One smooth brain take i keep seeing is "Four Stars can clear all the content" and while that is corrected you need to remember it'll takes MONTHS of investment to get to that point as a new or returning player, on top of that what is the four star in question is not on rate up, looking at you Tingyun, Pela, Gallager Ect ect. My whole point was that power creep makes new enemies and locations harder which in turn makes new regions harder, which in turn makes it harder to catch up with the games content and this problem will only get worse as the game goes on. A very lazy video right here, I wanted to talk about Star Rails Power creep for a while, but between work and School i dont have the time right now to edit something amazing. This one is more for Background noise friends, maybe watch something else while you eat your dinner.
Really am saddened cus I'm literally in the same situation as u. I can't beat Sunday story boss so I can't play the clockie event. Even if I pull maybe Firefly, I can't lvl her traces cus cus it's locked behind the same boss. At least u could lower Ur world lvl in Genshin but Ur fu*ked in HSR😢
"Four Stars can clear all the content" Then the guy posts the characters builds... and they are all Eidolon 6 & Superimposition 5 ! In that sense, i wonder if "4*" always equals to "free 2 play" : there are only a few pulls available compared to the many characters & cones randomly coming.
@@VerbosePX that's true. I can understand u having one or 2 4* stars at E6 but not the whole team at E4 s5. The s5 LC are the ridiculous part cus it means you'd pull on the LC banner as often as the character banner
4-star teams can beat all the content if you have a magic horseshoe up your butt while farming relics and have pulled enough times to get s5 on all the top light cones. Cool, yep I could beat everything too if I had only Crit/Speed/Attack on every single relic as well, fun, cool, absolutely recreatable by the average player.
Before I got limited sustains, I used Preservation Trailblazer and Natasha together a lot. They worked together to prevent one-shots and keep the team going.
I had to do the same thing a few times, i used March and Fire trailblazer on Sam, and for the rest of the content i used Lynx and natasha. It made the game slow and unfun but it worked until i got Loucha and later Gallagher and Aventurine
I used them too. Together with Bronya and Dan Heng 4 star. I bring them to fight almost anything in star rail. But After got Dan Heng IL and Gepard in 1.3, i changed Bronya to Tingyun and MC Persevation to Gepard.
I used to do that too, but that was in early days when my DPS weren't well/fully built, there weren't many (any, in my case as Bronya refused come until I finally got her through selector) 5* harmony characters and the enemies in MoC 10 (which was the only endgame contents back then) were weaker you didn't need the level of DPS required now.
I agree with the powercreep thing, break dps units as a whole are raising the bar together. I also want to say that I think your experiences are inflated by the fact you took a significant break from the game. This is not blame against you because it's an inevitability across all gacha games in general, you're not just going to miss out on a strong new character, you're also going to miss out on a significant amount of resources and stat growth.
Thats the issue, the power creep wont affect you if you keep playing the game since you can keep getting new characters. And it better be that way because if you start getting out scaled by enemies as an active players that would throw us into whale culture and that sucks. But what happens to new players and veterans in a year ? What if the meta units and meta sustains aren't on banner What happens when future Enemies get way stronger this is a problem after only a year, imagine how hard it will be for a new or returning player to get back into the game in two or three.
@@Soul_of_the_Og I was mainly talking about not growing account resources outside of the characters you could pull. Losing 8 months of resources will hinder any account, and as a jing yuan user who uses a bad team in overworld for a reason I can't really say myself I don't believe you should be struggling as hard as you say in the overworld specifically. Obviously it did happen though so this is just my input as to why. Gacha games that don't intake any skill from the player will be against returning players in any case but that is just obviously a bad practice as is endgame enemy scaling to force you to pull so it's not an argument of mine.
@@foxiki387 i agree losing 8 months of trailblaze power could inhibit ones ability to build units to a point where they can handle equilibrium 6 enemies, i even beat Aventurine with a team of ftp units (Herta FireMC Qinque, Natasha). I still struggle with end game content but as i start maxing out traces im still seeing progress. But i do see a ower creep issue with newer units every unit from 2.0 onward and arguably since 1.6 onward has been meta defining in some way and it worries me as the endgame modes do seem tailored to the new units.
@@SheetsIncyou guys are not understanding his point. He could’ve created a new account and still progressed through the game as fast as he did with his forgotten account. New players are not going to require 8 months to get to penacony.
@AldersonForOne I think their point is that those 8 months could have been used to upgrade units and maybe get some new ones to help with his time in penacony. A new player could probably reach penacony in a few weeks if they wanted too but it's the point of if you don't take the time to work on your characters then you will definitely feel alot weaker than other people. I think they just meant that if you're struggling with content, it might not just be powercreep, causing the issue it could be the 8 months not played and used to make yourself stronger
I was clearing MoC 12 fine, and then Aventurine dropped, and suddenly I'm stuck at MoC 9 because you've got enemies doing AoE one-shot damage, or requiring you to have a shield to beat their mechanic. When you're dropping two 5-stars a patch, and none of them feel skippable, that starts to feel really bad. And that doesn't even mention how often the 5-stars feel incomplete without their light cone. Quite honestly, it's shifted me to being fully free to play and just not giving a crap about endgame content. I enjoy the game, but I'm not rewarding that weaponized FOMO with money.
@eeeeepy my sustains at the time were FireMC, HuoHuo and Lynx. I lost 50/50 on Fu Xuan and had never got Gepard despite all my losses. I have Fu now and it's a massive difference, but even then those soda monkeys are a pain without traditional shields.
yeah i agree moc 12 aventurine was a big turning point in the power creep, it was also the first moc 12 i couldnt 3 star since being able to do so the first time on my account. it wasnt until i finally got lucky and pulled aventurine himself that i was able to beat him but to be fair, i also had no limited sustain on my account, not even gepard, just bailu and 4 star sustains. tbh, i couldve cleared fine with lynx but my dps at the time (clara) was not strong enough to brute force through since i needed to spend a lot of important dps skill points for healing, and she was built pretty abd
A simple quickfix.. would be to allow switching to one lower equilibrium level. The quest to go into equilibrium level 6 is very much lower than the actual difficulty of the enemies and bosses (in all ways), and a lot of people were caught in the limbo where they could clear the quest, but cannot clear content
That's something I asked for too, it will make clearing the story much easier, I have the same problem as soul because I couldn't play the game after its release, so I grinded and got lucky until I reached Ruan mei's quest........yk what happened there right
@@mohmedabdo4681 the swarm boss at the end is a real outlier. I first beat him with Gepard and Huohuo in the team and didn't really have an issue, but if you have no decent shielder (a good Gepard, FuXuan or Aventurine) then it's gonna be difficult. Right now I can beat him with no shields at all but I run with Acheron, Black Swan and Kafka that kill the smaller insects so fast that I can sometimes do Acheron's ults back-to-back and basically leave the boss one single attack in the whole fight. That's real powercreep.
@@renatomarelli4199 I remember struggle against it before I got boothil and his light cones. I remembered when I do like. Ten to Twenty cycle to got past phase one and get completely destroy by phase two(spam AoE are not cool for me) but now I come back and get Boothil(Got his light cone first then boothil in the next ten pulls) then I progress the story until Harmony and noticed I need swarm's material so I come back and defeated it. My unit is still the same. Now I'm building serval because lack of break in Harmony Choir(Sunday) boss.
Me and my gf just hit 180 days played. For the first half we both used a jank ass QQ, Silver Wolf, Fireblazer, and Lynx team. I remember fighting Skaracabaz on her account right before Acheron release. It was literally 40 minutes of turtling. Eventually Ruan Mei came, then Sparkle then DHIL, then Luocha, then Boothill/Fu Xuan. Gf got Acheron, Black Swan, Aventurine, Luocha, and Robin in that same time frame. We both dolphined (battlepass + express pass) and the difference was night and day. Just having Sparkle made everything a breeze with the jank ass QQ team. With DHIL I destroyed everything on autobattle. Now it's gotten to the point where we can both 3* MoC 12 comfortably. The other day she said that she wants to quit because it feels like a rat race - constantly having to fiend after the new "next best thing" that comes out every 6 weeks. My Boothill has 4 different relics and shitty planars but still cleared MoC in 2 cycles. If I had Bronya it would be 0. Firefly is looking to be even more obscene. I enjoy the game and I enjoy the story, especially since my S/O and friends play, but god damn is the power creep only accelerating
Games these days simply aren't built for dolphins, they're built for whales with room for the plankton that makes them feel big. There's probably a long ass youtube video's worth of stuff to extrapolate from that but it starts with us dolphins not getting fun games.
I played from 1.0 got Jing Yuan, SW, Blade and DHIL and took a break on 1.3. Played again on 2.0 and its ridiculous how much I was left behind. I couldn't clear stuff because all my dps are powercrept and my only sustain is loucha. Now I got all the new chars Sparkle, BS, FX, Acheron, Boothill and Ruan Mei and it ridiculous how much easier it became. My f2p Jing Yuan got better after sparkle and got powercrept again quickly. Blade is unusable. They want us to pull every characters without taking a break, it tells how fast the powercreep is. Maybe people who played since the beginning and whales wont feel it, but f2p players and people who took breaks got affected badly, this isn't much talked but many people don't realize this and the game isn't as f2p friendly as it seems.
Thank you for perfectly encapsulating my issue with power creep in this game. I started at launch, and had a ton of fun in the beginning. Got Jing Yuan on his release and was cruising through the game having a good time while waiting for Screwllum (RIP). The story kinda lost me after the Loufu arc, and I took a break for several months, not getting back into it until 2.1. Claimed my free Ratio but had to do Ruan Mai's story quest to unlock the bug weekly boss, and that shit took me AGES! At that point Bailu was my only built healer and even Gepard was struggling. Had to rework my team several times and farm for better relics before I managed to scrape by. Finally was able to pull for Loacha on his rerun cus I desperately needed a sustain with more utility, and eventually also got Gallagher. My only limited 5 star units are Jing Yuan, Ratio, and Loacha and I have been struggle bussing through Penacony. One of my biggest issues with this game is I can't just pull the units I like, it has to be a a very specific team, and a lot of the time, those teammates are characters I don't like. I think Boothill looks fun and I was tempted to pull, but I HATE Ruan Mei as a character. I'm f2p, as well as a husbando/waifu over meta player and don't wanna spend my very limited currency on characters I don't like, but every team wants her, same with Sparkle. As you mentioned, people hate Genshin comparisons, but at least in that game, you can get away with pulling who you like and brute forcing your way through the content because the elements are pretty flexible. HSR is just really unforgiving in terms of team comps and meta, and that has definitely impacted my ability to have fun in the game.. Anyways, sorry for the rant. At this point I'll probably eventually drop HSR like I dropped HI3, but at least Wuwa looks promising, and might even push Genshin towards some much needed QoL updates.
I mean, it's unfair to compare HSR and Genshin, specially since the most interesting and fun parts of the gameplay are in different parts, HSR the most fun part is in strategizing and team building, and engaging in teams like FuA( specially the IPC team, or at least Ratio, Topaz and Robin even at E0) and Dot, break is also fun, but I guess a lot of people don't have the characters for that, I started playing in the middle of 1.1 and played till 1.6, then I stopped playing for a while and returned in the start of this patch(2.2), I had a bit of trouble with the bosses in this patch but otherwise my roaster was able to handle it(mainly my team of Kafka, Ruan Mei, Fire TB and Sampo, but the last two bosses I needed to get a Himeko from the Standard and make a break team with HTB, it was Ruan Mei, Himeko, Lynx and HTB, then I was able to defeat Sunday), then I pulled for Topaz and Robin and got both, I was really lucky, though it was at 80-90, then I got Fu Xuan the day before yesterday because I didn't had a limited sustain.
