/m/ - media

>>490337
the casket represents the death of genshin and the smile on his face is to hide the devs desperation with the cheap mondo repackage

>>490337
Do you think they think they will regain their playerbase with their shitty Genshin spinoff being announced?

>>490343
No. I think Genshin was lightening in a bottle and only blew up because of the pandemic. It’s like Avatar where every sequel/spinoff has been poorly received.

>>490343
They will regain their playerbase if they fire the new art team, get the old one back from off of Star Rail, get the old writers back, and release male characters again. So realistically they probably won't.

>>490343
No they’re just going to recycle the same hoyodrones that already move around to play their existing games. HSR didnt bring in any new players like Dawei wanted, instead it siphoned off some Genshin players. Same thing will happen to the new game, retards who love being Dawei’s bitch will leave their current hoyo games for a different flavored hoyo turd.

>>490348
Why do people keep parroting this meme? HSR art direction reeks of plagiarised AI slop and they've been caught tracing assets from other games. I believe the old genshin art and writing team are either fired or shafted to that Astraweave vapourware.

>>490345
I agree with the lightning in a bottle part but I don't think it was only the pandemic, even though the pandemic is why it became a lot of people's first gateway gacha. But I think it also maintained it's popularity, and that no other gacha will ever reach the same heights, for two factors. Look at the fanbase and you can see two groups.

1. People who played gacha before and who went into Genshin because it had a much nicer budget and better gameplay than what they were used to. Before Genshin on twitter the gachas I'd see dominating would be rhythm games like the idol stuff, or games like Granblue Fantasy or FGO, which is also a pretty moid dominated franchise. None of these games innovate their gameplay and their pity system can be even worse than Genshin's. So by gacha standards Genshin was already an elevated experience. It felt like a regular game.So by gacha standards it was already good. There was fanservice for the female characters but it didn't look as bad as other games so it got a lot of women interested, and cool male characters were also some of the first promoted so it got that audience too, where at first they would think they'd be treated equally unlike other games.

2. The jrpg anime fantasy audience. I think this point is more relevant to Genshin's current staying power. Genshin got the type of normie crowd who loved jrpgs. A lot of those mid budget jrpgs you used to see on handheld consoles are basically obsolete now. But a lot of women like them and that audience is still there. Genshin managed to get that audience that Square Enix tossed aside when they were too busy trying to make the new Final Fantasy more like a manly action game. So you have the Final Fantasy crowd with nothing to really play in between games. The Fire Emblem people too in between the long wait between games. And series like the Tales games which are basically kill now thanks to management. Genshin just had what it took to attract this bigger crowd that gave it success. If Genshin only attracted the waifufags or only teenagers whose only contributions to fandoms are just kinning and discourse, it wouldn't have the big fanbase of artists and writers that it does. Most good fic writers after all are grown women with jobs, not annoying teenagers or moids who only care about building harems. That's why Genshin got so huge, it has the same elements that those type of female fans like in games. Being a live service game doesn't hurt the popularity either. FOMO is huge now with how fast moving social media is, one and done canons don't build the same longevity in fandoms anymore but people love to be into the big popular thing.

All this to say this is why no gacha game can ever really be the Genshin killer. New waifu games will take incels, some husbandofags will go to otome but not all husbandofags are yumes, or just want to play a dating sim. no matter how polished it is. None of these new waifu games or new Hoyo games will ever reach the heights Genshin had because it's not just because of the pandemic, its because of the other qualities Genshin had. Dawei is too prideful and stupid to see it because he wish it was it was Honkai instead. He doesn't want to bring back the old designers or writers. He wants it to be Honkai. Making all these spinoffs and side games, trying to turn Honkai into the next MCU, none of that is going to work. The "roots" he should be going back to aren't waifus, it should be simple anime fantasy. But I bet he resents that something that isn't his baby got so popular. He doesn't care if he tanks Genshin's reputation, he's already filthy rich. He really is such a loathsome CEO. If another gacha wants to kill Genshin , they'd have to do what Genshin did but better and reach the normie audience, but it seems they all want to chase the waifu audience instead, with diminishing returns each time. Someone should make a youtube video on Genshin's downfall. I have a feeling the ending is going to be a trainwreck that ruins most people's associations with the canon just like Jujustsu Kaisen and Tokyo Revengers ending did for those series. It would be nice to finally stop seeing people praise this waifuslop incel pandering game as deep and meaningful storytelling.

>>490436
I'm still coping that someday the original Genshin devs could work on a new IP together. It might not be as successful as Genshin, but I'd be interested to see what they could really do without all the honkshit influences.

>>490436
Interesting read, and interesting that the dev team swapped at some point. Fwiw I think LADS should market itself using it's combat system more often; I had no clue it was even in the game and it's really similar to Genshin.
I also think part of the factor for the game dropping off is that for people where Genshin is their first gacha, similarly to mmos, it's really hard to invest into a new game? Especially with how generic Mihoyo slop looks nowadays. I only picked up LADS recently without knowing it was gacha, and I had a huge break inbetween where I hadn't played Genshin because HSR was coming out and it felt like Mihoyos priorities shifted. Plus a steady decline of interesting shit to do besides artifact grind. LADS has an artstyle I prefer and it's gameplay is varied enough to be engaging for the time being.

>>490268
I used to find the shotas uninteresting but one day something clicked and I started projecting the irl 18-20 years old, slim but well sculpted build with boyish charm onto them and it all made perfect sense. Plus they’re dressed 100x sluttier than Hoyoverse would ever allow for a tall male. I don’t know if that makes sense but I hope it does.

