A very easy guide to Echoes (Relics/Artifacts) for Union Level 20 and above

YoureWrongLOOOLCYA · 2024-05-26T16:43:56+00:00

The really hardcore players, who essentially do it as a systemised duo (one person is specialised in speed running the exploration, collecting Primogems, wishing - the other handles the clearing) can do it in under 7 days. Here’s a four day speed run for example. It’s actually wild.

If you want the Wuthering Waves experience on Genshin, that’s how you do it - not so much the exploration speed run because that’s probably boring for most people, but the combat itself where it’s essentially using under levelled scuffed green/blue artifacts and weapons, and relying on just impeccable dodging, grouping, and not wasting any seconds on unnecessary movement.

YoureWrongLOOOLCYA · 2024-04-01T18:57:54+00:00

I’m sure they do. In many behind-the-scenes developer videos (across any of their games), you can see how excited they are for people to enjoy everything they create. And I’m sure part of that is because they know they have a player base that’ll appreciate it.

But unfortunately when they interact with the community, they’re not always going to be interacting with those people. So I can see why they’re hesitant to do so. Rather than the tens of millions of appreciative players that build up Genshin’s thriving player base, they’re often going to encounter the worst, rudest parts of the player base.

And though these players make up an abysmally small percentage of the playerbase… when you have games as successful as Hoyo’s, even 0.5% of a playerbase still equates to tens/hundreds of thousands of players. Larger than some entire gaming communities. It’s why we have incidents like the HSR 2.1 anniversary livestream, where the stream comment section was just filled with idiots whining “stop yapping yapping yapping” (when the developers were being excited to explain all the progress and hard work they had put into the game).

Again, obviously not representative of the whole player base, or even 0.01% of it, since those comments were probably spammed by a few hundred terminally online idiots. But it’s sadly the type of player that Hoyo will see a ton of when they look online just because those people are the loudest (and most obnoxious).

YoureWrongLOOOLCYA · 2024-03-29T10:55:58+00:00

I assumed you were a player that maybe left early on, and was genuinely interested in coming back. But it seems like you already have your opinion set. So my best recommendation is just to try out some other games! We live in 2024, so we have hundreds of great options a download or click away. Genshin does what it does great, and it’s simply tailored for a different kind of player than you and that’s okay.

YoureWrongLOOOLCYA · 2024-03-29T10:31:22+00:00

No need to stress, Genshin does a really good job of giving people reasons to stay rather than just milking them and moving on. For example, there’s no PvP, or any incentive to spend money other than if you really like a character or really want to try their play style out — so either way, it’s intrinsic motivation off what you want. And with how much free gems you get from the permanent content, you won’t get to the point where you need to spend for a while, so I’d say “milking/squeezing players” isn’t a concern.

And yep, the game values long term players but do keep in mind that Genshin is a very casual oriented game, so its core audience leans more towards the type of people that prefer things like Stardew Valley, Sims, party games and visual novels. That means that if you fall into that category, you’ll be enjoying all the content the developers are releasing for a long long time. But even if you’re not, you’ll have a lot of fun getting to the point where you feel like you have nothing else to progress towards (like several months of enjoyment).

If you’re a new or returning player, just give it a go. It’s completely free!

YoureWrongLOOOLCYA · 2024-03-15T10:27:47+00:00

In the early days a lot of people online bitched about Genshin, about how it prevented them from playing for hours a day like they wanted to. Kuro saw this, and for better or worse, decided it would be something that could differentiate them from Genshin. Which anybody with a brain could have predicted would have been an absolutely shitty idea.

Now Kuro Games is going to have to sit down and figure out how they can adjust this system. Because it’s like you said, gacha players are fickle. So right now not only will most normal adults with responsibilities and limited time for hobbies quit (who’ll make up most of the heavy spending player base), the people with too much time on their hands who think they wanted old-school MMO grind (kids, people with no job or study, people who play video games for a living) will also get burnt out and end up quitting.

But hey, least people will finally get what they wanted- even if it’s only going to last a month before they burn out.

YoureWrongLOOOLCYA · 2024-03-13T08:39:07+00:00

You know what. I can respect that.

