Genshin doesn't get talked about much here, are there any of you who have been playing it?

I only jumped in late last year so maybe i'm bearing the fruit of years of development, but this game is insane for a free to play and some of its stories have been genuinely memorable and emotional, i might also be at the perfect part of the game for this event to hit hardest.

Some spoilers for the event and the quests surrounding it

It was only a few weeks ago i was introduced to Shenhe and Ganyu and their social disconnect with regular people, so their sort of unofficial "family" under a god's guidance as a part of this quest was a sweet little part of it, Cloud Retainer getting a (beautiful) human form has been hilarious, her hesitating to play with the childs toy in public was adorable, and doing jobs with Gaming (which i'm pronouncing gah-ming), finding out about his feud with his father, hatching a plan to mend their relationship, then all leading up to the Lantern Rite festival itself where everybody comes together was WAY too sweet a moment, and yes i cried. The game has an uncanny abililty to make me care for these characters in short concise questlines.

Maaaan, i don't know what i'm doing i just wanted to give it some deserved praise, i'm rarely emotionally involved in games these days, and i'm just constantly confused why this free to play game, in theory designed to take your money, is the one that's doing it, this has been my experience from the beginning there are so many stories i want to gush about. I'm sad about the previous events i missed, maybe i'll read up about them once i'm more familiar with the rest of the characters.

I played Genshin for about a year starting around when it first came out. Eventually I gave it up because the F2P gacha monetization was just too oppressive (I quit shortly after the second section of Inazuma had unlocked and I had explored it all, I know they've added a lot more world since).

But the great tragedy is that, save for that incredibly shitty monetization, it really is a pretty fantastic game. Gameplay-wise it's very Zelda, but without some of the mechanics that annoyed me intensely in those games, like weapon durability and rain draining your stamina more (in effect, addition by subtraction). The world is large and fun to explore and run around in (well, at least until you get all chests and collectibles, because nothing respawns, so afterwards it becomes quite barren, though still very pretty). And the writing, while mostly fairly generic and tropey, does have its moments, and is all-in-all better than average.

In a better world this dev team would be devoting their talents to a non-predatory game, and I would be enjoying the heck out of it. Sadly, we do not live in that world...

I have a question about the monetisation, i've seen others complain about it too and i feel really stupid because i haven't encountered it yet.

I think the game gives you as part of normal questing something like 6 or 7 characters? So that you have at least one of every element, i've unlocked 2 more characters for free as event rewards, and from spending the in-game currency for wishes i now have 31 characters, i haven't spent any real money yet, there's no popup BUY NOW BEST DEAL screens and the shop is hidden behind the wishes menu.

So i feel like, is the money making scheme that they have you interact with all the characters to make you want them? Beyond liking characters the game hasn't pressured me into spending anything, i guess you might want stronger characters if the game is too hard but you can lower the world level to make it easier, and like i said i've got 31 characters for free so... i don't know, i like collecting the materials to level them up...

Maybe i'll hit something shitty at some point, but as a F2P game i've been expecting to hit that for probably over 100 hours.

@cikame: I mean, the game certainly pressures you to get new characters in the sense that the 5-stars are usually much better, and their pull rates from banners are appallingly low, so that if there's a character you want, good odds you won't have the currency to get them. And turning down the world level doesn't help if you want to progress you characters, which you can only do by fighting the higher level bosses. Also, good luck beating the Spiral Abyss without some real bangers.

But IMO the worst part of the F2P nature of the game is that it doesn't actually let you meaningfully progress after you've done all the one-time gameplay. I.e., once you do all the available quests, collect all the little floating thingies in each zone, and find all or at least most of the treasure chests, then the only things you can do to progress require spending resin, which recharges on a timer. Even if you never spend money on resin (I never did), a lack of it effectively stops you from playing the game. Sure, you can run around and collect ore and fight random enemies, but the XP for enemies is so miniscule as to be meaningless, and eventually I literally maxed out on some types of ore.

That's largely why I quit shortly after Inazuma had been fully released and I'd explored it all. There was nothing left for me to do except wait for more content, and log in every day to spend my resin, which caps off in less than 24 hours, but can be completely used up in about half an hour. This is a thing gacha games do, incentivize you to keep logging in and playing every day for engagement, so that you're more likely to spend money... but also keep you from playing as much as you want, so that you're left frustrated and wanting more. All part of the psychological warfare.