I pull for characters who can buff a specific dps that I love playing,I pulled sparkle and fu xuan because they help seele they’ve been with her ever since and I’m pulling Ruan mei for firefly and xueyi despite also not liking her as a character
And yes you can pull for characters you like and just heavily invest into them and get their supports,however I can’t hold that against you because relic grinding does suck
Personally, I refuse to pull for female units. I don't care how many units want Ruan Mei, I'll never get her. Harmony TB will be all I have. I don't care if a unit needs Sparkle, I'm not pulling her - at most I'll use Hanya who I pulled incidentally while trying for more Sampo copies.I suspect in time the game will become unplayable because its power creep is so bad and there's so few male units, but for now it's what I do.
@@Ui_Raizen same as me actualy, I hate Ruan Mei and pulling her for Xueyi break comp but OP has a point, no matter how good your supports are, your JY is still gonna suffer compared to an Acheron
Powercreep in HSR started already on 1.1 and things are just ramping up. Imagine acheron being powercreeped in the future? insane Edit here: i think ffe2 is the most busted thing in the game, yeah acheron was already powercreept kekw
She has already been power crept. A this point every single patch power creeps the previous one. Literally every single new 5 star character breaks the meta. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. The speed at which older character are being faded out is getting ridiculous.
I said the same thing and somehow got someone saying my statement is "delulu". I wonder how many more patches for the powercreep to be that much obvious to these hoyo bootlickers. I have E0S0 Blade, and he's been on the bench for the longest time because he's just unserviceable for MOC. Another case is my E0S1 JY, he's usable with MOC but that's it, barely. And it looks like Jingliu is also slowly being phased out. I thought Acheron would be a special case since she's a Raiden-expy so it's understandable she would be much more OP, but well, it doesn't stop there now, does it? I thought Genshin having its characters aging like fine wine (mostly) would also be applied to HSR. How thoughtless that is. Somehow, HSR follows the same trend of HI3 in terms of powercreep, because HI3 is the epitome of powercreep, you can bet the characters you pull along with their signature to get powecrept 2 patches later.
@@lokrjNo, Hi3 powercrept is in a year, some last longer (if they get a divine key or have the herrscher title) But every patch meta shifts, so that new shiny toy will suffer in new content unless they have support abilities
I didn't think Acheron could be powercrept. A Nihility dps that can break toughness bar regardless of weaknesses and does more damage when the enemies are debuffed? Now I'm starting to think they could in fact powercreep her, all it'd take is for new character to break their toughness bar with just their skill.
Im so very confused, because my friend who started last week - no bonus ratio or anything- did the entire penacony storey fine with just the standard characters and their 5 star was gepard. I think the only big issue is if you max your TB level out but were not in a position for the sudden boost of damage characters need to do.
yeah lower tb level content is really really easy, if you know what you are doing u can steamroll story at tb level 50-, simply way too ez. But if you are tb lvl 65+, you may struggle if you are not ready. And food is super op
I mean with the amount of chars being released with weakness infusions I think it's gonna get to a point where you pick a char you like to play ... And then you find the infusion char that can support it ... Then you just play whatever you want xD
You have a few options: - play casually and only select characters you like, but be aware you may struggle with end-game modes, - pick select units that are considered meta to help your account have complete effective teams for end-game content, or - spend money to acquire all desired characters
There definitely is powercreep in starrail, but i dont think its a huge issue in the game yet, and thats mostly because old characters get buffed by the new characters. But also, all the new characters are going to be good, so as long as you are pulling characters, your probably going to be able to clear all the content in the game, or at the very least the inportant parts. Powercreep will really become an issue when the content becomes so difficult that old characters cant physically beat the game, and so far that doest seem to be the case, with my overall mid built Jing Yuan and Blade still being able to clear content, even if their not as efficient as my acheron or boothill.
the issue is that the game is not even that old. It has been one year and it is basically at the same stage of powercreep as Genshin, 4 years later. the speed of which the powercreep is happening should be concerning.
Well it's good in case you are constantly pulling new characters, but what about returning or new players? They have to wait a year for a specific character to come just to do a certain content, before that it's not a game because you just login logout and dont really play for months
Well, I found this video late but I still want to leave a comment saying that I do agree with you. I have been playing every day since launch and the solution to end game content is always picking the character that counters said content. But due to power creep I feel like I'm not making any progress with my account. If I stop pulling for a couple of patches because I'm trying to save, the game starts to feel more difficult until I get that new unit that makes it trivial again. Gallagher for example, a 4 star unit that came out recently, is ranked higher on the tier lists than Luocha, a 5 star limited unit that came out a while ago.
One thing is there which i really like about the hsr moc is that every moc phase lasts around 40 days, which gives us a lot of time to strategize or pull for characters and build the already existing characters. And they always provide a four star alternative to be useful for that particular content. HSR's rewards are pretty generous so its actually easy to get at least two 5 stars per patch as an f2p. So i think its balanced.
Agreed with your video. For some reason when you mention this in places like star rail reddit, you will get raked over the coals for it and insulted with "skill issue" memes. Star rail fanbase and content creators are extremely toxic and refuse to believe that there is any powercreep in this game because the majority of them are huge whales.
They are just a bunch of losers licking hoyoverse boots while not realizing that the only control the game have is basic atk,skill, ultimate and enemy target switch which I hardly call that a skill issue
now that you mention it, i don't know how to fix it, I think power creep in live service games are inevitable. well... at least games that I've tried, they all have a power creep problem, unique hero in Lost Saga, New Operators and modules in Arknights, New Path in Elsword, Ship in Azur Lane, etc.
Power creeping isn't always inevitable, and even if it happens, it can still be hold under control and comfortable, but I suppose it just depends on the game
@@nicolas._.2294Power creep is inevitable in most gacha games that have a lot of characters, this is inevitable, and it can be minimized but with that what sense would people have on pulling? They wouldn't gain anything with it.
It has. Ruan Mei's kit made the devs make toughness bars on enemies more tanky since her release. Which led to break focus characters made to combat that. But Ruan Mei just straight up makes break characters better; so very likely enemies will have more means to make toughness bars immune to damage like some do now. Power creep is very much a thing in Star Rail and it's only going to get worse. TLDR: Ruan Mei shouldn't have been released. Or at least her kit.
@@No-Ink to be fair I havnt been here when they weren't tanky so I just wrote it off as the natural progression of the game (not counting chars like asta and harmony TB that just shred most imaginary and fire weaknesses in the right conditions kek)
@@No-Ink also I didn't say it didn't exist ... I just said it wasn't a problem cuz it didn't feel like it was warping the game around it to me to any like game breaking degree
@@toukoenriaze9870 The fact that toughness bars are harder to make because of one character being introduced is quite bad. And now everyone is like, "You gotta have Ruan Mei. This character is awful without Ruan. You need Ruan!" It's the most obnoxious thing. And it's even worse they're re-running her with Firefly, one of the most desired characters for awhile now. That's a shitty move.
My 2 main dmg dealers built on my account are Clara (e1) and ratio. I’m just going to start resorting to building 4 star dmg dealers instead of pulling for 5 star dmg dealers. I’ll just pull supports and sustains anyway and then build characters like Dan heng (wind), Luka, sampo, etc.
I'm lucky to have started hsr when I saved enough to get a ps5 in March 2024, got sparkle and her light cone, acheron e2 ( also e6 gallagher) because people said she'd be future proof for my account, got e1 robin and e0 aventurine, can already clear most content, saving for the fox guy. I started at the right time lol
Unfortunately, no character is future proof, literally in 2.4 a character named yunli is coming out and she power creeps every single dps at e0s0, she does easily over a million single target damage with her ultimate that charges near instantly and she’s a counter attack unit so she gets way more turns then any other dps
You definitely had me in the first half, but the longer the video progresses the more it seemed this was less a discussion about power creep and more of a skill issue/complaint video about how you feel about the game. Power creep is starting to peak it's head don't get me wrong but no where near on the levels stated in this video. I am currently playing a new alt account so I can progress with a friend who is trying the game for the first time, and our only complaint has been the game should add more sustains for F2P because Natasha aged poorly (which was obviously going to happen, she was literally given to use for free Day 1 BEFORE getting to Belabog). If people can still clear MoC with a rag-tag team of Xueyi, Natasha, Pela, and TY, then powercreep hasn't become an issue (YET).
Yeah guys just use the 2 best four star supports and the best 4 star DPS. Surely you can guarantee pulling all 3, and if not, it’s skill issue 😐. Not to mention light cones.
@@XTCyan I missed the MOC buff that increased every enemy toughness bar post-Ruan Mei. Or the one that almost doubled Kafka’s boss hp bar with in only 4 months. Like atp I’m convinced y’all are coping bc there is tangible proof of heavy powercreep and it’s only been a year. And the excuse of “just build another character that just HAPPENS to be able to abuse the buff to win.” Isn’t gonna cut it soon.
@@kokichishares5965 Again, for the third time. HSR powercreep is not that big, it is in fact extremely small. The only issue is that people fight against bosses that have literally 20-40% DMG Reduction to the element you are using to fight them, that is just a skill issue.
@@medojed8266 you are legitimately just a HYV bootlicker if you think that their isn’t SIGNFICANT powercreep. It takes less than one braincell to just read multipliers and realize that characters are increasing the damage ceiling with each release, that sustain characters are being overtaken by the latest, because why would you want a healer when you can have a healer and a dps and a debuffer?
@@kokichishares5965 to this day Ruan Mei isn’t necessary. I’m a day 1 player with her on my account yet, I don’t use her often because in a game like this, team composition matters most. Yes you can see people use the absolute meta team and dumpster but what your not seeing the egregious amount of time spent farming for those characters. You want proof go slap DHIL on a non IMG boss, and watch his dmg fall off (unless you have the E6 60% res pen). Hell there are people fucking do full clears HARMONY only, there is no excuse to complain. Just look at your characters realize you built like shit and keep grinding.
As a guy who beat the OG Version of Aventurine I feel you. I ran triple Healing and March 7th just to barely limp through. It took 1 hour of battle, 3 characters dead and the mother of all god shot Crits from Bailu as the killing blow at the end.
Feels like ppl want things too quickie. I still can’t do moc yet all my charactwrs are at lvl 70. Been playing since blackswan. I have 4 characters at lvl 80 traces not built yet but my adventurine and acheron are getting built. I am now building my characters and by wnd of year should have alot of them built. I am a light spender though. Battle pass and monthly. Im in it for the characters, team building and have s variety of teams built that can clear some moc levels at 70 with steategy. U’m intrestrf in the mechanics, dtory, and characters. Endgame is endgame and I’ll hrt there soon with lots of supports. Im not worried about it. Feels like everyone just want to clear endgame without pitting in any investment for endgame. At the end of the days its still a gacha game.
Bro if someone is talking about endgame, then OF COURSE they are at least lvl 80 on every character they use. The problem is that lvl 80 and max traces is not enough. You need some good relics, eidolons if you bring 4 stars and the right team for every situation. But now we have main dps that directly implant a weakness on enemies or ignore their resistance (Acheron), and the game is now balanced around them. Try to do anything with a Clara or a Himeko, that's not happening
@@legacymse7095 lvl 80 on every character. I doubt that. Endgame should b challenging. Put clara in a fua team and she excels. Clara, lynx, dr.ratio and last slot for further weakness break. Which btw all the characters I mentioned are free. Game is not hard, a few synergies and strategy going in. He clearly has a skill issue.
If u don't have the current broken DPS characters then all u r missing out on is the later 2 or maybe the last stage of MOC....But to clear all the other stages U need good supports and sustains...So my recommendation to all the new players would be to pick up Harmony and Preservation characters first because these characters are very difficult to powercreep once u have 2 sustains and 2 broken Harmoney for ur 2 teams then U can go nuclear on DPS characters left and right...!!! And don't worry if u do end up pulling lets say Ruan Mei or Robin or Sparkle then they will make even ur 4 star DPS characters do incredible dmg maybe not enough to make u clear MOC 12 every time but more than enough to clear MOC 10 every patch.
