, Granblue Fantasy, Project Sekai can have a mixed cast and in the case of the last game it's not about ML. Most of the really popular games are mixed cast and I don't think gacha is going to go anywhere good if that has to be abandoned for ML extremists.
No. 504759
File: 1749212910932.webp (270.71 KB, 1920x1080, a1zx28e3ua5f1.webp)
So, phase 1 is Skirk and Shenhe, with Dahlia. I know he's shit, but I still wanted him. I don't want either of those waifus, so I guess I'll have to skip him. I'm disappointed. I know nonas here hate Emelie (for good reason), but I could at least have used her with Kinich if I had gotten her while fishing for Dahlia. Nothing but disappointment with this game.
No. 504763
>>504755>Who knows, they also probably want fujos to fight each other about who's ship gets "acknowledged" now tooI have seen fujos of the same ship fighting over which character hyv is pushing as the 'top'. Just a few days ago I saw a they/it woman on twitter posting screencaps from /hsrg/ where anons were calling Mydei an emasculated fag, to prove that he is the bottom and basically a woman in the relationship, and that anyone who thinks otherwise just doesn’t understand his character. Maybe I am going full schizo, but even I have started to believe that hyv is fully aware of fandom infighting and they purposely do things that will rile people up and keep them fighting over scraps so that when they finally get something, it feels like a "win".
>>504733Seeing the length of his shorts makes me want to cry.
No. 504785
File: 1749217784560.png (1.18 MB, 797x1000, varka.PNG)
full body Varka
No. 504786
File: 1749217912685.png (5.7 MB, 2871x1571, Alice.PNG)
Alice? Her elf ears aren't present though but the design follows playable character design philosophy. hate they gave her pigtails for a "younger" look
No. 504789
>>504763Limmegan basically admitted he liked seeing people fight about the character relationships in HSR. He said this and people still argue like Hyv is going to "imply" any ship because everyone wants to have a Kiamei or else their ship isn't "
valid".
>>504785Really looks like a discount Aventurine. People will defend these lazy ideas by saying Hyv is a brilliant company making parallels and not just a bunch of hacks writing the same thing over and over just for money.
No. 504798
File: 1749219858768.jpg (282.83 KB, 2048x2048, 1749216980975505.jpg)
>>504785Kek he really is an Aventurine knockoff. It’s nice that he isn’t in barashit territory, but it’s still disappointing that they refuse to make male characters show even a sliver of skin beyond their wrists. Feels jarring when compared to
>>504708 No. 504799
>>504763I have seen that sort of retarded infighting since forever in fujo spaces, tho, specially with kaeluc/luckae in early genshin and this shit is imported discourse from danmei circles where people will in extremely nasty fights to prove who's top and who's bottom. I don't think this should ever be pinned against Mihoyo tho, it's just fandom becoming unbearable and people unwilling to accept other readings of characters.
>>504786I'm just glad she's not half naked tbh I've been waiting for Alice for a long time. I actually like that she has proprer sleeves than the detached sleeve combo they give literally everyone too.
No. 504803
File: 1749220682098.jpg (40.92 KB, 529x409, fJkKSK4.jpg)
They're really desperate if they're releasing dain now
No. 504837
File: 1749224644463.jpg (228.55 KB, 1041x904, RbSHojT.jpg)
Hoyo's financial emergency plan
>ZZZ has shit sales
>fujobait for one update then go back to incel pandering
>Genshin has shit sales
>fujobait for one update then go back to incel pandering
Someone is going to take this as the same as a new 5 star male or kit buff because hoyo made them canon during pride month and are totes allies
No. 504865
>>504837>because hoyo made them canon during pride month and are totes alliesThe comments under the OG post are already salivating kek.
>>504857It's Genshin, they're not desperate enough to add even the slightest ass jiggle like they did in ZZZ.
No. 504878
File: 1749228803503.png (452.83 KB, 1280x716, helpp-kaveh-and-alhaitham-offi…)
>>504837Ohh this is from the kfc collab? I was wondering how a namecard was supposed to make them money. This is so fucking stupid kek
No. 504952
>>504798People now saying they want a Ratio riponff to be with him, I wish people would stop hyping ripoff designs because it feels so lazy.
>>504837It's never in game either, it's just merch. I'm a shipper myself I don't hate shipping but I do hate the way Hoyo shipping is where people will hype up certain yaoi and yuri ships as Hoyo caring about the queers. It doesn't help that it makes some of these shippers have a big superiority complex compares to the other fujos and himejos too, which I'm sure Hoyo also knows about and likes.
No. 505034
>>504951RWBY? Lmao no wonder this guy must be used to glazing shit.
