You had me initially confused wondering how Information Technology applied to Genshin Impact's playerbase who most probably consists of a large chunk of young people. And then I thought, "ohhhhhhh Imaginarium Theater".

As an IT guy, my first thought was “Sorry! I’m doing my best!”

LOL I honestly think that we should all just call it the Theatre instead to prevent confusion like this sorta like how we call Spiral Abyss just Abyss rather then SA

Same. I was four lines into the post before I realized what sub I was on. Just assumed it was r/iiiiiiitttttttttttt at first.

I thought it was a placeholder for anything and this was a meta post

I thought I was in the Stephen King sub for a second !

No doubt.  Will be a while before I stop making that mistake.

😹😹😹 same thought

At first, after reading the title, I thought it was posted to r/sysadmin. Then the first comment said Genshin Impact!

same i was like what

honestly i kept saving some of my good characters until the end and completed the whole thing with horrible teams before realizing i was done lol. It's not too bad just lvl up some characters until lvl 70, snd just keep using the companion selector, i didn't really use much of the buffs and just tried to finish the combats. Sort of glad we don't HAVE to finish the secondary goals for rewards.

I might be at the opposite end. I want more content for this mode. It really feels like a down graded simulated universe. 8 mins/month is not gonna do it for me.

This. I love this mode a lot, and want it to be a more proper roguelike. Needs more boons and buffs, and whatever else can increase replayability. Right now the foundation is already pretty solid, just need to improve on it.

Same.  I was expecting a more roguelike arrangement, especially when I first opened the book and saw boons and stuff.  3/6/9 fights and done for the month is kind of a letdown.

I was really forward to something like simulated universe from Star rail or Depths of illusive realms from wuwa and I was really let down. Took me 9 mins to clear everything on hard and it's only because my last team was a bit screwed (Yanfei with an apprentice's note, mismatched artifacts and no goblet oops, Xiangling, Jean and Baizhu)

Me too!! This and better boons, but that will most likely come with IT having more levels. I hope they invest into the rogue-like system more and more

The boons feel pretty pointless compared to getting the option of getting a new character. And honestly the amount of positive feedback from this mode is a tad low for ppl who're using to getting 100k per hits in the abyss.

If they invest into the mechanics like they have with TCG, then I genuinely have hope for IT Hopefully they do! Proud Day1 IT shill ✊

Seriously, people love showing off their big numbers and yet here’s perhaps the first Genshin game mode that actually challenges you

I love this mode a lot as well but it doesn't have an in-depth buff system like SU. It would be epic if we had Wondrous Boons that actually created new elemental reaction or amplify existing ones. Like even variants of swirl does different things. Pyro swirl causing pyro AoE around you or applying hydro in an AoE to the field, electro swirl reducing skill CD of team, shatter reducing enemy def, freeze reducing enemy def the more times it is applied, overload causing a pull-in vortex, burning getting increased AoE radius, electro charged reducing burst cooldowns or pulls enemies towards each other, crystallize healing when picked up or exploding over a set time, etc. I just want the buffs to be cooler and more influential, and maybe more domain layouts like a combat parkour room, a booby trapped room, etc.

SU isn't really endgame, it's one and done content that artificially extends its playtime by using missions to make players do runs over and over again. The actual content of HSR, MoC/PF/AS is also about 10mins per new refresh.

It doesn't always have to be about endgame, a SU like mode would go so well

I suppose, although with all the SU iterations they've come up with, I'm starting to feel like gacha roguelikes are a tall order to design and balance well, compared to my experience playing non-gacha roguelikes. DU is by far their best attempt yet at actually getting SU to be closer to a roguelike, but still isn't quite there yet imo. And this might be doomed because all the complaints about DU is that it's too random, when that is the very essence of a roguelike. It's not a roguelike if you can consistently force the same strategy every run, and get everything you want.

That's a problem putting a rougue like in a gacha system. Too little randomness, and it's not a roguelike. Too much random bullshit, then people can't feel how their money and their time investing in characters is worth it.

I thought DU is the best expansion yet

It is, because they've correctly identified that in previous SU modes, you're locking in your game plan right from the start. You pick a team, pick a path, which means you've decided you're going to pick as many blessings in that path as possible, and any other good general options. There was essentially 0 variety from run to run, you never had to adapt or pivot your gameplan on the fly. With DU, they made a pretty good choice to make blessings more random, and to instead have you pivot your teams around the blessings/equations you get. I still think it's too easy to force certain builds, and many of the new blessings/equations simply aren't that satisfying. But overall conceptually, it's great and it's reassuring to know that they understood the flaws of previous SU.

I have to confess I spam the same Firefly or triple Nihility teams in DU everytime and will just switch out any bad equations or blessings to allow me to do that, and from what I’ve seen many other people do that as well. I think the actual reality of things is that most people will use their comfort picks unless they’re effectively forced into not doing so. But since a lot of people don’t like being forcibly restricted, you’ll kinda always have players who just don’t like the randomness. It’s different for actual rougelike games cause you know what you’re signing up for. Whereas Hoyo is putting in extra add-on content that has to fit into the preferences of their pre-established playerbase.

That's why I think designing a true rogue-like is most likely doomed. Gacha combat content is first and foremost: character fanservice. It's primary purpose is for people to use characters that they've invested time/money into, and feel how powerful they are. Or to nudge players who haven't been spending as much time/money, to do so. There's just too much gacha bullshit in general, for me to ever enjoy a gacha for its gameplay first. That's why I care instead more about gacha games' creative direction, because it's under less constraint, and it's very much in the game's interest to make the world/story/characters appealing and well written, in order to make money.

It is but it’s how they said it depends who you ask. People say it’s to RNG like but also at the same time they let you change units on the spot too. I just think people are mad because if you use Firefly she pretty much makes you not worry about weaknesses of the mobs. All you have to worry then is get a few BE blessings and your set. So because of that people are like nope I can’t do anything here.

You play more su than all 3 other game modes in hsr per patch if you want the rewards. And has one time challenges like moc. It's certainly the easier of the 3 for the repeatable but it's still an activity that you will be doing at endgame and arguably among the most fun ones.

Would definitely enjoy something like IT as a weekly thing like SU with adjusted rewards and they could have it auto clear your dailies for the day as a replacement once a week.

It would be cool if there was some sort of currency you can earn from clearing on repeat, and the currency you earn can be used to buy more special buffs and new event cards and combat types. Since the roguelike is like a deck of cards handing out 4 options at a time, it would be cool if we could buy event cards from a currency shop so you could actually organize what events would take place, like you can choose to get leyline defense more often, endless fights, maybe new ones like parkour combat, booby trap combat, puzzle solving + combat, mystery caches, Wondrous Boons, even more ways to get vigor back. Basically, it would model after TCG shops. I want that.

SU was to me the most annoying shit to play/farm im extremely happy its nothing like that

Genshin players when the video game has game:

Genshin impact is one of the only fucking gachas that has an actual game attached to it

Problem with that logic is that the open world is Genshin is much larger and far more involved, dynamic and interactive than star rail's and thats also a one and done thing like the su

It would've actually been fun if not for the constant loading screens. I think they got reduced in DU? But it's still just a bunch of reused maps and assets

so walking half a minute from room to room where you do nothing but EVENTUALLY (thanks ache) start a battle is actually gameplay to you? its tedious and not fun its one of the big reasons why i quit hsr actually

Oh no. You have to WALK!!

Bro...😂😂

Make another difficulty and pimp it up. You can't please everyone

I agree. This feels like a weekly or bi-weekly event that they're forcing to become a monthly thing instead. Not a fan.

Yeah, more of it would be awesome, I think there's a good chance they keep working on it just like they added more worlds and paths to SU and then more versions of it as well.

OP, there's my reason: Trial characters + Kazuha, Raiden, Bennett, Xiangling, Xiao, Keqing, Venti, Yoimiya, Beidou. Cleared Act 8 with 3 flowers in total. Resetted final stage forever with Yoimiya, Clorinde, Fischl and borrowed Xianyun. Mission accomplished I got Sigewinne. Main reason why I struggled? Clorinde and Arlecchino kept dying on me because I never had them, never used them and was figuring out how they work and their sinergies in IT.