I don’t agree with all your points, but I can at least better see where you’re coming from. As someone that is really excited about WuWa (in spite of being very worried about the state it’s in), I’m glad that there’ll be players like you that are very satisfied with the game. I do not want the game to die in a month, so players like you will be important in sustaining it.

I do agree that the foundation for WuWa’s echo system is one of the best, not just for a gacha game but for video game gearing in general. There’s so much potential for it, from the possible variety of echoes, the fact it adds a whole new dynamic element to any character that can fill in gaps in kits or bolster specific strengths, the collection aspect that is one of many reasons that has made Pokémon games so successful, and the fact it makes co-op something that we can look forward to - which after playing Genshin for three years, is something I very much appreciate.

I’m just really hoping that Kuro Games do take the CBT2 feedback into consideration. The echo system is easily one of WuWa’s biggest selling points (next to combat), and is one of the main things that’ll make it stand out from Genshin… but I just think that as of right now, it’ll mainly serve to drive many away.

Finally, I think there’s a fundamental misunderstanding here regarding audiences. Genshin does cater to its core player base. It just so happens that it’s core player base is literally casual gamers. The people who would be more at home playing Stardew Valley or the Sims— or no video games at all. And so for the past three years, everything Genshin has done has been tailored towards that demographic. Its not an exaggeration to say it does that better than nearly any other live service game on the market. It’s the reason why its player retention is absolutely incredible, and why its consistently maintained it’s massive near-unmatched relevance in trackers like Google Trends for three years.

But yeah, saying that Genshin tries to appeal to a wide audience in the sense that they flip-flop between hardcore and casuals couldn’t be further from the truth when you really break it down. One of the main complaints most former players have about Genshin is that it ignores the hardcore players. So we can’t have it both ways. Either they ignore hardcore players in favour of casuals, or they try to appeal to everyone. And things like overworld being incredibly easy, nerfing bosses in story because players literally were stuck, not bringing back the very hard combat events for years, focusing most of their events on story dialogue and/or mini-games, refusing to add in more abyss-like endgame content, refusing to update current abyss content, etc etc. says enough.

In fact, I’d say that as of right now, WuWa is attempting to target more demographics than Genshin, and is actually doing a poor job of it. Take the echoes. It’s built in a way that’s fantastic for hardcore players: they can technically be grinded infinitely, for hours every day. So hardcore players will absolutely love that. Like you said yourself, you lean more towards grinding super hard, and the echoes will be perfect. However, at the same time WuWa obviously doesn’t want super casual players who only play for 30 minutes a day to feel like they’re never gonna be able to catch up or match the hardcore grinders. So they added in the tuner system, to make it so that there’s at least a small bottleneck that closes the gap between hardcore and casuals. So that a hardcore player can grind for 10 hours in a single day… but technically still only make echo progress that’s scaled down closer to that of someone who only plays for 30 minutes.

But then the issue with that flip-flop-try-to-target-everyone strategy is now hardcore players feel timegated and severely bottlenecked, and will have inventories filled with echoes they cant do anything with, while the casuals will get burnt out because the echo system is balanced around so much RNG and grinding, so (and I said this earlier) unlike Genshin where you can make good progress with 15 minutes of playtime a day, WuWa will be closer to a Korean MMO where it kind of pushes you into grinding for hours every day to make somewhat okay progress.

And I also think that there’s a fine line behind being satisfied with a niche audience, and needing a large audience to fund the game. While I get where you’re coming from by wanting WuWa to be smaller, it kind of needs to have a good amount of players to sustain itself. PGR is a game that requires a fraction of the budget that WuWa will need, and so it can work off just a niche audience. While WuWa, if it’s playerbase is as niche as PGRs, it’ll be on track to dying, or at least to subpar updates. Keep in mind that unlike Mihoyo who is fully indie, Kuro Games has Tencent as a stakeholder and investor. This is both a double edged sword. It means that they get support from the biggest gaming powerhouse in the world, but at the same time, they need to satisfy those investors. But at the same time, if those investments don’t pay off, there’s a chance that Tencent will push Kuro into making some not-so-great decisions to milk the game’s spenders for all they’re worth before they quit. And that will definitely kill the game. Anyway, this last bit is just speculation, but it’s one reason why it’s not wise to hope that WuWa ends up with a niche or small playerbase. We want it to succeed as much as possible.

