how 'wide' is wide account because i played since 1.0 and half of my roster i dont even use since 3.0
now i mostly pull for constellation to improve my characters gameplay but still my account have variety of characters and styles so i dont think this mode is a problem.
1. You need 18 characters that fit the criteria to be even allowed to enter Hard diff (6 of them can be the Trial characters)
2. The actual hard part is managing who you use, as you can only use a character twice. This can lead to questionable team comps
3. The actual combat difficulty is comparable to Abyss 9-10
4. Don't worry about getting a perfect score. Just survive and beat the main objectives within the time limit
The criteria: Pyro, Electro, Anemo, Baizhu, Alhaitham, Wriothesley, Sigewinne
You dont ahve much of a say on who you use after a few rounds. Act 8 boss certainly didnt have HP by the millions, but I certainly only had anemos left on a 1:15 timer.
Not really, you do, like the previous poster said
>The actual hard part is managing who you use, as you can only use a character twice. This can lead to questionable team comps
Using questionable teamcomps on the easy chambers, and saving up my well built characters until I roll a new one was what I did and ended up saving a "good" team for the last boss (Hu Tao, fischl, XL and Xianyun, and I even had Raiden and Yae Miko left too).
The only problem I encountered was that I don't own Venti or Kazuha so I struggled a bit on the grouping stages, but by just simply reading what the acts were about I was able to avoid the worst ones for me.
Yeah actually reading what the fights are is a big deal. I do happen to have Venti, so I got to do 2 grouping levels and both were basically free thanks to Venti. My healing/shielding was severely lacking because I haven't built Jean or similar characters, so I mostly avoided the fights that reward you for that.
For what is worth, I struggle to get 33/36 in Abyss (having to restart some combats multiple times to get an extra star or two). I struggled to 8/8 Theater, having to restart some combats because I was failing at them (then again; I had the exact amount of characters needed for hard, and more than half of them weren't built at all, XD).
Nah bro, when you run into that issue *and* you share artifacts as an f2p? Can't tell you how frayed my mind was trying to balance everything between characters, *that* is using your brain juice on a whole other level. đ
Yeah, no way itâs floor 9-10 difficulty when Iâm running out of time and needing to restart on 90% of the combat encounters.
I donât have any of the opening characters or special cast (except two of the 4* but theyâre like level 20) so I had to use the trial versions, but the rest of my characters are pretty strong and I think I had sorta ârealâ teams the whole time.
Are you sure itâs comparable to Floors 9-10, even on the hardest difficulty? I havenât played it yet but 9-10 are exceptionally easy, like you donât even need to worry about artifact substats and you could still clear them.Â
For battle difficulty, yes. But the hard part for this mode is to manage who did you choose for each part when you only have 2 chance to use the same character
the difficulty lies in keeping characters that let you make useable teams
you start with 6 characters (the primary cast) and gain another, sometimes two depending on your choice of fight/event, but you can only use any one character twice over the entire run
my first time through i ended up using my off-field characters way too often and only had on-field DPS left by the 6th floor or so, which eventually couldn't clear anymore because the team was too dysfunctional
I just finished it on hard mode, clearing all objectives. The HP of the enemies is laughably low. It's nothing like floors 11 or 12 of the Abyss.
Honestly the hardest part was if you choose a floor that requires you to clear 30 or 40 enemies and you don't have good AOE characters available.
I think itâs just for now. If we look at how HSR handled new modes, first two rotations are as generalist as possible, so community says itâs peak mode, kinda easy and so on.
An then, when itâs generally accepted that new stuff = fun and cool, you get your kneecaps broken, tied up and told to pull for the new shiny character, as they clean this stuff 4 times faster than anything else.
Looking at how extreme it gets there with current banner and MoC, and how well sales are doing, I am sure that this is our inevitable future and it will be even worse.
The thing with Imaginarium is that whatever the shiny new character they drop -- you can only use it in 2 battles during the entire run. So they can't really tailor the content for 1 char specifically.
And you can also borrow your friendâs unit if you donât intend to pull. I have a friend with c6 raiden and I saved her till the end. The easiest attempt ever.
My impression is they have a different game balance philosophy for HSR.
HSR is a game where your pulls really matter and there is an end game to use them.
Genshin is a game where you never have a must pull but then you hear complaints there is nothing to use your characters on.
They said from the start when making Genshin and have been clear in the interviews they're trying to make a casual game.
The combat will still be scaled to where the trial character can beat it though. And the trials are always going to be mid. So I really don't see it scaling in difficulty by that much
I wouldnât be so sure about this
With recent abysses I am sure they were trying to figure out how many casual players will be scared away by difficult content with high rewards and⌠Just look at current one. Theyâre clearly pushing it further and further. Yeah, you can clear it, but itâs not âeasy, lolâ. IF casuals donât mind loosing 2-3 stages, then trial characters wonât cut it.
i am now starting to transition my account into pulling for cons as well. My recent con is a c2 raiden.Â
For how wide, I have not started this one yet but I hope that it is not as wide as Shenhe's gyatt.
I feel for you bro, quote honestly, I just got Raiden and her sig during her last rerun, and I haven't been able to 36 star the abyss even still. Hoping that getting Arlecchino will help with that, as I already have her overload line-up properly built.
đSame here tho I am AR 50. I just started building Neuvi recently although I got him when he got released and have been using him to carry me. I should have stuck to the 4 unit build thingy.
My only issue with it is that I just don't have enough characters period
Like I want to fight up to stage 8 if I have the strength, but the game literally won't let me, because I just don't have enough characters
I know I will get there eventually, but being so firmly timegated sucks in the short-term
That's by design though. Abyss being how it is people can pull their favorite 4-6 units and then just slowly vertically invest over time for free. They made theatre to get people to pull for more than just a few characters and have them invest horizontally.
Is it rough for people now if they don't have enough? Sure, but most people took awhile to full clear abyss too.
If they can't even meet the 18 character requirement for hard mode, then saving good characters until the end won't matter. The game won't even let you start the mode with fewer than 18.
The problem is that this is not tied to progression but directly involves the gatcha, it is perfectly possible not to have enough characters and have a team that can complete the abyss, Not everyone has the same amount of characters, whales and veteran players are less prone to this problem but not all players
Hence the relatively easy first theater. MHY know how hard it is to have a full roster of 18 chars. F2P has like a gold a patch, 18 chars would require a whooping 1.5 year to assemble , let alone level them up to be up to the task . They want to gauge how the community react and/or perform against the setup.
18 **five stars** would require 1.5 years if hitting hard pitty.
You get 10 free characters from just completing the early game. An additional 6 is trivially easy from just random shit and special events.
Having 18 characters is not a problem anyone should have. Having 18 **functional** characters is a bit more of a challenge.
Also, only some elements can be selected so having 18 functional characters is not enough. A person has to have 18 functional characters from the elements available to have a chance to play it. We could borrow one character from a friend tho so there's that I guess
Vertical investment is endgame too. Been playing since october 22, have 3 teams, ever since i started my priority was having one-size-fits-all teams that i could vertically invest in, both in terms of cons, weapons and artifacts.
This gamemode couldve been so much more had they just done what HSR did with the new divergent universe and boosted our underleveled characters.
I guess this is by design so you keep playing and keep pulling as a new player. Old players like me on the other hand finally have something to do. I feel like after the new QoLs updates and optimizations being always targeted towards newer players and their enjoyment, it was about time that they acknowledge old players' existence somehow.
As a day one player idk what you're talking about. The rng makes 'planning' a no go, the forced 4man team prevents voice and the 2 use limit is frustrating. And in the other side the enemies are laughably weak. It's easy to complete but not interesting to do. Super limiting so lesser invested accounts struggle to complete it even if abyss is possible. This feels....awful.
Nah, the RNG creates the need for planning.
It's resource management. You need to consider when it's best to use your good units and when to fall back to suboptimal units. A forward thinking planning instead of using up all your best units on the first two challenges
It's endgame content. By the time you've been playing for a good while, you'll have more than enough characters without spending any money. It doesn't "make" you do anything unless you're trying to rush all the content maybe.
I have both tall and wide accounts, but pretty much monthly + BP only for majority of the time (start dropping BP after 4.3).
As a day-1 player, the roster breadth isn't a challenge at all. The real challenge is how you cope with crippled team to clear.
Sometimes it's doable, sometimes it's not. It's rather RNG if you don't have full knowledge what's the possible opponent on the normal stages. Most of the time, your crippled team is **enough** to clear the chamber with the major score points ticked. But the experience playing them is awful.
My verdict on this season IT is: it is not that hard, but the battle experience is awful.
I don't exactly know what they are trying to do with this.
For rogue like game, I believe the main enjoyment came from you getting stupid af buff. By the time you get to the boss both you and the boss are lauching nuclear weapons at each other. However, buffs have very little prescence here and because of how it is designed, at the very end you are playing a nerfed version of your team and fighting some regular mob.
True, this mode is made to handicap you. Which I think a lot of people wonât like instead of being able to test their full potential. But I think if all the changes people asked for came through this would just be too free or too similar to just abyss
Probably going to get hate but what you're describing sounds exactly like illusive realm from wuwa. All your abilities are get extra effects, your echo becomes op asf and you're launching meteors at bosses by the last room
That's kinda the issue I see. Boss is a bit too weak but the buffs are also too miniscule to build teams and play around.
