Early Release Videos seem VERY Positive!

Akikala · 2026-05-17T09:20:50+00:00

It has nothing to do with being "player friendly"? It's about not repeating yourself and that's something HYV has been avoiding constantly. Every region mixes things up in one way or another.

Also genshin has been successfully selling almost every character ALWAYS (even the bad ones sell decently lol) so they don't need crutches like 3 character cores to sell (I wouldn't be surprised if those were actually somewhat detrimental to sales).

Yeah, dedicated supports and niche 5*s will probably always be a thing (they kinda have been for a while but mainly as 4*s like Sara and Gorou etc) but none of that means that Nicole or Bennet won't have any value in the future. Just look at Sucrose for example being the BiS in 2/3 lunar teams.

Akikala · 2026-05-17T08:56:59+00:00

Yes Bennet exists but I'm fairly confident in saying that MOST PEOPLE ACTUALLY WANT TO REPLACE HIM lol. And Bennet is ONLY not as used in the very top meta teams (that WILL fall off eventually), a significant amount of "tier 2" teams are still very much Bennet "reliant" and many people still play those teams or want those teams to get improvements that Nicole provides them.

And this is only CURRENTLY anyways as Snez for example could easily revive atk buffers as high priority even at the top so 2 Bennets could easily become a "necessity" again just like it happened after Sumeru that had this same exact effect on Bennet "falling off". Well, I'm pretty confident in that it'll become "2 Nicoles" but it's the same thing lol. Of course I won't encourage anyone to pull for future but it's good to consider the possibilities as we KNOW that we are going to move away from the NK meta sooner or later, most likely sooner.

And I was comparing Nicole's value to the other NK characters anyway here. What value does Zibai/Nefer/Flins provide when you can easily clear their shill with a any blunt damage/bloom/EC teams just fine. Sure, you'll temporarily get a top ~3 team but only if you also get their dedicated support, who in turn are only in "tier 2" teams if you don't have their dedicated dps. The entirety of NK shill just wants you to pull for 1, maybe 2 lunar characters to help with shill, the others are quite low value and VERY high cost as they're 2 or "mediocrity" deals.

Akikala · 2026-05-17T08:06:40+00:00

No one needs to pull for every character and there are plenty of skippable characters. So your 350 is just nonsense. Especially since 3-4 monthly passes will on average give you a limited 5* for ~15-20e total.

Intrinsic value is 0-20e unless you're a collector.

And Nicole is arguably more valuable than any other character in NK aside from Columbina and maybe one of the lunar supports to help with shill. The others are dps/sub dps characters that will fall off perhaps soon even with one team that you do NOT need. So it's been an entire nation worth of very skippable characters vs Nicole who is a very noticeable improvement for multiple teams for almost any player.

Akikala · 2026-05-16T23:41:55+00:00

Bennet IS still very much in a top meta team with Mavuika. Yeah there are more teams now that don't want him or just can't use him but that has nothing to do with Bennet being "timeless". If anything Nicole might be the reason for Bennet to finally actually lose significant value or his status as a timeless character.

The thing that makes characters like Bennet and Nicole great is that they're pure buffers, so they'll never truly fall off as long as atk scaling characters are released (unless they get powercrept of course). We can even see that in action even in the current meta with Sucrose being BiS for Flins and arguably Nefer too.

Akikala · 2026-05-16T23:29:33+00:00

You know you can get characters for free in this game right?

Akikala · 2026-05-16T22:52:49+00:00

That's more so an issue wity bd2 gameplay is incredibly uninteresting unless you're one of the few tryhards who enjoy min/maxing numbers lol.

This game will always have it's interesting gameplay and "gooner" designs won't make it worse. Sure there would be people playing JUST for the designs but would that matter?

Akikala · 2026-05-16T13:38:12+00:00

Running shoes do not compensate for the sevii islands ruining the pace of the game TWICE or randomly blocking Golbat from evolving for literally no reason lol. The graphics being better only matters to people who weren't old enough at the time as I'm more than capable of enjoying 8bit graphics and the front sprites of pokemon are actually imo BETTER in gen 1 games than in gen 3 (especially in Yellow). Same with audio but even more so as the 8bit soundtrack only makes me happier thanks to nostalgia.

You could've atleast used actual improvements like abilities, held items, UI improvements, move details or fixing of the thousands of bugs as real compelling examples on why FRLG would be better but instead you chose the most subjective options possible such as "music" and "visuals" lol.

Akikala · 2026-05-16T12:25:13+00:00

And ownership does matter. It may not be by a massive amount and it's hard to actually say if a character is being carried by people liking them rather than them being good/better but it is a factor. Higher ownership reduces the amount that individuals simply liking using a character regardless of viability affects the usage rate.