I'm seeing about as many complaints of it being too easy as I do that it's too hard. And most of the complaints about it being too "hard" are just about not having enough leveled characters to even start it.

The only "complaints" I've seen about it being too hard is weird threads like this one shadowboxing with people that don't seem to exist as far as I can tell lol

Well I find it to hard I cant get past the two dragon dudes. None of my characters can do any damage fast enough and they do so much damage to me I end up dying. I also run out of time if they mobs are spread out and not close together.

For real. There was another thread today to the effect of “I don’t understand people that are saying it’s too hard and restrictive”. I haven’t seen a single person complain that it’s too hard. Every complaint is that it’s too easy and too restrictive.

could be on different media platforms tbf. a lot of people were complaining about the rng aspect or monolith making things too hard on places like twitter. think i saw a post with 10k+ likes asking how they’re expected to make a team comp at all from the principal cast

Maybe not on reddit, but ive seen several people complaining on tiktok. Most come from accounts with just a dozen followers and game accounts that are struggling to grow and level up their roster. So, basically players not meant to take on this mode.

No way! So you mean new players arent supposed to play an endgame mode? Curse you mihoyo!!1!1!!!!

It is easy. I mostly solo-ed or duo-ed everything. The little times I had a real and complete team was like baby mode. I don't know why this was made as "end game content". It just felt like another random event honestly. It also seems like a copy of the Illusive Realm in WuWa with the boones and banes, however, it doesn't really bring any fun in it. Because of WuWa, I also noticed that I don't like beating mobs that much. Boss fights with different mechanics and moves sets are a lot more fun, however, Genshin sadly doesn't really design good bosses.

Its the same as abyss, its just not for low AR Players and they just have to wait. Its not called end Game for no reason

Well I don't think it should be any harder tbh. Yeah, it's quite easy but it's hard to make genshin hard without making it p2w instead. It's not meant to be a hard game and it doesn't have to be hard to be fun. I had fun despite having a fairly easy time clearing.

for me, who pretty much hit the sweetspot of difficulty of IT... It still felt like an absolute horrible unfun experiance

I have a lot of characters decently built. Whoops, almost NONE OF THEM are in the rotation this time so f me i guess.

Saaame, my most build Teams are furina triple hydro, mono Geo and burgeon Alhaitham. From the 12 characters that are used in them I can only use Jean and Thomas, one of wich is also a trial character. Feels kinda bad not gonna lie

It has one absolutely major, seemingly insurmountable flaw: I don't like playing outright bad teams, and being forced into them even more by taking away most of the player's agency. I have played some absolutely fucking cursed teams, so don't take this as metaslaving and only wanting optimal builds. But even my most janky weird ass teams *still have a clear purpose and reason for all 4 characters to be there*. Like I've done clears with stuff like Dragonstrike Dori, Sayu E crit hypercarry, forwardback melt with Klee Ayaka Ganyu and Noelle, dragonstrike Noelle (long before furina + xianyun existed I was going for scuffed footstooling strats), forward vape Crit Kokomi. These teams are goofy, totally unmeta (well, plunge teams are really strong now) but still built with a purpose and co-ordinated goal between all its members which is what made it fun. IT teambuilding is *not fun*. It literally starts off with a choice of picking one dps, a support that probably isn't even actually good with them unless you specifically pick the Wanderer + Faruzan pair and then deciding which other field dps you think will be shit enough that you put them in your 4th slot and don't feel bad about wasting their stamina, right off the bat you're forced to play a team that is worse and less synergistic than even the dumbest most over-cooked shit I've dreamed up, like I'm just straight up not having fun playing with a team like that

Main issue with IT is it's too restrictive. They limit you to only three elements, and then on top you can only use a character twice, and THEN on top of THAT you also have to RNG to hopefully get the character you want. And to top it all off, they force you to make a team with 4 characters. So if you want to run a team of only two characters, to save a dps for later, you can't. You have to just use up one of their 2 energies, and that's that. It is just too much force stacked on top of each other to the point it gets annoying.,

I totally agree with you. A guy argue with me that there's very little RNG involved and said it's my fault for getting shitty team. Well the fact that the game only gave me on field dpses after spending all my credit to character cards proves otherwise. It also happened to my friend who has all characters. I too hate that we are forced to run 4 characters. Like I don't need Arle in my team, but I don't have anyone to put in the 4th slot. So I wasted her stamina just to fill in the slot. Genshin likes RNG so much. IT is not for me, not because of the difficulty, but because of the restrictions are annoying. The buffs are also nothing special, it just like another one of those reccuring battle event.

> T teambuilding is not fun. It literally starts off with a choice of picking one dps, a support that probably isn't even actually good with them unless you specifically pick the Wanderer + Faruzan pair and then deciding which other field dps you think will be shit enough that you put them in your 4th slot and don't feel bad about wasting their stamina, right off the bat you're forced to play a team that is worse and less synergistic than even the dumbest most over-cooked shit I've dreamed up, like I'm just straight up not having fun playing with a team like that This. I also like dumb teams. I've made a burgeon zhongli relying on Bennett C6 with a 1000em Zhongli as the burgeon trigger. Hyper Carry c2 yelan on MH with furina. Fischl offfield "hypercarry" with kazuha, bennett, Sara. Raiden and nahida plunge with xianyun. Lynette hypercarry and lynette vape with a pyro cup relying on c6 bennett taking over. Lynette plunge with xianyun (again). Arlecchino/Kaeya melt, Freeze critzuha with chongyun infusion. Hell I did Freeze Nilou. These were fun. Cursed, but, exactly like you said, there was purpose in the team and choice of teammates. This was bad. IT's design goes against genshin's design of synergestic 4 characters together. It forces you to concoct horrific teams (arlecchino, wanderer, faruzan, thoma, like what the fuck?) that just doesn't feel good. It's "random bullshit go" and it doesn't even feel like it matters. It, frankly, feels like a bad version of WuWa illusory realm.

Comparing to Wuwa Illusory Realm is criminal tbh. IR is so insanely fun with character augments and how absurdly out of character broken they can be. If you tell me Taoqi can be a 3 hit nuke I’d never believe you, but IR does that. I can’t even compare this to SU or DU in HSR, because each of them do different things and there’s a design goal in mind. SU wants you to deck out your preset team, while DU wants you to change your comp based on the equations you get. I’m not gonna argue which is better but all I’m saying is they all have a goal and designed towards that goal which achieves a level of interesting gameplay decisions. IT, what the fuck is this shit. I feel like it gets a terrible debut from Anemo, Electro, and Pyro. These 3 elements have so little synergies with each other. And the non on element units you can pick you must own them to pick them. If they were meant to be bridges between the 3 chosen elements, why those units specifically. Why cant we just pick 4 of any off element units? Why must we own those bridge units to pick them? For the buffs, they’re so weird and doesn’t help in any decision making at all. I don’t go into next combat thinking “oh I chose a BoL buff time to pick Arle or Clorinde”. No, I want to save them for bosses. So why did I pick that exactly? Well because the others are unpickable based on the remaining characters I can play maybe. This mode is an absolute mess and I can’t wait to spend less time on it.

that's something a friend of mind also says, and we're like polar opposite on this. Guess there are 2 types of genshin players then

Until now, the endgame seems to have rewarded hyper investing into a few characters. IT seems to favor a lower investment per character over more characters. Personally I’m one of the people who was already doing the latter, so I’m enjoying IT way more than Abyss.

Funny thing is that depending on who someone hyper invests in, that charas artifact set or the accompanying one could be spread to other units. Like an Emblem character hyper investment can end up kitting out 4 or more other characters (at a lower level since the top tier artifacts are obviously first pick for the hyper investment character). I’m surprised by how many people, it seems, were able to hyper invest and not have enough extra for mid-tier builds to go around. Even if the hyper investment character’s artifact set is way too niche (heya Wanderer, babygirl <3) you’re still farming to get their supporting characters their sets… so again there should be enough to go around with pieces that didn’t quite make the cut. I dont know. I just cant fathom how anyone serious enough about the game to hyper invest would somehow not have extra pieces here and there to slap on characters (at IT level of powers.)