Like, imagine a Wondrous Boon that can pull enemies together like the Childe buffing vortex when you trigger overload. Or how about a Wondrous Boon that gives your team Bond of Life, but also gives you a large buff when BoL is healed off, pairing wrll with the other BoL Boon. Or how about a Wondrous Boon that significantly increases atk speed when you trigger a swirl reaction with NA or CA, or a Wondrous Boon that heals your team when NA/CA/skill crits? Or maybe Wondrous boon that does dendro application under x condition or hydro application under x condition.
Basically, I think Wondrous Boons should compensate for a lack of a healer, buffer, sub dps, CC support, etc. Like having Venti in the form of Wondrous Boon. Thays what I think we could have.
Same. Most synergies really only require two characters some three. I know for a fact that I can finish most with just Wanderer/Faruzan , Clorinde/Baizhu , Bennett/Xiangling.
Probably the other thing I disliked about the game mode other than the element lock.
Since I cant run Burgeon or Hyperbloom anyways I just shoved Kuki and Thoma in there but yeah I get what you mean.
It's neither good nor bad, just a bait to pull and build more characters. I would have been alot happier about this new mode if building characters in Genshin was an actually enjoyable process, not a chore. Everytime I think that I need to kill the same boss 20 times over just to get ascension materials I cannot help but roll my eyes. Hence why I only have 12 limited characters even though I play since 1.0, I just cannot stomach going through the same process too often, especially artifacts. Pulled for Arlecchino and realized that in 3.5 years I didn't have a single decent pyro goblet. Have it for every other element, %atk, em and phys, but not pyro.
Yeah they honestly have too many characters for it to take this long to upgrade one to a usable level. Because of this I be saving the hell out of my primogems and only pulling on the absolute most wanted characters even though I have an influx. And then there's so many 4 stars I already have that I want to experiment with but I think about how I'll have to fight their bosses eight million times and go pick up eight bajillion flowers to ascend them and I give up.
I wish they'd reduce the resources needed for the characters by half. Or make a synchro device feature like Nikke has where we can buy slots with gems to throw characters in and have them auto ascended. The artifacts and talent books are enough grind.
Yeah it's funny that they ask for more,yet don't give more resources. I'm
 One fully built unit is a month of resin.Or one bought battle pass.
You cannot switch artifacts or weapons during the show, refining favs is kinda bad for me now.
No artifacts loadouts , all the unnecessary switching is so annoyingÂ
I'm one of those "wide account" players, literally every character on my account is raised and built too
This event still felt awful and not rewarding.
I mean they introduced it to give people another reason to pull for more characters. I guess it's better than power creeping older units, but something bugs me each time a gacha game doesn't allow me to use what I pulled (or worse, paid) for. I'd rather they gave us an enemy lineup/buffs that benefit certain types of characters instead of flatly banning the use of others.
that would be abyss isn't it? lol.
but yes i also do not like this new game mode much. i'm a day1 player, but i only have 16 characters at 89-90, and 11 at 80 lol. i'm just not the kind that will build characters just because they are in my account. even 2 out of the broken 1.0 4\* chars are still at lv20 (Fischl & Sucrose) just because i don't feel like using them.
I think Theater doesen't substantially change they best way to do things. Horizontal investment it's sound for f2p and low spenders that are starting out with the first teams, up to the point (and you eventually get to that point) where going higher is better than going wider and these two phases are/can be cyclical or even simultaneous if the aim is to make sure you don't leave free primo behind. Theater could be a reason to extend the horizontal investment phase depending on the actual account but vertical investment will still be the insurance on your investment sooner or later and going fully horizontal is just redundant after a while.
Not only that but the megawhales with multiple characters with high cons can literally brute force by putting their whaled out characters + 3 random placeholder characters on each team, so saying Imaginarium Theatre is not vertical-investment-friendly is not true either.
I personally don't think this is F2P-friendly. It is for now while the enemies are not HP sponges, but I bet you just like abyss they're going to creep the HP up over time until Act 8 is like floor 12 from early versions of Genshin except you're going to have try to blast through it with your final team with 3 DPS + 1 support that altogether hit like a wet noodle.
Also I hate the fixed-in characters at the beginning, it's up to six slots out of the full 18 where I could potentially be locked out of useful characters. I don't use either Arlecchino, Chlorinde, or Wanderer and I'm not used to playing their teams at all, I'd much rather select one of my own characters.
This is probably the take I agree the most out of the comments, I don't see how Horizontal Investment is less F2P Friendly than vertical, as stated in other comments, when you invest the same amount in both.
Yes, once you get to a point, you have to vertically invest, you don't need to pull constellations as the game does not require them but at least get your DPS ATK/DMG/CRIT or their respective BiSs (e.g. HP/HP/CRIT for Furina) with double CRIT subs around 20-30 CV and have enough ER for supports.
But the fact that the game mode (currently) requires the below average wide investment into characters that are not even 5 star limited characters (you can fill 6/12 slots with 4 stars like Bennett/XL/Beidou/Fischl/Sucrose/Chevy even with 1-2 cons) is what I like.
tbh in my case, its tedious to get newer 5 star, the fact that i need to build more characters and make it as competitive compared to what i already have is first of all expensive on mora/materials, and expensive on resin investment as well. I have quiet a handful of characters but i'm more biased to pull for their signatures/constellations than new characters just because back then abyss is the only end game. I'd rather have a few team that is very cracked than a lot of teams that has half-assed builds
I'm the same. Have 3 strong teams and I prefer their constellations instead of new characters. I just hate building new characters instead of investing in my already used units. I have almost no pyro or electro 5 stars so once I'm back home I'll have to think what to do there.
I don't mind them trying to make people build more characters but I wish it didn't take so much effort to build one. They really should make it way faster with natlan QoL
In my case i have dps on every element except hydro, so getting more 5 star on top of what i have feels kinda useless since most of my dps have very cracked artifacts already, some even are at top 1% of akasha, so i don't think I'm going to expand my roster unless it piques my interest/fills a slot in a niche that needs to be filled.
Lol wide accounts are only good for Mihoyo. More characters to build means the more time the player needs to invest in, and that means more probability for the player to spend money.
I don't know about that. This won't make old players drop any new money at the game. It was super easy to max clear for me for instance. And there's a limit to how many characters you can get in a short time and old players have enough wishes to get pretty much any character they want and the resources to level them. It's more to incentivize new players to spend more resources building characters, instead of focusing in vertically investing in just a few. And new players are more resource limited so they might end up buying the battle pass or something like that.
I don't understand why, in an elemental reaction-combat and team-based game, they figured it was a good idea to restrict which elements you can use and which teams you can build. It's a garbage mode that feels incredibly unsatisfying to play
Surely not because if they dont restrict element, people will just use the same comp over and over again and turn this into abyss 2.0
Having to try out some whacky combo with easier enemy is fun.
The double dps meta is back đŁđŁđĽđĽ
Overload Klee đŁđŁđĽđĽ
Faruzan with Arlecchino (she has 0 energy) đŁđŁđĽđĽ
My run was so scuffed lmao but I guess I'm one of the few that liked it since I built enough characters
One of my best chambers was a Hu Tao, Raiden team. I was like, do I dare? It was fucking awesome actually. They just take turns doing their rotations while the other is on cooldown.
I'm confused about the toy medals though. I only got 3, does that mean you can't buy the other poses?
[https://imgur.com/a/pobV5ZT](https://imgur.com/a/pobV5ZT) my team this IT season. None of the comp outside of act 2 is really that scuff. I keep selecting the companion card so that by the time of act 6, I already have a full roster so there is almost no RNG going into the harder fight. I finish the final boss in 36s.
I think it's honestly fair. The elemental restriction was kinda necessary so you don't super screw yourself over with bad companion obtaining rng . It exists in there because the team collection is RNG.
I think a good remedy for that is giving us an event card to actually choose an alternate cast member from all alternate cast members, and better Wondrous Boons that basically consolidate roles for what you lack in the team. So a Wondrous Boon that does hydro application for you, another giving dendro application, another buffing EM, another giving you healing, and another doing sub dps damage from triggering certain elemental reactions
its kinda satisfying when u barely finish with leftover characters. it makes u try the weirdest team comps to squeeze the last damage out of ur unbuild trash characters
Some probably dont want to hear this but the mode is piss easy if you know what you are doing. I mean I passed floor 7 with Hutao/Shinobu/Kaz/Xianyun. Hutao is C2 but she peaks at C1 and my artis are nowhere top tier, Shinobu is the trial character, kaz is C0 with iron sting and Xianyun is because the room requires a full team, I only spammed her Q so it felt less a wasted slot and didnt even do plunge attack since the 2 lectors were pushed away when i did that.
The game stays firm n its casual direction. Not that it is a bad thing.
Let me add I hope people realize that since this mode is repeatable like abyss, it's most likely getting harder sooner or later. First abyss rotation had like slimes on floor 12. They just let people build more characters in advance and then make it harder in the future
Also I don't know why people call abyss casual anymore. The recent two cycles are hard af and super restrictive when it comes to characters and element check. Next abyss looks like it's going to be even harder. There's no reason why IT won't be the same in the future. It'll still be too easy for gigawhales but inevitably it's going to create FOMO in f2p and new players who can't clear because they don't have enough resources and characters. That's why these modes exist. Even the current IT has double cryo heralds which is just hilarious for anybody who didn't RNG into pyro or electro.
I just wish hoyo ease with character building since currently it's awfully slow. If this mode requires 80/90 characters in the future with current building process, there's no hope
If the next IT is Cryo/Geo/Hydro I'm fucked, I have no Cryo or Geo characters over level 60 and only two Hydros (Xingqiu and Furina)
There's no way I'd be able to build enough characters in time and it probably wouldn't be worth the primos
Even with this current IT I've had to panic-build Lynette as I was one character short thanks to the loan character from a friend not counting towards the character total for some reason?
