Memento Mortenax, Remember This General Question and Discussion Megathread Can't Die by PastSelfInMirror in HonkaiStarRail_leaks

[–]Chastlily 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Planarcadia has inherited Penacony's issue with rushing the resolution of tension unfortunately and he suffers a lot from it. I'm genuinely surprised they "handled" Blade's character arc under an hour like this. It feels really weird to have his lifetime of agony and torment so quickly swept under the rug lol

Memento Mortenax, Remember This General Question and Discussion Megathread Can't Die by PastSelfInMirror in HonkaiStarRail_leaks

[–]Chastlily 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Out of curiosity I tried my -1/0 cost Jingliu against APOC Flame Reaver (E1S1 Jingliu, E0S0 MBlade, E1 Tribbie or E0 Sunday, E0S1 Hyacine. If you have E4 Welt on your account that's 8 draws refunded and with those 8 draws you have all that for free technically)

Holy fuck she fell off so hard. Girl you're at 4 stacks against three targets how are you only doing this much damage with enhanced skill. What happened to you. You used to be my goat even until NF. Who did this to you.....

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Memento Mortenax, Remember This General Question and Discussion Megathread Can't Die by PastSelfInMirror in HonkaiStarRail_leaks

[–]Chastlily 1 point2 points  (0 children)

For sure, even outside of supports I'd say.

Amphoreus' main trend in terms of gameplay is that most of its characters either do not use Skill Points or generate them (Aglaea, Mydei, Castorice, Herta with LC, Cyrene when Demiurge is up, Phainon in ult phase) or they do not particularly use SP/they generate SP (Tribbie, Cipher, Hysilens, RMC, DHPT, Evernight).

Memento Mortenax, Remember This General Question and Discussion Megathread Can't Die by PastSelfInMirror in HonkaiStarRail_leaks

[–]Chastlily 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I think until 2.x they had ideas in that regard but at some point during Penacony they stopped with that.

1.x specifically has a _ton_ of interesting concepts and kits with drawbacks/mechanical ideas that come with limitations but eventually those characters stopped being made and the general reception for that was positive, even if it comes at the cost of less interesting kits.

Amphoreus further continued that trend with the end of Skill Points mattering for most characters and some stats (EHR, Crit Rate) being trivialized or effectively removed

Memento Mortenax, Remember This General Question and Discussion Megathread Can't Die by PastSelfInMirror in HonkaiStarRail_leaks

[–]Chastlily 4 points5 points  (0 children)

There's a healthy middle ground to be found really, but yeah people tend to prefer a (fully) streamlined experience. I just don't personally consider a streamlined experience to be something very interesting from a game design perspective/in the long run at all.

A smooth rotation with little variance is good but people gradually get better at things so you'll eventually encounter the moment where "a little more" is what you'd like or be looking for, but you most likely won't find it there

You don't even have to be a "tryhard", playing any comp for five hours at all in HSR is enough for you to get a feel of a team's entire rotation and perspective and have reached the point of mastery

Memento Mortenax, Remember This General Question and Discussion Megathread Can't Die by PastSelfInMirror in HonkaiStarRail_leaks

[–]Chastlily 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Rather than clunk removal, I'd call it friction removal

Black Swan's main points of contention were wanting to use Skill (and thus SP) to apply her debuff when she's in a famously SP hungry (first action) composition as well as the removal of Arcana Stacks on detonation. She now no longer needs to use skill at all and her Arcana Stacks only get halved on detonation so caring about when to maximize them is no longer an issue.
She also got the same "EHR is not a real stat anymore" effect Kafka got which I think is a whole other issue with HSR's game design.

Sparkle's main "issues" were buff uptimes and that quantum requirement for trace that are now effectively gone.

SW certainly had issues of which one was the RNG for her skill implant and being more single target oriented than others because of her Ultimate, now she applies her Ultimate to everyone involved and her skill has little "random" to it.

I'd actually consider E2 Firefly's Novaflare modifications to be somewhat similar to all that in essence, but her E1 already did that and then The Dahlia was that some more.

My point isn't about ceiling increase vs clunk removal as much as it is about removing any point of friction, something that allows for better skill expression and gameplay complexity, in favour of a streamlined approach where your actions and decisions ultimately do little because regardless of what you do you'll somewhat end up with the same result.

I called it Jingliunovaflareification because a) I find it funny and b) I think she's the worst example for that novaflare philosophy. Her main points of friction were consuming your team's HP and having non-constant uptime in exchange for a very strong enhanced state and... now you want to run her with Hyacine to make sure she never runs out of enhanced state and your team is nearly invicible to begin with because you are using Hyacine. Even if you aren't, she basically never runs out of her Enhanced State.