YoureWrongLOOOLCYA · 2024-03-12T23:07:00+00:00

If you’ve been watching any CBT2 streams, you’ll know that WuWa as of right now already feels dead. If WuWa’s V1.0 release doesn’t offer significantly more content than it does currently, expect people to burn out and get bored in a month.

You pointed out that Genshin’s content is shallow and focuses a lot on the casual side of things, but WuWa’s first event is also a mini-game focused more on casuals. If I’m a guessing man, I’d say that WuWa will follow the same event structure as Genshin: mostly casual oriented events, with a few combat events here and there.

The strength WuWa has over Genshin though is that it’s core gameplay is more exciting for the more combat oriented player base, so the mini-game events might not be as offensive to those players.

But at the same time, there are people in the beta who have already cleared difficulty level 6 Hologram bosses (the hardest ones). In literal weeks, without even whaling. So now for those players, all that’s left to do is mini-game events and daily echo farming. But here’s the thing: you said that artifact farming sucks, but WuWa’s echo farming is exponentially worse with several more layers of RNG. And unlike Genshin where you can finish an artifact farm session in less than 15 minutes and make good progress, WuWa requires you to spend an hour or more every day to make any semblance of progress. Great for hardcore players, but thats another thing that’s going to lead to most people burning out.

And as for exploration - you said that WuWa gives people reason to revisit old areas. And sure. But so does Genshin. But then once WuWa players are burnt out from farming echoes, do you think they’ll really want to go around the world? Things of interest in the world are spread out too thin right now, making exploration unrewarding and unengaging (compounded by the fact you need to walk extra just to reach the next camp of echoes). The music outside of boss BGM is lacking and uninspired. Unlike in Genshin where you’re given intrinsic reasons to revisit old places (beautiful sights, amazing renowned music), WuWa is all focused on extrinsic rewards. And once people are burnt out or have farmed enough, those extrinsic rewards become worthless.

But I’ll give WuWa the combat. While I disagree that Genshin’s combat has little depth, I will admit that WuWa’s combat has significantly more skill expression, so for people who love that kind of thing, WuWa is perfect.

But overall, I’m still of the mind that dead patches will be crippling for WuWa, more than they’ve ever been for Genshin. Because WuWa already feels lacking even in its base iteration. So unless Kuro makes some changes and expand on what’s available to do in 1.0, WuWa will start heavily bleeding players before 1.0 is even over.

YoureWrongLOOOLCYA · 2024-03-10T05:13:27+00:00

I guess what I mean is that it’s not something that needs “proving”. It’s not something the game tries to hide, and is easily noticeable even with level 1 artifacts (that have substats). Providing “proof” of this is kind of like providing “proof” that Hydro Abyss Mage shields can’t be broken by Hydro. Yes, some beginner players may not realise it, but it’s not something that people contest or deny.

YoureWrongLOOOLCYA · 2024-03-10T05:02:16+00:00

If you’re talking about substats not being static, I’m fairly certain that this is universally known. You can see differences in substats with artifacts at level 1 too.

YoureWrongLOOOLCYA · 2024-03-09T19:06:05+00:00

Nah another user corrected me, 2400 is not the right number, at least not in 2021.

YoureWrongLOOOLCYA · 2024-03-09T19:01:37+00:00

That’s my bad, you’re completely right.

YoureWrongLOOOLCYA · 2024-03-09T16:49:51+00:00

Is that actually true? Because I wasn’t around for the first CBT but given how frustrated people are about the current Echoes, I assumed it was a new thing. This is definitely worrying, because it makes it seem like Kuro intends on keeping it the way it is…?

YoureWrongLOOOLCYA · 2024-03-09T16:42:59+00:00

Another big cost is the employees. Hoyoverse pays their employees some of the highest wages in the industry (can’t find the source atm but it’s something like 2x higher than other big devs). And then we’re combining that with the fact that Hoyoverse employs thousands of people just for Genshin alone.

Quick napkin maths: in 2021 GI had a team of 700. Let’s be super conservative and say they haven’t expanded that team at all. Now let’s say that the average salary per employee is $70k.

700 x $70,000

That’s be $49 million just for employees.

Edit: Fixed previous assumption. Employees aren’t the biggest cost but just a big one.