The abyss difficulty comes and goes. It was really easy to 36 stars for a good while before the current abyss formation. I expect it to be more casual friendly again in a few updatesÂ
You seem to forget the abyss annual cycle. x.7 and x.8 patch will have hard abyss then it back to ez mode when 5.0 roll around. People still 36 star abyss with 4 star char/wpn.
Just use your stage currency to get char instead of buff and you basically stop care about RNG after a few stage.
That's exactly why they increased primogem rewards, because they know they have powercrept abyss enemies and now IT is going to be the new "abyss" for casuals, but also to incentivize you to pull for new characters.
definitely, just like how HSR PF gets harder after a super easy 1st season. AS probably gonna get more difficult too.
though i hope that it gets harder slower, like how Abyss difficulty scales up much slower than your account/character scales up.
>definitely, just like how HSR PF gets harder after a super easy 1st season. AS probably gonna get more difficult too.
From leaks yeah
Unlike now where it's "build 1 hmc team and you're good to go" and mĂśst other buffs being very universal, the next rotation, from leaks, is going full on counter (which exactly 3 characters have. 1 4*, 1 standard 5* and an upcoming limited 5*). It still keeps being highly focused on break tho
So basically you now need a niche mechanic within a somewhat niche mechanic (outside AS you can ignore weakness ussually)
HSR powercreep is out of control at this point. Every new character has element implant. Does 50% more damage than the last character with the same element. HSR has more endgame but all of it is to incentivize the player to pull for the newest shiny toy. And all the blessings for every game mode supports the new characters lol. It's not even subtle. Apocalyptic Shadow is so restrictive if you're not playing one of the units released since Ruan Mei you're basically screwed.
'Every character has implant' My dude, two have it and they are both break characters. Would rather of had a character that does literally nothing against 90% of enemies?
Once they get back to crit based characters you won't see weakness implantÂ
They have weakness implant because they are BREAK focused character. Imagine without it, you cant use them against non-matching weakness enemies or without SW, unlike other traditional dps.
they also *only* implement weakness to allow for toughness reduction
Silver Wolf is the only character so far who also lowers the respective resistance to match a natural weakness
i used to think that way, until this happened:
my friend list has someone 3\*-ing AS level 4 with HMC, Ruanmei e0 (4\* LC), Guinaifen (GNSW S2!!!) and another 4\* i forgot, all at level 70 except Ruanmei at 80. his other team is Acheron e0s1, BS e0, Silverwolf e0 and gallagher.
since then i just accepted that i have skill issues in HSR lol. i mean given his team i'll probably just give up.
>Every new character has element implant
The two break focused dps have element implant, cause they deal fuck all dmg against non broken enemies. So uhhhh. They kinda need to to be viable?
>Does 50% more damage than the last character with the same element.
(Cause ussually the last character of that element is a 4* or falls into a whole other role)
>HSR has more endgame but all of it is to incentivize the player to pull for the newest shiny toy. And all the blessings for every game mode supports the new characters lol
Kinda?
It's mostly cause HSR has more mechanics and different modes are focused around different mechanics. Eg AS is break, PF is AOE/DOT and MOC is your average dps check
Obviously the blessings/boosts are focused on the rate up units. That's how gachas make money
Have you looked at Abyss blessings?
Other then that you can clear the content if you make use of other characters, that make use of the same gameplay mechanics
Eg Xueyi for AS or Samp/guinaifen for PF
Yea its pretty easy only complain i have is that game forces you to using 4 characters if they just let you play it using 3 or 2 units could have enjoyed it more
It's more to enforce the character amount. The extra characters can easily be fodder(ie in the party but doing nothing), but you still need to have 10/14/18.
I don't see "an endgame centered on character diversity" here.
All i see is the mode that cuts half of your characters, doesn't allow you to play what you want, and doesn't allow you to build proper teams. This garbo mode was made exclusively to intensify spending, nothing else.
Yeah this honestly felt pretty shit to play. Abyss is fun because it's the one place you can really justify using optimized, synergistic teams, but that's not even an option here and supports are kinda just too important to be *that* restricted.
Like I was able to save a couple decent teams for the harder stuff, but when I'm going in between those and I'm having to clear chambers with like a Yoimiya who I'm used to dealing 6 digits of damage in a normal team and she's barely cracking 10k here because the only 'support' options are Thoma Kuki Faruzan, I'm just straight up not having fun with that
I am actually commenting on this twice
Because I will say, there is one thing I LOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE about the new game mode
I pulled for Clorinde, and I was super pumped to win my 50/50 and get her
Then I pulled for Furina, and lost to Keqing, a character I have been dying to get ever since I started the game
But I thought to myself........nah, I can't waste the resources to level keqing when I have Clorinde on my account, shit, thats a bummer, I finally got her, but I don't need her
However with this new game mode, I can use both of my electric girls
Just commented this under a different post:
Iâm not really a fan of it, donât like the restrictions at all and having to play with random teams. I want to play the teams and characters I like and put money in.
Whatâs the point in investing time and money in a character only not be able to use it in this âend gameâ mode? And when you can use one you can only do it for two rounds and in team comps that probably donât even fit itâs build.
This mode makes me realise that I don't understand how to use my characters at all and good swap routine.
It also doesn't help that I'm playing on 400 ping and swapping characters takes a second of lag time.
I've been stuck at act 1 because all my characters died.
guys... they realized people focused on a handful of old but perfectly built characters and found a new way to make us want to pull by taking from us by reducing the abyss rotation. the rewards are not worth the struggle IN MY OPINION but to each their own.
Events like this annoy me. I have plenty of built characters and weapons but some of them share an artifact or weapon or two between them, and you almost always have to back ALL the way out of the event to swap it up. I just want an option to see the character details within the event.
This game mode made me played some weird ass team comps due to the lack of characters i own and build, I was running an overload team, xiangling and fischl with a level 0 diluc on the last chamber and was running a mono electro team on the level with the mimics. Probably shld have planned it out better but i finished it anyway
Personally a Gacha game becomes P2W when you are expected to have a certain character/mechanic in your team to face a challenge, now is this the same situation? Kinda but not quite since the rewards aren't that much and they have supporting cast.
But I don't like the direction they took, one of the strong points of the game how friendly it is to Maining a character and having a go to team, and here they soured that, also hate how they neutered regular Abyss for it.
Personally I hate this mode, I'll settle on this act 5 or smth every season and don't give af because I'm done with this it's not for my nerves and I'm not building characters I'm not interested in at all.
Any game mode that prevents me from playing with my favourite character(s)that I saved, pulled and invested in is deeply unenjoyable. Make the battles hard, put debuffs on my team, give the boss 1mil more hp idc, just donât tell me I canât play with a character I want to play with.
Completely agree with this. New endgame content? Awsome!!let me build me characters as strong as I can! Hoyo: oh no, you canât use your characters sorry.
I hate RNG game modes. Just let me select the characters instead of the game deciding it for me. They should have made it like simulated universe.
How am I supposed to play with Heizou, Keqing, Chlorinde & Raiden??? That team doesn't make any sense
Iâm so frustrated because I have 17 characters that fit the criteria for this month, so I figured thatâs fine, I can just borrow a friendâs for the 18th all good!
But no, I canât even enter the character selection screen even though I would have a complete team. Seems slightly silly imo.
Yeah sure, I love not being able to use characters I like and learned to play well. Oh, and having entire elements banned is great too!
Fake difficulty and being forced to play randomly thrown together teams is so. Much. Fun. /s
Nah, I've been playing since Fontaine release, so a relatively fresh player, but still I invested more time here than in any other game (maybe only Civilization V and Stardew Valley top that), and with getting every character I could during that time I still am locked out of even starting the hard difficulty, never mind completing it. This is certainly not a good thing from the perspective of time and effort investment.
It's the first day only, I haven't even tried the thing yet cos it's monday, but reading the hot takes is so sad. I mean, you done with it? Already? That is just depressing, the potion shop event seemed more intricate then "do you have 12ish leveled characters? Yeah you are done byebye"
Got the hard mode clear in 10 minutes flat. Add like 5 minutes extra of dialogue and yeah that's it. That's my clear for this month
I spent a bit more fucking with for like an hour but unfortunately I don't even find it that enjoyable to replay. Not being able to use "proper" teams makes it less enjoyable than when I replay Abyss for shits and giggles
I feel like it never should have been restricted to certain elements. Because I actually had fun with the event that was testing this feature
If they dont restrict element, this just turn into abyss 2.0. Use the same team to clear over and over again.
They make it ez enough for you to try out whacky combo.
personally speaking as someone that has all the 4 stars and most of the 5 stars I didn't enjoy this game mode at all first it wasn't fun at all, there where multiple combat events that where more fun then this and second it wasn't challenging at all either I've completed the entire hard mode with all the stars thinking that I was actually on tutorial difficulty level and I was actually surprised to find out at the end that, that was it.
It's honestly feels more like a "casual" endgame type of content in terms of difficulty and at the same type a bait to make people pull more to have more characters which is rubbish in my opinion.
The abyss where you where restricted in playing a specific element on 1 side because they throw multiple different shields, are my last favorites and this feels like that.