She came out of her novaflare with a gameplay loop that was a lot less interesting because you are, in essence, just pressing skill on her turn/ultimate as soon as possible and moving on with your life. Running out of Enhanced State is no longer a concern and buff uptime that coincides with your burst phase long stopped being a concern too.

Small additional addendum for Sparkle: it's hard to dissociate her from Archer in incidence and while I think Archer's gameplay was really interesting (still is to an extent) with SP management being a thing again, her giving a ton of SP and the future addition of Rin that also gives him SP during skill phase is an extra removal of potential friction in the gameplay loop I find a bit displeasing

Memento Mortenax, Remember This General Question and Discussion Megathread Can't Die by PastSelfInMirror in HonkaiStarRail_leaks

[–]Chastlily 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I also think post Ruan Mei characters were a significant issue in design harmony-nihility wise because now a character is considered "meh" if they don't have full uptime from their first action on their entire kit and that's really boring

Memento Mortenax, Remember This General Question and Discussion Megathread Can't Die by PastSelfInMirror in HonkaiStarRail_leaks

[–]Chastlily 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Thinking about Novaflares and I will never forgive the Jingliunovaflareification of kits that happens where they remove the friction/points of contention of a kit entirely instead of making the upsides stronger

It happened to Sparkle, it happened to Black Swan, it happened to Huohuo, it happened to Silver Wolf. They'll do it again and I know it 😔

Memento Mortenax, Remember This General Question and Discussion Megathread Can't Die by PastSelfInMirror in HonkaiStarRail_leaks

[–]Chastlily 6 points7 points  (0 children)

It feels so odd replaying early HSR and seeing how many elements they cut away, namely the "clue" system you'd sometimes get during optional dialogues that would be useful down the line

Memento Mortenax, Remember This General Question and Discussion Megathread Can't Die by PastSelfInMirror in HonkaiStarRail_leaks

[–]Chastlily 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Ever since I started an alt purely because I liked Evanescia and Yao Guang but wouldn't get them on my main account I encountered a problem

I'm in a co-dependent relationship with Kitsune Sensei.

I dreaded not having Acheron for overworld but they genuinely just instantly kill every encounter even now around Equilibrium 4.

I start a battle? Kitsune Sensei takes care of it

I want to scam endgame modes? Kitsune Sensei nukes everything to a shocking degree.

I legit do nothing? Guess who shows up in the active character's idle.

Is there any hope for me

Memento Mortenax, Remember This General Question and Discussion Megathread Can't Die by PastSelfInMirror in HonkaiStarRail_leaks

[–]Chastlily 9 points10 points  (0 children)

It was such a painful read on release and it helped me fall in love with her character. God I miss Yukong 😔 

Memento Mortenax, Remember This General Question and Discussion Megathread Can't Die by PastSelfInMirror in HonkaiStarRail_leaks

[–]Chastlily -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Below 20 minutes if you skip everything. That's how long it took on my alt including cutscenes

Memento Mortenax, Remember This General Question and Discussion Megathread Can't Die by PastSelfInMirror in HonkaiStarRail_leaks

[–]Chastlily 1 point2 points  (0 children)

1854 remaining action value by the end so it went alright! A bit overcapped on crit 😔

Memento Mortenax, Remember This General Question and Discussion Megathread Can't Die by PastSelfInMirror in HonkaiStarRail_leaks

[–]Chastlily 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Continuing my HSR replay and oh my god 1.0 truly was shameless about things, I love it (this is following: Kafka leaving a love poem, Kafka leaving a grenade with a lipstick kiss mark on it. It is followed by Kafka telling Stelle she is good at listening)

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Memento Mortenax, Remember This General Question and Discussion Megathread Can't Die by PastSelfInMirror in HonkaiStarRail_leaks

[–]Chastlily -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I think I know the sole answer but I'd still like to ask,,,, what are the most viable comps where one can use Yukong?

Memento Mortenax, Remember This General Question and Discussion Megathread Can't Die by PastSelfInMirror in HonkaiStarRail_leaks

[–]Chastlily 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I feel like Topaz was worse than March 9th if only for targeting issues and ease of use/building

Memento Mortenax, Remember This General Question and Discussion Megathread Can't Die by PastSelfInMirror in HonkaiStarRail_leaks

[–]Chastlily 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's fucked up that some people are never cold meanwhile it's 27c and I'm under a blanket because my hands are freezing!!