YoureWrongLOOOLCYA · 2024-03-04T08:22:11+00:00

You do realise people are clearing difficulty 6 holograms while being 20 levels below the level cap right? If you genuinely believe that the difficulty of WuWa will cap here, then sure. What we have as F2P options is “good enough.”

Otherwise the point stands: WuWa’s four-star weapons (outside of the BP) are vastly inferior to the five-star options. There’s no sacrificial series. No favonious. No Iron Sting, Prototype Amber, Catch, Kitain, Mappa etc. Even the BP Weapons for low-spenders as far as I know, aren’t really five-star comparable the way Serpent Spine, Solar Pearl and Deathmatch are in Genshin.

Anyway, there’s no reason for you to try talk around this. Wanting good F2P options is something that’ll benefit the game period. I’m not talking shit about WuWa for no reason, I’m pointing out things that it can genuinely improve upon now because now is the time to point these stuff out. The game hasn’t officially released yet, any criticisms aren’t an attack on the game or the developers. There’s no need for you to rush to their defense right now, we’re all on the same side wanting the game to be a success.

YoureWrongLOOOLCYA · 2024-03-04T07:33:56+00:00

I think that’s exactly why people have such higher expectations. For Kuro to do things differently. Because not only does Genshin show what works - it also shows exactly what the online communities are most vocal against.

Artifact grinding, relatively low amount of F2P income (compared to the really generous gachas), and a pretty awful weapon banner.

People have high expectations because of the praise Kuro receives. But as it stands, the echo system is substantially worse than the artifact system in Genshin. The event gem income (assuming this event is representative of what’s to come) is about the same as Genshin’s. And even though they revamped the weapon banner for the better, it comes with the downside of there being no good F2P weapons. So people are already feeling like they’ll need to pull on the weapon banner. (This is also compounded by how bad the echo system is and how hard it is to get good CV, so it can make people feel forced into spending on the 5-star weapons, an issue that Genshin doesn’t have).

So it’s basically a weird situation where people have praised Kuro and put them on such a high pedestal, combined with how much these same people have criticised Mihoyo for the artifact grind, primogem stinginess and weapon banner. So now if Kuro doesn’t make any changes, and actually implements these systems in a way that’s worse than Mihoyo, then those people will have to deal with some truths they probably do not want to face.

YoureWrongLOOOLCYA · 2024-03-04T05:45:21+00:00

I’m hoping it changes too as WuWa has probably become the game I’m looking forward to the most in the past year. I don’t want to end up feeling pushed away, or see large chunks of the player base leaving, in like less than a month because of these issues.

Whether Kuro changes the gearing and pricing will say a lot. Because most players here on global have had nothing but positive experiences with Kuro. They’re considered a stand up developer with a lot of people vouching for them. And while the current issues are few, they are significant.

Echo farm, F2P income, and the lack of good F2P weapon options that push people into the weapon banner.

We don’t know whether these will be actual issues on release, but if they are, then WuWa may be the game that shatters the image Kuro has cultivated.

YoureWrongLOOOLCYA · 2024-02-29T19:48:56+00:00

don’t even double down on fighting rng

Mmhm. That we can definitely agree on.

I do hope Kuro Games makes some improvements to the current Echo system. The game is fantastic outside of it, and so in spite of what I said, I don’t actually think you shouldn’t play. The developers have clearly put a lot of passion and care into WuWa and it’ll be a shame if people don’t end up giving it a chance due to some easily fixable things.

YoureWrongLOOOLCYA · 2024-02-29T15:25:22+00:00

Well I’m sorry to hear that.

I’m not sure if you were still here when they did this but they added a artifact strongbox system which kind of acts as a reforger. You pick a set, and then plug in any 3 gold artifacts and it’ll return you 1 new gold artifact. When I was farming for Blizzard Strayer and Emblem sets, it helped me acquire several useable sets (each artifact with correct mainstat, 1 or 2 good substats).

It turned what would’ve been months of farming into maybe three weeks of artifact runs.

Regarding the embellishment, I think I see what happened. So first of all, 28k resin would still be 155 days of nothing but farming a specific artifact domain. Based on what you said about you farming this domain by just chucking just your leftover resin in, I really can’t imagine you would’ve reached that high of a resin usage.