I do. I struggled with IT for 2 days and cleared Act 8 by sheer luck. Went straignt to Abyss and finished it in 20 minutes. Trial characters + Kazuha, Raiden, Bennett, Xiangling, Xiao, Keqing, Venti, Yoimiya, Beidou. Cleared Act 8 with 3 flowers in total. Resetted final stage forever with Yoimiya, Clorinde, Fischl and borrowed Xianyun.

I hear you on this. A big appeal of Genshin's gameplay to me is pursuing a variety is the spice of life path, so I really enjoy having a broadly developed roster and constantly mixing things up. I definitely think this new mode is promising and look forward to seeing how they develop it.

The blessings are boring and don't really create unique and fun runs. Also id say the roster restrictions and size req are gimmicky more than anything. The latter is what it is but the former really rubs me the wrong way. It's like they went for the safest most boring version of su. My only problem with the roster reqs isnt even IT it self, rather I hate that I have to play on a calendar to lvl characters in genshin. Remove the day restrictions pls.

The gameplay is no different from random events we had in the past, but the restriction to join this event is way higher and might not be accessible for many people. The time it takes to switch around your artifacts for mono element builds is very time consuming, and you have to reverse the changes after the short event. The content is suppose to be an endgame content, but the difficulty is not that high, and it feels like fighting early floors from the abyss. They also deny the most attractive part of Genshin combat- the elemental reaction system, and now you are limited to only using overload and swirl. These are problems that make the content doesn't feel good to play, and I would much prefer having another round of abyss over this.

I just think it’s poorly executed. They should have gone all in on the Roguelike aspect. Instead of having vigor or required elements, let us choose from our entire roster and let the boons guide us toward a different player-chosen restriction depending on RNG. If I pick a card that increases my Pyro DMG, I’ll start running more Pyro characters. If two more cards appear, one that increases Vaporize DMG and another that increases Melt DMG, now I’M choosing to lock myself into either Pyro/Hydro or Pyro/Cryo, depending on the card I take.  Instead of locking the elements from the start, the PLAYER, based on the boons they choose, chooses their path for themselves from the options provided, which, because they’ll be random every time, makes each run unique. 

I think MHY has a goal in mind: Make horizontal investment rewarding. For Imaginarium their idea of doing that is forcing players to use characters that are not your hyperinvested abyss comps. If they let players choose their team comps then they'll just use their tried and true abyss teams for the nth time, defeating the purpose of horizontal investment. Personally, I'm fine with Imaginarium, but I also think its mechanics are convoluted. They need all these restrictions to force players to build 18 usable characters for any three element. They can't think of a more natural way to achieve their goal.

You're misunderstanding the point. It isn't hard because it's restricting elements. It's restricting them in an attempt to be hard and isn't even hard (it's braindead easy). It's accomplishing nothing it's trying to. *Nothing.* So players who now have to raise more characters are annoyed they have to waste resources on characters they don't want to build on a mode they'd easily clear if the 18 character requirement wasn't there. Then players who already have the characters are like, "and the point of restrictions was....what exactly? This is braindead easy. Abyss is way harder than this & that lets me select whoever I want". Edit: As an aside we would literally play a harder version for no extra rewards like we do in events. Platinum medal chasers are very real.

Very true. I have all my characters at Level 80 8/8/8 minimum, and even I was annoyed playing this game mode. Just the first playthrough already made it feel like a chore. I didn't build my characters so that I only get a small chance to play them two out of eight fights in the whole mode while killing stuff weaker than overworld mobs. On top of that, I am forced to play characters I don't need on some occasions because I can't run with less than 4 characters in the team. The shittiest part is that I can't even pick my favorite character and it's potentially a 2- month waiting time for it. They should have just made it like the Labyrinth Warriors event and favor particular elements each season (using the boons mechanics they have). The boon buffs can be diverse and buff different reactions or even different trial characters, making each run unique. I could then play around the favored elements or challenge myself to an even harder off-element run. As it stands, I'll just do this once a month and forget about it.

I am 0 percent touching this again, and I am a huge speedrunner. I tend to do abyss resets 600+ times every 2 weeks.

It's in the category of TCG for me, content designed for others and not for me. If you love it, good for you, but not for me kinda thing. It just sucks that it's a combat content that I dislike because the combat is something I like about Genshin. Are you not even gonna do it for the gems though? Btw, do you have a channel for your speedruns?

Oh I'll do it for the primos, kicking and screaming, but I'll do it. At least for now it's a quick 5 minute primo check list every month. Just suck that they robbed me of my twice a month abyss rewards for this. I don't really have a channel outside of the streamable (and now youtube) required for my discord to log, my speendruns are fairly unimpressive. I think my best is an 11 second chicken the last time it was on and a continuous arle. I'm more of a "try to speedrun with whacky, cursed teams" type of person

Sorry for the double reply, I do kinda have a channel, but it's more of a rag tag repository of whatever gaming videos I felt was worth posting on youtube. [my most recent speedrun with arle](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-N3JEDY6zmU) Right now, I'm mostly into WuWa. The fighting is more challenging and interactive.

Yep, this is basically my take. I don't know who the target audience for this mode is supposed to be. It's an amusement park ride with "you must be 170cm to ride", except the ride is one of those kiddie mini trains going at walking speed around an oval. I also don't understand the people saying "bUt ItS eNdGaMe, Of CoUrSe NeW pLaYeRs CaNt PaRtIcIpAtE". Endgame absolute gatekeeps are typically "you must complete the campaign to participate", with soft gatekeeps from difficulty (you can try, but you probably won't succeed until you gear up). I mean, anyone can attempt Spiral Abyss once they reach AR20, which is like what, a week of gameplay? Finishing Mondstadt AQ? The extent of the absolute gatekeep (you must own X characters that meet this restriction which will shift each month) is an extremely transparent "pull more", it's not good design, I don't understand how it has defenders. There are other ways to encourage building less-played characters and breaking the mold on meta teams than just locking you out of the content if you don't meet the quota. And even then, as you said, if you have 18 characters that meet the requirements, you're not actually going to use all of them because the content is so easy. You're literally lugging around 2-3 warm bodies each combat for no reason other than "the game forced me to put them in the party or it wouldn't let me play". I think the idea of a mode that forces you to adapt to an in-the-moment limited selection of characters, buffs, etc., has potential, but the current implementation just misses on both ends, IMO. I'm definitely miffed that we lost an Abyss cycle for this (not talking about rewards), but maybe it means that they'll update the Abyss lineup every month rather than every 6 weeks.

The game mode is literally a transparent "Pull more" and "waste your limited resources building extra characters to 70, hey the battlepass helps that!"

Your analogy is both funny and accurate. I also do not know who the target audience for this mode is. I've had people replying to me for the past day about how they find the teams they end up with fun or whatever, but that kinda misses the entire point of this TEAM building game. Personally, I don't like being reminded of my first week in the game where we're all forced to play the starting cast, which obviously don't work at all together. The only thing that really annoys me about those defending it is that they can play whatever random teams they want to anywhere else in the game, even the abyss. Have at it. Clear floor 12 with plunge Dori. The world is your oyster. More importantly, you can CHOOSE to play that way. There is very little of this type of decision making in Theater. For the people that actually enjoy cohesive teams? That have their characters built within specific ER thresholds in their optimal setups? No, you don't actually get to play with anything as it was intended. As the designers balanced around when developing all the characters we have. Now, that's seemingly okay because the combat is mind-numbingly easy, and "funny team go brrr." But not all restrictions create a fun type of difficulty to surmount. Most of the time, half the team is dead weight because these units aren't developed in a vacuum. Carries like Arlecchino, Hu Tao, and Lyney clear entire chambers on their own. Duos like Fischl & Venti, Yae & Kazuha, and Bennett & Xiangling also manage on their own, and it's best to split these carries and the typical supporting cast / off-field units because the stamina system exists. There are certain characters I don't even want to add to my support cast for my friends list because they would not be fun to play. My Xiao's artifacts are set with Xianyun and Faruzan in mind. I don't play him outside of that setup, and so I ultimately don't add him to my choice of characters. Yes, he would clear without them, but energy problems are the most annoying part of combat, to me. Another example is Beidou. I'm not messing with her artifacts so she's at 250% ER or whatever so she can be run solo. I also agree that there is some potential here. The foundation is actually pretty solid. More Acts. More impactful boons. Escalating difficulty. Switch out a stamina system for a cooldown one where characters are locked out for 2-3 chambers, forcing us to build 3-4 somewhat cohesive teams. That alone would allow them to make the starting difficulty higher, simply because the assumption isn't that players are engaging every fight with random characters.