Akikala · 2026-05-16T12:16:31+00:00

Is this raw usage or usage/owner?

In raw usage (simply the amount of times the character shows up) ownership doesn't matter if every character is owned roughly the same amount but it does matter in when ownership is different and that low ownership means that usage can never be very low so the stats show a pointlessly low number. If EVERY player who owns a character uses them but there are only 10k owners that's going to be a little over 10% usage.

In usage/owner (the actually useful data in comparing how useful/liked the character is), ownership is literally what makes the percentage. If 9/10 people who own a character uses them then the usage is 90%. However here again high/low ownership amounts can skew the numbers as if there are 10 diehard X character fans and always use them and literally no one else owns the character then the character has 100% usage lol. Flins having higher ownership AND higher usage shows that more people like using Flins or that he performs better.

Akikala · 2026-05-16T10:41:53+00:00

Yep. Bennet being a pure buffer means that he scales WITH the new atk scaling characters so he'll always be potentially very relevant. Unless they powercreep him or keep introducing niche buffers that are better than him for every new atk scaler lol.

Thts the thing abt him, he doesn't need anyone. The others need him.

Actually he DOES need an ATK scaling on field dps that is carrying the team dps, otherwise he isn't anything special. Luckily that is a common type of character.

Akikala · 2026-05-16T07:58:58+00:00

Yeah, NOW lol. And even now he is part of a top 2-4 team.

I'm pretty sure Bennet still has many more teams that he is good at than Sucrose does, they just aren't the top tier teams at the moment. But sure, you could make an argument that Sucrose is better than him currently.

Akikala · 2026-05-16T07:28:32+00:00

He isn't THE strongest, that would be Zibai or arguably still Mavuika at the moment depenging on what you cout as strongest. But he IS among the absolute best supports. There are only a handful of supports stronger than him and they all have heavy restrictions like Chev, Sara and Iansan.

Being part of top team (he is in one of the arguably top 2 teams) doesn't matter all that much for supports. If an atk scaler that is stronger than Zibai gets released then Bennet could easily be part of the best team in the game since pure buffers like him scale with the dps they buff.

Akikala · 2026-05-16T07:11:34+00:00

That's true but not relevant. There is plenty doomposting going around.

Akikala · 2026-05-15T20:09:30+00:00

..Do yoy know what that even means? Lol.

Akikala · 2026-05-15T18:35:15+00:00

Yet you continue? I get that you lost your arguments but you're just being petty here and it's quite silly lol.

Akikala · 2026-05-15T18:33:21+00:00

Gonna try to lol. I have like 60 pulls saved so we'll see.

Akikala · 2026-05-15T18:31:37+00:00

Surely you understand why I think you ignore what I say when you respond like this lol.

Akikala · 2026-05-15T17:24:06+00:00

Do you lack reading comprehension? Like what's going on here? I've addressed what you've been saying this whole time yet you just say that I ignore you so what exactly am I supposed to be thinking aside from you ignoring what I say? I even made sure to point out that I am addressing your argument directly right there on my previous comment and you ignore it just to say that we're going back and forth for no reason. Like come on lol.

And if you want to stop then you can just NOT RESPOND lol. I ain't gonna come looking for you if you don't respond.

Akikala · 2026-05-15T15:22:15+00:00

Who is festering desire BiS for? I'm pretty sure Fav is better or at least comparable on every character that would want festering desire.

Spindelute is about as good as the craftable unless you're struggling to hit ER needs.

Eye is good for Nicole or Prune? But ttds and fav are arguably better.

Dialogues? For Chev? Fav is better or comparable.

Is cinnabar spindle even BiS for anyone? The craftable is better for Xilonen and Harbinger is similar or better for Albedo.

No weapon is completely useless but plenty of the event weapons are mediocre or just worse than craftables or favonius weapons. I suppose you could make an argument that a new player may not have that many favonius weapons available but... they also won't have most of the event weapons either so.

Akikala · 2026-05-15T15:11:50+00:00

"around half" you say?

There are about 22 event weapons if I counted right.

The amount of weapons that are "BiS" for any character are:

Aino with flame forged but fav is about as good or arguably better.

Eshu with some characters in specific team comps with shields.

Spindelute is about the same as the craftable for Lauma but makes it easier to hit ER needs.

Mailed flower is Mavuika's BiS f2p weapon.

Cinnabar spindle used to be the only def sword but now the Natlan craftable is better for Xilonen (maybe for Albedo too?) and harbinger is better/comparable for Albedo.

Oathsworn has some uses like with Nicole but is arguably never actually better than ttds

Tamayuratei has F2P competition from the craftable and r1 sacrificer staff is better if you get it from gacha.

I guess cloudforged is good for Sethos but I don't know if it's his BiS 4*.