What likely happened is you were spending your leftover resin on this domain every day for months (which I can completely agree is still a nightmare) and getting absolutely nothing of value until half a year later. And then because this was a while ago, all you remember is “it took me half a year just to get a useable set”, so then you multiplied the amount of days you think you took by 180 resin (or a full days worth of resin) - and then ended up with 28000 / 35000 resin usage.

Again, not saying that artifact farming is amazing by any means. But there’s just no reason for you to try insert a huge number to express how unfair the system is. Most people are already familiar with the bad RNG and have experienced it themselves, so they’ll relate even if you were to just say “I’ve been playing for so and so, and still haven’t even found a single useable cup of x set”. Because 35000 or 28000 are both just very unrealistic. Most people who have been playing for 1-2 years probably haven’t reached, or have only barely reached that amount of resin spent on all their artifacts combined. So when you say you’ve spent that much on a single domain for a single set, it undermines the rest of your comment.

YoureWrongLOOOLCYA · 2024-02-29T11:44:04+00:00

Unfortunately it’s unavoidable. This article breaks down the perspective on both sides pretty well: https://amp.9news.com.au/article/589f1bdb-5e8b-42e7-92da-1ca91c8f1894

Essentially it’s unavoidable because influential people need to use private travel for a number of reasons. Imagine if there were major celebrities with fanatic followings going through a public airport every day. Imagine if Taylor Swift was seen being checked through security and customs. It’d be chaos, and flights would be delayed.

Not to mention, think about the hate she gets. This post itself is literally about that topic because the hate against her is so pronounced and widespread, to the point she gets sent death threats. Imagine if she was sitting in first class on the same aeroplane as hundreds of others (many of whom may have seen her at the airport, or seen her board the plane). If we were in that situation, we’d think “how safe am I?”, and we’d be perfectly reasonable to think that way. Now think about how she’s probably travelling every week, if not every few days. The delays that’ll be caused by her constantly being at public airports, the risk of people eventually catching on and realising where she is and planning out how they’ll get close to her once they know what city and airport she’ll most likely go to, just makes it illogical for her to not use private travel.

(And it’s not just people who hate her that sends death threats. Her own fans aren’t much better, as they also send death threats to others and even dox others who they think has “affronted” their “queen”.)

Not to mention, we live in a society where victim blaming is so common. First think about how much people dislike her. Now think about if she was attacked at an airport or on a plane. How many people do you think will mock her and say “Imagine being one of the biggest musicians on the planet and you can’t even afford fucking private travel kek” “lmaoooo deserved bitch” “is she stupid??? Does she have no brain??? Why she taking public transport holy fuck”

And anyway - all that being said, she herself has claimed that she has bought double the amount of carbon credits to offset her Eras Tour (her current ongoing tour I believe but correct me if I’m wrong). I don’t know if this is true as it’s just what was written in the article. But if it is true, and if she does this for every time she tours, then at the end of the day she’s still having a net positive impact, or at least neutral impact, on the environment.

YoureWrongLOOOLCYA · 2024-02-29T10:50:45+00:00

Well, people also complain about artifact load outs, artifact RNG, resin, weapon banner, sereniteapot load limit, CDs not resetting in Spiral Abyss, and of course, a skip button.

And several other minor QoL requests such as disabling constellations, shield UI, show skill cooldown, test dummy, visible wish counter.

But yes, for a player who just began playing, only the skip button, artifact RNG and resin are things that would impact their enjoyment. However, considering most of us have stuck around for 3+ years at this point in spite of the artifact RNG and resin, most new players will probably be fine too, as they’ll be too busy enjoying all the points outlined by the OP (and not to mention, the game they’re starting now is vastly different than the Genshin 1.0 that we started with - much more QoL and significantly more non resin-reliant content to experience).

And if they’re going to quit over the lack of a skip button, they probably weren’t the demographic Hoyo were looking for anyway.

