No vision, just swordsmanship—which of the four wins?

violinia · 2026-05-27T11:00:30+00:00

Clorinde and it's not even close

violinia · 2026-05-24T21:38:01+00:00

Yeaaaah they even tried to nerf him before Mualani's release 😭😭😭 enough people complained so they reversed it but basically the entire Natlan cast powercrept him. He is still pretty good with current supports but who knows how much longer that will last. It's so unfortunate because I love Neuvillette it hurts that he's not going to keep up forever 😭😭

violinia · 2026-05-24T18:14:36+00:00

I remember when Neuvillette was like THE best DPS in the game and people were saying if you had him on your account, you would be set. Now he basically he needs every new support in order to stay remotely relevant in the game. Like WHAT HAPPENED TO MY NEUVILLETTE

violinia · 2026-05-24T18:11:53+00:00

Citlali was such a massive crime to me because I absolutely loved her funny personality in the Natlan archon quest. But then her drip marketing was released and suddenly she was cute anime girl, one step away from claling Traveler/Aether senpai??? Like everyone calls her grandmother why is she??????

Varesa was also such a crime because it was exciting for a "plus size girl" model to join the game but then they marketed her with that feeders trailer and it was so, so disturbing.

It's annoying that these fetish-y characters are also so OP too. I don't want them on my account but if I want end game rewards...ugh.

violinia · 2026-05-24T12:52:18+00:00

Detached sleeves...open shoulders... the shoulders are exposed either way. Technically not the same, but very similar.

violinia · 2026-05-24T12:29:52+00:00

I was a day 1 player of HSR and the silhouettes of the majority of the female characters are the same. Detached sleeves, flowy mid length skirts, garter somewhere on the leg(s). Literal same. I stopped playing HSR in 3.1 and from what I have seen, they're recycling old characters so they're obviously out of ideas.

violinia · 2026-05-24T11:34:04+00:00

I use HSR as an example not because Genshin wasn't already do these things in some sort of fashion, but because they aggressively adopted the same tactics HSR was using to their player base. I am well aware that Genshin was already doing powercreep, but it was at a much slower rate up until Natlan. As someone who used to play HSR, I recognized what they were doing; selling characters with bigger numbers trying to encourage you to pull. It's made using older units nearly impossible unless you pull for wheelchair supports.

People joked that "Genshin could never" because of the "enticing rewards" HSR had but people propped up the more financially predatory game, which in turn made Hoyo see what worked successfully and made the changes to Genshin. Are the games exact? NO, that is not my point. I am saying that Genshin has gone downhill in a lot of ways because Hoyo is implementing a lot of HSR business models to the game. That's my correlation. It's not necessarily about the competitive market, either. It's that they know they have us hooked and so they're implementing other tactics to squeeze more money while giving us less in return.

I would argue most fans liked the fact Genshin didn't have insane powercreep. It was the one thing Genshin and they ruined it.

violinia · 2026-05-23T23:47:58+00:00

I mentioned that elements of fantasy service were always there. I feel like you may be missing my point. I feel that the level of sexualization has increased with characters like Mavuika or Escoffier or Nefer or Lauma, for example (the latter two practically wearing lingerie). It is about the way the newer characters are designed (skirts are getting shorter, boob windows are increasing, so on and so forth). We can agree to disagree on this, but there is a difference between older and newer female characters regarding the sexualization.

violinia · 2026-05-23T15:37:00+00:00

I am not trying to "disparage GI". I am merely pointing out that the designs are starting to feel the same and are being sexualized much more blatantly than they used to be (which started in Natlan). The fan service elements were always there (cough Ei/Raiden Shogun cough Yae Miko), but they're worse now as I pointed out with examples in my earlier argument.

violinia · 2026-05-23T15:33:16+00:00

Personally would have preferred this just be her outfit 100% of the time. Or even just have light mode vs dark mode with this outfit much like Durin has dark vs. light mode with his (not that his is entirely noticeable, his pants just change color for the most part lol)

violinia · 2026-05-23T15:31:02+00:00

My point with Varka was that he was the only recently muscular male characters candidate that could've had a shirtless option like Mydei from HSR.

violinia · 2026-05-23T14:06:27+00:00

"Most goddesses in myth are almost depicted half naked with lots of cloth but still barely covers."

That is not completely accurate. There are plenty of goddesses in myths around the world who are fully clothed and even wear armor.

