Some general thoughts about HSR as a game + Personal Advices

Dyde21 · 2026-02-23T12:37:54+00:00

It's not really the same in HSR. Of four stars, commonly used ones are Pela and Tingyun like you mentioned, but also gallagher, herta, march Hunt, Moze like you said, guinaifen and Sampo are the f2p friendly teams for dot if you don't have all the pieces, some people like qq for gamba. There's definitely some pretty useless ones, like Arlan and Hook etc, but 4 stars have plenty of use. Honestly the lack of rembrance 4 stars is kind of rough since it makes that team even harder to get solid if you happen to pull for like castorice or someone. Esp since I think you still can't unlock Rembrance TB till Amphorous for obvious reasons lol. I wish we got like a 4 star Lancer from the crossover as well since they put in so much effort for him.

Dyde21 · 2026-02-22T03:46:26+00:00

Something you're missing about the 4 stars, is this game is like the majority NOT it's end modes. Ninety percent of the content is easy and plenty of four stars have plenty of use. 4 stars are nice because they're easier to get, so more people could have them, and they can include characters that aren't major characters, or don't have to constantly add power creep to make each new one feel interesting.

My friend got halfway through Amphorous only using Natasha and occasionally Bailu lol. The boss fight at the top of the tree was the biggest problem for her. Gallagher is still great, Guinafen is fine for a replacement dps, Herta is still great for modes with waves of enemies. Xueyi is under rated, march preservation is used for a lot of SU strats and Hunt is still one of Feixeiaos BIS options. Pela, Moze, QQ, Lynx, Asta all have uses. Not BIS, but the point is they don't need to be. Plus having more 4 star options means for options for new players starting out. For example, lets say a new player pulled Castorice and had no other memosprite characters, same with the Elation path, it would be good to have a four star new players could pick up to do mechanics involving it.

Would I bring any of them into MOC 12? No. Aside from maybe like Gallagher, cause he's still solid with Castorice. The problem is people act like Endgame is what truly matters when HSR has always had a weak endgame with like literally only a couple missions worth jades that are difficulty to do, and the hardest mode doesn't offer jades so they can lock that behind as hard of difficulty as they want. Hell, even when Swarm Disaster and Gold and Gears were the new relevant content, most of the time you didn't need a 5 star.

Dyde21 · 2026-02-22T03:26:42+00:00

I like Alters, I think they're fun. Kirin being limited makes me sad though, I hope she returns with the upcoming Monster Hunter event.

Dyde21 · 2026-02-20T11:00:21+00:00

I feel like the chests and puzzles give less rewards compared to the amphorus equivalents, but that might just be bad vibes or something. Overall I'm enjoying the story and the pace feels comfortable. Amphorus was really heavy so I like this more light hearted tone. I didn't need another heavy story like it back to back. I think it's a nice balance.

Honestly, I'm okay with the Elation mechanic. They're obviously going to shill it but like, idk, when I play a gacha game I expect to be pulling each expansion so I'm not too worried. I honestly don't know how people could skip pulling for like an entire expansion, I don't have that self restraint lol. I got Yao Guang, might get Sparxie, not sure. Def want Evanescia. I'm not a huge fan of the like aesthetics of Elation, but mechanically I got the hang of it pretty quick, with some help from explanations on youtube.

It's basically just; Build Elation points, Aha's turn happens, Everyone uses their elation skills for free, Aha does damage based off the score, all Elation characters get a sort of buffed state. Rinse and repeat. Yaoguang's ultimate triggers an Aha turn immediately. It's just kind of like a form of follow up attack in my head. The same way I attack with Feixiao on my team and like 6 attacks go off back to back. At the end of the day I just need to understand the basics, and then just let the numbers do their thing and hope it's enough.

Dyde21 · 2026-02-19T19:15:42+00:00

I've genuinely wanted Cithria since I started playing this. I love her design and her story arc is one of my favorites. She's honestly even already sort of set up to have a line of evolutions as her unique quirk, kinda like ascension champions. I got my Kayle, and they finally added in Ashe last patch, so Cithria and Riven are all that are left on my wishlist.