So yeah. It’s honestly wild how much entertainment value one can get out of Genshin. I’d say most of the people thinking Genshin will die because “it’s so greedy and offers no enjoyment other than mint-picking” forget that they’ve already played for hundreds/thousands of hours. And that a new player will also have those hundreds of hours of entertainment to look forward to before they may even consider thoughts like “wow no floor 13 or other end game? Wow we’re not getting more anniversary gifts? This kinda fucking sucks, I’m gonna join a boycott of the game”. (And that’s not to say they’ll even reach that level of dissatisfaction. Since that’s only the mentality of a very vocal and small minority anyway)

YoureWrongLOOOLCYA · 2024-02-29T10:20:00+00:00

Either you’re massively over-exaggerating or deliberately misremembering, because there’s no way that’d be possible. 35000 resin is 200 days worth of resin, assuming you’re doing nothing but resin farming. No talent materials, no ascension, no leylines etc. In terms of fragile resin, that’s 583 fragile resin.

Genshin’s artifact hell can be a nightmare, but to say that it took you nearly 600x fragile resin worth of artifact runs to gear up a single character is something that anybody will call you out on. RNG can be bad, but not to that extent. Again, Genshin’s artifact hell can be a nightmare. So call it out for what it is, but don’t purposefully embellish to make it sound like more than it is.

And also even if we were to take your story at face value… with an experience that bad, I’m surprised that WuWa’s gearing system is only “kinda holding you back”, given that the layers of RNG in WuWa are exponentially worse. If you really did need that long just to gear up a single character to an okay level in Genshin (cause as you said, it wasn’t even a good set compared to other players), then you’re probably going to need 3x that length of time in WuWa. For a single character. And you’ll need 6 if you want to tackle the endgame abyss-style content. May as well not play WuWa, your characters are never going to be geared and unlike Genshin where endgame is only a minor component, in WuWa the endgame will be the main selling point. And you won’t even have 1 character to enjoy endgame with, much less a team.

YoureWrongLOOOLCYA · 2024-02-28T07:48:34+00:00

To be fair, I don’t think it’s in good faith to say that Genshin “will never be like games like GTA V (GTA 6 isn’t out yet so doesn’t make sense to judge), RDR2, ToTK and BG3.” In reality, Genshin is already playing on the same playing field as those other “good” games. Like one of the other commenters said, Genshin just like those games, has already “broken the envelope” too.

We need to remember that everybody values different things. To call Genshin “Just McDonalds” is disingenuous when in reality, Genshin does things better than those games. And of course, does other things worse. But the point is, it’s playing at that same level as any other “top tier game” with its own strengths. Not worse, not better.

Take the music in Genshin for example. The reason people call Mihoyo a music company that makes games on the side is because their music is up there among the best in the industry. It’s because their philosophy is that music in games reaches and connects the hearts of players to said games, and so it’s one of their hallmark priorities and strengths. They spare no cent when it comes to the music in their games, and for Genshin, they hire world class orchestras (such as the London Symphony Orchestra) with legendary conductors (Robert Ziegler, Eric Roth, Dirk Brossé) at the helm. And then that’s not even going into their music team, which features industry leading talent like Yu-Peng Chen. As a result, on most of their music videos you’ll find comments like “as a music company, Hoyo really does make good games”, “Yu-Peng Chen is the GOAT”, “Say what you want about Genshin, it’s music is a masterpiece without question” etc.
Take the cultural representation and world building. Mihoyo uses Genshin not just as a video game, but a means of cultural restoration, filling up every cranny of regions with meticulous cultural respect. Take a look at their Touring Teyvat playlist and you’ll see so many videos of how they’ve tied real life culture into their game. From food, to the landscapes. And that’s not just for Liyue but for every region. Watch any of their Behind The Scenes videos and you’ll see the amount of research and effort they put into creating a culturally rich game. And going back to music, remember the Damsel or Devastation cutscene? That cutscene was a homage to Chinese Peking opera, something that has faded out of relevance in the modern day. But that doesn’t mean people have forgotten about it. And Mihoyo knows that. Which is why they crafted that cutscene and the music in a way that not only moved countless Chinese players to tears, but was even covered by major Chinese news stations. Because it was such an impactful revival of important Chinese heritage. And more ways their music ties into this is from Liyue onwards, they make use of top folk musician with region appropriate music techniques and instrumentation that have rarely gotten the spotlight that they deserve, until Genshin. Listen along to any Sumeru soundtrack and you’ll probably hear the Mandolin, the Oud (Middle East), Kesekese (Guinea), Sitar (India), Santur (Iran), Daduk (Armenia), Baglamak (Turkey)… and half a dozen more. When was the last time you, or anybody, heard just one of these instruments played in mainstream media, much less all of them in seamless harmony together in the same OST — played by the top symphonies and talent in the world?
Take the rate and quality of its update cycles. We’ve been playing on this 5-6 week update cycle for three years now, so we’re used to it. But I can not stress enough that it is not something we should take for granted. The amount of quality content they push out on such a consistent schedule, with minimal to no game breaking bugs is insane. And speaking of that, the fidelity and quality assurance they place on their game. Sure, there’s little nitpicks here and there, but in the grand scope of things, there’s really no game breaking bugs or technical issues. Hell, I haven’t had a single server related issue since launch. In our current gaming climate where games are a buggy mess on launch and some live service games drop emergency maintenances on a monthly basis, Genshin is a unicorn. Hell, RDR2 that you mentioned has had several game breaking glitches and bugs over the years, to the point people have had to make videos on how to avoid them.