Anyway I'm seeing some people asking why people say Alice looks boring and that no one should be disappointed she's just like that Klee skin because "they're related it makes sense!!1" when the real issue is it feels underwhelming because they made Alice a secret for too long. There's such a thing as taking too long and Genshin has done it, wasting our time with filler waifus like onsen prostitute and lingerie chef. When you made people wait YEARS for Alice, no one is getting hype by her just being bigger Klee. I almost feel like they're rushing all these big characters now because they know people are losing patience. I don't think Skirk was ever meant to be playable this early and with them making cryo her "hidden element" because they can't release a new one. Skirk feels like an emergency glass waifu. Look how the leaks only mention her sq, she's not in anything else. Just an sq to make her MLbait for Aether and make people think there will be something cool happening later because Genshin can't be TOO satisfying or else people will leave.
No. 505080
File: 1749265417929.png (4.91 MB, 1080x3534, 9859f891-e33f-4ff9-aab9-2fa66f…)
>>504830Just the other day I saw a slutty male knight with their tits out. Very silly design but just imagine moids sperging out kek
No. 505106
>>505082Its beyond stupid, I hate it too even in relation to danmei/canon yaoi because it's always extremely gendered and overall an uninteresting way to see character interactions and it shows that despite the pretend moral superiority over straight ships, they see BL the exact same way and there's nothing actually inherently revolutionary/more interesting in it.
>>505034Genuinely still insane to me that Skirk is only in her own character quest. Not even an event to hype up her character maybe even involving the Childe nope we just get her dropped after a 5 minute interaction 2 years ago at the end of Fontaine. How do you fuck up a release this badly????
No. 505162
File: 1749292864626.jpg (121.57 KB, 910x937, 1000036144.jpg)
Kek
No. 505176
>>505162>yaoibait to regain female audienceThese cocksuckers are so pathetic. The worst part is that tactic working with fujos who are used to qavor the garbage they're being served.
On the other hand, they can no longer have their waifu harem without sales tanking kekarooo
No. 505297
File: 1749316243695.png (857.64 KB, 1177x1027, DADDYSHOME.png)
It is I, Dottosperg. Dottore was finally beaten and dragged out of the closet for the newest Nod Krai teaser. I was excited for all of 2 seconds before the fear set in about what they would do to Dottore if they already killed off Capitano, who wasn't even threatening to incels. They have ruined everything in this fandom. Everything. All in their pursuit of gooning, which they could have always done, they turned fujos against each other in endless moralfag wars about who is the most company shilled ship, and how everything else is wrong/proship/homophobic. They made yumes act like they're married to men in prison: "Just wait 2 more years, it'll be different this time!", with the pity appearances in events being conjugal visits. They fostered a somehow more annoying breed of yurifag who probably think Dragon Maid is for lesbians and that women who don't want to play only waifus are simply male centered misogynists. The remaining normies are too battered to care and consoom before filtering out slowly. Not even Gacha game creators, the avatars of greed, can hold back their ravenous hatred for women, even if it means hurting their bottom line. They'd rather watch us battle it out, get burnt out, and leave. The writer even admitted it.
People are too prideful to admit when they've been had, and the community will eat itself ravenously as they try and ignore the reality that they're just reading Da Wei's billion-dollar self-insert fic, and they have sunk too much cost to close the book. This is like if your favorite manga was somehow handed off to a group of weeby middle schoolers. They shamelessly infect the story with whatever passing fancy they have, with no regard for character or plot or timing. Succubi design, bigger boobs, cowgirls, WuWa, ZZZ, harem anime, honaki expys, whatever comes to mind. Upon realizing they need the patronage of women, they sprinkle on some last-minute crumbs so they can keep making their goonslop without being fired. Yaoibait with uggos, butchered shotas, lore teasing, more events and ship teasing. But instead of being lambasted for low effort bait, women eagerly jump to cape for their cow-whore and uggo 4 star men. "OMG! Ifa and a fugly tard saw the other lazy yaoi couple! We're being fed guys! Homoverse wins again! Escofuri canon!"
If he dies, oh well, I had fun for a year at least. He brought me endless inspiration and comfort, and I will never forget my time in the gacha gaming space. Even if the game felt like a chore to play, I fell in love with Sumeru and by extension the rest of Teyvat, but this thread killed the magic for good. This isn't my husbando, he's a carrot on a stick to try and get female players back. The shit writing will never go along with my headcanon, or even past hints because the old writing team simply is gone. I have no hope for the preservation of his unique personality and interesting story. Especially not in mickey mouse clubhouse land. The most likely options being that they him glaze some whore, maybe an intellectual superior, or set up Pierro as a fall guy so Bronya Tsaritsa has an easier time killing him off next year to redeem herself. Maybe they emasculate him and turn him into a whiny bitch. Or they buy into their own fanon and make him a rapey sadistic sociopath who harms yet another waifu we must save. (You can tell I already despise Collei). God forbid he just becomes the stand in honkai lore man setting up multiverse slop so they can make more expys. He's the smart one who hates gods, so he uses a dead god to make a portal to beyond the abyss. I can only hope he gets 2 minutes of screentime or Slutya puts him out of his misery quick and painless.