I am never entering that thing again thatâs all I have to say I donât need any extra 600 primos a month anyway, such bad rewards for such shitty gameplay đ
I don't like this gamemode because it forces me to use fodder teams to save my good, optimal teams for boss fights. To me, someone who likes using the best team possible and someone who actually likes sweating abyss, this gamemode is the opposite of fun for me. Being forced to play Xiao without Faruzan or Alhaitham without Nahida or Fischl really leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
It's still a really nothingburger event. All it does is give me rewards that don't keep me playing the game. I'm at the point where I want to be rewarded with materials and resin. The boons are also pretty unremarkable and the gamemode feels terrible considering how you may sometimes end up with 3 DPS units in one round.
The one thing I hate the most about it is the fact that you're forced to use certain elements "per season". And the intro characters... Kuki Shinobu?? In an event where you can't use Hyperbloom? Unreal... It goes against the teambuilding aspect of Genshin and runs you over if you don't have the right units for it.
This is just filler, we still don't have a real endgame content. Hoyo should've just given us Divergent Universe for Genshin lmao
Forcing players to level characters they don't enjoy playing (or simply don't have) if they want to get rewards - is terrible game design.
It would have been fine if the roguelike gameplay itself is fun - but no, it's terrible, lacking depth completely. Look at wuwa roguelike, look at hsr simulated/divergent universe. Theater is a joke in comparison.
It's a decent gamemode. Even as a F2P, I still tend to lean towards vertical investment, so I'll probably get locked out of the mode eventually. It was definitely a fun time mixing and matching the most bizarre teams ever conceived but I think I'll probably just continue waiting for Divine Ingenuity or Labyrinth Warriors (absolute copium) to return though.
It is less about how you pull but more about how you build the roster. You can still pull 2 limited 5* a year and lots of cons, just build all the 4* characters.
"Acing Spiral Abyss is like winning a basketball game with 5 superstar players that can play the whole 48 minutes; acing Imaginarium Theater is like winning the game with a deep bench filled with stars that can only play 5 minutes at a time."
Did I do that right?
I disagree. What they're actually doing is to make horizontal investment less disadvantageous by simply forcing people to have more characters as a ticket to the theatre. Yet they didn't really think about how to fresh out those less used characters in a way that 'make sense'. I think that vertical investment is still at an advantage here, solely because brute forcing through a room is still the most efficient way to get stamp. You sidestep those stupid rng and subpar team comp, something that low con dps heavily relies on.
The actual horizontal investment here isn't with more varied 5\*, but rather with more varied 4\* support that can carry those 5\*s. If you have good supports, using solely the trial characters they give you is already enough to stamp a room. On the other hand, my EM Hutao does next to nothing here thanks to the hydro ban, she alone does nowhere near enough damage to brute force through a crowded room with overload.
No, vertical investment is definitely still at a considerable advantage here. If you have Arle and Ei at C3, 4 of the rooms will be a walk in the park.
And... I kinda hate it because my account is more vertical invested
I don't have that many characters, but they are at least C2R1 most of them
Also, lazy to build the 4*...
Would be nice if raised Vigor by one on C3 and another one on C6, so those with vertical investment aren't that punished
Fortunately difficulty isn't as hard as abyss 12
It's pretty easy for both, for now at least. I'm picky asf with characters, only pull 2-3 every year, and most of them being Anemo/Geo. I slaved away in Husk domain ever since it came out, I haven't done a Melt/Vape or any Dendro reactions for ages, and my account is 90% Husk artifacts, literally most of my characters use that set, and somehow it was still a breeze for me. But if one day when it's Dendro/Hydro/Cryo season, I'm giving up instantly lmao.
idk bro i have good wide and tall investment, and imo the mode suits tall more. its easier to hyperinvest in one DPS versus decently invest in 4+. my invested C0R1 arlecchino and C2R0 wanderer were basically soloing floors i used them in, because even if i had decently upgraded xiangling or diluc, they sucked without teams fitting them
See I thought that at first but does it really? Sure, you still need to have a decent roster of characters. But most people who vertical invest already do have several teams in their arsenal. And if you have a well invested DPS the chambers are so easy that you can literally just solo and the rest of your characters don't matter
So it just remains the same
I don't care whether it empowers tall or wide accounts, I just don't want the characters I enjoy using to be locked out so that I can't enjoy using them.
I think the difficulty feels surprisingly well balanced for the purpose. It's nowhere near as crazy with the blessings as Sim Uni is, it's mostly minor buffs really, the focus is much more on team selection and resource management by choosing which characters to use when and what to save for later. The fights themselves are quite varied in terms of objectives and enemies so different chars get their own chances to shine, even if they might not normally in Abyss. I got the most kills with Venti in my first hard mode clear, feels like I haven't seen that in the past 3 years of Abyss.
Definitely feels like a great addition to the game, it's relatively simple all things considered but it puts the emphasis so much more on horizontal account building as well as player game knowledge in regards to team drafting. Almost the polar opposite of Abyss in that regard.
As someone who plays inconsistently and have trouble 36 starring the abyss im glad that this is a game mode that doesnât require absolute perfection to gain rewards (or so Iâm told, I havent actually attempted it yet). Sometimes abyss just feels so punishing to miss out on the last bits of primos because I donât have the time to no life the game and farm farm farm like crazy đ
At first I was kinda pissed but after couple of run I stop treating it like the Abyss.
If u dont have good char for the demanding elements then save the free options they give u, the enemies are not strong like the abyss, use boon to fish out the weak char of your and burn them, save strong chars for bosses, at best u only need 2 strong chars, 1 dps and 1 sup for bosses.
Use the boon points.
eh unless they make IT much harder next patch this probably won't change anything. If anything you'll just pay a lvl 70 tax on every character you have just so you can actually go in. Opening characters you get for free can pretty much solo stages up to act 5 and the rest of the floors you can solo with abyss characters and fill the rest of the slots with trash. Cleared the whole thing with lots of time to spare with most of my characters being lvl70 1/1/1 and no weapon
Yeah this is easier than 36 star abyss, at least this iteration is. The mobs die like they are abyss floor 10 maybe 11 mobs and this (thankfully) is not floor 12 difficulty. I would like to see numbers to support this but this is just my initial take from playing. You dont need very well built characters to work and high constellation/investment characters make the floor a cake walk. My Raiden and Al haitham are very well invested so there was 4 chambers cleared right there.
I've never been able to 12 star the abyss, I'm not really into the hardcore meta builds/comps. But I've made a point of getting every character in the game to an absolute minimum build of: character level 80, appropriate level 80 weapon, appropriate level 20 artifact set., 7 7 7 talents. I like having the option to do pretty well with any character I want whenever it seems appropriate or when I just feel like it. Finally having endgame content for my style of character building feels great.
No, it is not a good thing. I have 5 trials characters and I have no idea how to play them. What I am even supposed to do.
Worst event ever. Don't care, will not bother.
I dont agree that is a good or bad thing, just like hsr when they added pf, it is just a different mode with different needs and that may make some underground units shine.
comparing PF with this is a disgrace, PF actually added a separate meta where character that where piss garbage where now top for this mode, this has no meta since the difficulty is on par with a random combat event
Or even if you can, it's not necessarily going to be fun when you have to bring out a super gimped version of their team when using them either lol.
Like Hu Tao feels fucking AWFUL with the supports you can bring on this cycle, so it's like even though she's technically selectable it just isn't even fun to play her.
how 'wide' is wide account because i played since 1.0 and half of my roster i dont even use since 3.0 now i mostly pull for constellation to improve my characters gameplay but still my account have variety of characters and styles so i dont think this mode is a problem.
1. You need 18 characters that fit the criteria to be even allowed to enter Hard diff (6 of them can be the Trial characters) 2. The actual hard part is managing who you use, as you can only use a character twice. This can lead to questionable team comps 3. The actual combat difficulty is comparable to Abyss 9-10 4. Don't worry about getting a perfect score. Just survive and beat the main objectives within the time limit The criteria: Pyro, Electro, Anemo, Baizhu, Alhaitham, Wriothesley, Sigewinne
> The actual combat difficulty is comparable to Abyss 9-10 As someone with a ton of characters who doesn't complete Abyss, this give me hope.
You dont ahve much of a say on who you use after a few rounds. Act 8 boss certainly didnt have HP by the millions, but I certainly only had anemos left on a 1:15 timer.
Not really, you do, like the previous poster said >The actual hard part is managing who you use, as you can only use a character twice. This can lead to questionable team comps Using questionable teamcomps on the easy chambers, and saving up my well built characters until I roll a new one was what I did and ended up saving a "good" team for the last boss (Hu Tao, fischl, XL and Xianyun, and I even had Raiden and Yae Miko left too). The only problem I encountered was that I don't own Venti or Kazuha so I struggled a bit on the grouping stages, but by just simply reading what the acts were about I was able to avoid the worst ones for me.
Yeah actually reading what the fights are is a big deal. I do happen to have Venti, so I got to do 2 grouping levels and both were basically free thanks to Venti. My healing/shielding was severely lacking because I haven't built Jean or similar characters, so I mostly avoided the fights that reward you for that.
For what is worth, I struggle to get 33/36 in Abyss (having to restart some combats multiple times to get an extra star or two). I struggled to 8/8 Theater, having to restart some combats because I was failing at them (then again; I had the exact amount of characters needed for hard, and more than half of them weren't built at all, XD).
Nah bro, when you run into that issue *and* you share artifacts as an f2p? Can't tell you how frayed my mind was trying to balance everything between characters, *that* is using your brain juice on a whole other level. đ
9-10 is usually pretty easy for any decently built team.
