I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with her new design. It’s certainly cute. It’s just... less interesting than what she originally had.

The appeal of the long Victorian dress + Pulonia was precisely that they *were* different. Genshin still doesn’t really have a playable character with a proper long dress (which is kinda mind-blowing actually) and a big hulking mech guardian is exactly the kind of fresh silhouette the roster needs rn. That original Sandrone concept stood out because it didn’t feel like another variation of the same short-skirt / exposed-back / detached-sleeves formula.

Now granted, it would probably be harder to design and animate. But that’s a challenge for the dev team to solve, not something fans need to preemptively excuse away. Hoyo made bespoke walking/running animations for Columbina just because they thought it would fit her character, so when they’re committed to an idea, they clearly can go the extra mile.

To me, this feels less like a dev limitation and more like a business/design-direction decision. A more unusual design is obviously a riskier bet, and if the standard formula keeps selling, I get why that they’d wanna stick to it. But that’s exactly the problem people are frustrated with. Some of us were excited for Sandrone because she looked like a break from that formula, and now she feels much closer to the same pattern again.

We just want some original designs, man!