Admittedly, now that it's been a few years, I'm sure they've released enough bespoke content to keep me occupied for quite a while if I logged back in. New regions to explore and quests to do, etc. But I have enough to occupy me without jumping back into a game that's been deliberately made worse to service its monetization.

I don't know to what extent this is still true, have not played in some time, but for the longest time a lot of top teams were F2P focused and even if you did pull 5*s they were just slotted into those F2P teams as augments anyway.

Genshin is a game that is best played casually and then put down for a while when you've done the latest content. The more you try to squeeze out of it the more you run up against those annoying limitations.

@efesell: I mean, all the characters are F2P, though you're going to end up with all the 4-star characters pretty quickly since they're so much more likely to appear, and some of them are guaranteed to get through non-gacha (though getting all of their "constellations," which sometimes really make a difference, is another matter). And yeah, my understanding is that some of the 4-stars continue to be great for support, e.g. Xingqiu and Bennett.

But for me at least, when I was playing by far my most important characters were Ganyu for damage and Zhongli for defense--both 5-star characters. Those two were so good that it felt like the rest of the team barely mattered except for elemental affinities. It has been quite a while, though, and I'm sure I wasn't completely hip to all the hottest meta nonsense at the time.

I don't know much about it just some basic research, but there's something people call the "pity system" where every 70 pulls you get a 5 star, it's helped me get a couple of the 5 stars i wanted and it's nice to know there's SOMETHING there to prevent you not getting a top tier character forever. I guess i can see how a weaker willed person who has put significant time into the game would fall for the gacha trap, those characters only come around a few times a year, it's best to go in knowing you can't get everything and play it casually.

I can see how completing all the story content wouldn't leave you with much to do but that's kind of been my experience with all games that supposedly have an "end game", once i'm done with the story i usually move on, i don't know how people can play repeatable stuff forever, so once i'm done with the bespoke content in Genshin i'll probably move on to something else, doing the dailies and spending the resin is helping to drag out that process so i can earn more characters :D.

Thanks for sharing your experience, i needed to know more about the negatives cus i thought i was going crazy, i really hope whenever this game gets taken offline in the future it can be repackaged into a regular purchaseable game, unlike many F2P's that are simple treadmills there's so much here that's worth preserving.

I haven't finished the Lantern Rite storyline yet, but I think I see where the story is going in terms of the new character, Gaming. But on to the meat of this discussion. I can only speak for myself, but as someone who has been playing Genshin Impact regularly now, even replacing Warframe as my number 2 live service game, I've yet to get trapped by the monetization factor in the game. I'm at Adventure Level 55. Furthermore, I have a lot of characters I've unlocked over the couple of years I've been playing. Been lucky enough to pull some top tier 5-star characters overtime, with the latest being the Raiden Shogun, who was available last month and was a character I've been trying to get for some time. I've been able to upgrade my characters that I mainly use to make them strong enough to endure World Tier 8 battles, the highest Tier in the game so far.

I've done all of this, without spending a cent on the game. I haven't gotten any battle passes. Not only that, but I didn't pay for any in-game currency to boost any of my characters. Or used real money to pay for wishes. I get by simply by grinding, which itself is not that bad compared to other games I can mention. The whole Genshin Impact will take all your money to play it like you should, is one of the biggest lies ever told on the internet. The reason I stick with it, is because it doesn't do any of that. Once you reach a certain AR level, the whole game opens up to you, and you can just play it normally. I also play Destiny 2 a lot, and you must spend money to do anything meaningful in that game. You have to get the battle pass and the expansions if you care anything about the storyline. You don't have to do this in Genshin Impact. Final Fantasy XIV which I've yet to play, but might one day, is another example. Millions of people are playing this game, I'm willing to bet that most of them aren't clearing out their life-saving just to advance doing so.

And Paimon rules.

@av_gamer: I got Raiden on my first pull :P, not to... rub it in or anything, i actually wanted Chevreuse then on my 2nd pull i got her twice, that was a good banner.

So far the only thing i could say it's guilty of is having the option to spend money, put a store in any game and there will be people who spend too much, but i've been pressured to spend more in games like For Honor and Call of Duty more than Genshin, Diablo Immortal was pretty gross, i've seen the monetisation in Diablo 4 and that's pretty off putting too, you could ignore it but knowing it's there sucks.

edit: Oh my god i just remembered a spent a couple months playing Dungeon Fighter Online that was craaaazy with store ads.