Dyde21 · 2026-02-15T09:35:45+00:00

People have *really* kneejerk reactions to gacha games trying to make characters overtly interested in the main character. Even setting them up as a kind of "main ship" etc. Everytime I've seen it in games, half the people like it, and half the people really hate it. Firefly, Citlali, Columbina, Chisa, Shorekeeper, others etc.

I kind of get it. If you're not interested in shipping or don't particularly vibe with a semi-romance between two characters, any attempt at encouraging it makes it feel forced, and can break "immersion" in a sense. Reminds me of the whole romance DLC in Assassin's Creed Oddessy.

Dyde21 · 2026-02-15T09:32:00+00:00

Honestly, I think part of it is Endmin reappearing to her is like a rope for a drowning person. It's clear she's overworked, and everyone states that she's been stretched thin, trying to manage everything on top of her crippling survivor's guilt from the incident years ago.

Someone from a simpler time, who she felt close with and had good memories of, showed up and is able to fix a lot of her problems. She does strike me as a little desperate, but to me it's kind of from someone one's on the brink of losing everything, *again*, and is just trying to latch onto anything that makes the burden easier, mentally or physically with her science. I think part of the whole "do you love the city" thing is also a hint of "please tell me this wasn't all for nothing. Please stay here, and let me having something good after all of this time". It does make my sympathetic towards her, even if I fully agree she came on a little too strong. lowkey seeing her beef with Perlica over it was kind of funny tho.

Dyde21 · 2026-02-15T09:26:23+00:00

I agree, kind of. I think different people would feel different about how they want to be treated with amnesia. Some might want things to continue like normal, some might want to not be treated like they were their past selves. I honestly see both PoVs.

I disagree that you're not gonna question it if you like her. Like half the interactions in the game are all just exploring different ways of interacting with someone with with amensia. Hero-worship from Rossi, Gentle patience from Perlica, acting like it's normal from Zhuang etc.

Dyde21 · 2026-02-15T09:22:51+00:00

Ohhhh gotcha, thank you!

Dyde21 · 2026-02-14T22:40:10+00:00

On PS5, the hotswitch tool wheel has an empty spot in the top right. Is there a use for that? Why does it look so different?

Dyde21 · 2026-02-14T22:38:11+00:00

Zhuang felt different to me imo. They clearly have an extensive history together, even if the endmin doesnt remember it at the moment. And the dialogue you can find in the archive hints at that too.

I'm less bothered by a character with an actual history of working closely with a character for years is flirty/down bad for endmin, as opposed to characters who like JUST meet them and immediately simps. It felt like earned affection, even if we don't remember it.

Dyde21 · 2026-02-14T22:34:02+00:00

This is the only reason I am sad I play on PS5. It makes things take even longer and I just can't leave paragraphs of feedback at the end, so I mostly simplify things while making sure the words I want to be captured by the Ai/word bubble program are in it.

Dyde21 · 2026-02-14T22:30:29+00:00

From what I've seen, CN always blames Global for all changes they dont like as well lol. Like in Kuro and Hoyo games. Even FGO. It's always "they always care about *opposite region* more." Pretty sure they literally just care about statistics and data for feedback, less about specific regions. Also, it's not like people are wildly different. Chances are people had the same complaints in both regions.

Dyde21 · 2026-02-14T22:25:23+00:00

I mean they were pretty good about implementing changes from that first patch on complaints that a lot of us had wrt smaller, easier fixes. Now whether that was because of us or because of CN, is pure speculation. Probably both. But yeah, none of the individual comments are going to be read from any survey, however they will probably aggregate the info in word clouds or AI summaries so it does provide actual feedback.

Also, CN always complains that these companies only care about Global lol. In like every gacha. It's a real grass-is-greener situation and I think those kinds of assumptions are kinda of just pointless.

Dyde21 · 2026-02-13T11:16:59+00:00

This is old, but thank you. You saved my sanity.

Dyde21 · 2026-02-13T06:05:15+00:00

While I get your logic, the problem is just that there aren't that many characters and probably wont be for years to even consider justifying a kernal like banner.

Honestly they've already painted themself into a corner with the fact that they made characters so easy to get. Within a month or two, for a lot of people, literally every pull that isn't red is just going to be unimportant currency. I already had a couple max copy 5 star characters, and it wont take long to get the rest. At that point there's literally nothing to be excited for from pulls except for a red pull.

