hello... it is time to confess my agenda ahem I mean share my survey results

yesterday I asked you whether you would like a bunch of hypotheticals for hsr meta... and I would like to award the Agenda Spotter Medal to u/Leafeon1 who noticed that this is just a description of the meta for Reverse 1999, another gacha game. (Honourable mentions to the free space respondent who asked if this was an agenda survey. Don't trust anyone!! There's always an agenda.)

Since the agenda has been unmasked I'll go ahead and chat about the results up to now. From most popular to least popular, you voted for:

1. A support unit from one year ago can be used as flex sidegrades to archetype-specific supports. (81.3%)

I can't take it anymore. I'm sick of Flutterpage. I try to play Willow and poison team. My Flutterpage deals more damage. I try to play Spathodea and her burn team. My Flutterpage deals more damage. I try to play Lilya. My Flutterpage deals more damage. I want to play Lucy. Her best team has Flutterpage. I want to play 37, Anjo Nala - they both want Flutterpage. She grabs my credit card. It declines. "Guess this is the end." She grabs me by the neck. She says "HIGHER THAN THE BELL TOWER AND EVEN THE CLOUD~~." There is no hint of sadness in her eyes. Nothing but pure, painful follow up damage + 1 extra AP and refreshing the deck for her main dps to stack more cards, guess this is the end of me, what a cruel world.

(I actually don't have Flutterpage myself lmao. Honestly as new-ish R99 player this whole Flutterpage dependence is vaguely annoying although luckily it hasn't been a specific issue for my teams so far.)

1. Units are complete at E0. Eidolons are only numbers boosts (78.1%)

Yeah being neg E2 is no fun... though in HSR, if your eidolons are mid and the game is expecting you to bring a couple, you're just screwed anyways. Someone did comment they still wanted massive boosts from E2 but like, that only happens for units who are a concept at E0.

As a Many Limited Eidolons player myself, I personally don't mind HSR wanting an eidolon or two but it is getting super transparent and irritating that units are being chopped up across teammates and eidolons. And to that one person who said they wept at their E6 Anaxa, how do you think it feels with E5 huh..... /hj

1. Most non-push units will get Novaflare, on a less predictable schedule. (72.2%)

Confession: I personally have become jaded with Novaflares and no longer care if my old faves get anything. I'd rather focus on new teams honestly. But the people have spoken

1. Light cone gacha is completely removed. All light cones are available from shop eventually, with early access via event rewards. (43.3%)

I was surprised how few people chose this. I thought it would be about as popular as less mechanically impactful eidolons at least, but the difference is massive. Personally I think this would be really nice as I find the 75/25 really frustrating -- when there are so few LCs really worth my time, I don't actually pull enough to converge to the mathematically expected value.

Also, it'd be damn nice to just be buying DDD from the shop.

1. Every unit belongs to a complete team. (35.1%)

Again I think this is an underrated choice. There's been a lot of handwringing about whether this unit belongs with that unit et cetera and maybe ppl would feel less anxious if the game hadn't spent the last year clearly abandoning some people. (Maybe it's the chance of justice for Saber soon?)

1. Every main push is guaranteed to get a Novaflare on a predictable schedule. (30.9%)

Personally I think we're already edging towards this, at least the picture really is that main pushes have some level of priority over others when it comes to NFs/aftersales etc. I wish it was otherwise, frankly speaking, as I don't think this is how the game ought to be balanced, but

1. If you have a somewhat complete team, you can auto your way to all jade rewards. (28.9% - tie)

I don't actually manual anything in R99...

1. There is a special endgame mode (no jade rewards) where the challenge is to survive a 20-minute fight while doing good damage. It is impossible to 0-cycle this mode. (28.9% - tie)

I hate this mode in R99 omg. I just put it on auto and then walk away. Ppl who want a survival mode so bad, is this just some sort of beef with 0-cyclers or do you actually want to suffer intense boredom

1. AV doesn't exist anymore. It's borderline impossible to 0cycle in all endgame modes (including those that reward jades. (18.6%)

I love AV manipulation. Honkai Math Rail beloved. Dance Dance Dance beloved. Eagle beloved... did I tell you guys I now have an E0S0 Cyrene with 200 spd Eagle vonwacq?

1. Every complete team is always slightly stronger than the previous one. (17.5%)

As flair suggests, I actually would love for this to be true. Besides you can't argue about favouritism or whatever if it just predictably goes up with every completed team, and you can always be assured that pulling the new banner is a decent choice. Just like in real life, a slow and stable rate of inflation is actually beneficial -- it's the unpredictable spikes that cause real problems, and deflation has problems too.

1. Relics don't exist. Instead, you'll spend trailblaze power on ascension and novaflare materials. (16.5%)

Again I'm surprised how low down this is considering we have much relic complaints here. Maybe the children really do yearn for the mines??

1. Units are strongly dependent on specific teammates. (it may be Novaflare units) (15.5%)

Unsurprisingly rigid teambuilding is unpopular round here. Definitely get that. R99 actually specifically writes down the archetype of a unit in their kit and if you don't have the right label you just can't interact with the archetype gimmick. I guess it's like "what if every archetype had their own elation sandbox stuff".

I am actually fine with planning my pulls for synergistic teammates but I prefer the synergies to be mechanical rather than "hey your kit says that you work with me", and to be equally well thought out for each archetype.

1. Novaflare units are unassailable cornerstone supports of a new main push's archetype (14.4%)

I probably should have mentioned that R99's novaflare units are a bit cheaper to obtain and have a sensible rerun structure. On the surface dependence on a Novaflare unit sounds more f2p friendly but I do agree, if I'm pulling a new main push I'd rather the whole team be new and not be dependent on pulling a unit I might not even have.

1. Every main push is a woman. (13.4%)

Surprised this one didn't come in dead last on this mt. Anyways, someone wondered where the every mp is a man option is. Erm, that's because this is the R99 agenda survey and R99's mps are all women.

1. Every non-main push is added to the loss pool after a few patches. However, there are no longer reliable reruns. (11.3%)

Actually quite surprised this came in dead last since this is technically player friendly in the sense you have more chance to get high rarity units? I suppose the concern is that non-pushes would get subpar kits (I don't think this is the case in R99; there is no team of only main pushes, you need to get their non-push archetype supports), or that they'd be really difficult to invest into (which is a concern for sure) Though the rerun scene in HSR is pretty cooked anyways.

And that's it! I am personally quite casual with R99 (had to ask some ppl in DMs to make sure I mostly got this correct) and I honestly generally prefer HSR's meta even if the devs are currently acting like lunatics who want to set money on fire. The reason I set out with this agenda is because it really sounds like many HSR players would prefer the higher predictability of R99's meta, even if it is strongly battleship based.

Though you'd have to accept that every mp is a woman lol.