QUOTE(MerryGoRound^2 @ Jun 25 2025, 08:11 PM)
I get you, and what you're feeling is totally valid.
I know a lot more players who are dropping Genshin than any other titles. Have never played a patch of HSR, never believed in investing in a turn-based combat so I can't comment
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My case with ZZZ is a little unique. Though I historically never had any problems with powercreeping, I am particularly anal about writing and translation quality. With ZZZ, it's been a steady decline since 1.0 and there's been an absurdly ludicrous amount of transliteration in the English script. It might not be a huge painpoint for many, but having to sit down and read lines such as, "If XXX could get YYY power, it would be like the power of Gods," hurt me. Ditto with names like "Suibian Temple" or "Yum Char Sin," which clearly showed the writers and translators for ZZZ are absolutely piss poor with their work. It's very obvious QC for writing in this game is lacking. Very lacking.
I'm not a lore buff, and I certainly cry as much as some of the crybabies in the Genshin thread with spoilers, but Genshin's team has mostly upheld their quality with translation and writing. My guess is they know very well that lore immersion plays a pivotal role in anchoring players to the game. Most of the people I know who quit Genshin or dropped it somewhat were simply tired of the overall powercreeping, which is also a given. It took Genshin's writing to show a little crack 5 years into the title, and even then, it's still much better than ZZZ. The latter however started underperfoming a year into release.
Where powercreep is concerned, I am starting to see Genshin being a little more unabashed with their marketing strategy. Whether intentional or unintentional, I think ZZZ devs lucked out with their 3-team composition design, which neccessitates players to continue pulling for newer units as the impact each unit has in the lineup is much more significant compared to Genshin's. That said, I will also a friend's statement concerning powercreeping in ZZZ. The title seems to follow a similar balance approach to WuWa. I'm told WuWa's class systems do not have that clear of a segregation between DPSes and Supports.
In WuWa, you're either a traditional, pound-for-pound DPS, or a support with heals and buffs. Anything in between will allow you to play DPS x Buffers/Healers and still sufficiently stat check and answer to endgame content. I.e. Canterella who is a healer and sub dps by design, but can go on-field just as well if players are willing to master her mechanics.
I feel the same about good writing and translations. Genshin has been quite good with how they handle dialogue especially when they try to convey the meanings from the original Chinese script to English or straight up create localised English variants of it. A lot of players do not realise that HoYo games are always written in Chinese first (since they are a Chinese company) and have to walk a fine line between accuracy and localisation. If they try to be as accurate as possible then players would complain about not understanding the grandiose dialogue (since it is difficult to directly translate some Chinese characters and English equivalent words are not commonly used) or would not understand the original wordplay which only works in Chinese. If they make entirely localised translations then you would end up with very different scripts and miss out on the writer's original intentions.
In terms of powercreep, HSR is by far the worst with rampant HP inflation and pumping out new 5-stars every patch, with every shiny new 5-star being better than the rest. They created a new Remembrance Path (Genshin equivalent being weapon type, ZZZ equivalent being Specialties) which has everything from supports to healers to DPS just to lock out players from their Lightcones (Weapon/W-Engine) collections and force them to pull more since the default free options are terrible. Pulling for weapons or dupes is almost always a bad idea since at the rate of powercreep, a new character at low investment will always be better than a highly invested older character.
Natlan was the final straw for some players because the newer bosses always has some gimmick that requires you to pull Natlan or newer characters to overcome the gimmick faster. Putting those bosses in endgame modes and higher difficulty events results in even more frustration. While there are definitely alternative characters and strategies, the majority of the playerbase is casual. I believe only a small single digit percentage of the playerbase actually bothers to clear endgame content. Having a loud minority of the meta players say git gud to the vast majority of the playerbase only reinforces the general notion of rampant powercreep. I do hope the new Nod-Krai region will not heavily rely on regional mechanics like Natlan with Nightsoul. The fact that the broken Natlan artifact sets are locked to Natlan characters (because of the Nightsoul rerquirements) are already an indicator of future powercreep plans, where they simply lock out players from the shiny new stuff unless you pull for the new characters.
Can't comment much on ZZZ since I've only just started but I'm eager to see what the game has to offer, and whether I might go full F2P or contribute some to the devs (in terms of monthly pass).
This post has been edited by Oblah: Jun 26 2025, 02:54 PM 
Jun 24 2025, 07:30 PM
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