Honestly the only problem is missing out on materials to pull for more chars that would be able to clear that content ... Because you can't clear it already
Powercreep in HSR is fake anyway. They release very situational units that are amazing in very specific scenarios; then, it just so happens that the content surrounding a character's release makes these scenarios common. Boothill and FF are break units and it just so happens we got more break oriented enemies, crazy right? Similarly to how when BS released we got the dino enemy that just so happens to have a lightning and wind weaknesses and be hard-countered by DOT, who would have foreseen that? But like, if the devs don't put these favorable encounters in MC/PF cycle the respective characters can piss off. Look at how they made Himeko and Herta goated just by making pure fiction a thing, and then making sure there's always a fire/ice weak enemy in there. This goes both ways and they can (and will) do this to keep the meta rotating at a steady speed. In that sense, I think it's actually healthy for the game. You can't just invest into two teams and be done (cough cough genshin), you need a lot of horizontal investment. The characters that you already had might eventually go out of fashion for a couple patches, but you can count on the devs resurrecting them once their re-run comes around. There is always a little powercreep; if a unit is undertuned on release, it makes no sense to enshittify every upcoming character just to keep them inline. Luocha is a good example of this, he had nothing going on for him other than his low SP footprint (zero utility support lol), so in that sense, he was dead on launch. Additionally, I think that a 5* should be principally stronger than a 4*, and a limited 5* should be stronger than standard 5*. These ratings are there for a reason; if it were to be expected that all characters are similar in strength, then what even is the point of 4*/5* standard/limited distinction? That is to say, I don't think it's an issue that Sparkle mogs Bronya, or that Aventurine mogs Gepard. All in all, I don't think that the powercreep is a big issue in this game. While you need to have a broad batch of teams (ideally one per playstyle archetype), the units within that team rarely feel unfairly powercrept. Let's take Kafka DOT for example; look at Robin vs Ruan Mei, they are both contenders for the same slot, and they're so close to each other in terms of balance that it's not worth pulling one if your sole intent is to replace the other. When a character *does* get powercrept, it's usually by a rarer unit; for example Guinaifen/Pela (who are 4*) might be replaced by a certain Foxian Nihility in Acheron teams (and it's fine, because he's a limited 5*, nothing unexpected here).
Yeah, as direct evidence to your first point, everyone pulled for fu xuan and basically used her no matter what on any content. Then, all the sudden with penacony we have units that specifically require your sustain option to provide shields to counter them. Oh, and conveniently Hoyo releases the best shielder in the game by far. Fu xuan is obviously not bad by any means, but its still an ef you to the playerbase if she is your built sustain option for your first team and say, you run Loucha on your second. Honestly, 90% of the videos complaints could be fixed if they do a balance pass over fire TB and tune their numbers up to current content. Then there you go, f2p have an option to smoothly sail into current content, everyone has a decent shielder for the required. And for why I say that, its because not everyone pulls every standard unit. For example, as a day one player, I still don't have a clara or a bailu, but my welt is e5. Even long term players might not have all the standard banner options available to them. I also agree with you that limited characters should be stronger than standard characters, but I also think that if that is the case then everything should be tuned to standard characters. I cannot imagine doing Sunday's fight without a gepard or better, and if your a new account pray that a sustain is on whatever banner you join on.
@@LockedOnTargetShow The latter is true and I genuinely believe the devs are out of touch with the playerbase when it comes to balance in story content. It's almost a tradition by this point for them to introduce a new boss enemy in the story, and then nerf them a week later, because the casual players and/or low spenders can't complete a quest, lol.
@@AbcightDev So true. I think they’re starting to realize. In the latest story quest, you can literally talk your way out of a boss battle with a certain character. 😂
i wouldn't say it's fake because the devs literally cater the content to the new units, even so far as creating new mechanics that would make prior units significantly worse. and what makes this powercreep actually substantial is that it gets reinforced with successive patch cycles where on top of either very restrictive moc buffs/mechanics, we have spongeified enemy HP and increased damage output. i think the most egregious example of my first point is when imbibitor lunae came out and i distinctly remember being the moc buff was the addition of the warp trotter that i believe gave skill points upon defeat, but this warp trotter really messed with welt's performance, who before, was doing really well as the imaginary dps, because his skill would end up not bouncing on the bosses and getting artificially weakned with additional targets, something imibitor lunae didnt care about because his kit always has splash/aoe implements.
I think it's all skill issue. I also stoped to play around 1.4 and came back at the end of 1.6 but I had a plenty of characters built, be it limited or not, 5* or 4* idc, I build a lot of characters and everytime I struggle to beat a MoC or a PF stage I always test and try to compose the best combinations until I eventually get the 3* and for me that's part of the fun. If people were here complaining about limited characters being stronger than the previous one I would get it, but if you say that you didn't touch the game for 8 months and can't beat silly story bosses, that's just skill issue.
Is there... like... a lack of incentive for gacha game devs to buff old units? Literally the only thing I can think of is it may cost them revenue since people will be less inclined to get new characters since theirs still works fine, but most people already pull for the characters themselves/them bringing something new to the table. It doesn't even have to be equalised buffs, just buffs that bring them up a bit so they don't struggle as much. New player friendly is always gonna be a pretty big reason as to why powercreep in the long run isn't gonna work.
Old units doesn't even reach the point when their need buffs but people already crying about power creep. It's not about certain companies, it's about certain clowns.
It's not HYV specific, most gacha games suffer from powercreep. But yes, there are means to assist older characters, either: - directly (new passives or stats: see Arknights module system) - indirectly (new lightcones or relic sets, game modes or enemy mechanics)
I am coming from the perspective of a day one player and I myself am having issues with HSR’s powercreep, I got and built Clara last month and she does pretty good in my Ratio/Aventurine team, and whoopdido Yunli is coming out and she’s gonna be twice as good as her. I myself an very lucky and have four good sustain units in HuoHuo, Loucha, Aventurine, and Gallagher, and yet I’m still loosing at least one unit or come close to it when grinding(outside of my aventurine team which also has gallagher for that exact reason). Having a fully perfect and constantly updating team to fit the current state of the game will be become a problem for many people. I myself have tried to future proof my 3 current teams and am planning a 4th team so that eventually I’ll never have to pull new characters again and only pull for reruns. But with the amount of powercreep occurring in the 2.0 updates, it’s looking like I’ll have to pull for one or two 5*s every patch. Anyways you made good points this was a good vid man!
Seele is still one of the best chars to 0 cycle MoC though even right now in 2.2. for the aventurine boss fight most sweaty star rail pvp players will tell you that the team that can 0 cycle aventurine with the lowest cost and with a sustain( least eidolons and signature light cones) is a Seele one (3 cost: E0S1 Seele, E1S0 Robin , DDD Tingyun and E1S0 huohuo). her kit is just mechanically amazing , relatively low ultimate cost and her additional 'turn' on kill that helps with her rotation. The problem is her multipliers which can be solved with gear and better supports. I just want to point out how mechanically strong kits coupled with vertical investments are very important for the longevity of a char. If the char's kit is simple with just big damage multipliers he/she is likely to be less relevant every patch. As a gatcha game resource management is also important . kind of understandable how a totally new player or a casual player will face massive difficulties. I myself started an alt account 1 week before the free ratio went away . I still have pulled 0 5 star limited dpses but I have cleared MoC 11. my 3 DPSes are clara, E6 serval and ratio. ( lol clara is still extremely competitive especially at E1 and above)
Not me making the mistake of leveling Yanqing, thanks god I've got Aventurine to help him out, but the unit is THAT bad now. They also understood that destruction character were doing the same, and I'm glad they fixed it with the Pure Fiction end game content but still kinda sad for just hanging around in the game sometimes
Power creep is real but more important problem than that is how comeback/new players can clear at least the story if they only has natasha or very old characters that can't keep up with new content anymore. Giving up free characters like Dr Ratio was a good move, probably they need to give free *5 healer so new players can play with a new DPS and healer (and they shouldnt put expire date for those characters in the mail).
I mean Ratio was also a super marketing move to make people but the IPC team, which worked well, and it's indeed super fun, even at E0 though you probably shouldn't use it if it don't match either weakness, because if it don't match weakness Ratio will be unreliable.
I agree that when i will not be able anymore to finish the Trailblaze Missions & Continuation with the Astral Express crew (Trailblazer, Himeko, March 7th, Welt & Dan Heng + Natasha until Gallagher), then the game will be basically a pay to play. End Game modes are a different thing : those willing to invest their time, saved jades and even money are legitimately rewarded with the 3 stars clears. So far my experience has been really smooth by making the choice early on to kind of sync the character levels at Equilibrium Level -1. This gives me 10 character levels to play with in case the Mission content is a little too hard. For example, ascending my characters to Level 61 was the reward for finishing Luofu and currently, at end of Penacony, they are at Level 65 and i plan to up them up to 71 after 2.3 patch story. The Argenti fight was the one too hard & i did not know it was skippable, so i leveled them up just a bit to see and it worked just well enough. The Sunday boss fight was an Epic experience, lasting for so long that the 2 last times he got run over by the Train, no one had any catch phrase left to say anymore :) The Meme & Aventurine did not cause any real problem with DestructionMC + Welt + March 7th + Gallagher. The Meme is fast compared to what i have so that was the challenge ; fortunately Welt imprisonment happened to be a nice counter. Aventurine dices were countered by the fact these characters either attack multiple targets or have AoE Ult. The Phantylia fight however was something else ! I am not sure which level i was exactly but i remember it was at least 12 levels under the recommendation. So, of course, i entered without any hope of winning, just to gather info. Turns out that Phantylia & summons were absolutely obsessed by PreservationMC's taunt and basically never targeted anyone else. So, as Natasha kept healing him and the flowers kept stealing Skill Points, the (mandatory high level) Jing Yuan and my Dang Heng only had to rely on their Basic and Ultimate, with Imbibitor in the background sending a heavy blow every now and then... And somehow it worked ! Now, i have to admit that i enjoy a VERY slow and step by step progression and that i do not mind a boss fight lasting close to 1 hour ! I might be a weird one there ; it just makes the game closer to a usual RPG for me. So far so good. However indeed, i wonder how much the EQ level is influencing the TB Missions & Continuance. I sure have noticed that the Echo of War bosses at higher difficulty are doing things that i do not recall them doing during the mission fights. If that is the case, it solidifies my strategy to wait for a good opportunity before upping the EQ level. And work on the characters equipment in the meantime (i am currently learning about Speed mechanism !). Until maybe there will be a point were having non standard units will be mandatory even for the story mode... Hopefully never : Hoyo can not be sure players will have limited 5* at any given point of the story, particularly new comers 🙏
I'm honestly really confused about most of what you're describing as the problem in this video. I'm a new player, I think I started early april or end of march and I haven't really run into any of the issues you're describing here. I did most of the story content up to aventurine without pulling for any limited 5 stars, and never really struggled with any content up until him. I don't consider myself particularly good at this game either, so I'm not trying to say it's a skill issue, I just don't really understand where the difficulty you're describing comes from. I didn't particularly struggle with regular enemies or bosses, and while I certainly couldn't clear MoC or PF until I raised my equilibrium level a bit and improved my characters, that seems understandable since it's 'end game' content. I don't think I ever lost fights more than a few times throughout the story, and when I did fail to beat aventurine after a couple attempts, I sat back and thought about my strategy for a bit and then came back with a team featuring more AoE characters to effectively deal with the dice rolling mechanic and made sure to save ultimates for when he uses it, and proceeded to beat him first try with that strategy. Also, at 11:15 you said that any character can clear most of the difficult content?? Wasn't the point of the video that you need to have pulled for newer 5 stars to keep up with the story content? Are you saying you found MoC easier than the story bosses? I hope this doesn't come off as me trying to brag or flex - again, I don't think I'm particularly good at this game and I don't have amazing builds on my characters either. I'm just not sure where all this issue you're describing is? To be clear - I'm not trying to argue powercreep isn't a thing either, just that I don't see your issue?