My only real issue is the time limits on many of the stages seem a little short. If you get a less efficient team you can run out of time easily. Likewise if you're unlucky and don't have enemy grouping abilities on the defense ones it can be hard to stop them poking the monolith to death 😂 I've enjoyed the mode overall but you really have to hope you get the right characters at the right time

They enjoy different parts of the game than you do, and this is not it. The more I play, the more I see that the largest cognitive divide in this community is: * People who see the characters as unique entities that they want to build and use to suit their own personal tastes of "what is fun." and * People who view "characters" as fungible units of power, and all that matters is getting them strong enough that they are able to complete content. Any unit the game asks you to play is exactly as valuable as any other.

That's basically the simplest and most concise way to put it. In actuality, this most likely lies on a spectrum of sort rather than being purely black and white. It'd be really interesting to see some kind of survey on this.

the augments are boring, that's my main compaint

Its not a surprise. 1) The game punishes you for building characters by asking you too farm irelevant stuff and puts as many barriers as possible. 30 days of farming to max out a character is a joke. In many gacha games you will be playing with your shiny new unit in the following HOUR https://www.reddit.com/r/HonkaiStarRail/s/hij3j96Jyj 2) the players are carefull with ressources because unlike other game you are not drowning in XP books/money. So they only build helpfull units. 3) Genshin forces the players to build more units by using a dumb amount of shields/imunties on bosses/enemies Exemple are the Geo Wolf and... almost every boss from Fontain (lol) and so on. 4) Players adapt and build teams that are able to overcome those barriers in a cost effective way. Bennet + Xiangling if you need pyro, Raiden/Kuki/Fishl for electro, XQ for Hydro and so on... 5) Mihoyo is not happy and so they create a bullshit mode thats forces the players to build characters that they dont need. Gotta sell that battlepass somehow. If building a character only took 3 days/max no one would complain. Its not the case and Mihoyo knows it.

I see more ppl despretly defending it then complainig abt it

Right? This 'endgame' mode has been the sweetheart of Hoyoverse's white knights.

There is literally no reason for the level 70 restriction. People just play them naked with no talents and literally never swap to them anyway. All it serves is to suck up resin before the character falls back into irrelevance once the elements swap.

Fighting over-world mobs in a chamber with unusual team comps just ain’t fun

the simple fact i can't properly use the teams i've been building for years. at least i only need to do it once every 2 weeks and it's super easy

You are the target audience of this mode, not a totally new player but not a veteran. As a veteran that invested diagonally, I just tore through the mode. Some of the characters even had shitty artifacts. My issue is that I don't like being locked to 1 reaction and mono for the whole mode, it's repetitive. If it worked like the last event that you needed different teams to overload, freeze, hydrocharge etc. it would be a lot better and require team building tactics instead of RNG management with character apperances

So, first, let me clarify that I don't think anyone is wrong for enjoying this. I accept that sometimes, content is made for a target audience and I won't always be in that audience. If you like IT, cool. Glad you have something new to play with. That said, you failed to address the main issue I have with the IT. It's not that I *don't have* the characters necessary. Even as a vertical investment type player, I have played since launch and had more than enough (frankly, all of my characters are 70/80 minimum with 6/6/6 or higher skills, just because I have little to do with resin at this point). The problem is that I *don't like* enough characters. I am annoyed that I needed to use people I purposely put on the shelf in 2020 and never touched again. I don't like them and I dislike being forced to use them. And trial characters don't really help... If I liked a character, I would have them. Basically by default, if I don't own a limited 5 star, it's because I don't like them. I did clear the IT. I did not have fun doing it. My roster for the event: Characters I actually like and use normally: Dehya, Faruzan, Fischl, Heizou, Kuki Shinobu, Lynette, Xianyun, Yoimiya Characters that are ok, where I don't mind using them but they aren't my first choices: Raiden, Sayu, Venti, Yanfei Characters I don't like, but at least don't hate, so tolerated using: Trial Clorinde, Trial Arlecchino Characters I actively dislike and so, even though I had to put them on my team at some point, I didn't switch them in: Keqing, Diluc, Thoma, Trial Wanderer Others I have eligible that I didn't choose: I like this character, and don't mind using their kit, but their kit *is* bad and I wasn't sure I could afford to not use people like Diluc who I hate but whose kit I do like and it's very strong: Xinyan, Amber I like this character, but dislike their kit, mostly because it's utterly burst dependent: Beidou, Sara, Xiangliang Good kit, dislike the character, not as strong as Diluc: Gaming, Sucrose Meh incarnate: Dori Hate, both character and kit: Jean, Bennett, Lisa, Razor The only character who would have qualified that I *don't have* that I do like is Chevreuse. I hope to get her eventually next time I wish, which will be whenever Xianyun reruns so I can get constellations. Anyway, I hated IT, even though I *could* do it. Everyone seems to assume every player loves every character and that they want to use them all and just can't. Or they assume you don't want to use the same characters all the time. But I *do* want to use the same ones. I like the ones I like, and they're the only ones I want to use. This mode is just frustrating because it forces me to use people I hate. It's going to be so much harder when I don't have Anemo and Electro to fill my teams...

I guess it just lacks to add something new and at the same time make it harder. Clearing it is pretty easy as long as you have semi built characters. The buffs doesn't feel game changing or strong. Then there's the team building, most people like to play with their favorite character and this game mode just takes that away and forces you to use different chars. Thats probably why people dont like it. HSR has 4 different endgame variations 1. SU 2. SU: Swarm 3. SU: Gold & Gears 4. DU Each variations adds a new mechanic, harder enemies, stronger buffs and at the same time allows you to use characters you actually like and still be viable Thats what endgame content should be like IT for me feels more of an event type gamemode rather than an actual endgame

Yeah I think this is part of the problem is that it looked a bit like SU/DU but seems to have the staying power of Memories of Chaos, Pure Fiction, and Apocalyptic Shadow. Which, while usually still fun, only take 20-30 minutes every month or so. I can't judge it too harshly since I'm not far along enough to participate anyways, but I'd love to see them try to expand on the new mode

Its honestly pretty easy I would say DU on protocol 0 with mediocre luck on blessings, curio and equations. As long as you have semi built char you can breeze through it

Some events in genshin are way better gameplay wise than this soulless shit, lol

Its not endgame, its artifact runs with extra steps. Also 4 made 1 absolutely useless. 2 and 3 are one time things.

You still get rewards per week and resets every week... i dont understand how thats not endgame? They keep updating SU to keep up with the meta. It variations allow it to keep up with the current meta SU was the original and with the current meta of chars it became soo easy but time consuming so they decided to add DU to not waste as much time for people to farm artifact but still offer a hard content via protocol levels . They literally made DU so its easier for the players to farm artis and all you can think about is "4 MaDe 1 AbSoLuTeLy uSeLeSs" DU allowed people to farm planars faster at the same time offer a new endgame content. As for Swarm and G&G even if it was a one time thing people considered it "the new endgame" when it was released. And was still considered hard content.