If he's playable, he's gonna get a half assed redemption arc, humiliated, turned into a segment, or redesigned into being ugly. His current form will not cut, and the current design team who made Ororon and Varessa are probably excited to rape our eyes with it. Even though he shows 0 skin, they'll give him a full mask. Or a huge overcoat so we can't see his thin waist. Prime Dottore will never be hot-old like Welt, he'll be an NPC. Since we're also never getting a new element as proven by Dainslef and Skirk, he's gonna have some useless niche kit. Some bullshit like an attack scaling polearm geo shatterbloom shield support for Kaveh. At that point, it wouldn't be worth it to go back and pull for him, as the new version would just be a slap in the face after literal years of waiting. At least Scaramouche fans saw him every year before his character was brutally molested in Sumeru. This is so sad, nonnas. It may just be over.
But hey, I've made good progress with my own personal works. It's a bit sad having the skill to make good genshin fan content but not wanting to give such a company my free time and effort. Maybe we can join in on /ot/ when they make the artfight thread?
No. 505745
File: 1749407679434.jpg (119.24 KB, 1170x510, 5hdo1Pe.jpg)
Do you think they'll retcon Alice having a husband now that she's playable?
No. 506283
File: 1749541609100.png (Spoiler Image,112.93 KB, 695x705, Gs_QbvrXQAEFivg.png)
Nod-Krai leaks: Sorry fellow Dottorefags, he's going to be killed in 6.X after becoming a weekly boss. At least his character won't be given the woobification treatment.
No. 506330
>>505162I am a fujo and this news pissed me off. Hoyo doesn't write ships in any interesting way and I don't want companies to decide before what ships people should be into. That defeats the whole point of fan shipping and making your own fun. It's also why the fandom is so
toxic with the shipwars.
No. 506334
File: 1749554987693.gif (2.37 MB, 415x498, IMG_7321.gif)
>>506283I didn’t really give a fuck about anything Hoyoverse has done before because I can ignore nothingburger waifus but this… this is personal. Yep, I’m fucking quitting. Pack it up everyone. We’re done here.
No. 506342
File: 1749558324964.jpeg (125.61 KB, 1125x628, IMG_7494.jpeg)
>>506283Don’t lose hope nonnies. I’ve been seeing conflicting leaks.
No. 506358
>>506342>>506341I can absolutely believe Dottore is getting killed off though. Do people even want him playable if they want him evil? They couldn't even make Arlecchino evil, what makes you think you'll get evil playable characters after that?
>>506356Zhongli wasn't written to have bait on purpose. Zhongli is already a boring character regardless of ships because he can't do anything in the plot because people would boycott.
No. 506364
>>505297The first two paragraphs are why I hate Hoyo as a company. I don't understand the fights between yume or fujo bait when the real problem is with Hoyo and the way they know how to psychologically manipulate fans to fight each other and to accept less. Even here. A male character's writing will be shit and it has nothing to do with yaoibait and "more yumebait will fix him" because the problem lies with Hoyo. They don't want to put effort into their male characters. Whatever the bait is, it doesn't matter, since BOTH type of bait characters get written like shit. The female characters are also low effort, it's just that them male audience doesn't care and yurifags are trained to believe that wanting better writing of female characters is misogyny.
All I can hope is one day Genshin will be regarded as one of those promising stories that turned to shit like RWBY or something so the glazing and excuses for Hoyo's bad writing stops. I really believe it's because so many rpgs and other franchises were gutted and many fans have never played anything besides Genshin, so they don't know what better writing even is. They don't know that it's not normal to wait two years for your favorite to appear and only be written off as an joke, They don't know they could have yaoibait that's a major part of the story and just not two random guys. They don't know they can get female characters who are actually complex and not good people. The only other gacha of comparison people think of is Wuwa, and they're so much worse with their writing that they make Genshin look good. The only thing that would knock Genshin off its pedestal is another anime game with a big enough budget and clout behind its name that has writing so good it gets people to realize they were had. Because it's true, right now the sunk cost is too steep. Hoyo can turn Childe and Scara into girls to please incels and people would call it a trans kweer story. They can make every female character be waifubait and have people call you a misogynist for not liking her. The Hoyo cult is too ingrained and people forgive them anything, even things they said they wouldn't forgive like Natlan being white. Which leads me to believe the only thing to topple Hoyo is for a new game to offer the same experience their games do. Fandom is all built around peer pressure and following the crowd and many people won't leave Genshin when they can still make money off the fanmerch and their friends are still playing and posting about the game. It's why everyone knew that boycott was going nowhere.
No. 506496
>>506349No offense but if Haikaveh is the best yaoi in Hoyo ever then I don't want them to do anymore since their yaoi is just completely boring. Alhaitham felt like a better written characters before Hyv decided to make only shipbait his entire personality. I didn't even mind the ship initially but now it feels like Hyv just doesn't let him be his own character anymore. It doesn't even help when characters like Sethos exist only to be like a bad fanfic character talking about the ship.