@@user-eo2db5il3x i think he's mainly talking about the story, not "everything". And quest bosses are always easy so yeah, not being able to clear even that is a problem.
I think this video wasn't exactly well thought out There's a discussion to be had about powercreep in star rail but i think this guy was just frustrated, turned the mic on and vented...which honestly? Fair enough
I definitely agree with your perspective, and while I am a day one daily player, I am not a sweaty minmax player. I don't share the opinion of people here that my early dps (Clara) became obsolete when I get later DPS (Kafka, Acheron). I pulled Jing Liu poorly because I love her design, and never use her. I skipped Sparkle because I dislike her as a personality. Basically, I am an inefficient player, but I like playing the game, and that's why I am usually just 2 stars short of clearing MoC while in Genshin I can barely make it past floor 8 of abyss. The relic grind feels disgusting to me in Genshin but feels natural and simple in HSR. I think that's where this guy's problem is. He doesn't like playing this game, so he can't make progress or even have the patience to understand his potential teams. As a new player he might have reached forward too fast like I did in Genshin, but without the ability the roll equilibrium back a level to catch up.
@@Ali_Fuchs sure, but we're just hearing him vent. I've seen streamers not clear a story boss simply because they hadn't bothered to level up any traces, or they just equipped any relics to fill slots. It might've been good enough right up until the point it isn't, and this guy might just be expecting results from the game without putting in adequate investment. Basically, playing the game will help you play the game, but he isn't interested in playing the game so it isn't working out for him.
the bug was the bane of my life back in january it was so brutal for me and my friends that started or reloged back into the game to get a free ratio...
This was actually a pretty fun rant to listen to. I won't deny there is powercreep, I haven't felt it since I've been keeping up to date with HSR since it's release but it was interesting to see the perspective of a person that took a long break because you are definetly able to notice the changes that happened more clearly than the rest of us.
Majority of the powercreep is indirect and they all incentivize getting the latest unit. However this is NOT the case for normal story content. Not everyone does MOC/PF (and upcoming Apocalyptic Shadow) which are the dedicated endgame modes. And these are endgame modes already which are supposed to be the toughest content in the game. Most of the content is doable f2p and powercreep is only obvious on the endgame modes. And HSR being live/gacha game makes powercreep inevitable no matter how hard they try to prevent it. There are even certain cases where they do reverse powercreep instead of forward powercreep (the debut of PF shooting Jing Yuan, Himeko and Herta to meta status). But powercreep is an issue that’s applicable to every gacha game, not just HSR.
What u said is correct but u have to remember that he wasn't just talking about powercreep but the rate of power creep. 50+ characters in 1 yr is crazy 😢
@@Pha3th0n fair point - and releasing characters at a rate this fast simply aggravates the issue. I sincerely hope Hoyo slows down on the release of new characters, especially 5-star ones, or like with Dr. Ratio, give one to us for free. And this is why HSR players really sometimes want a filler patch...
JY is still not that good in PF... He doesn't have goated FUA like Himeko/Herta, instead he has the slow ass, random targeting, CC bait, lightning lord Acheron is way better which is sad considering he is Erudition
The first half of the video I didn't I see a point but the last point tou mentioned I can understand, if I didn't start star rail when I did and didn't get the characters I wanted for one reason or another I don't know if I could clear some of the story. I had rough spots in the story but I eventually overcame them with brute force but also because I had the proper supports/sustains. I still use Seele and will still probably be using her after firefly comes out but the spike is there.
Uh considering I did the story including Penacony with preservation MC, March and two of OG Danheng, Himeko and Welt, the difficulties you ran across sound... weird. My Himeko and Welt aren't even built that well, the mmainstats are there but the substats are a mess. And Herta and Himeko are basically T0 for Pure Fiction.
I used Phys Trailblazer until the 2.1 boss fight to fit the fact we appeared with the bat in cutscenes (then went fire as we used the lance, then imaginary once unlocked). The Break Meta power creep is not a bad thing for more end-game-facing power creep. Similar to Hyperbloom in Genshin, this allows lower investment to catch up to the scaling difficulty of the content, which is important for new player acquisition and retention.
Powercreep is Star Rail is a very fun topic, because while it exist, it is pretty small, and probably a healthy amount (and a lot of it can be explained just by saying that devs didn't fully understand how much certain roles have to do in 1.0 era). And as someone who builds wide, I would say that the most of the biggest powercreep is how much are you willing to invest into units. My Acheron has similar build to rest of my characters and she consistently feels bad in comparison. While characters I pick because I want to play with a certain team sometimes just destroy. Similar thing happens with sustainers, even though I have Fu Xuan and Aventurine, I end up using Natasha and Gepard a lot, because they are quite often a better choice. Also I feel like enemies increasing in strength is natural progression of difficulty and had nothing to do with new characters being stronger. Also I wrote that before I actually watched the part about Natasha not being able to heal in Penacony, and that whole segment was certified "skill issue" moment, seriously Natasha is amazing at low investment levels. And related note Lynx's healing and SP generation is worse than Natasha's, if you really need another sustainer you can just use Fire TB or March which work extremely well in that role, as second healer doesn't solve anything other than having a second panic buttons.
@@snowflak6173 Lynx has higher energy cost, which quite often means that you need Skill to get it. And having Cleanse only on Ult leads to a lot of awkward moments, when you have to choose between healing and Cleansing.
I also sometimes struggle with the story enemies even tho ive been playing I'd say pretty regularly and my account is pretty lucky so i definitely understand the struggle
Not gonna argue with powercreep it's a thing but what I see here is just rushed equilibrium before being ready for it. People run MoC with 4 stars, it's a thing. Lynx's healing is better than Nat's but Gallagher isn't a good healer until well invested into his traces and even then he's NOT better than Luocha and is significantly harder to sustain with. Really this whole thing screams skill issue and not much else. So many people beat the game using F2P chars, yes including Penacony.
I could say the same thing about huhhoh she harder to sustain than luocha she still better sorry mate gallagher is just superior and honestly he not that hard to sustain with
In Penacony the speed, the damage increase and tankyness on the new enemies was quite noticeable. I did still pull trough with old limited 5 stars but my team is well invested and I do agree that for someone starting the game it can get difficult to progress with 4 stars and standard banner units.
I have noticed many of the overworld enemies in Penacony are not facing the us and thus do not attack us unless we get closer or in their line of sight. I took it as a way of reducing the difficulty and the number of fights.
@@iamwayne6138 That is correct. For older DPS more invest it needs to deal with newer enemies may be easier to defeat with the newer DPS game mechanics.
@@iamwayne6138so I guess it isn’t powercreep, it’s power(you have to spend months grinding just to keep up with the new damage ceiling that new characters introduce)
I think the way to solve this could be buffing other character or make something like an interlude from fgo it always work quiet well since in fgo most of the time these buff make old character more viable heck i clear the new boss in that game with just 3 star now i know these are 2 diffirent game but i can expect star rail devs to add this since the star rail director is a fate fans and these interlude and give us a better look at the character too
I used Dan Heng IL and he had no issues in Xianzhou. But when the story of Penacony unlocked I feel there are something about the creeps there. They are stronger and less likely to be finished by oneshot combo
Just for some reference though, I use main physical Trail Blazer for all of Xianzhou, and was fine, it sounds like you weren't keeping up your own pace with relics and talents, and not optimizing proper skill sets
In terms of power creep, do you think it would be a good idea to follow what fgo did, and gave the older units( *primarily standard characters especially yanqing lmao* )buffs to match the current state of the game or givve them a new nichè?
I'm sorry it's been difficult for you but I can't relate. I started playing in January and my two first standard banner characters were Bailu and Gepard. To this day they are still my two primary sustains (I have no other 5* ones) and I have been able to 12* MOC 12 and 3* PF 4 just fine for the past few versions. Sure, it's harder than if I had better ones and I have to be careful+restart the round sometimes, but I'm in no rush to get new sustains as long as they continue to work for me. And they aren't fully built either. None of their traces are maxed out and they have mid relics.
Gepard is a Standard Character and Aventurine is a limited Character (same as qiqi and every other healer in genshin).... Why the first take is always bad when people say that Star Rail has a huge powercreep problem? Just saying that the first take is so bad that makes a lot of people just quit of your vid, the rest is good.
In all honesty, that's a stupid mindset; you might as well give those pulls to me. Coz if you dont pull a character fearing "future characters" you will do the same for those "future characters" you speak of... Just pull for who you like man, well unless pulling for meta is what you like, in which case you should be pulling whoever is the meta rn, not saving away for "future" coz it keeps changing.
I agree with this and I think Star Rail should make Bosses in Story Mode far easier to defeat. Some players even the old one cannot be bothered or stressed to farm so much relics and gambling their sanity away when all the 5 rolls dodged the double crit substats, and they still want to go through the story without a hitch. Safe the hard and challenging contents for MoC and gangs and don't put a boss who force you to gamble and sodomize you in the back if you don't bring AoE or 3 sustains with you.
i remember playing HSR in earnest a few months after the ps5 version released. i enjoyed the challenge of playing with only 4* characters for awhile and being f2p, but i also remember struggling a LOT. I remember waiting so long to get a healer through Natasha and then waiting to pull for Lynx (i think she was on Blade&Ruan Mei banner) just to have a better sustain than Natasha. I've been playing pretty religiously after a certain point, but I do distinctly remember difficult bosses often being perfectly aligned to being defeated by the latest character out at the time (i.e. Argenti in the Washtopia quest being weak to physical when Argenti was first released while also being crazy difficult for new players or low spenders). I also remember having to pull and build Luocha just to beat one of the story bosses in Penacony. Granted, I was planning on getting Luocha anyway because it hurt to only have Lynx as my best healer, but wow... i can't imagine getting to that point as a new player and not having the proper (or enough) sustains just to clear story content. i am definitely feeling the power creep as a Blade main, but i never considered not having the proper supports at the right time until i saw this video (like, if I hadn't pushed to pull for Aven during his initial banner, it's highly likely i wouldn't have beaten the final Penacony boss as quickly as I did (which was still a difficult battle since i only have 4* fire and thunder damage dealers). this would have been devastating for me since i was grinding on the daily at that point). we desperately need more viable yet accessible 4* sustains, especially preservation now that harmony MC is out. maybe also a way to tweak difficulty of the enemies? so whales/dolphins who want a challenge AND new/casual players can still enjoy the game.
So as someone who came back to the game during Robins banner, feels like I was only able to catch up because of her and thankfully getting a Kafka/Sampo combo going before I left( and didnt come back in time for Dr Ratio). Feel like they should( but never will) is give everyone a free Adventurine or one of the newer supports just to help bridge the gap
As a newer player i definitely 100% agree here,i am now tbl 67 and a half so most things aren't a massive issue,but i started exactly in the kafka ratio half in 1.6 i think it was? Which no limited sustain was there until loucha in 2.1,i was genuinely considering deleting the game cause it was just too much,everything was one shotting me while i barely did any damage,i got stuck at that stupid ahh bug,i also got star railed by aventurine,thank god i was able to get a decent enough DOT team before 2.2 or else i would've also been hardstuck on sunday! Every single major boss was a hard lock for me until igot loucha and just slowly killed them with kafka and swan DOT
This is same take I heard when imbibtor came out and jingliu was as strong as him some genious people where whining like "we thought our beloved imbibitor is an exception", but no. It will hapen a lot.