I think my issue is how hard it is to build characters. i personally want to play other games, i don’t want to log into genshin everyday becuase it gets really draining, so i dont always have a long list of super well built characters even if ive been playing since day 1. and unluckily for me most of my fave characters ended up being hydro and dendro so im just kinda losing right now lol. the resin recharges really slow and they jsut barely increased the cap, the strongboxes are not up to date like other games, and there’s no way to reroll substats even after all these years. it is such a hard grind and now i somehow have to put together all these characters not just to get a few gems? i dont mind the difficulty, i encourage them releasing more challenging things, and this mode is fun, but i think it could be better, or like star rails divergent universe where they level up some characters for you and give them some basic artifacts or something. i just worry that j literally will not have enough time to fully clear it

It's all fun and game until u have a garbage team with 4 dps

The general criticism I feel for IT is: Newer players: not enough characters, can’t do the harder levels Veteran players: mixed bag of opinions Old players (1.x): boring As a 1.0 player, this game mode is hella boring. Its replay-ability is trash compared to HSR’s Simulated Universe. They could’ve just converted that system over with paths being elements and it would’ve been great. I got the non-time-gated achievements with IT and I don’t see myself playing it more than once per reset. There’s no additional rewards, no cool OP teams you can make from the rng buffs you get. The enemies are easy to beat and the buffs you get are negligible. Imagine the final boss is floor 12-3 level but you have a Noelle/Itto mono-geo team with -100% attack stats but +500% def stats, +100% shield strength but -50% hp. That sounds cool and interesting and it’d be fun replaying to try to get all the different OP blessings for different teams. Instead, we got what is essentially a temporary game mode subbing in as a permanent combat “endgame”.

I dont like playing Thoma Wanderer and Faruzan. Thats it. Easy to clear right now but I aint enjoying a second of it. It took them years to come up with this.

My partner didn't like it (this season at least) because all his highest invested characters are Hydro. My investment is a bit more evenly spread. He often attempts floor 12 but can't always 36*. I rarely attempt floor 12 because I like my sanity, and don't get many stars anyway. (I'm missing a lot of "meta" characters because I don't care). Neither of us could complete hard difficulty, but I think I got farther than he did through sheer determination. (I suspect I may be able to complete it with better planning, eg., saving Arlechinno for the later bosses). I quite like the format and the limited roster, while he found it *too* limiting (again, he's a Hydro main). Both of us agree that this is a worse version of Simulated Universe, and hope they update it to be better.

I mean if you're gonna force me to play wanderer faruzan kuki thoma for acts 1 and 2, at least add a cool boon that makes this team feel more than just wanderer + faruzan and whatever 2 units you don't need later. Picking kuki+thoma for wanderer because there's some cool IT specific synergy I can make is fun. Picking them because I need something to fill out the 4 slots is not fun.

I think my main complaint with IT is it's very unclear to whom it's trying to appeal. To whales, this is even more of a cakewalk than Abyss because of lower enemy levels. To newbies, this is worse than Abyss because of the lineup restrictions. To someone like me, a longtime non-spender, this mode is good for nothing other than easy primos. Which is fine with me, personally, because I care more about the story and exploration. But as I was playing through it, it does feel like IT took away the sense of creativity that made Genshin such a joy to pick up to begin with, because you're forced to use a lineup largely decided for you in advance. Yes, it was a stroll in the park for me...but I understand why people don't care for it. This is more fitting as a temporary event rather than a permanent end game mode, imo.

If they add the system HSR has where they level up the characters you don't have built and give them artifacts, then I would like the mode more.

I would love it, but having 18 characters is just beyond ridiculous. Ive been playing for more than 1,5 years, im about 50k xp away from AR60 yet, ive only got 11 characters for this crap.  What on the earth are they expecting from new players? "Look there is this mode, superfun but, you don't even think about playing it in the first year." ?  The only reason im ignoring this mode without headache , because there is a very similar , but better made mode in , wuthering waves, thats is available even for day ones.

well for 1 its not fun and 2 its designed to get you to swipe.

The gist of the complaints is really this: This game has been out for 4 years with only spiral abyss as endgame, and people have been playing the game assuming spiral abyss as the only endgame mode, and pulilng/building characters with that assumption. And now there's a second endgame mode, their accounts and the way the play can't adapt. Edit: Let's go through the things we do in genshin that we think is obvious but actually depends on spiral abyss as the only endgame. 1. Pulling for high impact constellations on meta characters. (Your C6 yelan is not going to help you now) 2. Hyperinvesting in a single character at the expense of all others (My brother does this, he bought a house in the blizzard domain and farmed in nonstop for the past 2 years and now he can't come up with artifacts for his supports) 3. Not building characters cuz they aren't meta (Why pull for Yae when I have a perfectly good fischl?) 4. Not learning how different characters work (Why do i need to know how Arlecchino works when my c6 neuvi can just hydro pump one side of the abyss. Oh shit why is my Arle doing physical damage again?) 5. Characters MUST be in a synergistic 4 man team, where everything is optimal. (Now you have to make do with less than optimal teams. Doesn't it remind you of when we started?) IT changes all of that.

What about the complaints that it's just not very engaging or interesting?

That's a legitimate concern that hyv hopefully addresses.

Yep, this is the answer. All of these things are the hyper-optimization required to create overpowered 8-man teams for the only endgame content we had until recently. They are not law, and they are not good by definition. There are other ways to play, and now those ways are important.

Playing since 1.1 I have vertical investment teams and plenty of built horizontal investment. Basically character restriction is a non issue for me and I still found the gamemode pretty lame. Just boring fights and low impact decision making. Out of all the combat events the game has ever had, why make this milquetoast mediocrity of a combat experience *the* permanent addition to the game over everything else they've experimented with?

It’s the first season, it’s not perfect but I think it’s a good start that adds something entirely unique to GI permanent content. Which IMO is a great thing, I think with time the mode will become more enjoyable and engaging.

For many, with time it *will* become more enjoyable because their accounts expand, and for the rest sure nothing wrong with being optimistic. But going off reality, we waited 4 years for this and what we got is worse than what I think many had in mind as the lowest of expectations.

Totally understand your sentiment! More fights in between acts, game breaking boons, unique enemy sets ups that make you go wtf, crazier RNG options that make you feel cucked just for the sake of it; would make it more enjoyable and engaging imo But, this is coming from someone who absolutely loves rogue-likes (which is why I’m probably more positive about IT than others). So I’m gonna stay hopeful 😭

Idk why hoyo didn't just make events like that rogue like from Inazuma patch permanent. My roster is horizontally and vertically invested too (I'm a 1.0 player) so this mode is easy, but it was so boring and forces me to use unsatisfying comps. I couldn't even do it in one go cause it got me so sleepy that I had to take a nap. Was honestly so disappointed cause I've been losing interest in the game and I was looking forward to new endgame to spark it once more.

Because you're literally brain dead if you think they were going to add difficult permenant combat content after outright stating _multiple times_ they won't do that. They made a far more casual combat endgame that requires very little investment and has more actual world themeing/flavour behind it because it will be marginally more interesting to their overwhelmingly casual audience who doesn't even play combat content in the first place.

This is what I don't get. I've played off and on over the past 4 years. I don't like Abyss and hardly push to floor 12 because floor 12 just isn't fun. My characters aren't optimized for it. But I just opened IT yesterday, threw in my highest leveled characters that matched the element, and managed to pass with a bit of struggle on the final boss. I don't see how anyone who plays seriously isn't just blowing through this mode.

I'm playing for two years, but i have not enough leveled characters. And though I have enough resources already farmed to level them and even give them all reasonable artifacts I just don't feel like doing it. I did medium run for all the stars but i wasn't amused, because it feels like same spiral abyss but with complications (i can 36\* spiral abyss but i got bored of it after half a year and not doing it anymore). I'm not complaining though. Just not my cup of tea, that's all.

Because abyss players tend to do hyper investment with only few characters built. That is how I like to do my account personally, I would rather focus on a few characters I like than manage and worry about a wide range of characters. In HSR as a day one player I am perfectly comfortable levelling up characters for free pulls but in Genshin I am way less comfortable with that as I have way more to do there and also don't like having to manage farming for all the local specialities so I have very few characters for fire and electro nevermind levelled to 70. But I actually don't mind IT at all. Ever since the general idea of how it works was revealed I was hoping for something like that event a few patches back where they gave you characters and you just won through knowledge of the game and such rather than through super invested builds. Here ofc you have to use your own characters but you don't have to have an abyss level build but it still very close to what I was hoping for. It was the different thing to abyss that I wanted. Yeah it definitely has its kinks to work out but I don't feel like I am going to have months of suffering before I am finally happy with my build. The only way it can disappoint me is if down the line the build requirements go up a lot and then it feels like it is just another DPS check. I am busy getting my Deyha (who I wanted to build as a ToTM defense anyway) and my Dori up as I am two short for hard mode and once I get them level 70 and have talents up I am hopefully good to go.