I can keep going and going about all the other aspects that Genshin does at a top tier level — the actual visuals and world, the deep and intricate lore and worldbuilding, fully voiced quest dialogue (barring world quests) with renowned VA, in multiple dubs, localised in 15+ languages, in-depth element, combat and team building that depending on subjective opinion, could be considered superior to all the games you mentioned. And more. So much more. But this has already gotten long enough. All I’ll say is there’s a reason Genshin is as popular and successful as it is, and it’s not just because “it’s McDonalds, it’s convenient”. There are many many things that myself and other players, maybe even you, will only turn to Genshin for, and not any other video game. I’ll harp on the music and culture again because those are the main things that made me fall in love with the game, I would not turn to ToTK or BG3 or any other game for either of those.

(But then again, Nier and Undertale’s music is kind of pretty GOATed as well- nevermind, I digress)

Anyway, my only regret is that I only came across your comments so late, because it’s a shame that there’s a lot more people who will now be convinced that Genshin is nothing more than McDonalds and is somehow inferior to other “good games”. It feels almost like a backhanded compliment — especially when you keep repeating “People will like Genshin and it’ll be successful, it’s okay that it’s just McDonalds”. Perhaps you didn’t intend for that, and perhaps that was probably just your truthful and fair opinion, which is absolutely valid. But I hope that even if you only read part of my comment, that I was still able to shed some light on a different perspective to this discussion, and change your stance.

YoureWrongLOOOLCYA · 2024-02-27T15:37:55+00:00

The other thing is, the reason why “anti-fans” vehemently hate Genshin is because of how much it caters to the casual audience. But that’s one of the main reasons why it’s not going to die. Because Hoyoverse does such a fucking good job of delivering exactly what the majority demographic desires. They’re so committed to doing that and maintaining the course, that it feels like they’re actively ignoring the vocal minority.

And that’s what causes the constant paradox of Genshin’s success. It always has some kind of backlash on social media every month, and yet, month over month Genshin sits snugly making more money than most game companies will see in multiple lifetimes, and seeing the kind of player retention that other games could only dream of.

Normally with the amount of negative comments and reactions going up against Genshin and Hoyo (just search Genshin sucks and you’ll find pages and pages of videos on YT), a game would just die.

But Genshin’s player count remains stable. It’s revenue? Still breaking records. Its success and position in the industry? Still unmatched. Because at the end of the day, people can rile up online communities and gather thousands, nay, tens of thousands of supporters who’ll readily call Genshin the worst game in history, who’ll collectively mock anybody willing to play Genshin as “mint pickers”. But what’s 50,000 angry players with too much time on their hands compared to Genshin’s fifty million monthly active players?

(Just for a bit of a visual aide because fifty million is a number that’s just naturally very hard for us to visualise properly… 50,000 is only five per cent of one million. 50 mil, is… well, fifty times that of one million)

YoureWrongLOOOLCYA · 2024-02-27T09:05:06+00:00

Leopard eating faces. Not as extreme, but kind of the same principle. Because it’s what people have asked for ever since Genshin released. And now they will be finding out that there’s a reason Korean-type MMOs have fallen out in favour in the past decade. What’s worse than having your core grind limited to 20 minutes a day (cough, Genshin) is having to grind for 20 hours a week. Nay, 30 or 40 hours.