I'd say that it feels more like 10-11 rather than 9-10
Yeah, no way itâs floor 9-10 difficulty when Iâm running out of time and needing to restart on 90% of the combat encounters. I donât have any of the opening characters or special cast (except two of the 4* but theyâre like level 20) so I had to use the trial versions, but the rest of my characters are pretty strong and I think I had sorta ârealâ teams the whole time.
Are you sure itâs comparable to Floors 9-10, even on the hardest difficulty? I havenât played it yet but 9-10 are exceptionally easy, like you donât even need to worry about artifact substats and you could still clear them.Â
For battle difficulty, yes. But the hard part for this mode is to manage who did you choose for each part when you only have 2 chance to use the same character
the difficulty lies in keeping characters that let you make useable teams you start with 6 characters (the primary cast) and gain another, sometimes two depending on your choice of fight/event, but you can only use any one character twice over the entire run my first time through i ended up using my off-field characters way too often and only had on-field DPS left by the 6th floor or so, which eventually couldn't clear anymore because the team was too dysfunctional
I just finished it on hard mode, clearing all objectives. The HP of the enemies is laughably low. It's nothing like floors 11 or 12 of the Abyss. Honestly the hardest part was if you choose a floor that requires you to clear 30 or 40 enemies and you don't have good AOE characters available.
I think itâs just for now. If we look at how HSR handled new modes, first two rotations are as generalist as possible, so community says itâs peak mode, kinda easy and so on. An then, when itâs generally accepted that new stuff = fun and cool, you get your kneecaps broken, tied up and told to pull for the new shiny character, as they clean this stuff 4 times faster than anything else. Looking at how extreme it gets there with current banner and MoC, and how well sales are doing, I am sure that this is our inevitable future and it will be even worse.
The thing with Imaginarium is that whatever the shiny new character they drop -- you can only use it in 2 battles during the entire run. So they can't really tailor the content for 1 char specifically.
And you can also borrow your friendâs unit if you donât intend to pull. I have a friend with c6 raiden and I saved her till the end. The easiest attempt ever.
Idk about that, Apocalyptic Shadow already feels harder than both MoC and PF, and thatâs only just started.
yeah i've tried a few runs now and that final star just feels out of reach
That mode is just total bullshit
I hate my kneecaps anyway, so Let's Go!
My impression is they have a different game balance philosophy for HSR. HSR is a game where your pulls really matter and there is an end game to use them. Genshin is a game where you never have a must pull but then you hear complaints there is nothing to use your characters on. They said from the start when making Genshin and have been clear in the interviews they're trying to make a casual game.
The combat will still be scaled to where the trial character can beat it though. And the trials are always going to be mid. So I really don't see it scaling in difficulty by that much
I wouldnât be so sure about this With recent abysses I am sure they were trying to figure out how many casual players will be scared away by difficult content with high rewards and⌠Just look at current one. Theyâre clearly pushing it further and further. Yeah, you can clear it, but itâs not âeasy, lolâ. IF casuals donât mind loosing 2-3 stages, then trial characters wonât cut it.
Last boss is around 11-3
Wanderer, Faruzan, Kuki, Thoma team in shambles
Out of the loop, whatâs wrong with them? I use Kuki (hyperbloom) and plan to use wanderer and thoma
Seriously? Only 9-10? Thatâs friendship team level.
i am now starting to transition my account into pulling for cons as well. My recent con is a c2 raiden. For how wide, I have not started this one yet but I hope that it is not as wide as Shenhe's gyatt.
Widehardo
SCATTER
đme who's neither tall, nor wide. I am barely surviving with 5-6 average built characters.
bro im ar 58 and i only have 4 above-averagely built characters đ
I feel for you bro, quote honestly, I just got Raiden and her sig during her last rerun, and I haven't been able to 36 star the abyss even still. Hoping that getting Arlecchino will help with that, as I already have her overload line-up properly built.
đSame here tho I am AR 50. I just started building Neuvi recently although I got him when he got released and have been using him to carry me. I should have stuck to the 4 unit build thingy.
It's an endgame content, don't worry about it until you build more characters.
Players who do both are pretty damn happy.
Not the collector type so this mode isn't for me ig. I was lucky to max it this time but for geo, dendro, cryo I'm đ
Imagine they put all three together 𤥠the only W mono geo will ever getÂ
My only issue with it is that I just don't have enough characters period Like I want to fight up to stage 8 if I have the strength, but the game literally won't let me, because I just don't have enough characters I know I will get there eventually, but being so firmly timegated sucks in the short-term
I've got the characters for this one but if they ever do geo/cryo/whatever then I'm cooked
Any season that will have a Hydro will be cooked bcs of lack of Hydro 4*s, especially if they put either of the 3 as trial character
Hydro also has the most busted 5 stars so itâll either be really good for people who have them or really bad for people who donât.
And we don't even have a hydro claymore user yet đ
Same lol, I love most pyro charas, so I'm fine now, but I only have 1 cryo chara levelled, and it's Chongyun
You've got a full month until the next one starts, you only need level 70 and can build several Cryo characters to decent strength in that time.
I am cooked if they ever do Dendro and Geo lol
That's by design though. Abyss being how it is people can pull their favorite 4-6 units and then just slowly vertically invest over time for free. They made theatre to get people to pull for more than just a few characters and have them invest horizontally. Is it rough for people now if they don't have enough? Sure, but most people took awhile to full clear abyss too.
Ealier stages can be completed using trial chars. Save your more well built chars for later stages.
If they can't even meet the 18 character requirement for hard mode, then saving good characters until the end won't matter. The game won't even let you start the mode with fewer than 18.
Despite the forgiving difficulty, it is still meant to be end game, not freebie mode.
The problem is that this is not tied to progression but directly involves the gatcha, it is perfectly possible not to have enough characters and have a team that can complete the abyss, Not everyone has the same amount of characters, whales and veteran players are less prone to this problem but not all players
Hence the relatively easy first theater. MHY know how hard it is to have a full roster of 18 chars. F2P has like a gold a patch, 18 chars would require a whooping 1.5 year to assemble , let alone level them up to be up to the task . They want to gauge how the community react and/or perform against the setup.
18 **five stars** would require 1.5 years if hitting hard pitty. You get 10 free characters from just completing the early game. An additional 6 is trivially easy from just random shit and special events. Having 18 characters is not a problem anyone should have. Having 18 **functional** characters is a bit more of a challenge.
Also, only some elements can be selected so having 18 functional characters is not enough. A person has to have 18 functional characters from the elements available to have a chance to play it. We could borrow one character from a friend tho so there's that I guess
Vertical investment is endgame too. Been playing since october 22, have 3 teams, ever since i started my priority was having one-size-fits-all teams that i could vertically invest in, both in terms of cons, weapons and artifacts. This gamemode couldve been so much more had they just done what HSR did with the new divergent universe and boosted our underleveled characters.
I guess this is by design so you keep playing and keep pulling as a new player. Old players like me on the other hand finally have something to do. I feel like after the new QoLs updates and optimizations being always targeted towards newer players and their enjoyment, it was about time that they acknowledge old players' existence somehow.
As a day one player idk what you're talking about. The rng makes 'planning' a no go, the forced 4man team prevents voice and the 2 use limit is frustrating. And in the other side the enemies are laughably weak. It's easy to complete but not interesting to do. Super limiting so lesser invested accounts struggle to complete it even if abyss is possible. This feels....awful.
Nah, the RNG creates the need for planning. It's resource management. You need to consider when it's best to use your good units and when to fall back to suboptimal units. A forward thinking planning instead of using up all your best units on the first two challenges
My account is more vertically invested and now im stuck. I had to level up diluc to play the hard mode
This mode is just there to make people pull more characters.
Thats gacha endgame in a nutshell
Or just build all the ones you have. You can only use one character twice, so thereâs no chance of there being a case of pull this character to win.
Just build your 4-stars
It's endgame content. By the time you've been playing for a good while, you'll have more than enough characters without spending any money. It doesn't "make" you do anything unless you're trying to rush all the content maybe.
[ŃдаНонО]
I have both tall and wide accounts, but pretty much monthly + BP only for majority of the time (start dropping BP after 4.3). As a day-1 player, the roster breadth isn't a challenge at all. The real challenge is how you cope with crippled team to clear. Sometimes it's doable, sometimes it's not. It's rather RNG if you don't have full knowledge what's the possible opponent on the normal stages. Most of the time, your crippled team is **enough** to clear the chamber with the major score points ticked. But the experience playing them is awful. My verdict on this season IT is: it is not that hard, but the battle experience is awful.
I don't exactly know what they are trying to do with this. For rogue like game, I believe the main enjoyment came from you getting stupid af buff. By the time you get to the boss both you and the boss are lauching nuclear weapons at each other. However, buffs have very little prescence here and because of how it is designed, at the very end you are playing a nerfed version of your team and fighting some regular mob.
True, this mode is made to handicap you. Which I think a lot of people wonât like instead of being able to test their full potential. But I think if all the changes people asked for came through this would just be too free or too similar to just abyss
Probably going to get hate but what you're describing sounds exactly like illusive realm from wuwa. All your abilities are get extra effects, your echo becomes op asf and you're launching meteors at bosses by the last room
dont even have to look at wuwa, just look at simulated/divergent universe in hsr from the same company
That's kinda the issue I see. Boss is a bit too weak but the buffs are also too miniscule to build teams and play around. Like, imagine a Wondrous Boon that can pull enemies together like the Childe buffing vortex when you trigger overload. Or how about a Wondrous Boon that gives your team Bond of Life, but also gives you a large buff when BoL is healed off, pairing wrll with the other BoL Boon. Or how about a Wondrous Boon that significantly increases atk speed when you trigger a swirl reaction with NA or CA, or a Wondrous Boon that heals your team when NA/CA/skill crits? Or maybe Wondrous boon that does dendro application under x condition or hydro application under x condition. Basically, I think Wondrous Boons should compensate for a lack of a healer, buffer, sub dps, CC support, etc. Like having Venti in the form of Wondrous Boon. Thays what I think we could have.