>>506485I don't think he was written to be bait at all on purpose, although I do think they wanted fujos to also be interested, but I don't get this criticism at all since early game Genshin didn't seem to really only write characters to be purely bait for ship or even ML in the more obvious way they do today. Early Genshin was more subtle. Even Kaeluc, a ship I know they wanted people to also ship, seemed to have more subtle writing and things going on besides just being for each other. But personally I only found Zhongli interesting in that aq because he seemed like a grey-ish character, and now he's just the boring straight man. I know everyone loves Zhongli for being a Mary Sue but he's so bland and I don't even enjoy his presence because I know he can't do anything too interesting.
Discussions about shipping and bait aside, the real problem with Genshin is that these characters are too boring. No one is allowed to do anything. The real baiting that they do is making you think you might get a morally grey or complex character and then making them nothing. Forget complaints about shipbait/yumebait/waifubait. The real bait is them making you think a character will be interesting and then removing any source of conflict so they can tell. I was so hype for the Tsaritsa at first but now I know her writing is going to be complete ass. It will be everything wrong with Raiden and Arlecchino's handling but way worse and now the fandom has had five years to get primed into thinking that wanting a morally grey woman to actually be an antagonist is the real misogyny.
No. 506500
File: 1749591697047.jpg (178.59 KB, 611x671, 49291103919202.jpg)
The dickriding is crazy
No. 506508
>>506502I take them with a grain of salt because it's deweibs but they say that isn't the reason there's no playable villain, it's a choice from Hoyo to pander to incels. There's other Chinese gachas that have villains as playable characters. A lot of companies will chose to self censor and use that to fan the flames of fanwars.
>>506496I have no hope for the Tsaritsa because of Dottore's existence. There's no way to make a character as comically evil as he is and then have the leader of said organization that employs him not be a weak character. She'll have to be absolved of all responsibility in order to be "good". Do people actually think this is feminist? Do they actually want this? People are such moralfags they don't want any playable woman to possibly be morally unjustifiable, but then they do want it for the men. They want the men to be evil but every woman has to be a girlboss.
No. 506531
>>505162I feel like they were setting something up with Varka and Capitano before they had to kill off Capitano to glaze Mavuika, so now we'll get some knockoff that's way less fun since Hoyo only cares about selling ready made tropes now. The way they serve up "ships" now is so cheap, it's like getting a frozen dinner and pretending it's the same thing as a home cooked meal. Modern fandom eats it up now though since people only want media to be a list of "tropes" like a fic on ao3 over letting a story play out.
>>506345Ayato and Sethos have to be some of the biggest missed potential. Sethos especially, he either exists only to be a dildo for Scaramouche in the ship or Haikaveh's cheerleader. What a waste of his fun personality.
No. 506710
>>506496Zhongli never came off as morally grey for me, specially on the Archon Quest, because we barely even learn anything about Morax or the Archon War in it, he just comes off as a stern God who had to fight and win a war and was testing to see if he could truly retire
it's not like Liyue was ever in actual danger because he can defeat Osial any time, too
No. 506715
File: 1749652512518.png (298.73 KB, 625x398, skirk lore.png)
Skirk canonly regrows her arms and legs using abyss energy…?
No. 506834
>>506714I've noticed that a lot of people sometimes mistake fandom speculation on lore and characterization with canon material. It doesn't help that Mihoyo does retcon shit explicitly and at times just abandons it on top of making things too vague on purpose, but readings of the text can just be outright wrong too.
With Havria, before Zhongli's first story quest all we knew was that she died during the Archon War and that her territory was close to the Guili one, and I guess people took that to think he killed her?
>>506715If only her character design reflected this instead of the 1000th thigh high plus detached sleeves combo
No. 506905
>>506853Vendettaposting aside, no men in Hoyo means no drama since only incels and Hoyofags are staying. ZZZfags love to brag about how they're "chill" compared to Genshin, but that's mostly because nobody plays their shit, much like HI3tards.
>>506876Nahida's Disney princess treatment and Furina's pityparty alleviated this.
No. 506912
>>506905ZZZ isn't chill at all, the moids still go apeshit at anyone mentioning a ship that isn't Wiseharem. I don't think that's "chill". I think people just assume men being massive babies is normal and they only care about fandom being
toxic when it's women who are fighting over ships. Which yes, they can be, but then moids act even more entitled and tell people to die for shipping yuri of their waifus and are considered chill which is just bias. I don't want these games ceded to them even though I know Hoyo isn't an ally.
The pity partying for both of them is why I think most archon writing is quite bland. Hoyo seems to think the more pitybait a character has, the better they are, and it doesn't help that this is what the fans react the most to. I think it's boring for a story with such a big cast when the only way to get a character to sell is just to make them a
victim.