>>490569
Nothing against LADS, I just don't think it should be all female players have because not all women play games in order to date characters. Like most popular mmos or rpgs, most come for the characters and world first, maybe they even like to ship characters together, but romance as a focus is a different thing entirely. Hoyo games being a lot of people's first gacha I think won't bring them to other gachas unless those gachas have something really different. As much as I want Hoyo to eat shit for the choices they're making, they really won't decline unless something better comes out that can offer what Genshin had at its peak. Being able to date husbandos isn't what got all women into Genshin. Narrowing the audience as they're doing is actually just narrowing the reach a particular game has. Hoyo has the money where they could tell incels to eat shit and fuck off, they don't because Dawei himself is an incel. I wish he'd get ousted and get a non incel in charge instead.

>>490597
What annoys me the most is that Mihoyo already has two projects (one old, one new) that are specifically catered to incels and waifufags, so WHY change their omnipandering massively succesful one? Like nonna said a lot of it is Dawei's particular taste and vendetta because his own pet project and taste isn't as popular but also can a CEO have that much power that even after months and months of middling sales, lukewarm to negative reception and huge player drop they won't recorrect course? Genshin is not cheap to make and maintain, and while Star Rail is succesful, it's nowhere near Genshin's levels. ZZZ isn't a failure but I doubt they count it as anything overwhelmingly positive and yet last month a dead ZZZ patch did almost the same as a dead Genshin one… Genshin has what? 10x the playerbase? The company cannot survive with it's biggest game doing this poorly so I just don't get other why developers or even investors just anyone there isn't shaking some sense into him. Mihoyo is not a small company anymore, I doubt it's just HIS money on the line.

>>490603
It has nothing to do with the money at all. Anyone who says it's because women don't sell is a liar. What kills me is I've seen some "woman liking" m/f shippers bragging about how husbandos don't sell too, but then they don't even realize that incels don't want their waifus shipped with other guys besides Aether, so why are even support a trend that goes against your own interests like this? I can't understand it at all.

The omnipandering is what made Genshin successful because most normie gamers don't want what these crazy incels want. Most people who want a harem or a porn game will just go play those games. Dawei is already rich so even if revenue tanks he can still do whatever he wants. They know they can bait people back by dangling older characters like carrots on a stick and the fandom will come back. The reaction to the Mond patch is exactly what he wants. They can do the cycle again in Nod Krai, only now if anyone complains about "gooner" content they'll be told to shut up because the Mond patch had men and just wait for Snezhnaya to see Childe next. People don't want to believe that the company is this manipulative but they are very well aware of trends and how to keep people thirsty and desperate so they'll accept any scraps Hoyo throws at them.

>>490436
Yeah, people keep coping that it was all thanks to the pandemic that Genshin took off so well and while it was definitely a factor it was far from being the only one. Genshin delivered a simple premise that nobody else was doing - a high budget anime fantasy game that didn't center around gooning and had actual gameplay. As someone who has played both jrpg and gacha for a very long time Genshin filled a never before seen niche. Besides Granblue, FGO was the most successful gacha that had actual gameplay and compelling story in the past could have been classified as omnipandering, but the game went to shit because Japanese gaming companies are notoriously bad at management and tanked their flagship property in favor of that shitty Sakura Wars game that went tits up in less than a year. Genshin came out during that era (2020) and a lot of especially female FGO players transitioned to playing that.

So if some gaming company actually wanted to make a Genshin killer, they could do so easily - just make a fun, well designed world with interesting lore and a simple combat that appeals to a broad audience i.e. doesn't have 12-year old girls flashing their asses or 10 subsequent naked cowtit waifus but a balanced gender ratio and character designs that don't make you feel like a degenerate for touching the game. But they don't want to do it. Even Mihoyo straight up ruined their cashcow franchise out of moid pride. Now producing one from scratch would be expensive, Asian incels would eat them alive, stakeholders would scoff at you and refuse to fund the project because they're all misogynistic Chinese billionaires themselves. It might be a crackpot theory but I fully believe the rumor that Mihoyo tried to intentionally sabotage Mydei's banner to keep up the lie that shirtless male characters don't sell.

>>490617
idk that feels like a bit of a naive undertanding of how a company that became this massive works (maybe just this buying the idea of Dawei as the great incel gooner savior doesn't really make logical sense to me)
like i said, I definetly believe the change of direction that happened in Natlan was on purpose and it was Dawei's doing its not even that I dont believe Dawei himself isnt an incel trying to push his fanservice waifus or that stakeholders arent misogynist chinese billionaires but rather that what motivates stakeholders the most is always money so if the formula of change for the game is failling this miserably and for so long i don't see why they wouldn't pressure the dev team to change tactics

>>490337
How can OroIfa shippers, Kinichfags and Varkafags call this patch a win when apron fetish girl is still a 5* and Kinich's tragic story took 6 patches to come out?

>>490666
someone took the time to animate the unrealistic tit jiggle

>>490666
No fucking shot they pulled a Cantarella. Hoyo is so blatantly ragebaiting atp it's unreal

>dahlia’s kit is another skirk teammate
Man, the shilling is going to insane when she finally drops

>>490666
Everyone is retarded. Hoyo can keep pumping out the most slutty, borderline pornographic female characters and women in the english speaking fanbase will still see it as some feminist victory. I have seen posts with around 30k likes dickriding hoyo because they turned a dead, misogynistic man into a half naked anime girl.

>>490678
>replacing a misogynistic chef by an apron fetish coomerbait made by misogynists is totally a win, sisters
Someone needs to study the level of brain damage between mobage and their playerbase.

>>490678
when FGO did this shit and turned historical figures into coombait you wouldnt find random women on the internet twisting it as some feminist win literally what happened