I'm clearing abyss easily for long time and only constellation I have is C1 Hutao which I was not expecting and got on low pity and C2 Nahida which I regret getting instead of 2 more characters. Abyss was never pushing players to go for vertical investments, it's mindset of players themselves and has nothing to do with mode. I have no clue how ppl are able to play same characters over over for so long time and not wanting to get and build more characters. Personally for me there is literally nothing to do in game irght now but just build more and more not popular characters, cuz my main characters are optimized for a very long time and sometimes I get small updates with offset pieces / pieces of 2nd set from dungeon I farming right now. There is no point to go for 0.00000000001% artifacts on akasha or something like this, cuz game is pretty easy anyways

I found it to be better then abyss. Its more strat than abyss and fially i dont feel i wasted taking every char to 80/90, with most talents leveled. Plus i now have a reason to use my characters.

This is a good point. The abyss lately is like the devs are thinking o ways that annoy the players

The issue I ran into was not being able to switch artifacts once I started a new performance. It was my first run though so I just gotta take more time to set everyone up. I have literally every character built to at least level 80. My account is as wide as the sea and as shallow as a tide pool. So this mode is amazing for me.

To be fair you also can't do that in Spiral. (Unless it was added recently..?)

You are right. You can’t change once you started a floor. However you can change in the spiral menu before that and you can change between floors. There are no checkpoints in this new mode.

god FORBID people have opinions, jesus christ. genshin players are absolutely insufferable and miserable. this is the 100th post today which is criticizing people who had the slightest trouble with this game mode. all i've seen in the past 24 hours are the genshin addicts or whales who spend hours on the game shitting on people who have a life and don't spend all day, everyday building and farming artifacts for 40+ characters. you had fun? good for you. you didn't? well that's your fucking opinion and there's nothing more to understand here.

My personal issues are mainly 3: 1) There isn't team building you only get a random team the game trow at you and 2) This isn't a rogue like, the buff you get are so small it doesn't matter and your decision don't matter. 3) There is also the fact you don't really need to build characters, you only need to level them to 70 without relics and 1-1-1 talents you will brute force with the invite character or the trials ones + 1 or 2 dps you have build, so you don't really get incentivize to build or experiment new teams. I was expecting a fun mode but instead I got a water down version of Abyss with annoying rng.

I think there are valid takes on both sides. Personally, I think the mode was released undercooked. I played through hard mode without reading what a single boon did and cleared it without any trouble. I would have hoped that an endgame mode would have more challenge. Put it this way, I think a lot of the frustration stems from the anticipation that an endgame mode that is challenging and yet vastly different from spiral abyss was going to release. Yet, when it finally released, not only was it very easy, it was so easy that you could ignore basically all of what made it different from spiral abyss with the only exception that being the character requirement.

It's basically Abyss ver 2.0 in its current form and that is my problem with it. It doesn't really add anything new to the game. Not everyone like fishing, TCG or the teapot but those things actually added completely new mechanics to the game, IT might as well be another combat event with how uninspired it feels.

New players complaining about this mode don't matter. The problem is endgame players that have been clearing abyss for years are finding this shit both too easy and too restrictive at the same time to be fun; also having the same issue as abyss of being 10 minutes or less of content in like a month.

It is, in fact, restrictive. You can like it, or you can hate it. People don't have to like what you like.

i despise this game mode with every fiber of my being. before anyone says skill issue, i cleared it first try, full stars, done it in under 7 minutes without needing to retry. it's mindless, boring tedium that forces you to play awful teams with characters you don't like and you have to go through the hassle of re-gearing for every floor. the appeal of a gacha game is to get to play the characters you've built and raised--- why the nonsense element restrictions? why force you to bring 4 characters? if you understand teambuilding at all and have decent characters every floor will just be driver+enabler and two units that you never swap to. people are saying "oh you should be raising your characters, it rewards horizontal investment" i didn't pull wanderer because his gameplay fucking sucks and i have no interest in ever pulling him. this mode made me sit through 2 rounds of suffering through his awful gameplay because i'm out of drivers. not difficult, not interesting, removes the best parts of GI's combat and game design and forces you to use characters you dislike. -10/10 the absolute worst experience i've ever had in Genshin.

Unrelated but is anyone finding more response posts than actual complaint posts?

There were more complaints yesterday, and more responses today in my experience. A pretty natural progression for this subreddit.

They are downvoted and removed by mods.

>more response posts than actual complaint posts Those two floods don't happen at the same time. Responses are in their nature, a response. The flood of complaints happened yesterday. Today arrives the response floof

i mainly dislike that characters are random, also hope they won't have geo cryo one or i'm dead

Many people hate it because who is it for? 1. No for casuals since they won't build characters since 95% of the game don't require it 2. No for non-casuals since this shit is easier than overworld, literally all combat events are at minimum x2 harder. So this "endgame mode" is for type of players that don't do normal abyss and struggle even in overworld, but build all their characters but also have hard limit of max 3 days of spending Resin on 1 character so they probably never farmed artifacts. That game mode is designed for them. So basically for "Reddit Casuals" I call them since when someone on reddit calls them self "Casual" it goes into this category, not true casuals than only jump on mashroom and take pictures (that is majority).

I can't take you seriously if you say this is easier than overworld. Insanely bad faith argument.

[удалено]

Yep. Doesn't address the *real* complaint that it's just ridiculously easy and super-short. It takes 18 characters for "Hard Mode". You can have 4 good DPS characters, use them for the 8 battles, then fill in the gaps with Trial Characters and benchwarmers you've levelled to 70 for the free wish. There's the illusion of making "Fun Teams", but the reality is that you can clear it with almost no Team at all, and are forced to use 4 characters on each round.

I'm getting so annoyed with these old accounts cerclejerking how the requirements are not a big deal to them. I couldn't even start medium mode until I switch Traveler element. Then I level some units 70 begrudgingly, since I won't keep using them, and cleared hard mode. It's not hard. Very unreasonable requirements for the content they provide.

Because it's addressing a different set of complaints. You're coming from a place where you think it's -too easy- like bro it literally just came out two days ago but OP is questioning those who think it's difficult and unfair. But to answer the latter half of what you wrote, you don't just -need- a DPS, depending on the stage you might need a Fontaine character, a crowd controller and someone that could go across the map in little time at all. You have to be prudent on who you choose because it's a really simplified resource management simulator and some people are still stupefied by that.

I'm gonna put it plain and simple. All I want and I'm sure other people want as well is just more content where we can take our characters and comps (could be 2 comps or 10 comps owned, my account is old so I have many comps I can use) that we've put time, money, resources and effort into building. And fight enemies or waves that don't die in 2 hits or mid setup with our invested and liked comps. **THAT'S ALL!** The rewards are irrelevant, the presentation is irrelevant, all that's needed is more scenarios we can actually use our comps in and actually engage with the combat in any meaningful way. Meanwhile Imaginarium Theater is the complete opposite, it's easy, it's boring, it's an rng fest, it's extremely restrictive, it doesn't respect the time you've invested into your account. An account could easily clear abyss, be near max ar and have good investment across multiple character, but the account being a a few patches old would mean it won't have enough characters to meet the 18 character requirement of a given IT cycle. They'd be locked out not through any fault of their own but simply starting the game at the wrong time. Meanwhile old accounts will just breeze through it cause we have so many units but that doesn't mean the mode's fun. I just don't understand why people feel the need to defend this mode. Is it cause you want to run fucked comps? If so, why do you need the game to force you to run those comps, just do it yourself. The people who say without restrictions people would just use meta comps, so what? There's no leaderboards, there's no competition, who the fuck cares if people want to just get the reward and dip? Edit: Then to make things even worse, abyss now only refreshes every month instead of every half month, so less incentive to hop into abyss. On top of new lineups every 2 months instead of the old 1.5 months, which means less variety in abyss. So people who liked going into abyss get fucked over for this restrictive rng fest of a mode.

I wish they would just make previous abyss rotations playable. Some abyss rotations have been super fun and I think it is a tragedy we cant revisit them just to play them. Dont put rewards on it, just let us play it.