E0 JL can clear stages without ice weakness and work with trash relics, just slap on her any CD you have. E0 DIL only good vs Imaginary and requires proper investment.
up until recently, i had no problem clearing overworld content at all. And keep in mind, before acheron, I was mainly using Jingliu, SW, Bailu, Fireblazer, but after acheron came out i used her, black swan, bailu, and fireblazer. Up until the sunday boss fight (spoilers I guess?) I had no real problem clearing difficulty, and should not have in theory and problems with that boss. But whether its because i finally ascended my world a level or because they force you to use harmony blazer which, honestly, fireblazer was the only shielder i had and because of how needed a shielder was, even with food buffs (which i hardly use as i dont like to use them) it was difficult. Even to the point of needing to wait for fu xuan and getting her on her rerun just to barely get through it including some weakness break food buffs. That was the one time i felt the powercreep be so bad and significant that i was basically stuck. Everywhere else has felt more of a need better build/get good noob feeling, but not that boss, it felt like i literally was blocked from any form of progress no matter how hard i tried. So yeah. Tldr. clearing content is easy up until the end of penacony no matter who you use, but powercreep is still very much real and a problem.
I feel like an issue some people, and maybe even you, run into is leveling your equilibrium level too fast. I started(f2p) a few days before 2.2 dropped and couple weeks ago leveled up equilibrium after I barely got 2-3 characters properly built for the last level. Set me back a good few days of grinding before I could progress in some content again. I do somewhat agree with the sentiment that the good "f2p" characters that everyone recommends I do not have (pela, tingyun, etc., ig all my luck got used up in getting Bronya in the departure warp and then Gepard a couple of standard banner 10 pulls later), but I didn't have much issue with much of the content until penacony. Even the bug one that a ton of people struggle with I got done on my second try.
I feel like a lot of these problems are just about what you'll find in any gacha game, go back to mondstadt and you'll find yourself one shooting a lot of overworld enemies, go to Fontaine's enemies as a new player and you'll get clapped, this is how these games are designed, hell even non gacha JRPGs are all designed like this, and Natasha can definitely solo sustain btw, and I don't see a problem with releasing a lot of characters, this is only a problem for deranged collectors who love gambling, you 100% don't need to get all characters, is there powercreep in HSR, yes, just like it's in Genshin, Arlechinno powercreeping Hutao and Diluc (no I refuse to consider Xianyun Diluc as Diluc, he's just a plunging stick), Neuvillette powercreeping everyone and their mothers, and the 4 stars argument not being in rate up is literally the same as in genshin, you don't get Sucrose for free, you don't get bennet for free, you don't get XQ for free, you don't get most of the good 4 stars for free except XL, (and she's trash without bennet), my point is that these aren't HSR problems, these are gacha games problems
11:49 You can choose the difficulty in each and every domain. Plus new endgame content was introduced months after the game came out, because the developers knew it would take time to get 2 full teams. I admit it’s difficult for newcomers and returnees, but this wasn’t a mode made for them, it was made for loyal players, who consistently played the game. Why is the game so difficult? Maybe you think it’s just a video game, but Pure fiction was by *design* made to make people pull for certain units. It’s just a huge advertisement campaign. It’s supposed to be difficult so you can’t just get the highest scores, it forces you to stay, eventually spend money etc. It’s a strategy made for player retention and increase sales. So (your) frustration was intended. And yes loyal players are stronger. Why? We only did dailies and grinded after one week of story content after 1.0. So we just upgraded our characters for weeks. It was borderline boring. And this was the way the game was intended to be. (I don’t say it’s a good set up, but you essentially just postponed what we did/had to do MONTHS ago). What every player had to go through. (Similar in Genshin when we’re going from Liyue to Inazuma). So in the end the difficulty spike should encourage you to stay or spend, because otherwise you fall off or behind. And if you stay maybe you’re more prone to spend something…. Are these predatory game mechanics? Yes. But what do you expect in a gacha game? (Also the meta isn’t that old characters are bad, but that the buffs in these modes doesn’t favor them. ) But wait until they rerun and suddenly you see a power spike in certain teams and characters. 😉 Edit: Haven’t you also complained that Genshin was too casual and you needed more difficulty? Hoyo tapped exactly in the domain for these exact players, who wanted more difficult content. (And please don’t believe day one loyal players could all fully max the MoC).😂😂😂 It’s still hard.
I am a dolphin, I get every character but very rarely get any light cones. I do not get any eidolons. I have not missed any event rewards, I've completed every battle pass, I've let my fuel cap like maybe 3x since release. And I seem to always struggle with the last floor of MoC and sometimes pure fiction but not commonly as much. Like even just the most recent one, took me like 3 hours (just for floor 12) and some team organizing and bit of leveling/upgrading skills. And then finally beat it in 9 cycles. But the thing is, I have all the characters, every strategy is open for me, I have them build like level 75 or 80, level 8 to 10 talents, decent light cones, they are pretty much build to or slightly above or below recommended endgame stats you see on prydwen. My point is I think you are really right, the enemies are getting too hard way too fast. I struggle a bit, when I have like everything, figuring out how to beat this most recent MoC if I didn't have Ruan Mei probably would've taken me like 6 or 7 hours instead of 3. Now I do know how to, It'd be to have insanely good team comp with INSANELY good speed tuning. Like where my boothill and bronya get out of order after 2 turns but with adversarial LC passive speed + tingyun speed then with a bronya normal atk it'll put them back into order for the next 2 turns allowing me to actually get boothill to be able to land 2-3 hits on a broken enemy without ruan mei helping hold them in their broken state. But it's just crazy that that's the level of optimization needed to clear it well. Want to do it without all the strongest characters? Gotta super optimize the whole teams stats like that which sure isn't easy with how relics work and then someone gets hit with some sort of sleep or stun rng during fight it's just a reset.
when Swarm disaster first came out, I was having hard time clearing diff 3 with Natasha and fire mc TOGETHER in a team. But then I pulled Fu Xuan and I cleared diff 5 first try with nearly all paths with single team.
oh and boi, I forgot to mention. I also got Fu Xuan's LC on first day and god's sake. her LC better than even some limited Abundance units lmao (restore everyone hp by 80% at the start of every round)
Imo it heavily depends on a character. For example, as a day1 player I benched seele and blade, but i still use bronya himeko (1.0), silverwolf (1.1), kafka (1.2), fuxuan danheng (1.3), huohuo (1.5), ruan mei (1.6), all the time and they still feel and are super good. I don't really agree the powercreep is as huge of problem. A ton of older characters are meta and new characters only keep enchancing them. Yea, damage dealers are getting powercrept, but it's always gonna be the case. Same with diluc < klee< hutao=arlecchino. It's sad that seele isn't good anymore, but she's still usable, just like blade/ jingyuan.
Seele is still good, but nowadays, she requires heavy investment and teammates to compete with the new content. She also requires strategy and especially, she needs conditions to perform optimally - that is, minions you can one-shot to proc Resurgence - without those conditions her DPS falls off a bit, but if those conditions are met she still does incredibly great and still clears. I'm still using her on MoC, and I used her on some fights in Penacony. Powercreep, in my opinion, is less of an issue than it seems to be.
i have a feeling that Blade and Jingyuan was never intended as an op dps, rather sub dps. I don't mind it, I like to use Blade, he is one of my favorite, if he gets rerun, I want to pull his eidolons. :)
Honestly I agree so much on this. Healers - Natasha is just unplayable, let's face it. March is just too skill point heavy. People talk about bringing Lynx as a sustain but like... have they ever used Lynx? She's weak as fuck, her heals are absolutely pathetic. Meanwhile, Gallagher can heal 100% of a teammate's HP with his E, implant a lifesteal debuff with his ult AND he can act immediately after his ult AND his enhanced basic attack heals EVERYONE. Support- Every 5 star support is busted in it's own way. I would say they're pretty balanced among each other. But Tingyun and Hanya have been absolutely powercrept, no doubt about that. I believe Bronya did too DPS is hard to say because support are the reason why a DPS shines, but it's clear that standard 5* dps are pathetic compared to the newer ones. Though it's pretty obvious that Acheron is just better than everyone else
10:00 - 10:06 That's the reason why I pulled for Imbibitor Lunae, to do swarm content, and to have an imaginary dps unit that can attack all enemies. Helped that Sparkle was in the next patch and I got her as well.
Swarm was MADE to sell DHIL. It took me a lot of time to do propagation part of swarm content with Blade and in a way he's made to work with propagation's "boost basic attacks" perks.
About Genshin, I’ve never played the game before so I hope for an answer. How many characters were they releasing per version? For HSR, I know it’s 2-3 characters per patch, but for Genshin to have about 80 in four years while Star Rail has about 60 characters within the first year is crazy to me.
2 five star for first two patch, 1 in the archon patch, 1 liyue adepti per cycle, a bunch of 4 star here and there, and the last patches( x.7 or x.8) usually have no new characters, but archon rerun exception being now in fontaine because they were aware of wuwa.
Star Rail had a bunch of characters on the backburner Argenti had his story quest lines recorded before the game even came out and characters like Jiaoqiu have had preliminary kits from the start of the game
Genshin’s character releases aren’t like Star Rail’s where they have a set pattern. The first update version 1.1 introduced four new characters, two new five stars (Childe and Zhongli) and two new four stars (Diona and Xinyan), it’s the first and only time that Genshin has added four new characters in one patch, they likely did it just to add to the roster since it was so small back then. A trend of adding two five stars without a new four star began from version 1.2-1.3, however from version 1.4-1.6 they only added four new characters, Rosaria (Four star) in 1.4, Eula (Five Star) and Yanfei (Four Star) in 1.5 and Kazuha (Five Star) in 1.6. From then on the patterns would switch around, sometimes we’d get one five star, then maybe two five stars, then maybe one four star, or one five star and two four stars. Version 3.8 broke this rule and didn’t release any new character that patch, it’s the only time Genshin has done that. As a person who plays both games, it’s clear that Genshin does take its time with character releases, and what bothers me about Star Rail is that releasing two new five stars each patch is super unnecessary, not only does it stress players out with all the characters, but it’s clear that Hoyo doesn’t care about some of them, Jade got what I like to call “The Topaz Treatment” in the beta, where she got completely neglected while Firefly got a bunch of buffs and tweaks to her kit, and while I don’t think every character needs constant changes in the beta, it’s clear that Hoyo really didn’t care about Jade, heck look at her banner compared to Firefly’s and it’s clear they didn’t want her to sell well. So what’s the point of releasing Jade if they aren’t gonna care about her? Why not release Firefly by herself, have people spend all their money on her and then release Jade later on and have her banner be stacked as well, wouldn’t two stacked banners separated into two different versions sell better than one stacked banner and one terrible one in the same patch? I feel like they’re shooting themselves in the foot with some of these characters, Jade would make tons of money if they had just adjusted the character releases, actually put effort into her kit and then have her banner be stacked. It wouldn’t affect Firefly’s sales because we would only fully know about Jade releasing and her kit in the second phase, i.e. the phase after Firefly’s banner has already made a bunch of money. It feels like a better business strategy than what they’re doing right now, and it would be less stressful on new players in a way.
@@samkelly5045 only firefly got changes, because nobody complained about Jade? And everybody complained about firefly being weak? That's why there was almost no changes for Jade
They release the exact same account tbh. Your perception is a bit messed up. They follow the same pattern. It's always one or two 5 star per patch, with maybe a couple 4 stars
i agree with that my f2p account is in panecony and I can´t get past the adventurine boss because my only build dps is ratio, my other units Gepard, Pela, Bronya, TB and Tingyun. There is no way to win this fight the gamble kills all but pela slowly but surely and ratio deals barely dmg to adventurine, now I´m building Boothill to be able to win this battle hopefully if that doesn´t work I build Herta but damn this really sucks sometimes. It takes days to build one unit as free 2 play
I do agree that powercreep is a huge problem in star rail. I have been playing since 1.0 and decided to make a new account. Bailu and xueyi got me through most of the begining content, but pulling robin and her signature lc made the game 100x easier than it already was.