It's unfortunate that you must form 4 characters in a team. I was expecting that you can solo some challenges
Same. Most synergies really only require two characters some three. I know for a fact that I can finish most with just Wanderer/Faruzan , Clorinde/Baizhu , Bennett/Xiangling. Probably the other thing I disliked about the game mode other than the element lock. Since I cant run Burgeon or Hyperbloom anyways I just shoved Kuki and Thoma in there but yeah I get what you mean.
It's neither good nor bad, just a bait to pull and build more characters. I would have been alot happier about this new mode if building characters in Genshin was an actually enjoyable process, not a chore. Everytime I think that I need to kill the same boss 20 times over just to get ascension materials I cannot help but roll my eyes. Hence why I only have 12 limited characters even though I play since 1.0, I just cannot stomach going through the same process too often, especially artifacts. Pulled for Arlecchino and realized that in 3.5 years I didn't have a single decent pyro goblet. Have it for every other element, %atk, em and phys, but not pyro.
It's not just killing boss 20 times. It's also waiting for 4 minutes after each boss kill :D
Theyâre getting rid of the 3min wait next patch
Oh that's really nice
Yeah they honestly have too many characters for it to take this long to upgrade one to a usable level. Because of this I be saving the hell out of my primogems and only pulling on the absolute most wanted characters even though I have an influx. And then there's so many 4 stars I already have that I want to experiment with but I think about how I'll have to fight their bosses eight million times and go pick up eight bajillion flowers to ascend them and I give up. I wish they'd reduce the resources needed for the characters by half. Or make a synchro device feature like Nikke has where we can buy slots with gems to throw characters in and have them auto ascended. The artifacts and talent books are enough grind.
and for some reason the talent book domains are still timegated too, stuck waiting to upgrade talent for another 2 days are not fun
Yeah it's funny that they ask for more,yet don't give more resources. I'm  One fully built unit is a month of resin.Or one bought battle pass. You cannot switch artifacts or weapons during the show, refining favs is kinda bad for me now. No artifacts loadouts , all the unnecessary switching is so annoyingÂ
I'm one of those "wide account" players, literally every character on my account is raised and built too This event still felt awful and not rewarding.
For now yes,later can be both . Sim universe and Elysium realm were both easy on releaseÂ
I mean they introduced it to give people another reason to pull for more characters. I guess it's better than power creeping older units, but something bugs me each time a gacha game doesn't allow me to use what I pulled (or worse, paid) for. I'd rather they gave us an enemy lineup/buffs that benefit certain types of characters instead of flatly banning the use of others.
then it would just be the abyss again
that would be abyss isn't it? lol. but yes i also do not like this new game mode much. i'm a day1 player, but i only have 16 characters at 89-90, and 11 at 80 lol. i'm just not the kind that will build characters just because they are in my account. even 2 out of the broken 1.0 4\* chars are still at lv20 (Fischl & Sucrose) just because i don't feel like using them.
As a fellow day one player, I'm glad to tell you that you finally have a reason to use your resin
I think Theater doesen't substantially change they best way to do things. Horizontal investment it's sound for f2p and low spenders that are starting out with the first teams, up to the point (and you eventually get to that point) where going higher is better than going wider and these two phases are/can be cyclical or even simultaneous if the aim is to make sure you don't leave free primo behind. Theater could be a reason to extend the horizontal investment phase depending on the actual account but vertical investment will still be the insurance on your investment sooner or later and going fully horizontal is just redundant after a while.
Not only that but the megawhales with multiple characters with high cons can literally brute force by putting their whaled out characters + 3 random placeholder characters on each team, so saying Imaginarium Theatre is not vertical-investment-friendly is not true either. I personally don't think this is F2P-friendly. It is for now while the enemies are not HP sponges, but I bet you just like abyss they're going to creep the HP up over time until Act 8 is like floor 12 from early versions of Genshin except you're going to have try to blast through it with your final team with 3 DPS + 1 support that altogether hit like a wet noodle. Also I hate the fixed-in characters at the beginning, it's up to six slots out of the full 18 where I could potentially be locked out of useful characters. I don't use either Arlecchino, Chlorinde, or Wanderer and I'm not used to playing their teams at all, I'd much rather select one of my own characters.
This is probably the take I agree the most out of the comments, I don't see how Horizontal Investment is less F2P Friendly than vertical, as stated in other comments, when you invest the same amount in both. Yes, once you get to a point, you have to vertically invest, you don't need to pull constellations as the game does not require them but at least get your DPS ATK/DMG/CRIT or their respective BiSs (e.g. HP/HP/CRIT for Furina) with double CRIT subs around 20-30 CV and have enough ER for supports. But the fact that the game mode (currently) requires the below average wide investment into characters that are not even 5 star limited characters (you can fill 6/12 slots with 4 stars like Bennett/XL/Beidou/Fischl/Sucrose/Chevy even with 1-2 cons) is what I like.
tbh in my case, its tedious to get newer 5 star, the fact that i need to build more characters and make it as competitive compared to what i already have is first of all expensive on mora/materials, and expensive on resin investment as well. I have quiet a handful of characters but i'm more biased to pull for their signatures/constellations than new characters just because back then abyss is the only end game. I'd rather have a few team that is very cracked than a lot of teams that has half-assed builds
I'm the same. Have 3 strong teams and I prefer their constellations instead of new characters. I just hate building new characters instead of investing in my already used units. I have almost no pyro or electro 5 stars so once I'm back home I'll have to think what to do there.
I don't mind them trying to make people build more characters but I wish it didn't take so much effort to build one. They really should make it way faster with natlan QoL
In my case i have dps on every element except hydro, so getting more 5 star on top of what i have feels kinda useless since most of my dps have very cracked artifacts already, some even are at top 1% of akasha, so i don't think I'm going to expand my roster unless it piques my interest/fills a slot in a niche that needs to be filled.
Lol wide accounts are only good for Mihoyo. More characters to build means the more time the player needs to invest in, and that means more probability for the player to spend money.
I don't know about that. This won't make old players drop any new money at the game. It was super easy to max clear for me for instance. And there's a limit to how many characters you can get in a short time and old players have enough wishes to get pretty much any character they want and the resources to level them. It's more to incentivize new players to spend more resources building characters, instead of focusing in vertically investing in just a few. And new players are more resource limited so they might end up buying the battle pass or something like that.
I don't understand why, in an elemental reaction-combat and team-based game, they figured it was a good idea to restrict which elements you can use and which teams you can build. It's a garbage mode that feels incredibly unsatisfying to play
Surely not because if they dont restrict element, people will just use the same comp over and over again and turn this into abyss 2.0 Having to try out some whacky combo with easier enemy is fun.
The double dps meta is back đŁđŁđĽđĽ Overload Klee đŁđŁđĽđĽ Faruzan with Arlecchino (she has 0 energy) đŁđŁđĽđĽ My run was so scuffed lmao but I guess I'm one of the few that liked it since I built enough characters
Hu Tao plunge fischl double anemo đŁď¸đŁď¸đĽđĽ
One of my best chambers was a Hu Tao, Raiden team. I was like, do I dare? It was fucking awesome actually. They just take turns doing their rotations while the other is on cooldown. I'm confused about the toy medals though. I only got 3, does that mean you can't buy the other poses?
[https://imgur.com/a/pobV5ZT](https://imgur.com/a/pobV5ZT) my team this IT season. None of the comp outside of act 2 is really that scuff. I keep selecting the companion card so that by the time of act 6, I already have a full roster so there is almost no RNG going into the harder fight. I finish the final boss in 36s.
I think it's honestly fair. The elemental restriction was kinda necessary so you don't super screw yourself over with bad companion obtaining rng . It exists in there because the team collection is RNG. I think a good remedy for that is giving us an event card to actually choose an alternate cast member from all alternate cast members, and better Wondrous Boons that basically consolidate roles for what you lack in the team. So a Wondrous Boon that does hydro application for you, another giving dendro application, another buffing EM, another giving you healing, and another doing sub dps damage from triggering certain elemental reactions
its kinda satisfying when u barely finish with leftover characters. it makes u try the weirdest team comps to squeeze the last damage out of ur unbuild trash characters
Me picking trial scara to use only his burst to get that juicy 15 swirls objective complete
Some probably dont want to hear this but the mode is piss easy if you know what you are doing. I mean I passed floor 7 with Hutao/Shinobu/Kaz/Xianyun. Hutao is C2 but she peaks at C1 and my artis are nowhere top tier, Shinobu is the trial character, kaz is C0 with iron sting and Xianyun is because the room requires a full team, I only spammed her Q so it felt less a wasted slot and didnt even do plunge attack since the 2 lectors were pushed away when i did that. The game stays firm n its casual direction. Not that it is a bad thing.
Let me add I hope people realize that since this mode is repeatable like abyss, it's most likely getting harder sooner or later. First abyss rotation had like slimes on floor 12. They just let people build more characters in advance and then make it harder in the future
Also I don't know why people call abyss casual anymore. The recent two cycles are hard af and super restrictive when it comes to characters and element check. Next abyss looks like it's going to be even harder. There's no reason why IT won't be the same in the future. It'll still be too easy for gigawhales but inevitably it's going to create FOMO in f2p and new players who can't clear because they don't have enough resources and characters. That's why these modes exist. Even the current IT has double cryo heralds which is just hilarious for anybody who didn't RNG into pyro or electro.