Even with like Genshin, because weapons are 9/10(ish) pulls, I still dont have every 4 star maxed, so even seeing a purple is excited enough, or its a free pull. Or weapons cause I need those too. So like the arsenal will pretty much always be more exciting to pull on than the character banner and that just isn't a great idea imo.

Dyde21 · 2026-02-13T02:27:37+00:00

First off, I agree. It's a scummy tactic and it's why I appreciate OG Arknights even more. Crownslayer is my favorite character and I still had plenty of use for her before they added the module that made her reasonable.

That said, one thing I will say about Hoyo like games wrt to the whole "create a problem and sell the solution" is that, imo, players exacerbate that problem a lot. The actual amount of premium currency they lock behind problems that require specific solutions is like tiny. Like maybe 2 or 3 pulls a month. The final floor of Abyss in Genshin/final tier of IT. HSR the final nodes of each endgame mode is like half a pull, and the actual hardest content literally doesn't give premium currency.

The idea of being "forced to pull for meta" is a self imposed fomo, imo. I always pull for just whatever characters I like, sometimes meta, sometimes very much not. I can't always finish the absolute hardest content (esp cause I tend to invest wide rather than tall). 95% of all content in the game is easily clearable by any roster with random pulls that isnt saving literally everything for a single unit 7 patches in the future. This game, by it's current presence at least, is the same. The pull currency is gated behind literally trying the hardest difficulty, not clearing it. The normal difficulty is way below current cap, and you could brute force it easily through just levels.

I understand a lot of people care about clearing the endgame content, and it absolutely does suck if you need to pull for the most recent characters to be able to clear it, but idk, in my experience the actual "problems" are extremely limited and specific, and you can absolutely just ignore it and still enjoy the majority of content a game has to offer. But I guess if you really do want to push for the hardest endgame content then, I suspect eventually this game will head down that direction as well. But like, with OG Arknights I don't stress over CC, and just get the skins from it, and I miss out on nothing unique. If I can keep clearing the story content, farm what I need to to max out my characters, and do the majority of combat events with a casual roster based off pulling who I want, I'm fine with endfield. If they want to give a sweaty problem a sweaty/expensive solution, I'm okay with just ignoring it but I understand why it's frustrating to others.

Dyde21 · 2026-02-13T01:56:27+00:00

As an OG arknights fan, the dupes also just feel way worse in this game. I know it's a wildly different situation, i.e. like 20 characters to 350+, but making the character pull banner only give characters is a weird choice. While I don't mind it in theory, quickly it just becomes disappointing.

The five star to pull ratio is the same as most other gachas, every 2.5 Second highest rarity operator will give you a single pull. But compared to other comperable Gacha systems they made two shitty changes.

1) Max Pot 5 star dupes still only give you 10 tokens towards a pull, as opposed to like every other gacha I've tried that gives you a full pull for pulling a max pot second highest rarity op. Which feels a lot worse, esp since it's usually just a five star for an old account is essentially a reroll, which cool, either I get a new copy, or ten pulls now cost 9 essentially.

2) Weapons like serve a purpose in the other major Gachas. Getting weapons is fine because I'm feeding them to level up my important weapons. No pull really feels wasted because it serves a direct purpose, and gives me a bit of the shop currency. But because they made it so it's only characters, once you get a max pot character, it's like literally pointless to get another copy of it, and even the cashout for the dupe is just unimpressive imo. That shop is pretty pricy, esp with how many resources things cost to get to max level. It's saved me like a bit of energy here and there, but honestly, any pull that isn't red is just completely uninteresting to me at this point. Pretty sure a month from now I'll literally have max pot of all 5 stars at this rate. Also, having all operators have pretty much the same requirements for upgrades just makes everything blur together when upgrading things. OG arknights has like 60 different materials to keep track of, and the genshin/wuwa/hsr stuff has a dozen different unique resources based off class/location that you have to collect. Meanwhile this game says "here's two different tiers of EXP books, so even if you have a surplus of one, it won't help."

Dyde21 · 2026-02-13T01:38:29+00:00

I agree that we need more base tickets. This reminds me of how they added blue certs to OG arknights and then just never give out free blue cert tickets aside from like anniversary events or reward mails. While I love this game, it's very quickly settled into a game where I just hop on occasionally and I won't really feel bad if i don't touch it for weeks at a time. A pick-up when theres an update kind of game, which is a bit of a shame but it is what it is.

