Most of the bitching is about Endgame and powercreep. Which effects less than 1% of players, and doesn't effect whales as they E6 every character anyway.
This is a weird argument. The best selling characters the majority of the time are the busted main push dps and the busted supports. If MBlade or Pearl were not very powerful then their sales would’ve dropped down like crazy.
Why would most players pull for meta if they weren’t planning on doing endgame at all???
It's almost like they plan for Meta characters to be some of the biggest, most popular characters to begin with. Like shock, most of the Push Characters turned out to be Emanators, the consistently most popular characters.
Maybe they make a character Meta because they were already planned to be popular?
- Tribbie has a child model, which is objectively less popular than a more adult female model. You'll never guess why she topped revenue charts.
- Ashveil is emanator level and the leader of the galaxy rangers, but put him between the flagship elation characters and down goes the revenue.
- Aventurine has been simped on by the female side of star rail revenue since his original version. Too bad his SP is one of the lowest selling characters cause he's the third elation dps after everyone already pulled either SW or Eva.
Edit: Not to mention, the devs would not be implementing this extreme powercreep and hp inflation in the game if they didn't think it was gonna boost their sales a lot.
Besides Tribbie (and there are always a few exceptions), you've listed 2 non-push characters who didn't do well. Aventurine was popular previously, but he was clearly playing second fiddle to Robin in his patch, who was popular and pushed for Meta and seemingly has done really well.
Meanwhile, each Push/Annie unit (Castorice, Phainon, Cyrene, SW999 etc.) have been massively successful, Meta and a clearly focused unit. Like honestly tell me when a massively popular push unit hasn't been Meta in HSR?
exactly, it’s not like you need to clear all of AA, it’s just cosmetic currency and resin. MOC,PF, and APOC are piss easy and it’s the only endgames that’s “worth” completing
You have to accept that the majority of people just do dailies every day and sometimes do story content in weekends or break days.
Let's be real, people care more about story content than presentation. Maybe it'd have been different if it was another open-world game but I never heard story presentation complaints when I play honkai impact because if the story is good then most won't complain.
Didn't say it did but at what point is it being mad at finding squares at a square factory.
HSR has always pursued that strategy of being a side and more time friendly game. Their MSQ philosophy is also another hoyo strategy which is more evident in the games with honkai in their title. Huge exposition dumps in the story building up to a climax which is usually a short animation.
All the criticism is valid but most people just don't hold them.
Exactly. If you don't like to get wet, that doesn't make a swimming pool flawed because it's full of water. It's just not for you, so don't jump in. If they take the water out of the pool, it's just going to disappoint the people who wanted to go swimming for the sake of someone who doesn't even like swimming pools in the first place.
Most people’s problem with the game is the swimming pool water has gotten dirtier and yet people still go to it. Genshin has no need to improve with how stable it is and yet it still goes the way to improve presentation, models, and events.
I hate the pseudo-intellectualism lingo brought by people in their search for a Genshin killer. All the made up and misused words to describe playing gacha games besides just calling them what they are, games with gacha mechanicms.
Games are always about perception. If people still enjoy the game then they will play it and have no reason to quit. Simple as that. Policing people who enjoy something because you stopped liking it is very negative and not a good mentality. It's closer to your analogy of going to a dirty pool but this pool is your Agenda Rail subreddit,
The hsr community deserves all the shit it gets. That community was the progenitor for toxicity even before wuwa came along. Let’s not act like that game has people who are like cattle willing to defend the game even when it bites them in the ass. They’re so ingrained in toxicity that their meta players think needing E2s for a character to be functional is normal.
I didn't really see anyone policing people for liking the game, but just posting their complaints about it. If you ask me, equating criticism about the game you like with policing is a worse mentality. You shouldn't feel attacked because someone had complaints about a game you like, particularly if those complaints are valid.
Also what on earth are you on about with pseudo-intellectualism? Can you explain what you mean by "all the made up and misused words" people are saying?
How does that apply to people who like the story or characters, but hate how the story is presented or paced, or how they can't use any of their favorite characters because of no content beside a very restrictive endgame?
There might be things you like about going to the pool. Maybe you like going down slides, but hate that you get wet on the waterslide? Your solution would be to take the water out of the slide so that you can go down without getting wet, while the people who like the presentation, pacing, and state of endgame would prefer you go to a park instead so that they can enjoy their thing the way they like.
Considering I only see this drama or criticism on the EN side makes me think the criticism is a lot more "subjective" rather than objective, just an observation
There's tons of complaints in CN and JP, not just EN.
But here's the important thing - whales are largely immune to the effects of gameplay negativity, they max out every meta unit any way, so they don't feel power creep or health inflation or whatever it is people complain about. They can still auto-battle everything.
Only the dropping story quality affects them, and there is an effect - HSR is down 30-40% year-on-year revenue. A single month isn't going to change that. Not even the next banner (November) doing well will change that. Compared to its 2024 heights (something like $700-800 million), HSR is down over 50% revenue, that's not "players not caring."