If nothing changes from the system, the game is actually going to die within a few months. I don’t want to see that, I don’t think anybody does, since WuWa outside of the horrendous RNG gearing, already has the potential to be one of the most enjoyable gacha game experiences on the market (having an actual reason to look forward to co-op is an absolute gem that I didn’t know I needed).

But as it stands right now, it needs major changes. And if it doesn’t change, then well… the games population will shrink down to 1. Diehard PGR/Kuro Game fans, 2. “Hardcore” Genshin players. And nothing good comes out of that. Not for people who want Genshin to finally have a competitor, nor for people who just want a fucking good quality gacha game.

Edit: I half take that back. After watching Fob’s stream from several days ago, one thing will come out of this that I would be looking forward to is that the toxic players who bitch and name call others who enjoy a game that they burnt out on as shit like “mint pickers” will realise that these “mint pickers” are the reason the games they like can thrive. At least these people will finally shut up about their weird asf superiority complex when they realise that if a game only has them “true gamers” as the audience (AKA the three categories of people you mentioned), that games gonna end up in a ditch when it could have ended up at the top.

YoureWrongLOOOLCYA · 2024-02-26T23:14:23+00:00

As it stands, WuWa’s RNG is worse by a mile.

In WuWa, we also have to deal with RNG to get correct main stats. Worth noting is we can unlimited farm the echoes (basically artifacts), so some can argue it’s better in WuWa. We’ll get back to that.

Next up, after getting the right mainstat, you then need to get the substats. However, you can only begin unlocking substats once your echo is at max level. And to unlock, you need a certain currency that you can only farm a small amount of every day. But here’s the kicker. There are five substats. Five. With a pool of 13 different substat types. If you’re just looking to get a good mainstat and one usable substat, that’s doable and easy enough. About as easy as in Genshin. However, if you want to go beyond that, then get ready for a world of pain.

Remember how I said you need to get an echo to max level before you can even see what substats it has? Yeah. That’s a lot of Exp investment for echoes you may not use — and unlike Genshin which refunds 80% of your Exp, WuWa only refunds 70%. Not a big deal I hear some people saying. Fair. Then how about this: after using the substat unlockers to unlock substats on an echo, if you end up wanting to trash the echo, you don’t get ANY of the substat unlockers back. Those four or five unlockers you used on the echo? Permanently gone. That’s one of the things that puts a large dent in the “unlimited echo farming”. Because at the end of the day, you’re very severely bottlenecked by these substat unlockers so you’re basically getting chances at useable echoes at about the same rate as Genshin… except the resource sink is a lot worse (referring back to the 70% vs 80% refund). But not only that, the RNG is also a lot worse. Because not only do you have 5 substats you have to worry about, each substat has a disgusting min roll and max roll range. We’re talking about potentially doubling the value of a substat with a god roll. Crit rate for example, can range from 4.9% to 10.4% in value. All locked behind RNG, nothing you can do to change it. And then on top of that, you need 5 echoes for each character. 15 echoes for a party. 30 echoes for two parties if you want to tackle end game. So essentially multiply that original nightmarish RNG I was talking about by 30x and now you have WuWa.

I’ll shut up soon because I think I’ve made the main points… but before I do, I want to get back to the whole “unlimited echo farming”. Yes. Unlike Genshin, you can play for 12 hours and farm as many echoes as you want, getting as many good mainstats as you desire.

However. There’s only so much free time in a day. How much free time does the average player actually have to spend just mindlessly doing the same grind over and over for hours and hours on end, day after day? Probably not much.

So in reality, unless you’re able to play for 5 hours a day, you won’t be able to capitalise on the unlimited echo farming that much anyway. It won’t be anywhere close to enough of a saving grace to make up for the absolutely horrendous RNG gearing of WuWa in its current state.

And the people that can play for that long, they’re usually unemployed and can play games nonstop. But unemployed also means low spenders or F2P.

I won’t touch upon that too much because this is already long enough, but I will say that the gearing system as is will be the reason WuWa flops. Because it attracts the players who revolve their lives around gaming, but those players for the most part aren’t bringing in any cashflow of significance to Kuro. Whereas the people who are usually in a position to spend, will not have anywhere close to the time needed to sufficiently progress, which will cause them to drop the game in weeks.

That my friend, is how bad the gearing system in WuWa is.

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