In my previous posting, I briefly mentioned the designed power creep aspect in the staggered progression systems that rears its head at Adventure Rank (AR) 25 where your World Level is 1.
I kept myself capped there since up until that point, I did not realize that I needed to ascend my AR via a quest (which upon successful completion, would also raise the cap on my World Level). I kept it capped until I could farm some character ascendancy materials (since at World Level 1, these elite world bosses are level 37).
This designed power creep means you need to keep your core party of characters, their weapons, and their artifacts leveled, and that you run these elite bosses to make sure you have enough mats before you hit these AR caps and run the quest to raise your AR and World Level caps. I finally ran the AR Ascension quest since I was nearing 30K of accrued adventure XP. The final timed challenge required completing the level 35 Electro Hypostatis boss in 8 minutes. Having done the open world version (level 35 at World Level 1) several times, it wasn’t a problem.
Successfully completing the dungeon ranked me up to AR 29 and World Level 2 due to the accrued experience. What sucked is that I was only a small amount away from hitting AR 30 (which would be World Level 3). That puts those elite world bosses at level 50. And I’m running into that conundrum of leveling up at least 3 other characters and burning through Mora (gold) and artifact fodder.
Like most of these free to play games, when you first start, the game throws a lot of freebies (from launch events) at you where it’s a small dopamine fix. My in-game mail had all of the promo stuff which felt like a flood at the time. But you slowly begin to peck through all of it. It’s not like my roster of characters is huge; it’s the main traveler + initial 3 free ones from the main story quests, Barbara (the promo running until patch 1.1 where you get her upon reaching AR 20), Noelle (the Beginner’s Wish pull), Xiangling (the people’s choice event where you get her for completing Spiral Abyss Floor 3 Chamber 3), and Razor (my only successful pull from a regular Wanderlust Invocation Wish). Short tangent here (which really should be in another posting).
The pull rates are pretty bad. While there is a guaranteed 4-star or higher item or character with every 10 wishes, most of the pulls in between were the same 3-star trash weapons. If you are one of those types (like me) that have really bad luck with RNG, it’s going to take a lot of pulls to get the characters that you want. I have nearly 10K Primogems built up (from promos and from in-game earnings). Intertwined or Acquaint Fates (used for Wishes) cost 160 Primogems so that’s approximately 62 pulls that I can do at this time. Besides Noelle (which was guaranteed in the first 10 Beginner’s Wishes), Razor was my only out of the next 20. If my RNG is 1 character per 20, that potentially means 3 more. And knowing my kind of bad luck, I will pull the same duplicates (which from reading others experiences, is normally going to be Amber).
That’s just how it goes at times; I still remember how I went almost 2 months in Diablo III: Reaper of Souls after it launched in March 2014, butting up against the fail safe… and getting the same crap legendaries over and over. I never got a set drop (not even Blackthornes) during that same period. It was one of the most frustrating experiences of poor RNG where I stopped playing in June 2014 (and then played on the PTR and saw drops that never did drop on live). It’s why I stayed away from loot boxes (I did try once in TERA to try to get a xmas themed weapon skin and ZILCH).
My point is that with my type of luck, I’d likely need to spend over a thousand bucks just to get the characters I want in Genshin Impact. The money for me isn’t the problem. I just do not believe in spending that amount of money on games designed around the gacha mechanic. To be more frank, I don’t like to “whale” in these free to play games because it only incentivizes these companies to design the games monetization around rates that are solved by throwing tons of money at the game (I know that this the reality anyway but I’d prefer not to be part of the problem for this sort of predatory business practices).
And I think people can see how predatory the design really is in this game when you are trying to get 5-star characters and weapons from these pulls. I know there are some who will go through the hassle of creating a lot of accounts (sort of a meta-game in its own right) and use the freebie promos to try to get a decent set of character/weapon pulls, but that isn’t for me.
Digressing, miHoYo did a really great job with the initial and early hook leading up to AR 20. A little after that, you become more cognizant of the specific grinding that you need to do. And it’s far worse for those who have blown past the story quests and the chests in the open world (which seem to have very long reset timers). So once you’ve collected all the Anemoculus and Geoculus (which I did in a little over a week of casual play), and tracked down most chests (I stopped doing this so that I’ll always have something to do), you are at the point of having just a small amount of grind to do (since you are limited with Resin).
The content update coming in a few weeks with version 1.1 (likely a new element type with new statues to find and level up) will only provide a short period of new exploration. I know this is a single player game (with limited co-op) but it’s still being designated as a service so they are going to have to continue to find ways to keep players engaged. For those who enjoy this sort of power creep design, I suppose they’ll be fine. For myself, I may just decide to stay capped at the next AR ascension rather than stay on the hamster wheel (depending on how future quests are gated).