The trend will be different in a per game basis but most gachas follow a trend of being at the peak in launch and in the anniversary period then having a gradual decline as the years go by.
What's is one of the most contentious Genshin regions? Inazuma. What regions are in everyone's top list? Nodkrai and Fontaine. Genshin presentation, visuals, and everything else has improved since 2022.
But no banner today or then in Genshin would match the peaks of Inazuma and early Genshin. Does that indicate Genshin being at a worse form or perception since then?
It happens to all gacha games including Wuwa soon enough. Also really can't underscore the marketing campaign. Remember when you can't past a single youtube video without the white night ad playing?
But it's funny no matter how much people talk about the great decline of HSR, it still consistently stays at top 3 throughout the year when there's a new banner. Does it say more about HSR or about the current state of the genre?
Popularity and revenue doesn’t really equate to a good game unfortunately. No greater example than the Pokémon series. Hsr also doesn’t really earn as much as these revenue charts would like to say, there is a gulf between genshin and hsr in popularity and revenue but hsr is just the most easiest game to play on mobile, you could argue it’s a waste of space on consoles or pcs cause the visual difference with mobile is minuscule. Problem is people here use these numbers in mobile revenue for agendas.
Completely with you on the power creep point. It's definitely a problem for a lot of players because the game basically requires you to play emotionlessly as a F2P such that you skip chars you like to pull eidolons on the characters you use, or locks you into pulling for the exact favored "slop" teams if you want to clear endgame, which sucks for anyone who the min-maxxing isn't part of the fun. I'm very fortunate that I liked Firefly, Evernight, and Wolfie and focused on those three teams at the expense of other stuff, but if the characters you like aren't favored like those three (especially FF where I needed to invest only 1 cost to keep a 2 year old team relevant) well, then things can be quite a bit tougher.
But with respect to the lack of content, at a certain point people need to accept that genuinely there are players who actively like the lack of playtime juicing content. I'm among them tbh. I have a full time job, other commitments, and want to play other (non-gacha) games. Just give me the story, endgame, and then put the rest of the jades in the bag and let me go about my day. Part of the reason I fall off with other games and have stuck with HSR is because it doesn't require a ton of time to keep up so I don't have to be like "oh I could play this fun new game OR I could play a knockoff of Fall Guys, when I'm not even interested in playing actual Fall Guys."
With respect to story presentation, I AM also fundamentally with you there and think it could be improved, because it's not the most cinematic game, but for me at least the story, themes, and characters (especially this, I think the way the MC is less 'important' to the minute to minute narrative makes the other characters in HSR feel much more three dimensional because it gives so much time to letting their relationships with one another develop) override the more stilted way it's presented, but your mileage very much varies on that.
Also of note, this mo th both encapsulate Waven banner fully but also the brunt of Pearl who ranked higher in Asia.
The next month will essentially have nothing new since the better part of Pearl was for September
Meaning it would be better to look at the average rather than "woah it sells really well" "ah it crashed, games is doomed" but instead a more nuanced take
During 3.3 and 3.4 people were praising the story and music. But, I would not say HSR was getting praises left and right lol.
Remember people were still complaining about powercreep, hp inflation, Castorice global passive, black screen white text, story being too long, no voices, mid fate collab, etc.
I'm saying last month, the august thread, people said BA was fine because revenue increased(thanks to fes). but it's clearly not fine compared to where it was a year ago.
Thats easy to answer. Most of the team that made the game good left and now they are making AO. The game has been stagnating for years in both the story and gameplay. Nexon brought an ex EA suit and he changed the gacha. So now people are finally waking up and realizing the game they've been player has been incredibly mediocre for years without hope of improving.
yeah feels like people were too deep into their favorite girls to realize how bad things were getting. I stopped after the fuckass wall boss raid, no thinks this game isn't very good anymore.
No, Blue Archive is pulling normal numbers post-anniversary if you look into the raw data per region. The gacha system change hasn't really done anything. Also, GR's Steam Charts don't really have revenue nor include it AFAIK, so it's discounting that.
If cash grab = what Trailblazers want then sure? It just sounds like you're mad it wasn't what you wanted, lol.
I also think it's distinctly possible HSR could crash legitimately 50% of its entire playerbase and end up making more money. They're nickle and diming whales and pressuring dolphins more to spend with harder end game.
I don't think any games in this list will "fail" but they'll certainly have it's moments of fall in popularity. Especially with ToT and Hi3, possibly even zzz (which is really surprising tbh)
True but Star rail has seen a very noticeable revenue decline year on year tho, it might be this region that less hype ofc but we shall see how someone like aha does
Hsr really is the modern day fgo . The game may go to shit but there’ll be people whaling because they don’t care about the game other than pulling the characters.
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u/analcrasher101 6h ago
with the bitching and complaining lately you would think hsr was in the 30s lmao