No. 506953
File: 1749689755357.jpg (334.1 KB, 627x848, img302.jpg)
Hyv really is the fandom where anyone gets a hit tweet by making a false comparison thinking they're defending a female character. These Jade stans from HSR are some of the worst offenders. Most Dottore fans like him for being evil and want to enjoy him in peace. It's only the female characters like Jade where they want to be justified in everything they do, while at the same time pretending to be superior for liking female characters who are "complex". Even though they don't actually want them to be complex at all.
No. 507046
>>506876In my opinion, Venti is the best written Archon. He's depressed and drinks because of his dead friend whose form he took out of respect, and he basically abandoned Mondstadt because he didn't want to commit to his Archon duties due to being in bad terms with Celestia. He's highly flawed as a person and the game isn't trying to hide or woobify that fact but instead portrays him as what he is - someone who ascended into godhood and did the archon equivalent of quiet quitting. Ei would've been an interesting, selfish, villanous archon if the game didn't start treating her as a friend out of nowhere and portraying her as a demented grandma with no dignity. Furina was absolutely ruined by the pity party bullshit at the end. Nahida I didn't really have a problem with, but Mavuika was the ultimate Mary Sue given tons of undeserved glazing.
>>506912>>506966This, moids will literally go knife the CEO if their best girl has been insulted while they love pretending only "women have drama" because they fight over ships. Yeah we have drama but men have either passing surface level gooning interest in anything or schizophrenic mental illness, there's no in between.
No. 507058
>>506953Like why are they even comparing Jade and Dottore? Dottore is clearly portrayed as a villainous character who has an extremely warped moral compass because he stops at nothing to achieve his scientific goals and has bitterness in his heart for the world who didn't understand his way of seeing things. Experimenting on children to cure eleazar is just one of the horrifying things that he did. It's an entirely different setting from Jade's. Why do waifufags and yuritards always have this retarded one-sided rivalry where they need to keep making up these fights that only exist inside their heads? Is it just them being mad that people don't like what they like?
>Even though they don't actually want them to be complex at all.This, their reading level and understanding of media is so atrocious they can only pick up surface level traits to begin with. All of the portrayals that they see as canon are based on memes, not the source material.
No. 507101
>>507046>moids will literally go knife the CEO if their best girl has been insulted while they love pretending only "women have drama"The Evangelion fandom
alone is proof that moids love their retarded shipping wars.
No. 507193
>>507046I completely agree, maybe I'm biased because Venti is my favorite tho. Him aside, I think the 'pity party' with Nahida works in comparison to Furina because with Nahida it's the first time we see an Archon be completely undermined by the nation they are supposed to control and she doesn't really get a long ass sequence where we're supposed to wallow in the misery that her years being caged by the Akademiya brought.
Furina's version of events rings hollow because it happens right next to Nahida's so it's more repetitive, and I think it focuses too much on her having to 'act' instead of the anxiety of not knowing what the hell Focalors plans was or if it was ever even going to work. Maybe if they showed Furina be outwardly angry and resentful about Focalors plan instead of just accepting it with a sad face it would have been more distinct.
No. 507205
>>507193With Nahida it was poignant because she truly, deeply cared for her people but was gaslit by the Akademiya to believe that she's worthless and could never live up to Rukkhadevata's name and she had to grow as a person during her story arc, so her redeeming her place as the Archon felt fulfilling. With Furina she acted the same for the entirety of the archon quest to be given the last minute pity party. Not only that, it was Focalors, the true archon we didn't even know nor did get to even meet, who sacrificed herself for Fontaine.
>I think it focuses too much on her having to 'act' instead of the anxiety of not knowing what the hell Focalors plans was or if it was ever even going to work.Fully agreed. The forced drama spelling basically "oh no, you had to eat cake and listen to people praise you" felt so out of pocket and a huge missed chance of focusing on what living in uncertainty for 500 years having no idea what the person who created you is planning and using you as a compliant puppet to masquerade as a god would do to a person's psyche.
No. 507526
>>507205I don't get how people aren't tired of the pitybait when they use it on every single girl in all their games. With Furina/Focalors it felt like rewrites. Remember how the lore before Fontaine made Focalors sound awful? I'm sure that was the intent until Hoyo realized they needed to sell archons because archons are the moneymakers. I saw rumors of the story changing mid way and I bet the archons being more defanged has a lot to do with it. Travail trailer makes most of the archons sound like they would be darker from Fontaine on, and I know Hoyoshills will call it "brilliant misdirection" but I would bet you a thousand bucks that it wasn't planned that way. Hoyo can't sell a woman who does any wrong so they pull out the pitybait and people then claim a character is "peak" only because they suffered a lot. Look at how Furina and Wanderer are considered the best characters because of this.
Now we're going to get more pitybait with Skirk and Columbina will be the same way and nobody ever gets tired of this because fandom is full of moralfags who want pure characters, especially female ones.