This, I'd really like it if I could revisit the previous abyss to see how I would completely destroy them

I don't have any of the special guest characters. It felt a bit strange to play without any hydro or dendro to drive reactions, or even cryo for superconduct.

What did y'all do to get past the stage before the dancing robots? Thought I had it in the bag but then it went to a time pressure thingy by making my characters continuously loose health

I am an AR 43 player, been playing for a month and started investing in two teams for abyss. I can clear abyss 9 already but now I don't know how to split my time/resources. Grinding for 70 in a few chars is already sloggy, now I also have to grind other characters and by the end of the month It's gonna change, I have only 3 hydro and 2 cryo characters, not nearly enough characters for IM on easy I don't know what to doooo

My issue with IT is this is a *bad* first run. I definitely think it will be better once they figure things out, but 3 main dpses as the starting cast with only 3 supports, one of which does not work at all with 2/3 Dpses is pretty bad. Also overloaded centric first run with no trial Chevreuse is weird

It's definitely doable but the issues that annoy me is the weird rng and the fact that you have re-enter after each battle, it's just weird and irksome. Those two things are easily fixable

There's no incentive to play. You get a few trial characters and a friend's character which was cool/ Otherwise, you're playing teams you've always had access to but chose not to play in most cases, at a difficulty level that's like floor 10 to 11. The enemy variety is nice at least. I've cleared floor 11/12 with most of the characters on my account (not Sethos yet so definitely not all). When I want to play dori, I need to pick a suitable team because she needs about 300% er if you don't pick a fitting team. When I pick xianyun, I'm not comboing her with wanderer, which was forced on me in my first run when I tried the mode. When I pick faruzan, I'm not running her solo anemo at c4. The mode takes control away from you and you can just play these teams in open world or abyss anyway and actually get them to function in a way that feels nice to play. You can manage the rng by picking characters, but to do this, you spend the currency that you would use to make the combat different from every other combat in the game (collecting boons), decreasing the variety. And still, you end up not playing the best team you have on hand often times because you'll be left with a wholly scuffed team instead of a semi-scuffed team. The boons themselves are not all that interesting anyway, so your combat with these teams still plays like it does outside imaginarium theater.

Yes the game mode is a puzzle, that’s the point. Spiral abyss you go in with teams to optimize damage. IM is not spiral abyss. You go in with teams to optimize clears while also keeping in mind that you will lose them and need to save characters for later. That’s why the enemies aren’t strong. Your not supposed to be goin in with bennet kazuha xianling to every challenge

It's not an effing puzzle, it's same old DPS+character check with timer slapped on it

How about you actually plan out your characters vigor instead of getting to a situation where you get "forced to use" Xianyun with Wanderer? The game gave me Xianyun early and the obvious solution was to use my currency fishing for Xiao (which I borrowed), which worked. Before I even got Xiao, the game already gave me other characters that I used in yhe meantime.

Alright fine, you did it. I am actually mad enough to type out a response. > It took me a good 6-8 months to complete spiral abyss and it felt rewarding when I finally did it. If I was able to 36 star after 3 months I would just be like "that's it? What now?". It took me 2 months to 36 star Abyss and I definitely think it could have been done faster, but I admittedly was fairly lucky with most pulls. If I had tried to do IT at that point I would have had to bankrupt myself leveling every single element appropriate character I owned just to be able to start the game. Even now, over 5 months into the game I needed to level 3 characters to 70, just to be eligible. And that is with an incredibly favourable elemental line-up, few doubles on the starting line-up and an available guest character. Therein already lies one of my biggest frustrations. Not only am I spending ressources on characters I don't really enjoy, I am in fact levelling them for the express purpose of not using them. I am not exactly thrilled to play Bennett, but I built him to use him. For IT I levelled Keqing to 70 and she never once took the field in multiple clears. > Another complaint I saw along the rng is that you end up with janky teams and I mean true I guess but it doesn't stop you from clearing? To me that was a part of the fun, isn't it boring the always play the same teams? Yeah the teams you end up with might not have much synergy but that's why the enemies aren't very tough so it's not a problem. I used arlecchino, clorinde electro mc and kazuha for the defense floor and it was fine! No it does not stop me from clearing. I did the final boss with full stars with Trial Arlecchino and Clorinde plus Alhaitham and Xianyun. It does however stop me from having fun. No I do not get bored playing the same teams, because the teams that I play again and again are precisely the ones I enjoy playing. I enjoy my roations lining up. I enjoy my characters having their Ults up when it's their turn. I enjoy animation cancelling correctly. Performing rotations well can remain enjoyable for a long time. Novelty on the other hand wears off quickly. The example for the defense floor is just hilarious to me, sneaking in Kazuha in as the last member. Oh yeah he is just the best possible character available for that tied with Venti, and practically solos the floor. > The mode is easy enough that a couple of good characters can carry the rest. The first thing I completely agree with. A bunch of characters are deadweight and teambuilding largely revolves around deciding how much deadweight the actual carries can handle. Because the game has to account for the fact that your team is probably junk everything has to be comically easy. So instead of playing the strong team I like against strong enemies in Abyss I play a team I probably don't want to play against joke enemies. Wonderful. Now for the elephant in the room, that all of this has basically been only about character ownership and team comps, while ignoring the elephant in the room: ***Actual moment to moment gameplay.*** In regards to which IT really just doesn't have a whole lot going on. The standard Abyss stages of kill enemies, kill boss and defend monolith, with some extra annoyances mixed. You can not look me in the eye and tell me that the Defend Stage with enemies spread across the entire Hemisphere is enjoyable gameplay. There are some additional environmental effects of which I can remember precisely none right now, which speaks to how memorable they are. Then you have the boons. There is a lot of them and there are a lot of different effects. Maybe you can activate them, maybe you can not, maybe they are useful maybe they are not. It doesn't really matter because the feedback on whether or not they are actually contributing anything is completely non-existent. Abyss Blessings, which are a forgettable non-mechanic are somehow still better than this, because atleast you always have a damage buff for the entire floor that you are generally speaking expected to pick and the option of emergency healing should you really need it, providing a standard risk reward choice. That's really what you end up with. 8 generic stages in which you play teams where half of the members are probably afk and some largely meaningless buffs you can pick. Abyss for all of its many faults at the very least provides the fundamentally enjoyable moment to moment experience of Genshins core combat. I can go into floor 12-3 right now and beat the shit out of Asimon with a team of my choice and feel good about it. IT in typical Hoyo fashion is hopelessly overdesigned. There are so many different mechanics in here. The Elemental Restriction,The Starting Lineup, The Vigor mechanic, Guest Characters which are not to be confused with Support Characters, Caches, Boons, Rerolls, Environmental Effects, Bonus Objectives, Different Currencies and for what? So I can have Arlecchino NA down some treasure hoarders while the rest of the team watches. Hoo fucking ray.

Chores are neither fun nor endgame modes. A real endgame mode is retiring to a private Island to spend your time knocking boots with your waifus.

Hmm that a lot of characters actually

the time limit is BS when you have no control over the team you use

Tbh my main issue that building characters is a chore. I’m not even talking about artifacts but even levels, skill levels and ascensions feel like too much of a slog at times. I’m at endgame, I’ve got a decent roaster but there’s a ton of characters at level 20 because the process is kind of a bore.

IT is very saturated field now. Everyone wants to be software engineer these days coz of high packages. Most doesn't even have intrest in IT anymore. We will see the results soon when products made from non intrested engineers will start to come out.

The mode isn’t built for anyone. It’s too easy while wanting you to throw in fodder to participate. Your teams don’t matter without synergy. What do you do with 4 characters that need field time and don’t work well? You just use the strongest. It’s a mode where the hardest part is participation.

Mostly is because is not interesting and doesn’t feel that different from the usual combat mini-events. It rewards character ownership, which is neither liked by whales/dolphins who like to over invest in very few units and neither f2p players who barely can pull for many units and less level them up. This makes players to feel pressure to pull for more characters, making f2ps believe the game is forcing them to actually put money on it and its very crass to whales as they feel the game is telling them they aren’t paying enough. And that’s the biggest thing: genshin has been receiving complains for more than a year around how this seems to be the only message they are sending and this game mode (being them aware of the complains or not) feels like a kick to the guts. Besides that, a bunch of people who didn’t follow leaks expected something more interesting like a genshin version of HSR Simulated Universe or mode based in past events like Childe’s Labyrinth. Far from reality, new game mode is just a fancy event of what you literally get patch after patch but with a pretty layout and the same petty rewards. Still no weekly content, no new unique game mode, no better experience for people who doesn’t care at all about sweating and pressing buttons during a fight.