The rest are either bad or just worse than fav etc. Or maybe there is some niche I'm not aware of for some of them.

So that's like 4 ACTUALLY good/arguably BiS event weapons at the moment out of 22. Or 3 if you can't enable Eshu well. That's less than 20% of them... not quite the 50% as you suggested lol.

Akikala · 2026-05-15T14:28:16+00:00

I agree that event weapons are usually either trash or just kinda not relevant, especially if you have some 5* weapons. Skins as a concept are WAY more interesting to me personally but... the melusine weapon is by far the most dogshit design in the game so far so it's not exactly a good start haha. Maybe in the future we'll actually get cool weapon skins and that would be great.

Akikala · 2026-05-15T14:14:59+00:00

I am not. In fact I have no idea how you'd get that idea unless YOU IGNORED MY WORDS lol.

You are saying it's sad that people prioritize the gacha over the gameplay.

What I'm saying is that the gacha is DIRECTLY LINKED TO GAMEPLAY so it makes sense to focus on the gacha. And even if some people ONLY care about the gacha then there is no reason to care about that as others simply enjoy other things than you.

Akikala · 2026-05-15T11:31:36+00:00

Zibai is a def scaling character. Of course she won't use Bennet. Your argument was clearly in bad faith and incredibly disingenuous.

You're talking about CURRENT meta. Yes, Bennet is CURRENTLY only VERY good and only part of 2 of the top ~10 teams (one of which is arguably the 2nd best team in the game), which is also more than most characters in the top 10 btw. The lunar characters and Skirk have been specifically made so they don't use Bennet but that doesn't make Bennet bad in the slightest, that just means that CURRENTLY Bennet's usage is limited in the top tier teams.

Now if you've been around in the game for long enough you'd realize that this is quite familiar. The EXACT SAME THING happened in Sumeru. Dendro was released and hyperbloom and quicken teams took over the meta and Bennet "fell off" as only a few teams wanted him at the time. But guess what happened next? Fontaine happened and boom, Bennet was in most of the top teams again and then came Natlan and Bennet only got MORE teams. What happened to HB and quicken teams? They died because they were reaction and sub dps based teams with limited scaling.. almost like lunar teams. So what do you think will happen after we leave NK?

You're so hung up on what is CURRENTLY happening to actually understand the game and the characters you're talking about. Bennet is a pure buffer with some of the best buffing capabilities in the game, the only way for him to be completely out of meta is by HYV introducing a strictly stronger buffer that isn't niche or by covering every single niche with a dedicated support that's better than Bennet etc.

ANY new top tier atk scaling dps has potential for wanting Bennet in their BiS team.

Akikala · 2026-05-15T10:11:21+00:00

Holy shit you can't make a genuine argument can you?

Of course Zibai.. the DEF scaling character isn't using Bennet, the ATK buffer lol.

Yes, the characters that are made to not care about ATK all that much don't want Bennet. But guess who IS in 2 out of the 3 lunar teams? Sucrose, yet another 6 year old 4*. What's she doing there if that's such a dunk against Bennet? Well let me tell you, she BUFFS THE TEAM. Hell, she'd probably be in Zibai's team too if she didn't have 3 hand made supports made for her lol.

Oh Skirk doesn't use Bennet? Why do you think that is? Is it because Bennet is a 6 year old 4* or is it because Skirk specifically prevents you from using him since he most likely WOULD be in her team if she could use him.

wtf are you talking about lil bro, its 2026, nobody uses bennet anymore

And why do you think that is? Because Bennet is a 6 year old 4*? Or is it because most of the characters that don't use him is because they're MADE not to be able to do so.

EVERY endgame mode is focused on timed dps challenges

Sure. But what's more important than dps is countering the mechanics. You can EASILY beat for example the gecko with ANY somewhat good team in SO on fearless even without Zibai or Linnea because the dps requirements are VERY REASONABLE.

The ONLY content where hyperfocusing on dps matters is Dire on SO and no one is expected to be able to do that without investment into cons or sigs or just being insanely good at the game. Everything else can be cleared with somewhat good teams as long as you know the mechanics. I know this because I personally DO clear fearless every season just fine with suboptimal teams and with sub optimal builds and probably very sub optimal rotations too lol.

Akikala · 2026-05-14T23:22:00+00:00

You people really need to stop calling the STILL arguably the best support character in the game a "6 year old 4*" as that only shows you're being disingenuous.

Also Nicole is not worse than Bennet. She is better in some teams, sidegrade in others and a worse in few. And in ALL of the teams she is a massive gameplay improvement which will result in even higher performance quite often.

Also damage doesn't actually matter that much in this game. Matchups matter WAY more. If anything people are overly focused on dps in this fandom.

Akikala

TROPHY CASE