No. 507601
File: 1749834232902.jpg (87.6 KB, 1000x564, 1000037030.jpg)
>alleged upcoming weapon skins
>they're temporary and once they expire you have to get them again
>to get then you have to defeat the newest abyss
>This is the boss HP.
No. 507602
File: 1749834274868.jpg (103.66 KB, 1280x591, 1000037031.jpg)
>>507601Double reply this is one of the skins
No. 507611
File: 1749835060930.jpg (79.27 KB, 1228x609, 1000037037.jpg)
>>507602Another double reply, multiple inflated bosses actually
No. 507679
>>507647Just another strategy to
trigger FOMO and to keep people playing the game while paying for the new meta. The artifact reroll "system" is the same as well. All these QOL updates are fucking dogshit, they're specifically designed to get people to spend more and not because they genuinely want a better gameplay experience.
No. 507877
File: 1749884313782.png (253.51 KB, 1252x1235, FFfallen.png)
>>507526I still believe Natlan's Archon was really supposed to be a conquistador before Da Wei stepped in and decided to turn her into an Himeko expy
No. 508075
>>507601This is just straight up bullying players now. Remember when in 2021 they said they're committed to keeping the endgame content casual? Are they genuinely trying to force the game into EOS? Who in their right mind would go through this trouble for temporary
weapon skins? Something like this would work in MMORPGs but who the hell is going to see your weapon unless you deliberately flex it on social media?
No. 508157
File: 1749942562976.jpeg (37.13 KB, 500x250, IMG_7585.jpeg)
After 4 years I finally gave up and got Ei. I only got her to make a team comp with alhaitham. and it’s not like I don’t have the other waifus on my account.
No. 508329
File: 1750005411093.gif (3.73 MB, 474x498, hugo-vlad-zenless-zone-zero.gi…)
Not sure if off-topic but: I'm a day one Genshin player who's been posting about its downfall on this thread since pre-Natlan. I hate fanservice, I hate waifuslop, I hate cheap yuribait and I hate harems. So when I first gave ZZZ a try, I dumped it instantly. The combat was clunky and the women were fucking ridiculous. Bored of Genshin, I recently gave it another try: No female characters. Male only. That was the rule. After a few weeks of easing into the gameplay, I'm both shocked and ashamed to say that I haven't felt this alive since 1.1. I'm not necessarily recommending ZZZ to nonas since I empathise why the the game sucks (I ignore the female character screens and leave them all at level 1) but (unlike Genshin) you can skip the story completely, get every male character you want effortlessly + their constellations, all without spending a dime. I only bring this up here because the combat is really, really fun and it might be worth considering if any of you are desperately burnt out on gachaslop; ironically, the worst HYV game for fanservice is also the easiest to navigate for husbandofags right now. The more you know.
No. 508330
>>508329Samefagging since I contradicted myself: the combat was really clunky at first, but that's only because there's a very heavy learning curve. If Genshin takes about 15 minutes to learn a character's basics and a day to truly master, ZZZ takes a day and a week respectively. Once you have your main, you have your main, meaning that you don't have to touch the waifus with a ten-foot pole. Plus, even the 'slowest' character can feel boring to play at first until you discover their quirks and all of a sudden combat becomes lighting fast. The fights in ZZZ are genuinely skill-based > damage and rewards you
heavily for quick thinking and intelligent heat-of-the-moment decisions based on your specific team. So 'waifu of the week' powercreep is basically irrelevant. But that's enough sperging from me.
No. 508355
File: 1750009441953.png (16.78 MB, 6000x3750, Uggo Fucks.png)
>>508334Sure thing, picrel is my custom-made tier list just for you nona. The majority of the earlier males were fat power-fantasy uggos but we're starting to see a gentle shift towards prettier boys as a pick up for ZZZ's massive revenue failures. Take that as you will (with a pinch of salt).
>>508341Not to worry; like I said, it's a light suggestion for desperate nonas who liked Genshin's combat and have given up on story.
No. 508387
>>508355If you want to swap him with Lighter that's fine by me but as
>>508376 said, he gives off safe isekai harem protag vibes and his model is ehhhh okay. I do agree he's a little cute though
No. 508541
>>508438>>508405Thank you! ZZZ is unapologetic gooner slop. women playing ZZZ because of "husbandos" affirms to hoyo that the can make a game pandering to scrote furries and lolicons while still relying on women to be their financial emergency kits. At least when Hoyo tried to get fem players to switch from genshin to hsr, hsr wasn't waifu slop from the start.
No. 508544
File: 1750052854880.png (279.05 KB, 960x540, b7nv1988r77f1.png)
The upcoming banners are absolutely horseshit. Damn, I just want one copy of Dahlia.
No. 508552
>>508355God ZZZ's designs are dogshit. Boothill mogs all these "husbands" a thousand times over. No wonder this game is a failure.
He should have been in Genshin…
No. 508570
File: 1750065989082.jpg (105 KB, 1080x1115, Gd_ht7xa0AInxdf.jpg)
>>508552HSR males may be bland, but at the very least they're not plagiarized.