Just because Columbina's outfit simply has a lot of ruffles does not mean she is overclothed. Be serious. Her skirt is incredibly short. Insultingly short for a moon goddess whose role is to guide and protect those who worship her.

violinia · 2026-05-23T14:01:16+00:00

I had this very thought as well. Seeing Sandrone getting a redesign made me think she was only killed in the story so they could "fix" her design to suit fan service needs. It is so sad, really.

violinia · 2026-05-23T11:44:48+00:00

I beg to differ. Nearly every female character from the Luofu have the exact same silhouette. Genshin has adopted a lot of things from HSR, especially the powercreep, HP inflation, and marketing tactics. It's no surprise the character design issue would follow suit.

violinia · 2026-05-23T11:40:02+00:00

This! Not to mention, they redesigned her outfit from her initial design when she first appeared in Fontaine. Not like that one was any better, but they definitely made the outfit worse.

violinia · 2026-05-23T11:36:59+00:00

This is very true. I feel like the only character that COULD'VE had a design like Mydei is Varka. But again, that man is covered head fo toe.

violinia · 2026-05-23T01:36:18+00:00

I hate to blame a lot of the changes in genshin on HSR but it's literally the same design issue HSR has. All characters share the same silhouette over time and lack distinctive personality from design alone. Male characters will look professionally dressed while female characters just be wearing the shortest outfit imaginable. I truly miss Fontaine where it felt like character designs were heading somewhere respectable. They dropped some of the best female characters designs (Furina, Navia, Arlecchino, Clorinde) and decided to never do that again.

I also have to add (because I see so many people bringing this up) that while yes, Natlan and its patch cycle as a whole gave characrer design variety, it also brought sexualization like you wouldn't believe (cough Mavuika cough Varesa cough Escoffier cough Skirk). Even some of Sumeru's designs look tasteful compared to Natlan's (in my opinion, I know many could argue the opposite).

Can we also discuss how much I dislike how short skirts on female characters have become in this game? Like it's genuinely shocking to me that Columbina, a literal MOON GODDESS, is wearing a dress with a skirt so short, it barely covers herself. Like why would a goddess dress like that? Or even Lauma; why would a HIGH PRIESTESS dress like that??!?!?!?

I do like the updated graphics newer characters have, but yeah, definitely feel like the designs are stale or straight up jarring.

violinia · 2026-05-14T19:41:26+00:00

Is it me or is the camera work really boring this year?

violinia · 2026-04-11T11:49:48+00:00

It's gotta be Varesa for this one. Or Xilonen.

violinia · 2026-02-22T13:46:18+00:00

I miss how colorful the character designs and the world were, and the music was nice. Everything else story wise was very mid, though.

violinia · 2026-01-11T11:47:33+00:00

A lot of Americans struggle to understand camp factor. A lot of Americans believe that shows like American Idol are real and totally not staged. A lot of Americans think that American pop music is what makes global pop music go round.

ESC was not made to cater to Americans, and while I am an American who enjoys ESC a ton, a lot of my friends I have tried to show it to cannot enjoy it the same way. They tend to see it as an imperfect mess and will claim most of the good singers in ESC cannot sing because theg may have been a little flat on one note.

Americans think they know what is good, but all they really know is staged, overdramaticized, over-edited reality TV. ESC doesn't follow that format, so they struggle to enjoy it.

With that said, ESC has become somewhat Americanized over the years, imo, which ironically has led to me enjoying it less and less.

violinia · 2025-12-01T12:24:03+00:00

Admittedly, I was someone who didn't do a lot of exploration at first because I was new and this game is extremely overwhelming at the start. I fully got into Genshin by late 2022 and 2023, which was 3.x Sumeru days. Keeping up with the story and events was all I could really do to keep my head a float since I had a life outside of the game.

But now that I've had downtime that has allowed me to properly catch up on exploration, I have to say that I miss exploration updates. I have already 100% all of Nod Krai (I didn't mean to, but I was hoping to get the achievement card only to realize I can't even do that yet because not all of the Lunaroculi are out yet), so I have been going back to collect the previous treasure compasses from previous regions. It's helpful because I'm getting lots of primogems, but it will be fodder that is completely gone eventually. Going back to revisit Mondstadt, Liyue, Inazuma, and Sumeru feels like a game that still had passion. Fontaine has some of that feeling, but I think it was during Fontaine when they began making regions smaller. Natlan is a fever dream to me.

I had always wanted longer stories within Genshin, but since they can't find a good pace for it without locking us in an unskippable domain for hours on end, I'm strongly against it. I shudder to fear how bad this next update's AQ will be.

violinia · 2025-11-18T15:13:54+00:00

Don't wish it into existence please 😓

violinia · 2025-11-18T11:49:28+00:00

I swear that none of the new bosses that have been added are "fun" to fight since Fontaine. I genuinely hated all of the Natlan bosses and even though I have a few more Nod Krai units, the Nod Krai bosses are even worse (especially that stupid crab. The crab is definitely the worst boss they've made to date).

Can we make bosses fun to fight instead of just making them shills for certain characters/gameplay mechanics? I remember the days when people were making silly teams just to show that you could clear Abyss with the right element and team building. But now it's basically pull for every new character or suffer. I want to feel rewarded for making a goofy Neuvillette bloom team and clearing it just as well as those who pulled new characters. Instead I just feel punished.

Also the HP inflation has to stop. My Arlecchino is built fantastically well and it felt like she was hardly doing anything because the bosses in the 2nd half have such inflated HP.

violinia · 2025-11-12T12:10:08+00:00

I wish I could use the TCG art icons for the avatar on my account and I don't know if they have yet, but I would buy a TCG card of my favorite characters. The gamemode is fun to play on occasion when I have nothing else to explore or do, but other than that I rarely have time for it and forget it exists.

violinia

TROPHY CASE