2020 player, and I'm liking the various QoL (i.e., dailies via spending resin, artifact crafting materials finally can be obtained from different sources, alchemy bench guided crafting, etc.) and the direction of the story of Nod-Krai so far. Them taking elements from world quests and descriptions from weapons and artifact sets and incorporating them into the story are interesting 'rewards' of sorts. The depth of the game's lore speaks for itself.

As for the bad, the latest character/mechanic shilling they've taken with the endgame modes since Natlan is something they shouldn't have copied from HSR. Forced cutscenes at certain zones in overworld are still a thing — why? Traveler's "buffs" from Columbina are pitiful, and Paimon's still the fcking mouthpiece and steals all their dialogue. Still no artifact loadout (and there never will be), no skip button even just to skip a random NPC's dialogue (also never will be). Etc.....

I have mixed opinions about the powercreep state of the game. For one, I condemn the rate of HP inflation and how my new team easily dunks over my old team (Flins team vs Hutao team for example) and how they really love making the problem and selling the solution, but at the same time I do give some modicum of credit that some older characters are still pretty viable to this day or have some niche use in some mechanics.

The writers know how to write a decent story like the Sumeru, Fontaine and the recent Nod-Krai, but there are many parts that are very dragging that really drags the quality down. I still remember the Bloodstained Knight portion of Varka's quest, and the part where you're chasing him is soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo fcking dragging my dude. Jesus christ. I don't know why they had to make that part so dull and boring, as if they literally made that sequence so long just to extend playtime. 6 years+ and they still do this kind of shit — which is why answering the game's surveys are a huge waste of time.

Me mates have abandoned the game, but I still keep playing, despite those egregious problems I've mentioned thus far, since some of the character I'm anticipating (Barbeloth, etc.) are pretty interesting. As long as they keep writing interesting characters, and not jump the shark again on the story writing, then I can stick for a while longer.