I mean I have both invested seele and acheron, i never use the former despite liking her more since she is inefficient even for exploration, and that's just an year
I play honkai impact too and I'm also familiar with the powercreep that goes on in that game. A lot of the of best dps and supports back in the day are now usless in the challenge content, especially in abyss/superstring dimension. Only a handful of valkyries are competitively viable (mainly the newst ones.) Luckily it's only problem in endgame content since the game gives you trial units for the main story mode, no gatcha required.
Idk if this same thing or not but during dhil + swarm su dropped, imo it was weird because the whole content are easier if you have him. I was a little worry about the game future but it wasnt that bad, I cleared all of it and got all reward without him.
That one was unfortunate because the bug's weakness are imaginary and quantum, two of the most premium element in the game at that time. Actually we still don't have 4* imaginary dps. March is coming soon though. Now we have more options. Everyone has Dr. Ratio. For quantum there's Xueyi.
Power creep is a thing, but it mostly for endgame content like moc. I have account where I do only standard pulls because I want to save up for e6 5* and my luck is really terrible on this acc (got e1 Bailu and than her lc, recently I got Gepard but he is still not leveled up). And mobs and bosses in world are actually fine to me, only Sunday was a bit problematic and I needed 2 tries. Overall, the developers are still doing a good job of balancing content for the world. (Endgame unfortunately requires too much damage to complete)
I agree that the powercreep is a problem. Especially with aventurine. And his boss fight. I am lucky to have ruan mei. I used clara, march, ruan mei and linx for that boss fight and it worked pretty well. But there are many times where i wished i had welt on the xianxhou or even in penycony. Or many times where i struggled using fire trailblazer to just survive the onslaught of damage.
that's what makes the game more fun for me lol. Using your old character to do the current MoC or pure fiction (herta/himeko) just makes it more rewarding and not boring
Even Adventure is getting power creept in floor 12 of MoC this time as a sustain… He just came out. 😅 Another issue is even for at launch players that are F2P might not have the right units to Break this floor… I’m leveling Clara I just got because I can even survive the first half of floor 12 without the right unit type damage.
I think its because mihoyo recently keep releasing certain niche memory turbulances or buffs which are really adventageous to newer units and encourage people to pull. Yes, there is certain team that can ignore those advantage but its still doable for older unit to clear if you knew what you are doing. Luckily they increase the rewards so its not really that bad.
The powercreep is realistic but is evidently small in HSR. I've seen people talking about how it makes defeating enemies or farming in general harder because of the misalignment, but some people like me are able to rush through contents with a bit of management done.
I'm a new player, started on robin's banner so like a month ago. Just realized that i never really struggle with the story bcs i got Gepard from my welcome banner. Fire MC, serval, herta & gepard can defeat aventurine (though barely, but you can). Sunday boss is tad bit easier (weird but huh, thanks i guess). So, new players technically can progressed through the story even without limited dps as long as they got Gepard... (or any 5 star shielder. Natasha & march wouldn't be enough i think). Well but isn't that the true enemy boss here? the gacha 😞
I did it with Natasha and March ... And honestly it's good to use both of them especially in the Sunday fight cuz they both have a clense to deal with the Trinity
Yeah there's powercreep, the problem is how to balance it from being a shock to returning players if it tilts overboard vs. becoming a snoozefest endgame with no incentive to continue investing in chars for vet players (ie. genshin) Don't have any real hardline takes but perhaps it makes sense to level set expectations that you will not be able to full clear hardest endgame when one initially gets back into the game, at least until you pull for a couple of new-ish chars
I agree 100% with you, that hoyo relase way too much limited 5 stars, banners are too short. This is a real problem. But. Moc was always fitted to the newest meta characters, last moc very hard. Current is much easier, and I don't even have a break team, Blade and Jingliu (with very avarage build) cleared moc 11. Also don't forget about swarm disaster and gold and gears. If you now what you are doing with blessings, you can beat it with many characters/team comps. Not to mention divergent universe, where you have all your characters leveled up. Oh, and this cycle is for Jade, which means, all 3rd plane enemies has quantum weakness - so I just brought a Qingque team. Hoyo try to make pull in every banner, but you in reality you can just skip them, and only pull for your favourite. I will skip Jade, Argenti, Yunli, Huohuo on both acc, and skip Jiaoqiu and Black swan on my main acc. Who said, I have to pull all of them? Gallagher as Luocha power creep? What??? You put Gallagher in a super break team with a full free HMC, and he makes damage? What a suprise. Luocha is still better healer with his high healing, field and free turn healing, and he can make 30-50k damage with HMC... (It's not against Gallagher, I like to use him.) Also, most people who are struggling with Aventurine boss have bad teams or they are after equilibrium, or their builds are bad. I saw many others beating him with Herta, Misha, other cheap units. Same with the big boss bug before the critter pick event. Also I saw somebody, who could beat Sunday with really badly build characters (his lvl 80 Dan Heng IL made 7-11k dmg...), he needed only 3 attemps. My partner beat him with Bailu as only sustain. Poeple are beating the newest moc with Himeko team. If people learn to let go their competitive nature, they can let go the newest meta characters too. I let go of pure fiction difficulty 3/4, apocaliptic shadow 3/4, moc 10-12 (depends which moc, which acc), swarm/gng difficulty 5 and conundrums, most likely I will let go of du treshold 5-6. It's personal issue, that people want to clear every contents in a month nad they complain that they can't. Power creep is real and bad, but your video seems exaggerated.
i believe progressing through the story will be a problem only if you come back to the game with an already high leveled account with no good relics farmed (which i don't even know how one could have such account but whatever), since the world level makes it so the enemy are lowered in level and even the newer bosses i believe their scaling becomes abnormally high once they reach level 90 and above, so before that point they should be weak enough to be beaten even with a beginner team unless i'm heavily overestimating the scalings
i definitely agree with you that there's incredibly evident powercreep and problem creating-solution release cycles in star rail. however you've said that certain units just aren't designed around new content anymore ie you bringing up natasha not being able to sustain in penacony and i feel like that's not really the case. people are very much able to use natasha in the latest moc 12 in total 4 star runs and are able to clear in time and this might be some of the highest dmg output from the end moc ever, and the penacony order robots also place nasty dots that natasha can actually cleanse on demand. this isn't even really a point of defending natasha's relevance but i think hsr actually has very strong 4 stars (outside of maybe arlan) in specific scenarios. i think where the powercreep is in selling the new game modes and creating artificial problems, like how many accounts could've not invested in strong erudition units and then pure fiction comes out. on the other hand, herta and himeko instantly became a lot better with pure fiction but for a lot of players, it highlighted an account issue that wasn't there before. i thinkt he same will happen with apocalyptic shadow and not having insane single target dps that also happen to be really fast or self-action pushing
the unit that was least powercreept was ... Herta XDDD Also I had similiar problem. I quit on Blades banner and rejoined at start of Robins banner. My units, Seele, Balde, JY, Gepard, Welt... yeah.. all almost univested. But I was lv 66 or 67... I still need to get supports from a whale to clear some of the weekly bosses. The Sunday boss took me a week.. However I got Robin and it started to feel diffferent. From the time I started until now I only level traces... Ratio, Robin, Lynx etc.. Now I have saved enough for RM and I am so sorry I didnt pull Aventurine cos Gepard is not doing well. Still Gepard + Lynx helps me clear the content in 1000 turns.. As soon As I got Robin. Blade, Seele + lynx clear everything in overworld no problem
Personally i dont really feel it coz i cleared the main story till 2.1 with march, dan heng 4 star, mc and natasha. End game content is difficult only coz i havent bothered to build most charectors yet.
I understand your point but on the other side power creep is also a good thing for the game cus if you can already do everything in the game with just your seele, it gets boring after a while and having to get new characters for new content in the game makes you have a reason to continue playing the game. Obviously direct power creep is bad for the game like the example you mentioned with Aventurine and Gepard but indirect power creep like sparkle and bronya isn't a problem so much because they have (slightly) different uses and isn't just directly replacing another character. This way you can still use each character just in different situations. I understand your argument tho and agree to an extent. Great video
I definitely would be pretty miserable if Fu Xuan wasn't rerunning right now. By the end of the Luofu chapter Gepard could not sustain my team effectively anymore.
I got luck and in my first 50-60 rolls I got Bailu. She is carrying my whole team in campaign like crazy. Thx god i got her xD( Sadly i lost my 50/50 on Boothill and got her again :( ).
That's why I've always started playing gachas on day one. It saves you a lot of trouble. These games just aren't made to be picked up randomly or enjoyed casually. Either you commit wholeheartedly or maintain your sanity by avoiding gacha games altogether. I wish I had done the latter.
Aren't there only 49 characters? Though, I do agree with all your points (and I also think 49 characters in only one year is still insane, I'm not putting that point down either). In every game, there is bound to be power creep. However, unlike genshin, HSR puts you in a situation where you need certain characters or else you won't succeed... whereas in Genshin, for example, all the elements seem to have at least one interaction with each other, therefore assisting you. Let's say you had a dendro team; even if it was with Yaoyao or Collei as your dendro applicator, plus maybe Barbara for hydro and Fischl for electro, if you build them right, you have a hyperbloom team already. In genshin, you can survive off of one team in the overworld just fine. But in HSR? Now we have weakness breaks and all that. Thank you for this video. I really hope that HSR doesn't go down the same path as Genshin where they didn't listen to the playerbase...I've only been playing for a week and I'm so addicted to this game. However, I'd hate for that to get ruined by constant grinding/farming because I'm worrying about whether I'll be able to pass the content.... maybe, just maybe, HSR will listen.
Although I agree there is powercreep, I completely disagree that it's making the story too hard. For MoC / PF, sure, although I haven't really gotten there yet. I started roughly a month ago (missed the Ratio giveaway), and beat the entire story with only using Fire MC, Bronya, Natasha, Serval. No eidolons, except a few on Natasha. Relics with random stats, not even maxed. Traces at like level 3-5. You can definitely screw yourself over if you increase your equilibrium level without investing in your characters first, if you don't manage your resources properly though. There was this one trashcan miniboss in penacony that kept one-shotting my team after I raised my equilibrium level, but just leveling random relics fixed that problem.
One smooth brain take i keep seeing is "Four Stars can clear all the content" and while that is corrected you need to remember it'll takes MONTHS of investment to get to that point as a new or returning player, on top of that what is the four star in question is not on rate up, looking at you Tingyun, Pela, Gallager Ect ect. My whole point was that power creep makes new enemies and locations harder which in turn makes new regions harder, which in turn makes it harder to catch up with the games content and this problem will only get worse as the game goes on.
A very lazy video right here, I wanted to talk about Star Rails Power creep for a while, but between work and School i dont have the time right now to edit something amazing.
This one is more for Background noise friends, maybe watch something else while you eat your dinner.
Really am saddened cus I'm literally in the same situation as u. I can't beat Sunday story boss so I can't play the clockie event. Even if I pull maybe Firefly, I can't lvl her traces cus cus it's locked behind the same boss. At least u could lower Ur world lvl in Genshin but Ur fu*ked in HSR😢
"Four Stars can clear all the content"
Then the guy posts the characters builds... and they are all Eidolon 6 & Superimposition 5 !
In that sense, i wonder if "4*" always equals to "free 2 play" : there are only a few pulls available compared to the many characters & cones randomly coming.
