After 6 years still (or again) at the top is a big feat for Genshin. Deserved though, they have been incredibly consistent. It's like a perfectly running clockwork.
Genshin still a few banners that will surely end up as heavy hitters. Tsarita, Asmodeus (maybe), Dainsleif, Rhinedottir, Madame Ping, Alice, Signora, Capitano, etc. - some are almost guaranteed (Tsarita, Dainsleif) but any of the others, if they turn out to be playable, would make huge bank (ok maybe not Madame Ping but i bet she would still be popular).
I mean Natlan era was the one that they tried to do things extra way but it didn’t worked out. It still gave the devs experience and some of the features were developed to what we see in Genshin today. I can’t wholeheartedly say that Natlan was bad, it just wasn’t really my thing.
I loved Natlan World quests tho I think it was Natlan that saw a huge improvment on how they present world quests and since then it has only improved.
I feel like Natlan finale left a bad impression to a lot of people including mine....but tbh everything but the Finale was really solid Archon quest wise, it wasn't Nod-krai lvls of good but much better than Inazuma for sure.
I think the way they took the story was too much ‘Mavuika&friends feat. Capitano,mc and Ororon’ where Mavuika has the most screentime. But even then they didn’t do justice to her story since she’s such a cool and strong character inside out, failing to showed off her complexity of being the ‘perfect sun’ human archon (where she is too selfless that it hurts, they never managed to make people understand her at all if they didn’t read her character story and did some reading between the lines) was on them.
Otherwise Natlan was the nation that they started upping story presentation. Longer cutscenes with better quality, more characters animation like hugging or holding things, interactive maps for only story usages etc. Even the meeting point was born from the feedback of tribal quest. People praised Nod Krai to high heaven but without Natlan it wouldn’t have been that good. And I actually had so much fun with events and exploration. They can never make me hate Natlan.
Tbh they handled Capitano perfectly it was Mavuika that they fumbled. Capitano's entire life goal after the cataclysm was to die and since he had so many souls inside him that also needed to be put to rest he had an even greater responsibility and the way he challenged Ronova to trigger a paradox due to his curse was awesome to witness.
Right now he is certainly not really "Dead" his soul was absorbed by the Lord of the Night kingdom and that's also is what's powering her up to help her maintain Natlan's leylines.
I disagree. I find his story to be rushed and convenient plot device to spare Mavuika from dying. And I feel it didn't really help that he had so little screen time, and not doing much for most of the final archon quest, other than aura farming and dipping out.
Having an end of goal wanting to die feels like a convenient way to push him out of the spotlight and remove any potential for playability.
As far as his story and reasoning goes it all makes sense given the Kanriah'n lore...but at the same time having so little screentime is the result of the entire region story being cramped into just a few acts...that decision hurt all the characters tbh.
In retrospect, the only thing I wasn’t so enthusiastic about during Natlan was the AQ. The WQ remained excellent (even if I couldn’t care about the Little One at the beginning), the world designed remained interesting even though I didn’t like the idea of it getting more and more linear, and the lore remained great. The music too remained excellent. If you’d consider that a flop, that’s on you and your own expectations. I would’ve loved to see more melanin but from the few ones we got, Mualani and Xilonen are still among my favourite character designs in Genshin ever.
It wasn’t the most successful experiment definitely but I think it’s still a worthwhile endeavour by the devs if only to see what works and what doesn’t.
Considering how successful Nod-Krai and now Snezhnaya are, that makes only a single “flop” since they doubled down on scope since Sumeru. That’s a 80% batting average any RPG series would love to have.
They already had successful formula from Sumeru and Fontaine but still decided to try and bring changes, did different things for Natlan. And I gave them credit for that, no one can tell me the devs don’t love this game. It wasn’t all that successful and there were weird things but it was a fun ride. And the ending patch with Benny was perfect.
The entire discourse of Genshin allegedly phoning it in that has been so loud since Natlan is so confusing to me. If anything, how much they tried to mix up the gameplay and the world design are only showing they did the exact opposite.
The worst is that we had to wait a whopping 3 months just to play that Act V… which was disappointing. Act IV was great for an ending and Act V should have just been the epilogue, cuz we mostly ride the wave and beat that Abyss without much tactics or brain, just trust in the power of friendship. Then spent half the Act dancing and celebrating. Thankfully they learnt and upped their game for NK and Snez.
That's true dedication right there. Always great lore, which allows for great story, and great characters by every aspect. The snezhnayans are just too pretty
I'm convinced that part of the revenue comes from miliastra, and this is the reason for their stable income.
Since it's essentially a mode within the game, analytics can't separate the revenue sources in any way, but CN is very passionate about this mode, and in all likelihood buys up a bunch of skins.
I think it's pretty widely agreed most of it is from the Welkin moon.
Genshin is one of the biggest games in the world period let alone gacha, the amount of people with the pass keeps the game stable even on rerun only months like next month.
And honestly I can see it do that well for many many years to come. Even if they screw something over they have a lot of room to improve it because players will always come back for a character they like. It's the literal perfect recipe created during covid and maintained with precision to this day. It's like they know exactly to a milisecond when it's optimal to make the game go from "it's so over" to "we're so back" and vice versa
I lost interest in the game a few years ago tried to get back in but it has to manny of the post genshin gatcha game problems, to list a few static dialogue scenes, paimon, season mechanics, tedious events and low currency. Obviously genshin also did a lot for gotcha, added quality a world with returning characters, initially a fun elemental system, a slow steady pace of lore and evolving world. Good Voice acting.
its impressive that there fanbase stuck with them until the end. Whether it was timing or fomo or something to do on the train, they must be doing something right.
Genshin since Nod-krai has seen kind of a Renaissance....It is an old game made by developers that weren't as big as they are now so the jank is still present unlike their latest game ZZZ....but the improvement is also very much visible, story telling and presentation for example has seen a huge lift up....!!!
And Genshin story and lore is truly very interesting and so people stay with it.
Yea i actually played though the initial main quests of nod krai and agree its a step up, i do think paimon has killed it for me broke the camels back. I also think the changes to the fatui and how low quality i felt like sandrones model was, the story fell off a bit towards the end with the doctor ark, little things like that didn't help.
But i did appreciate the small improvements that were there,
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u/Malschaun2 6h ago
After 6 years still (or again) at the top is a big feat for Genshin. Deserved though, they have been incredibly consistent. It's like a perfectly running clockwork.