No. 508610
File: 1750082231786.jpeg (75.27 KB, 1255x806, image0.jpeg)
Eng kequing is getting replaced by “anonymous” and Paimon has leaked voicelines by someone else. (Link is Paimon)
https://streamable.com/vbuq4e No. 508658
>>508610Finally corina is really gone kek
The new va sounds so much less annoying
No. 508798
File: 1750108116704.jpg (73.12 KB, 736x736, 6162025.jpg)
i've done it. it cost me everything and i probably will be in debt all summer but i got him to C6. i love Ayato and i hope he can feel my love and dedication
No. 508965
>>508798Congrats, nonna! I too whaled on the Chronicles banner much more than I should have, but sadly I got my girl Chiori to C4 only. I could whale some more, I'm so very tempted because I want to play her as an on-field dps, but I just mustn't. Even though I was really lucky with my pulls I spent too much, but it saddens me that she probably won't be back for at least a year now.
Anyway, enjoy your C6 Ayato, may he bring you lots of fun!
No. 509036
File: 1750163585787.png (602.36 KB, 420x720, IMG_7633.png)
>>509035The only Natlan 5star I genuinely pulled for was Mualani.
No. 509052
>>509035I only pulled for Kinich of the 5 stars. I also pulled for Ororon, but on Lyney's banner. If Varka is fun I will likely pull for him and I could go for Durin if he becomes playable in Nod-Krai but otherwise I only want Capitano and am not all that interested in pulling for anyone else. Maybe Columbina since I like her blind angel aesthetic.
As for Abyss I'm not really struggling. Some are more annoying than others but I don't find I can't clear. I do have multiple high constellation characters though.
No. 509057
>>509035I gave up after Mavuika. I didn't get Incelbaitlali and I haven't gotten any of the new waifus either. I might go for Skirk since I got a guarantee backed up. Kinda sucks the abyss rely heavily on Cryo since I can never 36
it properly and I have Wriothesley C1. In terms of support, I don't have incelbait lolibaba, I don't have Shenhe, I don't have apron OF model, and none of my 4 cryo support can take down the khjillion HP bosses.
No. 509096
File: 1750185010975.jpg (39.4 KB, 760x406, 1000037790.jpg)
I want to believe this is real just to laugh
No. 509298
File: 1750236825002.jpeg (595.87 KB, 846x847, IMG_5500.jpeg)
I reflexively said “ew” out loud when I saw them.
No. 509331
File: 1750243769171.png (1.05 MB, 1024x1024, VO1j94r.png)
Splash art of the 5.8 EC girl.
Wow, that's the easiest skip ever. I mean, at least her tits aren't out and she isn't wearing a butt plug, but imo that's the most boring, uninspired design ever. Hoyo characters have really lost their magic.
No. 509337
>>509298And instead of wearing lingerie like Escoffier, she wears a retarded bsdm gear.
>>509331Are we sure this is still a Genshin design?
No. 509343
>>509331I didn't know this was a Genshin character until I looked at the thread pic.
My first thought was "soccer/football player" because the pink thing looks like a scoreboard. Genshin is truly dead, lmao.
No. 509355
File: 1750246311024.jpg (176.65 KB, 1280x720, 1000008169.jpg)
>>509331Ineffa comes with backshots and armpits because Hoyo's fetish. What the fuck is Nod-Krai even supposed to be kek.
No. 509367
>>509355She even has a headband like Aegis.
I can already see genshin pickmes screaming that this more tame (but absolutely ass) design being disliked is obvious proof coomer designs are better.
No. 509372
>>509355Dogshit design. I've seen AI coming up with better OCs than this.
Also, what's with all the recent female characters having tiny feet? Is footbinding Dawei's fetish?
No. 509400
File: 1750257249993.mp4 (18.28 MB, 852x480, Untitled video.mp4)
These are the most 4* animations ever kek. Skirk must have eaten up all the dev's budget and time.
No. 509406
File: 1750258319917.webp (211.58 KB, 1000x2549, P3_Aigis.webp)
>>509331>let's copy Aigis, nobody will noticekek they must be pretty desperate to copy this shamelessly
No. 509418
File: 1750260233162.jpeg (440.66 KB, 1125x1657, IMG_7672.jpeg)
Benny skin leak
No. 509428
File: 1750261488438.jpeg (572.4 KB, 884x1598, IMG_7674.jpeg)
>>509418Full skin leak. This is censorship
No. 509445
File: 1750265454660.webp (95.1 KB, 760x428, IMG_7679.webp)
Full body
No. 509447
>>509331>>509355>>509400Oh my god if I thought Natlan's shitty modern video game motorcycle DJ party shtick was cringe and as far away from the original Genshin as can be, this is way worse. They're full speed turning it into a Honkai spinoff. A dead-eyed mecha girl ripping off Aigis, what the fuck happened to this game?