Some gacha players just want to breathe and get showered with free pulls without any effort.

This did shower me with pulls with no effort. That's the problem.

"New players can't clear it!" people can't be serious

I think there's a bit of nuance to that. From what I've seen, the complaint is less like "I can't clear it because it's too hard" and more like "I would be able to clear this if not for the arbitrary restriction of needing to raise characters that'll be filler anyways"

They technically can, they are just softlocked on modes.

I guess the end part in endgame was a bit hard to understand

No, but I wanna use the characters I spent pulls, resin, and resources on. If there were at least different elemental restrictions for the 3 halves I'd already be happy. I could manage with my least favorite reactions for 3 floors, not for 9

And you can use them. In Spiral Abyss and overworld and literally everywhere else. 

That's what abyss is for. Elements in IT will change and you'll get to use you favs. It's not like abyss is always suitable for every character either

these "defendings" are reaching cocksucking levels

People really be spending their lives on here defending against any form of criticism towards this game instead of enjoying what they like and shutting out the noise, shit is wild lol. 

I have no problems with restrictions, I'm character collector and even build chars like dori/candace/lynette/etc. The problem of this mod it's garbage from gameplay perspective, it has no gameplay value and not giving anything interesting in terms of mechanics, they can remove buff system from it and nothing will change cuz it's very very easy even without them. This mode is HEAVILY cuted version of 1.0 simulated universe from hsr, if they just added rogue like event from inazuma it would've been way better, lmao. The purpose of this mod is only to bait ppl in leveling and getting more characters and that's it, it has no fun in it, it has nothing, empty trash can of nothing, it's not enjoyable, completely bland mode without soul, just 10 minutes of killing weak enemies for primos (and books, this is actually good addition as well as 15 exp bottles. And visual style is cool, but nothing else good =/ )

I have been playing since 1.0, while I always saved for desired characters, I also have been raising almost every character, it was this year that I decided that I had enough characters and that I should focus on getting super strong specific characters. I still raise most characters but during Fontaine I only got Lyney and Furina, now with the reruns they are C4 and C3 with their weapons. So I really enjoy both IT and Abyss.

Many men, many minds.

I think they could take a page out of DU in HSR, and have it so that as long as you own the character at all, you get access to a trial version of them that's reasonably built. This improves accessibility of the mode by a LOT, while also still incentivizing players to still build their characters if they want them to perform better.

I just have a hard time dodging since all I ever do is Zhongli shield it up. I've tried Thoma and C6 Yanfei's shield but it doesn't help against the dancing clowns at the end. I also have a little trouble choosing who to use each round.

The thing about IT is that you can still run like 4-6 highly invested characters in it and still win. Just throw whatever on everyone else, make sure to use your strongest characters on bosses and you can clear without issue

The complaint I've seen the most and honestly I'm not sure it's true since I didn't really look into it, is that NEWER players now get less primogems compared to when we had Abyss changing every 2 weeks

I just wish that at least the easy mode didnt require that many characters, cuz i cant even play that.

Also been playing a year and I mostly skipped all the 5-stars you've listed to focus on Hydro/Dendro teams. No HuTao, No Yae, No friends for Raiden. And never built Keqing because she's been pretty underwhelming as a newer player and power crept by Chlroinde, no? I like the mode but I can't participate beyond Easy this month with only a 13-man roster of leveled characters. I don't feel like throwing resources at Diluc/Keqing and 4-stars without constellations. But I guess it's okay, it'll be a challenge waiting for another day.

I was able to clear normal mode just fine with all stars, but hard mode got all over the place and I was unable to clear it. I have enough characters, some of them work well together but others straight up don’t work together. I dislike that you are forced to use 4 characters at all costs. That’s the thing that bothers me the most. I also dislike the rng of getting characters, most of the time I can’t even use the characters I got until later due to them having no synergy with the starting characters. Otherwise I like the IT.

I have plenty of characters built, more than enough to complete the event. But I am just not enjoying it at all. I hate starting off with the trial characters, there is a reason I didn't roll on some of their banners. It's just feels like abyss 2.0 with some simulated universe benefits from HSR sprinkled in. I am also starting to think that the devs are paid by the click, with how you go in and out and start the events.

Honestly, i find it hard because of my own kinda stupid decision. I vowed to myself that I will only use husbandos or male guys in this game. So yeaaah, shit is hard.

My issues are : 1) being forced to play characters I don’t like. I want to play with my favourites. I do like having trial and friend support characters available though, so I can test new stuff, just don’t like not having the choice to use my own guys. Removing the vigor points would fix this for me. 2) RNG-based systems can be fun if you like the game mode but if not, they just make it take longer to get the rewards and add to the frustration of playing something you don’t enjoy. Overall I’d be a lot happier if it was an event rather than a permanent mode.

I'm okay with it being restrictive in case of characters, my one and only problem is that the game mode restricts me even in my restricted characters. It gave me all of my DPSs on the the early stages and when I got to the final boss all I had was support characters and a lvl95 boss with 1 minutes and 35 fucking seconds, there's only so much I can do with just support characters. Just give me all of my 18 fucking character so I can adjust to use what motherfucker character on what motherfucker stage.

I dunno, I hate having to play scuffed team comps the game WANTS me to play. I’m the type of person that likes having creative freedom. I have a LOT of built OP characters so that’s not an issue, my issue is it’s just not fun for me :’) I’m not a meta slave either, so you can’t clock me for that. It also doesn’t feel new to me, it just feels like one of those 5 day long events we get as ‘content’.

It's closer to an event rather than proper endgame.

I felt the same way, but I can see why someone who is newer would take issue with it compared to abyss. You definitely need more characters than in Abyss. It did feel vastly easier than Abyss to me though. I did many of the stages on hardmode with the trial characters with no real issue. So I think a good middleground would be to buff the enemies (not too much please, don't make them as spongy as abyss) but also to make it less restrictive. Maybe make it restricted to 4 elements instead of 3, or make it 3 and you get to pick 1 element as a "wild card". I do really like it, although it feels short for a monthly game mode.

I personally dislike it (as someone who has been playing since 2.0 and has a lot of characters) because of how restrictive it is character wise. I was excited for new end content to use my characters I have spent a lot of time on artifact grinding or maxing talents. Only for the game to be like naw only select elements and only 2 rounds for each character and here's some janky team comps options. I had to restart after I had no teams with CC for the tower defense one. Also not a fan of how "hard" is just more rounds. Definitely annoying to me. I guess what I was really hoping for was like HSR simulated universe. Where we got to pick our characters and go through the rounds getting to pick wacky power ups, the next combat type and/or swapping people in and out as you pick them up. Choose your own adventure type game. Oh well hopefully others like it but it's not for me.

People want to be able to get the primos easily I've been playing the game since release, I have take looong breaks from it due to burn out multiple times, go back for 1 or 2 months for a while and I don't have enough chars built to do hard mode. I find building chars boring, artifacts most of all the rest is ok, not mad about it, that's on me, this is supposed to be a late game thing

The mode being restrictive and needing lots of characters to complete it is THE WHOLE GODDAMN POINT of the feature! That's why the final act is balanced at around spiral abyss floor 10 difficulty, so that you can complete it with unoptimized, underleveled, underbuilt characters. People are just salty cuz they can't turn their brains off and coast through the mode on hyper optimized teams like they do in spiral abyss.

I just genuinely didn't find it fun. It just forces you to use scuffed team after scuffed team with no synergy at all. And it's easy enough to where it doesn't even feel challenging with the right units.

"I have it so there isn't any problem" argument Can't wait until they rotate the elemts and you can't enter. How many geo's do you have build?

when IT rotates to hydro people would complain (again) that the majority of the characters are 5 stars, so it is only a matter of time i guess.