@@VerbosePX that's true. I can understand u having one or 2 4* stars at E6 but not the whole team at E4 s5. The s5 LC are the ridiculous part cus it means you'd pull on the LC banner as often as the character banner
what people need to understand is that 4* full teams are made for challenge, not some kind of f2p team guide or anything like that
4-star teams can beat all the content if you have a magic horseshoe up your butt while farming relics and have pulled enough times to get s5 on all the top light cones. Cool, yep I could beat everything too if I had only Crit/Speed/Attack on every single relic as well, fun, cool, absolutely recreatable by the average player.
Before I got limited sustains, I used Preservation Trailblazer and Natasha together a lot. They worked together to prevent one-shots and keep the team going.
I had to do the same thing a few times, i used March and Fire trailblazer on Sam, and for the rest of the content i used Lynx and natasha. It made the game slow and unfun but it worked until i got Loucha and later Gallagher and Aventurine
I used March and Natasha lel
I used them too. Together with Bronya and Dan Heng 4 star. I bring them to fight almost anything in star rail. But After got Dan Heng IL and Gepard in 1.3, i changed Bronya to Tingyun and MC Persevation to Gepard.
I used to do that too, but that was in early days when my DPS weren't well/fully built, there weren't many (any, in my case as Bronya refused come until I finally got her through selector) 5* harmony characters and the enemies in MoC 10 (which was the only endgame contents back then) were weaker you didn't need the level of DPS required now.
rofls when Harmony Trail Blazer forces you to lose a tank you really need 😭😭😭😭 that fight was hard AF
a huge fix which wouldnt do much but it would slow down powercreep is.. QUIT RELEASING TWO NEW FIVE STAR UNITS EVERY FUCKING UPDATE.
I hear they might start releasing 3 at a time lmao
@@brizzleyohyoure lying. there's no way they dont have enough money 💀💀
@@solarenity They're a multi-billionaire company lol, releasing 4 characters an update wouldn't be a problem for them
I agree with the powercreep thing, break dps units as a whole are raising the bar together. I also want to say that I think your experiences are inflated by the fact you took a significant break from the game. This is not blame against you because it's an inevitability across all gacha games in general, you're not just going to miss out on a strong new character, you're also going to miss out on a significant amount of resources and stat growth.
Thats the issue, the power creep wont affect you if you keep playing the game since you can keep getting new characters. And it better be that way because if you start getting out scaled by enemies as an active players that would throw us into whale culture and that sucks.
But what happens to new players and veterans in a year ?
What if the meta units and meta sustains aren't on banner
What happens when future Enemies get way stronger
this is a problem after only a year, imagine how hard it will be for a new or returning player to get back into the game in two or three.
@@Soul_of_the_Og I was mainly talking about not growing account resources outside of the characters you could pull. Losing 8 months of resources will hinder any account, and as a jing yuan user who uses a bad team in overworld for a reason I can't really say myself I don't believe you should be struggling as hard as you say in the overworld specifically. Obviously it did happen though so this is just my input as to why. Gacha games that don't intake any skill from the player will be against returning players in any case but that is just obviously a bad practice as is endgame enemy scaling to force you to pull so it's not an argument of mine.
@@foxiki387 i agree losing 8 months of trailblaze power could inhibit ones ability to build units to a point where they can handle equilibrium 6 enemies, i even beat Aventurine with a team of ftp units (Herta FireMC Qinque, Natasha). I still struggle with end game content but as i start maxing out traces im still seeing progress. But i do see a ower creep issue with newer units every unit from 2.0 onward and arguably since 1.6 onward has been meta defining in some way and it worries me as the endgame modes do seem tailored to the new units.
@@SheetsIncyou guys are not understanding his point. He could’ve created a new account and still progressed through the game as fast as he did with his forgotten account. New players are not going to require 8 months to get to penacony.
@AldersonForOne I think their point is that those 8 months could have been used to upgrade units and maybe get some new ones to help with his time in penacony. A new player could probably reach penacony in a few weeks if they wanted too but it's the point of if you don't take the time to work on your characters then you will definitely feel alot weaker than other people. I think they just meant that if you're struggling with content, it might not just be powercreep, causing the issue it could be the 8 months not played and used to make yourself stronger
I was clearing MoC 12 fine, and then Aventurine dropped, and suddenly I'm stuck at MoC 9 because you've got enemies doing AoE one-shot damage, or requiring you to have a shield to beat their mechanic. When you're dropping two 5-stars a patch, and none of them feel skippable, that starts to feel really bad. And that doesn't even mention how often the 5-stars feel incomplete without their light cone.
Quite honestly, it's shifted me to being fully free to play and just not giving a crap about endgame content. I enjoy the game, but I'm not rewarding that weaponized FOMO with money.
Idk, cleared him in moc12 without aventurine just fine, using fuxuan that came out in version 1.3, just need to know boss mechanics and strategize.
@eeeeepy my sustains at the time were FireMC, HuoHuo and Lynx.
I lost 50/50 on Fu Xuan and had never got Gepard despite all my losses.
I have Fu now and it's a massive difference, but even then those soda monkeys are a pain without traditional shields.
yeah i agree moc 12 aventurine was a big turning point in the power creep, it was also the first moc 12 i couldnt 3 star since being able to do so the first time on my account. it wasnt until i finally got lucky and pulled aventurine himself that i was able to beat him but to be fair, i also had no limited sustain on my account, not even gepard, just bailu and 4 star sustains.
tbh, i couldve cleared fine with lynx but my dps at the time (clara) was not strong enough to brute force through since i needed to spend a lot of important dps skill points for healing, and she was built pretty abd
@@maevethefox5912thats not powercreep your account is bricked lmao
@@syzler8664 imagine lost 50/50 called as bricked... oh boi 😂
A simple quickfix.. would be to allow switching to one lower equilibrium level. The quest to go into equilibrium level 6 is very much lower than the actual difficulty of the enemies and bosses (in all ways), and a lot of people were caught in the limbo where they could clear the quest, but cannot clear content
Thats not the fix
That's something I asked for too, it will make clearing the story much easier, I have the same problem as soul because I couldn't play the game after its release, so I grinded and got lucky until I reached Ruan mei's quest........yk what happened there right
An instance of star rail could never ngl
@@mohmedabdo4681 the swarm boss at the end is a real outlier. I first beat him with Gepard and Huohuo in the team and didn't really have an issue, but if you have no decent shielder (a good Gepard, FuXuan or Aventurine) then it's gonna be difficult. Right now I can beat him with no shields at all but I run with Acheron, Black Swan and Kafka that kill the smaller insects so fast that I can sometimes do Acheron's ults back-to-back and basically leave the boss one single attack in the whole fight. That's real powercreep.
@@renatomarelli4199 I remember struggle against it before I got boothil and his light cones.
I remembered when I do like. Ten to Twenty cycle to got past phase one and get completely destroy by phase two(spam AoE are not cool for me) but now I come back and get Boothil(Got his light cone first then boothil in the next ten pulls) then I progress the story until Harmony and noticed I need swarm's material so I come back and defeated it. My unit is still the same.
Now I'm building serval because lack of break in Harmony Choir(Sunday) boss.
Me and my gf just hit 180 days played. For the first half we both used a jank ass QQ, Silver Wolf, Fireblazer, and Lynx team. I remember fighting Skaracabaz on her account right before Acheron release. It was literally 40 minutes of turtling.
Eventually Ruan Mei came, then Sparkle then DHIL, then Luocha, then Boothill/Fu Xuan. Gf got Acheron, Black Swan, Aventurine, Luocha, and Robin in that same time frame.
We both dolphined (battlepass + express pass) and the difference was night and day. Just having Sparkle made everything a breeze with the jank ass QQ team. With DHIL I destroyed everything on autobattle. Now it's gotten to the point where we can both 3* MoC 12 comfortably. The other day she said that she wants to quit because it feels like a rat race - constantly having to fiend after the new "next best thing" that comes out every 6 weeks.
My Boothill has 4 different relics and shitty planars but still cleared MoC in 2 cycles. If I had Bronya it would be 0. Firefly is looking to be even more obscene.
I enjoy the game and I enjoy the story, especially since my S/O and friends play, but god damn is the power creep only accelerating
Games these days simply aren't built for dolphins, they're built for whales with room for the plankton that makes them feel big. There's probably a long ass youtube video's worth of stuff to extrapolate from that but it starts with us dolphins not getting fun games.
Basically why my gf and I quit too.
I played from 1.0 got Jing Yuan, SW, Blade and DHIL and took a break on 1.3. Played again on 2.0 and its ridiculous how much I was left behind. I couldn't clear stuff because all my dps are powercrept and my only sustain is loucha. Now I got all the new chars Sparkle, BS, FX, Acheron, Boothill and Ruan Mei and it ridiculous how much easier it became. My f2p Jing Yuan got better after sparkle and got powercrept again quickly. Blade is unusable.
They want us to pull every characters without taking a break, it tells how fast the powercreep is.
Maybe people who played since the beginning and whales wont feel it, but f2p players and people who took breaks got affected badly, this isn't much talked but many people don't realize this and the game isn't as f2p friendly as it seems.
Thank you for perfectly encapsulating my issue with power creep in this game. I started at launch, and had a ton of fun in the beginning. Got Jing Yuan on his release and was cruising through the game having a good time while waiting for Screwllum (RIP). The story kinda lost me after the Loufu arc, and I took a break for several months, not getting back into it until 2.1. Claimed my free Ratio but had to do Ruan Mai's story quest to unlock the bug weekly boss, and that shit took me AGES! At that point Bailu was my only built healer and even Gepard was struggling. Had to rework my team several times and farm for better relics before I managed to scrape by. Finally was able to pull for Loacha on his rerun cus I desperately needed a sustain with more utility, and eventually also got Gallagher. My only limited 5 star units are Jing Yuan, Ratio, and Loacha and I have been struggle bussing through Penacony.
One of my biggest issues with this game is I can't just pull the units I like, it has to be a a very specific team, and a lot of the time, those teammates are characters I don't like. I think Boothill looks fun and I was tempted to pull, but I HATE Ruan Mei as a character. I'm f2p, as well as a husbando/waifu over meta player and don't wanna spend my very limited currency on characters I don't like, but every team wants her, same with Sparkle. As you mentioned, people hate Genshin comparisons, but at least in that game, you can get away with pulling who you like and brute forcing your way through the content because the elements are pretty flexible. HSR is just really unforgiving in terms of team comps and meta, and that has definitely impacted my ability to have fun in the game..
Anyways, sorry for the rant. At this point I'll probably eventually drop HSR like I dropped HI3, but at least Wuwa looks promising, and might even push Genshin towards some much needed QoL updates.
I mean, it's unfair to compare HSR and Genshin, specially since the most interesting and fun parts of the gameplay are in different parts, HSR the most fun part is in strategizing and team building, and engaging in teams like FuA( specially the IPC team, or at least Ratio, Topaz and Robin even at E0) and Dot, break is also fun, but I guess a lot of people don't have the characters for that, I started playing in the middle of 1.1 and played till 1.6, then I stopped playing for a while and returned in the start of this patch(2.2), I had a bit of trouble with the bosses in this patch but otherwise my roaster was able to handle it(mainly my team of Kafka, Ruan Mei, Fire TB and Sampo, but the last two bosses I needed to get a Himeko from the Standard and make a break team with HTB, it was Ruan Mei, Himeko, Lynx and HTB, then I was able to defeat Sunday), then I pulled for Topaz and Robin and got both, I was really lucky, though it was at 80-90, then I got Fu Xuan the day before yesterday because I didn't had a limited sustain.