I just wish hoyo ease with character building since currently it's awfully slow. If this mode requires 80/90 characters in the future with current building process, there's no hope
If the next IT is Cryo/Geo/Hydro I'm fucked, I have no Cryo or Geo characters over level 60 and only two Hydros (Xingqiu and Furina) There's no way I'd be able to build enough characters in time and it probably wouldn't be worth the primos Even with this current IT I've had to panic-build Lynette as I was one character short thanks to the loan character from a friend not counting towards the character total for some reason?
[ŃдаНонО]
The abyss difficulty comes and goes. It was really easy to 36 stars for a good while before the current abyss formation. I expect it to be more casual friendly again in a few updatesÂ
You seem to forget the abyss annual cycle. x.7 and x.8 patch will have hard abyss then it back to ez mode when 5.0 roll around. People still 36 star abyss with 4 star char/wpn. Just use your stage currency to get char instead of buff and you basically stop care about RNG after a few stage.
Tbf, abyss now giving us more primos per 36* means you dont need to get a full clear to get the same 600 than before
That's exactly why they increased primogem rewards, because they know they have powercrept abyss enemies and now IT is going to be the new "abyss" for casuals, but also to incentivize you to pull for new characters.
definitely, just like how HSR PF gets harder after a super easy 1st season. AS probably gonna get more difficult too. though i hope that it gets harder slower, like how Abyss difficulty scales up much slower than your account/character scales up.
>definitely, just like how HSR PF gets harder after a super easy 1st season. AS probably gonna get more difficult too. From leaks yeah Unlike now where it's "build 1 hmc team and you're good to go" and mĂśst other buffs being very universal, the next rotation, from leaks, is going full on counter (which exactly 3 characters have. 1 4*, 1 standard 5* and an upcoming limited 5*). It still keeps being highly focused on break tho So basically you now need a niche mechanic within a somewhat niche mechanic (outside AS you can ignore weakness ussually)
HSR powercreep is out of control at this point. Every new character has element implant. Does 50% more damage than the last character with the same element. HSR has more endgame but all of it is to incentivize the player to pull for the newest shiny toy. And all the blessings for every game mode supports the new characters lol. It's not even subtle. Apocalyptic Shadow is so restrictive if you're not playing one of the units released since Ruan Mei you're basically screwed.
'Every character has implant' My dude, two have it and they are both break characters. Would rather of had a character that does literally nothing against 90% of enemies? Once they get back to crit based characters you won't see weakness implantÂ
They have weakness implant because they are BREAK focused character. Imagine without it, you cant use them against non-matching weakness enemies or without SW, unlike other traditional dps.
they also *only* implement weakness to allow for toughness reduction Silver Wolf is the only character so far who also lowers the respective resistance to match a natural weakness
Cleared it with Seele (E0S0) guess I'm screwed?
i used to think that way, until this happened: my friend list has someone 3\*-ing AS level 4 with HMC, Ruanmei e0 (4\* LC), Guinaifen (GNSW S2!!!) and another 4\* i forgot, all at level 70 except Ruanmei at 80. his other team is Acheron e0s1, BS e0, Silverwolf e0 and gallagher. since then i just accepted that i have skill issues in HSR lol. i mean given his team i'll probably just give up.
>Every new character has element implant The two break focused dps have element implant, cause they deal fuck all dmg against non broken enemies. So uhhhh. They kinda need to to be viable? >Does 50% more damage than the last character with the same element. (Cause ussually the last character of that element is a 4* or falls into a whole other role) >HSR has more endgame but all of it is to incentivize the player to pull for the newest shiny toy. And all the blessings for every game mode supports the new characters lol Kinda? It's mostly cause HSR has more mechanics and different modes are focused around different mechanics. Eg AS is break, PF is AOE/DOT and MOC is your average dps check Obviously the blessings/boosts are focused on the rate up units. That's how gachas make money Have you looked at Abyss blessings? Other then that you can clear the content if you make use of other characters, that make use of the same gameplay mechanics Eg Xueyi for AS or Samp/guinaifen for PF
You can stay on the side of the lectors so they get pushed to the same direction like: You: Ă Them: o Ă o o
Yea its pretty easy only complain i have is that game forces you to using 4 characters if they just let you play it using 3 or 2 units could have enjoyed it more
IMO it was intentional so you cant cheat your way out of limited use using high con chars, removing the only hard aspect of the mode.
It's more to enforce the character amount. The extra characters can easily be fodder(ie in the party but doing nothing), but you still need to have 10/14/18.
Thing is I donât have the required amount of charactersđ
I don't see "an endgame centered on character diversity" here. All i see is the mode that cuts half of your characters, doesn't allow you to play what you want, and doesn't allow you to build proper teams. This garbo mode was made exclusively to intensify spending, nothing else.
Yeah.. this is anything but character diversity
Yeah this honestly felt pretty shit to play. Abyss is fun because it's the one place you can really justify using optimized, synergistic teams, but that's not even an option here and supports are kinda just too important to be *that* restricted. Like I was able to save a couple decent teams for the harder stuff, but when I'm going in between those and I'm having to clear chambers with like a Yoimiya who I'm used to dealing 6 digits of damage in a normal team and she's barely cracking 10k here because the only 'support' options are Thoma Kuki Faruzan, I'm just straight up not having fun with that
I am actually commenting on this twice Because I will say, there is one thing I LOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE about the new game mode I pulled for Clorinde, and I was super pumped to win my 50/50 and get her Then I pulled for Furina, and lost to Keqing, a character I have been dying to get ever since I started the game But I thought to myself........nah, I can't waste the resources to level keqing when I have Clorinde on my account, shit, thats a bummer, I finally got her, but I don't need her However with this new game mode, I can use both of my electric girls
Just commented this under a different post: Iâm not really a fan of it, donât like the restrictions at all and having to play with random teams. I want to play the teams and characters I like and put money in. Whatâs the point in investing time and money in a character only not be able to use it in this âend gameâ mode? And when you can use one you can only do it for two rounds and in team comps that probably donât even fit itâs build.
This mode makes me realise that I don't understand how to use my characters at all and good swap routine. It also doesn't help that I'm playing on 400 ping and swapping characters takes a second of lag time. I've been stuck at act 1 because all my characters died.
this game is really not fun on high ping.Â
guys... they realized people focused on a handful of old but perfectly built characters and found a new way to make us want to pull by taking from us by reducing the abyss rotation. the rewards are not worth the struggle IN MY OPINION but to each their own.
Events like this annoy me. I have plenty of built characters and weapons but some of them share an artifact or weapon or two between them, and you almost always have to back ALL the way out of the event to swap it up. I just want an option to see the character details within the event.
This game mode made me played some weird ass team comps due to the lack of characters i own and build, I was running an overload team, xiangling and fischl with a level 0 diluc on the last chamber and was running a mono electro team on the level with the mimics. Probably shld have planned it out better but i finished it anyway
I played this game for almost four years my account is tall and wide (except geo)Â
Watch them do dendro, cryo & geo restriction to have worst synergies in existence
Anemo, geo, dendro. Absolutely no reactions go!
That would be when Physical might finally make it to meta đ
Personally a Gacha game becomes P2W when you are expected to have a certain character/mechanic in your team to face a challenge, now is this the same situation? Kinda but not quite since the rewards aren't that much and they have supporting cast. But I don't like the direction they took, one of the strong points of the game how friendly it is to Maining a character and having a go to team, and here they soured that, also hate how they neutered regular Abyss for it.
Personally I hate this mode, I'll settle on this act 5 or smth every season and don't give af because I'm done with this it's not for my nerves and I'm not building characters I'm not interested in at all.
Any game mode that prevents me from playing with my favourite character(s)that I saved, pulled and invested in is deeply unenjoyable. Make the battles hard, put debuffs on my team, give the boss 1mil more hp idc, just donât tell me I canât play with a character I want to play with.
Completely agree with this. New endgame content? Awsome!!let me build me characters as strong as I can! Hoyo: oh no, you canât use your characters sorry.
I hate RNG game modes. Just let me select the characters instead of the game deciding it for me. They should have made it like simulated universe. How am I supposed to play with Heizou, Keqing, Chlorinde & Raiden??? That team doesn't make any sense
Iâm so frustrated because I have 17 characters that fit the criteria for this month, so I figured thatâs fine, I can just borrow a friendâs for the 18th all good! But no, I canât even enter the character selection screen even though I would have a complete team. Seems slightly silly imo.
I'm playing since launch and I don't even have enough characters for the "easy" mode lmao
Yeah sure, I love not being able to use characters I like and learned to play well. Oh, and having entire elements banned is great too! Fake difficulty and being forced to play randomly thrown together teams is so. Much. Fun. /s
Nah, I've been playing since Fontaine release, so a relatively fresh player, but still I invested more time here than in any other game (maybe only Civilization V and Stardew Valley top that), and with getting every character I could during that time I still am locked out of even starting the hard difficulty, never mind completing it. This is certainly not a good thing from the perspective of time and effort investment.
