A bunch of videos popped up in my YouTube recommendations regarding what seems to be a mutiny of sorts that started in the CN community after the recent 4.4 livestream (these livestreams cover the upcoming new content, events, banners, and various other details). Since this update will also be including the annual Lantern Rite festival (which also coincides with the real life Chinese New Year), miHoYo also dropped some information regarding the rewards. Rather than me typing out this stuff, it’s just better to watch/listen to a content creator go over what happened (the following are just two of many videos covering this).
This has unsurprisingly begun to spill over to the english community which also has two of the game communities that miHoYo develops, at each others throats (on Twitter, YouTube comments, Twitch chat, etc). Now I try to stay out of drama like this (not worth the time) and the last time I covered Genshin related drama was back during the 1st anniversary event (in 2021) where the western player community went ballistic over the rewards. I spelled out how I felt about that whole thing in that post. I ended up following that up with TWO more postings: this one, and this one when miHoYo actually relented. Basically for myself, I don’t expect anything from these game companies (because the industry has proven itself to be led by mostly greedy bottom of the barrel scums that are better known as gaming executives). And since I am normally not into gacha style games, my experience with most other genres is the only time we see free stuff is as compensation (or very minimal stuff on its anniversary).
This new thing is pretty much the above again where miHoYo has shown that they really learned nothing from that previous drama (and I am actually wasting time again writing up all of this dreck). When a person or even a company shows you what they are the first time, believe them (so I kind of expect the minimum with most game companies).
The other thing with this drama though is the war between Genshin and HSR players. I play both but as I’ve also written before, I play them my own way. As I also noted (when I first tried HSR), I didn’t really care for the combat being turn based but changed my mind after a week of play when I found that it (plus 2x auto combat plus all of the QoL stuff) fit the casual potato playstyle I had switched to in recent years. Also during the time when Diablo IV was about to launch, I wrote this post that now is obviously wrong (regarding the lack of tribalism between Genshin and Honkai). I briefly mentioned that based on my observation at the time (compared to the constant war that happens between Diablo II and Diablo III, and PoE and Diablo III). With Diablo IV now being in the mix (with its own problems due to yet another new design team), some of that tribalism has included this latest version.
This kind of warfare is as old as Buick versus Chevy versus Ford versus Mercury versus Dodge versus Plymouth versus brands from Europe versus brands from Japan. And within this, you have wars between models. No different with guitar and drum brands. If you are into cooking, I would not doubt there are wars between cookware brands. In gaming, it’s also a given (which is why it’s funny because it’s bonkers that some believe it is sacrilege to play games that in their mind, are competitors). There’s a territorial component that is wired into our beings where there is an instinctual need for many to defend the superiority of that which they own/use, play, listen to (the Metallica versus Megadeth debates never fail to amuse me), etc. In my case, I usually tell those people I don’t give a shit what they think (it’s my time/money so I will do as I please with it). And like many, I do have an opinion, and will try to give my fair assessment (this blog is full of hot air about just that when it comes to the games I play or stop playing).
Now I did mention that HSR has a whole lot of QoL improvements that just streamlines a lot of the game systems (like completing your dailies is cake in HSR or farming for your various character and weapon ascension materials is just so much better in HSR). There’s a lot of this sort of stuff that has never been implemented in Genshin (or very slow in coming). It’s why I stopped filling in those surveys back in 2021 (but it became obvious to me when I started playing HSR, that a lot of that feedback had been implemented in that game). I’ve managed to pull most of the 5-stars I wanted in HSR without spending money because my Stellar Jades pile up relatively quickly (even though it utilizes nearly the same formula as Genshin with how you earn Primogems). But then again, I know with Genshin, I do tend to not do a lot of events (because they are just too long in the tooth whereas any event that is combat related in HSR, is 2x auto’d while I do other things). But yeah, I do agree that the Genshin development team could do a better job with bringing a lot of these streamlined QoL features to their game. Oh and yes, I did notice they gave us a free 5-star in HSR (Dr. Ratio). I didn’t think much of it though. Additionally, I’m about 100 pulls away of being able to select my free 5-star from the standard banner (don’t think Genshin had a system like that though maybe it was sort of covered with the amount of free Primogems they gave out during the launch window). Yes, I know some of the warfare comes from what some view as unequal treatment. But I digress…
IMHO, all of the unfollowing and review bombing aren’t the steps that are needed to get miHoYo to really do a self-reflection on how they approach rewards. Relenting and trying to give out better rewards doesn’t solve the root cause issue since it’s a short term bandaid fix. The longer term issue is the way the company views how it should reward their loyal player base. Now I can pretty much guess how an executive who is making over 7-figures, views this. Most will be like “these players are so ungrateful when we made this gesture that they should be thankful we give them anything at all”. The reason is the average executive mindset; it’s all about the bottom line (revenues and profit margins) versus showing actual sincere gratitude to their customer base (the written stuff is just PR to make it look like they care). Yes, there are some exceptions, but those folks are rare (and even more so in the gaming industry).
As I wrote before, the main thing these company execs will jump in panic to is when key game metrics (with regards to engagement) AND revenue numbers drop into a chasm. It therefore requires a combination of not even playing, but also not spending any money on the game because as I mentioned before, miHoYo executives (like most gaming industry leaders) know they have a mostly captive audience (where a good percentage of that pays little attention to drama like this). So far, no other game in this genre has been able to take actual share away from Genshin. Tower of Fantasy was not it (it has its own niche). Some folks are hoping Wuthering Waves will unseat Genshin. It’s possible, but will still be a tall order because miHoYo/HOYOVERSE has HOYOMIX (the music is a big part Genshin). I know one thing; I have no intention of taking up Zenless Zone Zero (miHoYo’s upcoming new franchise) because playing three of their games that draw on a similar formulae for its release cycle, is going to be too much.
I will probably just do a short single followup to this when 4.4 goes live (to see and report on what miHoYo does in regards to this whole thing).