>>509035Neuvillette was my last pull. At least I went out with the best hydro DPS in the game.
No. 509448
>>509445This would be cute if it didn't literally censor his entire previous outfit.
>>5094445 bucks says this was the original Xbalanque design and they just recycled it for a Bennett skin.
No. 509540
>>509516Skirk’s quest is what happens here
>>491155For the sibling quest I’m pretty sure leakers said the hilichurl at the start was the girl’s brother??? Friend?? The quest was a bit confusing for me to follow but I feel like abyss twin might be a clone like Luke fon Fabre. Idk seems
sus the sibling has no memory until years later and is like “oh yeah I have a sibling”
No. 509591
File: 1750295033648.jpg (313.69 KB, 605x829, 201093091309390.jpg)
Right on cue. It's always this stupid motherfucker making these engagement farming tweets too.
No. 509650
>>509348The hip size is ridiculous for a short female character, I thought I was the only one who noticed that. But just wait for the 'uhhh don't you know women look like that?!' comments to start filtering through.
>>509355So they're not even going to attempt to research slavic cultures either? Cool, cool, cool, no, that's fine.
>>509400ZZZ nona here since you guys probably won't recognise this: that's a ZZZ ult. The single-bright-colour background (Genshin usually let's the open-world bg peek through), the ass pause and the over-use of bloom fx and bounce. The old design team is so dead, kek.
>>509271I'm waiting for someone to release a Dahlia vape nuke showcase.
>>509428They only did this because 99% of moids are 'forced' to have Bennett on their team and are virgins who can't cope with the miniscule back window of a semi-shota boy. Ugh, my boy deserves better.
>>509564Please let this be ragebait, please let this be ragebait, p
No. 509667
>LADS hitting #1 on CN iOS>Infold devs gave 20 rolls>Genshin hitting #1 on CN iOS>hoyo devs sent code for 40 primosHoyo glazers are still going to defend this kek
>>509650>So they're not even going to attempt to research slavic cultures eitherwdym this is obviously a reference to Atomic Heart
No. 509710
File: 1750336410039.jpeg (29.19 KB, 360x360, IMG_7711.jpeg)
>>509696It’s like “let’s victimize Skirk and help her get over her PTSD”. Remember that China has a hand in what is allowed for story writing. It’s why people theorize Nani giving Lilo away to foster care was a way to pander to Chinese govt. “Never question authority and the govt is always right” lmaoo
No. 509723
>>509696The problem with Skirk is Hoyo doesn't know how to tell a story without putting pitybait on a female character and this audience always eats it up. I never see anyone get tired of it. Why even try when all Hoyo has to do is show a character as a sad child and everyone will go "sad poor baby must pull!!"
>>509709Uh this is a bit schizo and people always like to use the China excuse when it's an American company that more likely used that message more to pander to the AMERICAN govt and conservative people who make up most of the Disney base. There are obvious political reasons why the US govt would be promoting family separation as good right now.
No. 509728
>>509670>>509673It's just that Hoyo now writes their yaoi so boring because they don't care beyond using it as meager crumbs. It's not only yume who think it's boring. I'm a fujo and I can't get into any Hoyo yaoi because the way they now can't let the characters be their own characters anymore takes out the fun of shipping them. You don't have to be a yume to dislike it. The problem again is just Hoyo and the fact that you can tell they do the bare minimum. The yumebait for guys isn't better either, I don't think guys who can't be anything now but yumebait also suffer from the same problem. Xiao was the only one who was fine but then when they have to do their obligatory yumebait when his arc is over, it winds up being shit. I think the other problem is Hoyo is only good at putting effort into characters during their banner and after their main "arc" they have nothing else to do, and since Hoyo will keep milking this cash cow for years, a lot of characters will suffer from more tropification. Yumebait isn't a fix for it. Look at Childe, he barely shows up because the incels don't like him having too much screen presence but people think because they got a few crumbs it's ok. Under an incel company no male characters get good treatment. Even the people who were bragging that Scaramouche was the devs favorite had to learn they will reduce his screentime if incels are loud enough.
>>509720I thought Dainsleif is forced with Lumine? Since they make it more clear in their marketing that Lumine is the Abyss twin and Aether is the traveler in canon.
No. 509753
File: 1750348002737.jpg (222.47 KB, 600x894, 409409349013030.jpg)
Why is this Remellu moron always crying about people not liking Genshin designs or new story elements? A new twitter personality is now being a Hoyo defender 24/7.
No. 509761
File: 1750350637007.png (467.79 KB, 990x922, 1750198143445187.png)
When will it end… I miss normal Genshin…
No. 509767
File: 1750352061158.png (194.25 KB, 595x491, brave_uc0I1BeZsB.png)
>>509761Slutya-chan, this is marvelous. Chasca's pants needs some glowmaxxing and Mavuika needs her retarded zipper. Otherwise very good.
>>509753>>509591You know it's bad when yuritrannies start beefing with them.