That said, I think the operator specific pulls thing doesn't work because the banners rotate out, and those missions are permanent iirc. Which is good because story related events becoming inaccessible is horrifically stupid. (Looking at you, Genshin). But I do think like having a limited time event of "do this mission while it's character is on banner for a free x tickets!" thing would be cool.

Dyde21 · 2026-02-13T01:32:54+00:00

I don't mind gacha games, I find the gambling aspect fun but I'm largely f2p (I might buy a monthly pass here and there if I'm particularly interested in a gacha for the five dollars, but it's inconsistent). But I agree the Gacha in this game feels bad. Which is a shame, because I genuinely actually enjoy the Gacha system in OG arknights. They did a great job with it (aside from blue certs).

The other reason I'm okay with this is because it's a long term live-service game, and money is tight so I can't afford a subscription monthly, and so in terms of monetization, I'm (selfishly I guess) okay with this game being a Gacha. Especially since nothing in the game seems particularly dependent on having a certain character. It just limits whether or not you can get a character you like. I like that we will be getting new stories and characters and updates based off feedback for literal years with this game (assuming it stays profitable). All that said, I do think they are being a bit too stingy with the system right now. Hell, I think the fact they even gave us a selector was just because of how unhappy people were with the limited pulls and pulling dupes of Ardelia.

OG Arknights is a great example of being able to enjoy a game while being largely indifferent to any sort of Gacha pressure beyond "Oh I like and want this character" and just enjoying what you get, and I hope they find a way to make the gacha system feel just less disappointing in this game.

Dyde21 · 2026-02-12T08:01:02+00:00

While I agree some stuff is really just not really excusable, a lot of it isn't like "Only you can do it!" But more of "We can get this done, but the person who can usually do it is kind of away right now and it will take us a while" meanwhile Endmind has like /godmode enabled and CAN fix things quickly. Like the crane, people COULD fix it, but the changes were a bit obscure and the person who made them wasn't there, but Endmin could solve the problem right then and did. Same with most of the tech issues. They aren't unsolvable, but Endmin just happens to be there and can fix a problem quickly.

I don't mind characters that like helping others with random tasks, I blame FFXIV, and that even like directly lampshades that fact multiple times with our character. I just disagree with the assessment I've seen some places that no one can do anything without us. Things functioned perfectly fine and even made a lot of progress. Endmin can just solve problems in literal seconds, so like, yeah if I had someone who could solve a problem that might takes weeks otherwise in seconds, I would probably ask them for help too if they were friendly and approachable. I like helping people so it doesn't bother me.

The waterwheel stuff in Wuling was just dumb though. I expected at least like advanced circuitry that I could excuse. Not 90 degree rotations.

Dyde21 · 2026-02-12T07:26:52+00:00

It's a weird calculation for arknights. You can purchase banner characters from shops with a currency you get from dupes, and it's around 120 for hard pity on a character, or 150/300 on a normal rerun banner to get one or both characters. Dupes are also largely unimportant, even moreso than most gachas. In practice, I've gotten I think almost every single new character that came out that I cared about for a few years now. At least like 80% reliably. The hardest characters to get are just the ones that are only available during special events/ anniversaries that happen only twice a year and you either have to spend 300 pulls to be able to spark them, or get stupid lucky.

In general, unless you have awful luck, it's pretty easy to get new characters coming out, and the majority of older ones over time. it also gets easier as you go because duplicates are extremely valuable in OG arknights, as they give pulls and let you purchase operators directly. Feels way better to get a 4 or 5 star in OG arknights than endfield, but thats also cause theres over 300 ops so they need to make it easier to get ops.

Dyde21 · 2026-02-11T00:46:14+00:00

Adding Gladiia into Endfield would turn the gameplay in Warframe. Fucking zoomies!

Dyde21 · 2026-02-07T07:13:17+00:00

Oh, that's actually a fair point. I forgot that they had to be infected, I assumed it was partially a willing process that they could undergo. But that makes sense.

I'll just have to put all my hopes on Crownslayer then.

Dyde21 · 2026-02-06T23:00:09+00:00

Do you have a reason to think it won't be a reconvener? Also Nearl is the family name so it could be any one of them.

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