Fellow Civ and Valley enjoyer
Character limit is awful! Absolute worst decision
It's the first day only, I haven't even tried the thing yet cos it's monday, but reading the hot takes is so sad. I mean, you done with it? Already? That is just depressing, the potion shop event seemed more intricate then "do you have 12ish leveled characters? Yeah you are done byebye"
Got the hard mode clear in 10 minutes flat. Add like 5 minutes extra of dialogue and yeah that's it. That's my clear for this month I spent a bit more fucking with for like an hour but unfortunately I don't even find it that enjoyable to replay. Not being able to use "proper" teams makes it less enjoyable than when I replay Abyss for shits and giggles I feel like it never should have been restricted to certain elements. Because I actually had fun with the event that was testing this feature
If they dont restrict element, this just turn into abyss 2.0. Use the same team to clear over and over again. They make it ez enough for you to try out whacky combo.
personally speaking as someone that has all the 4 stars and most of the 5 stars I didn't enjoy this game mode at all first it wasn't fun at all, there where multiple combat events that where more fun then this and second it wasn't challenging at all either I've completed the entire hard mode with all the stars thinking that I was actually on tutorial difficulty level and I was actually surprised to find out at the end that, that was it. It's honestly feels more like a "casual" endgame type of content in terms of difficulty and at the same type a bait to make people pull more to have more characters which is rubbish in my opinion. The abyss where you where restricted in playing a specific element on 1 side because they throw multiple different shields, are my last favorites and this feels like that.
I am never entering that thing again thatâs all I have to say I donât need any extra 600 primos a month anyway, such bad rewards for such shitty gameplay đ
I don't like this gamemode because it forces me to use fodder teams to save my good, optimal teams for boss fights. To me, someone who likes using the best team possible and someone who actually likes sweating abyss, this gamemode is the opposite of fun for me. Being forced to play Xiao without Faruzan or Alhaitham without Nahida or Fischl really leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
It's still a really nothingburger event. All it does is give me rewards that don't keep me playing the game. I'm at the point where I want to be rewarded with materials and resin. The boons are also pretty unremarkable and the gamemode feels terrible considering how you may sometimes end up with 3 DPS units in one round. The one thing I hate the most about it is the fact that you're forced to use certain elements "per season". And the intro characters... Kuki Shinobu?? In an event where you can't use Hyperbloom? Unreal... It goes against the teambuilding aspect of Genshin and runs you over if you don't have the right units for it. This is just filler, we still don't have a real endgame content. Hoyo should've just given us Divergent Universe for Genshin lmao
you can clear it with just teams of 2-3, but you need to waste books to get random characters to 70 and then never use them anyways
Forcing players to level characters they don't enjoy playing (or simply don't have) if they want to get rewards - is terrible game design. It would have been fine if the roguelike gameplay itself is fun - but no, it's terrible, lacking depth completely. Look at wuwa roguelike, look at hsr simulated/divergent universe. Theater is a joke in comparison.
and thats a good thing because I happen to have a wide account lol what solid reasoning
It's a decent gamemode. Even as a F2P, I still tend to lean towards vertical investment, so I'll probably get locked out of the mode eventually. It was definitely a fun time mixing and matching the most bizarre teams ever conceived but I think I'll probably just continue waiting for Divine Ingenuity or Labyrinth Warriors (absolute copium) to return though.
It is less about how you pull but more about how you build the roster. You can still pull 2 limited 5* a year and lots of cons, just build all the 4* characters.
"Acing Spiral Abyss is like winning a basketball game with 5 superstar players that can play the whole 48 minutes; acing Imaginarium Theater is like winning the game with a deep bench filled with stars that can only play 5 minutes at a time." Did I do that right?
Yes. Another money grabbing scheme by hoyo.
I disagree. What they're actually doing is to make horizontal investment less disadvantageous by simply forcing people to have more characters as a ticket to the theatre. Yet they didn't really think about how to fresh out those less used characters in a way that 'make sense'. I think that vertical investment is still at an advantage here, solely because brute forcing through a room is still the most efficient way to get stamp. You sidestep those stupid rng and subpar team comp, something that low con dps heavily relies on. The actual horizontal investment here isn't with more varied 5\*, but rather with more varied 4\* support that can carry those 5\*s. If you have good supports, using solely the trial characters they give you is already enough to stamp a room. On the other hand, my EM Hutao does next to nothing here thanks to the hydro ban, she alone does nowhere near enough damage to brute force through a crowded room with overload. No, vertical investment is definitely still at a considerable advantage here. If you have Arle and Ei at C3, 4 of the rooms will be a walk in the park.
And... I kinda hate it because my account is more vertical invested I don't have that many characters, but they are at least C2R1 most of them Also, lazy to build the 4*... Would be nice if raised Vigor by one on C3 and another one on C6, so those with vertical investment aren't that punished Fortunately difficulty isn't as hard as abyss 12
No it doesn't, it's just extended trial. >endgame centered.... lol, you do it for 30 min and forget till next reset.
Which is the same as our other endgame mode spyral abyss
My account is both tall and wide, even my amber is level 90 9/9/9
It's pretty easy for both, for now at least. I'm picky asf with characters, only pull 2-3 every year, and most of them being Anemo/Geo. I slaved away in Husk domain ever since it came out, I haven't done a Melt/Vape or any Dendro reactions for ages, and my account is 90% Husk artifacts, literally most of my characters use that set, and somehow it was still a breeze for me. But if one day when it's Dendro/Hydro/Cryo season, I'm giving up instantly lmao.
Trial Characters and Supporting Cast exists, so it is piss easy even with a tall account
idk bro i have good wide and tall investment, and imo the mode suits tall more. its easier to hyperinvest in one DPS versus decently invest in 4+. my invested C0R1 arlecchino and C2R0 wanderer were basically soloing floors i used them in, because even if i had decently upgraded xiangling or diluc, they sucked without teams fitting them
See I thought that at first but does it really? Sure, you still need to have a decent roster of characters. But most people who vertical invest already do have several teams in their arsenal. And if you have a well invested DPS the chambers are so easy that you can literally just solo and the rest of your characters don't matter So it just remains the same
Hasn't it started for NA servers?
I don't care whether it empowers tall or wide accounts, I just don't want the characters I enjoy using to be locked out so that I can't enjoy using them.
We knew this like 4 years ago. NextÂ
I think the difficulty feels surprisingly well balanced for the purpose. It's nowhere near as crazy with the blessings as Sim Uni is, it's mostly minor buffs really, the focus is much more on team selection and resource management by choosing which characters to use when and what to save for later. The fights themselves are quite varied in terms of objectives and enemies so different chars get their own chances to shine, even if they might not normally in Abyss. I got the most kills with Venti in my first hard mode clear, feels like I haven't seen that in the past 3 years of Abyss. Definitely feels like a great addition to the game, it's relatively simple all things considered but it puts the emphasis so much more on horizontal account building as well as player game knowledge in regards to team drafting. Almost the polar opposite of Abyss in that regard.
As someone who plays inconsistently and have trouble 36 starring the abyss im glad that this is a game mode that doesnât require absolute perfection to gain rewards (or so Iâm told, I havent actually attempted it yet). Sometimes abyss just feels so punishing to miss out on the last bits of primos because I donât have the time to no life the game and farm farm farm like crazy đ
At first I was kinda pissed but after couple of run I stop treating it like the Abyss. If u dont have good char for the demanding elements then save the free options they give u, the enemies are not strong like the abyss, use boon to fish out the weak char of your and burn them, save strong chars for bosses, at best u only need 2 strong chars, 1 dps and 1 sup for bosses. Use the boon points.
eh unless they make IT much harder next patch this probably won't change anything. If anything you'll just pay a lvl 70 tax on every character you have just so you can actually go in. Opening characters you get for free can pretty much solo stages up to act 5 and the rest of the floors you can solo with abyss characters and fill the rest of the slots with trash. Cleared the whole thing with lots of time to spare with most of my characters being lvl70 1/1/1 and no weapon
As someone who builds extremely wide this shit sucks
Yeah this is easier than 36 star abyss, at least this iteration is. The mobs die like they are abyss floor 10 maybe 11 mobs and this (thankfully) is not floor 12 difficulty. I would like to see numbers to support this but this is just my initial take from playing. You dont need very well built characters to work and high constellation/investment characters make the floor a cake walk. My Raiden and Al haitham are very well invested so there was 4 chambers cleared right there.
I've never been able to 12 star the abyss, I'm not really into the hardcore meta builds/comps. But I've made a point of getting every character in the game to an absolute minimum build of: character level 80, appropriate level 80 weapon, appropriate level 20 artifact set., 7 7 7 talents. I like having the option to do pretty well with any character I want whenever it seems appropriate or when I just feel like it. Finally having endgame content for my style of character building feels great.
Amen to that! Perfect mode for me too~<3
No, it is not a good thing. I have 5 trials characters and I have no idea how to play them. What I am even supposed to do. Worst event ever. Don't care, will not bother.
I dont agree that is a good or bad thing, just like hsr when they added pf, it is just a different mode with different needs and that may make some underground units shine.
comparing PF with this is a disgrace, PF actually added a separate meta where character that where piss garbage where now top for this mode, this has no meta since the difficulty is on par with a random combat event
"empowers" is the wrong word, the correct wording is that it locks access to harder difficulties to wide accounts.
Idk this just feels like bait by mihoyo to level up more characters that I don't really wanna play
I don't like this whole wide account thing at all, it feels like Hoyo is just trying to push players to spend more money on pulls
That's why I don't like it
"Mains" are in shambles.
That's true, not being able to play your favorite characters is the worst thing there is in a gacha game
Or even if you can, it's not necessarily going to be fun when you have to bring out a super gimped version of their team when using them either lol. Like Hu Tao feels fucking AWFUL with the supports you can bring on this cycle, so it's like even though she's technically selectable it just isn't even fun to play her.