I pull for characters who can buff a specific dps that I love playing,I pulled sparkle and fu xuan because they help seele they’ve been with her ever since and I’m pulling Ruan mei for firefly and xueyi despite also not liking her as a character
And yes you can pull for characters you like and just heavily invest into them and get their supports,however I can’t hold that against you because relic grinding does suck
Personally, I refuse to pull for female units. I don't care how many units want Ruan Mei, I'll never get her. Harmony TB will be all I have. I don't care if a unit needs Sparkle, I'm not pulling her - at most I'll use Hanya who I pulled incidentally while trying for more Sampo copies.I suspect in time the game will become unplayable because its power creep is so bad and there's so few male units, but for now it's what I do.
@@Ui_Raizen same as me actualy, I hate Ruan Mei and pulling her for Xueyi break comp
but OP has a point, no matter how good your supports are, your JY is still gonna suffer compared to an Acheron
Powercreep in HSR started already on 1.1 and things are just ramping up. Imagine acheron being powercreeped in the future? insane
Edit here: i think ffe2 is the most busted thing in the game, yeah acheron was already powercreept kekw
I can't stop laughing at this
She kinda did
Boothil and FF next new characters with strongest 4 star perhaps
She has already been power crept. A this point every single patch power creeps the previous one. Literally every single new 5 star character breaks the meta. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. The speed at which older character are being faded out is getting ridiculous.
I said the same thing and somehow got someone saying my statement is "delulu". I wonder how many more patches for the powercreep to be that much obvious to these hoyo bootlickers. I have E0S0 Blade, and he's been on the bench for the longest time because he's just unserviceable for MOC. Another case is my E0S1 JY, he's usable with MOC but that's it, barely. And it looks like Jingliu is also slowly being phased out.
I thought Acheron would be a special case since she's a Raiden-expy so it's understandable she would be much more OP, but well, it doesn't stop there now, does it?
I thought Genshin having its characters aging like fine wine (mostly) would also be applied to HSR. How thoughtless that is.
Somehow, HSR follows the same trend of HI3 in terms of powercreep, because HI3 is the epitome of powercreep, you can bet the characters you pull along with their signature to get powecrept 2 patches later.
@@lokrjNo, Hi3 powercrept is in a year, some last longer (if they get a divine key or have the herrscher title)
But every patch meta shifts, so that new shiny toy will suffer in new content unless they have support abilities
I didn't think Acheron could be powercrept. A Nihility dps that can break toughness bar regardless of weaknesses and does more damage when the enemies are debuffed?
Now I'm starting to think they could in fact powercreep her, all it'd take is for new character to break their toughness bar with just their skill.
Im so very confused, because my friend who started last week - no bonus ratio or anything- did the entire penacony storey fine with just the standard characters and their 5 star was gepard. I think the only big issue is if you max your TB level out but were not in a position for the sudden boost of damage characters need to do.
I am sorry what👁👄👁
I am relatively new, only comed like 2 months ago, and i striggled at that boss fight so much, it tooked me so many hours
@@nicolas._.2294maybe because you level up too fast? The difficulty of the enemies in the story is based on your level
yeah lower tb level content is really really easy, if you know what you are doing u can steamroll story at tb level 50-, simply way too ez. But if you are tb lvl 65+, you may struggle if you are not ready. And food is super op
i started 2 months ago, i found any story and sidequests stupidly easy. while Moc just kicks myass XD
Ok I understand.. I guess you really can't just go for who you like these days if you don't already have a team that works well in the current patch..
Actually it's becoming you have to like everyone to justify getting all of them
I mean with the amount of chars being released with weakness infusions I think it's gonna get to a point where you pick a char you like to play ... And then you find the infusion char that can support it ... Then you just play whatever you want xD
You have a few options:
- play casually and only select characters you like, but be aware you may struggle with end-game modes,
- pick select units that are considered meta to help your account have complete effective teams for end-game content, or
- spend money to acquire all desired characters
If the characters you like are the meta you can just work with it. I’m just glad Qingque is still god
There definitely is powercreep in starrail, but i dont think its a huge issue in the game yet, and thats mostly because old characters get buffed by the new characters. But also, all the new characters are going to be good, so as long as you are pulling characters, your probably going to be able to clear all the content in the game, or at the very least the inportant parts. Powercreep will really become an issue when the content becomes so difficult that old characters cant physically beat the game, and so far that doest seem to be the case, with my overall mid built Jing Yuan and Blade still being able to clear content, even if their not as efficient as my acheron or boothill.
the issue is that the game is not even that old. It has been one year and it is basically at the same stage of powercreep as Genshin, 4 years later. the speed of which the powercreep is happening should be concerning.
Well it's good in case you are constantly pulling new characters, but what about returning or new players? They have to wait a year for a specific character to come just to do a certain content, before that it's not a game because you just login logout and dont really play for months
@@kokichishares5965 well genshin had the problem of completely pointless/irrelevant releases. Everything between raiden and nahida was complete filler
@@kokichishares5965 well they released twice as many characters each patch than Genshin until now.
@@Stanzbey69Kokomi, yelan, yae, tighnari are all still great units though
Well, I found this video late but I still want to leave a comment saying that I do agree with you. I have been playing every day since launch and the solution to end game content is always picking the character that counters said content. But due to power creep I feel like I'm not making any progress with my account. If I stop pulling for a couple of patches because I'm trying to save, the game starts to feel more difficult until I get that new unit that makes it trivial again. Gallagher for example, a 4 star unit that came out recently, is ranked higher on the tier lists than Luocha, a 5 star limited unit that came out a while ago.
One thing is there which i really like about the hsr moc is that every moc phase lasts around 40 days, which gives us a lot of time to strategize or pull for characters and build the already existing characters. And they always provide a four star alternative to be useful for that particular content. HSR's rewards are pretty generous so its actually easy to get at least two 5 stars per patch as an f2p. So i think its balanced.
Agreed with your video. For some reason when you mention this in places like star rail reddit, you will get raked over the coals for it and insulted with "skill issue" memes. Star rail fanbase and content creators are extremely toxic and refuse to believe that there is any powercreep in this game because the majority of them are huge whales.
They are just a bunch of losers licking hoyoverse boots while not realizing that the only control the game have is basic atk,skill, ultimate and enemy target switch which I hardly call that a skill issue
now that you mention it, i don't know how to fix it,
I think power creep in live service games are inevitable.
well... at least games that I've tried, they all have a power creep problem,
unique hero in Lost Saga, New Operators and modules in Arknights, New Path in Elsword, Ship in Azur Lane, etc.
Power creeping isn't always inevitable, and even if it happens, it can still be hold under control and comfortable, but I suppose it just depends on the game
The powercreep is still very minimal in HSR
Simple u release supports that buff the old units
@@nicolas._.2294Power creep is inevitable in most gacha games that have a lot of characters, this is inevitable, and it can be minimized but with that what sense would people have on pulling? They wouldn't gain anything with it.
powercreep is only an issue when the game gets ballanced around it ... which from what ive seen hasnt happened yet
at least it hasnt happened to a degree that it makes the game unplayable
It has. Ruan Mei's kit made the devs make toughness bars on enemies more tanky since her release. Which led to break focus characters made to combat that. But Ruan Mei just straight up makes break characters better; so very likely enemies will have more means to make toughness bars immune to damage like some do now.
Power creep is very much a thing in Star Rail and it's only going to get worse.
TLDR: Ruan Mei shouldn't have been released. Or at least her kit.
@@No-Ink to be fair I havnt been here when they weren't tanky so I just wrote it off as the natural progression of the game (not counting chars like asta and harmony TB that just shred most imaginary and fire weaknesses in the right conditions kek)
@@No-Ink also I didn't say it didn't exist ... I just said it wasn't a problem cuz it didn't feel like it was warping the game around it to me to any like game breaking degree
@@toukoenriaze9870 The fact that toughness bars are harder to make because of one character being introduced is quite bad.
And now everyone is like, "You gotta have Ruan Mei. This character is awful without Ruan. You need Ruan!"
It's the most obnoxious thing. And it's even worse they're re-running her with Firefly, one of the most desired characters for awhile now. That's a shitty move.
My 2 main dmg dealers built on my account are Clara (e1) and ratio. I’m just going to start resorting to building 4 star dmg dealers instead of pulling for 5 star dmg dealers. I’ll just pull supports and sustains anyway and then build characters like Dan heng (wind), Luka, sampo, etc.
I'm lucky to have started hsr when I saved enough to get a ps5 in March 2024, got sparkle and her light cone, acheron e2 ( also e6 gallagher) because people said she'd be future proof for my account, got e1 robin and e0 aventurine, can already clear most content, saving for the fox guy. I started at the right time lol
Unfortunately, no character is future proof, literally in 2.4 a character named yunli is coming out and she power creeps every single dps at e0s0, she does easily over a million single target damage with her ultimate that charges near instantly and she’s a counter attack unit so she gets way more turns then any other dps
@@jefferygrandor7852 I was gonna skip her what 😭😭
You definitely had me in the first half, but the longer the video progresses the more it seemed this was less a discussion about power creep and more of a skill issue/complaint video about how you feel about the game. Power creep is starting to peak it's head don't get me wrong but no where near on the levels stated in this video. I am currently playing a new alt account so I can progress with a friend who is trying the game for the first time, and our only complaint has been the game should add more sustains for F2P because Natasha aged poorly (which was obviously going to happen, she was literally given to use for free Day 1 BEFORE getting to Belabog). If people can still clear MoC with a rag-tag team of Xueyi, Natasha, Pela, and TY, then powercreep hasn't become an issue (YET).
Yeah guys just use the 2 best four star supports and the best 4 star DPS. Surely you can guarantee pulling all 3, and if not, it’s skill issue 😐. Not to mention light cones.
@@XTCyan I missed the MOC buff that increased every enemy toughness bar post-Ruan Mei. Or the one that almost doubled Kafka’s boss hp bar with in only 4 months.
Like atp I’m convinced y’all are coping bc there is tangible proof of heavy powercreep and it’s only been a year. And the excuse of “just build another character that just HAPPENS to be able to abuse the buff to win.” Isn’t gonna cut it soon.
@@kokichishares5965 Again, for the third time. HSR powercreep is not that big, it is in fact extremely small. The only issue is that people fight against bosses that have literally 20-40% DMG Reduction to the element you are using to fight them, that is just a skill issue.
@@medojed8266 you are legitimately just a HYV bootlicker if you think that their isn’t SIGNFICANT powercreep. It takes less than one braincell to just read multipliers and realize that characters are increasing the damage ceiling with each release, that sustain characters are being overtaken by the latest, because why would you want a healer when you can have a healer and a dps and a debuffer?
@@kokichishares5965 to this day Ruan Mei isn’t necessary. I’m a day 1 player with her on my account yet, I don’t use her often because in a game like this, team composition matters most.
Yes you can see people use the absolute meta team and dumpster but what your not seeing the egregious amount of time spent farming for those characters. You want proof go slap DHIL on a non IMG boss, and watch his dmg fall off (unless you have the E6 60% res pen). Hell there are people fucking do full clears HARMONY only, there is no excuse to complain. Just look at your characters realize you built like shit and keep grinding.
As a guy who beat the OG Version of Aventurine I feel you. I ran triple Healing and March 7th just to barely limp through. It took 1 hour of battle, 3 characters dead and the mother of all god shot Crits from Bailu as the killing blow at the end.
Feels like ppl want things too quickie. I still can’t do moc yet all my charactwrs are at lvl 70. Been playing since blackswan. I have 4 characters at lvl 80 traces not built yet but my adventurine and acheron are getting built. I am now building my characters and by wnd of year should have alot of them built. I am a light spender though. Battle pass and monthly. Im in it for the characters, team building and have s variety of teams built that can clear some moc levels at 70 with steategy. U’m intrestrf in the mechanics, dtory, and characters. Endgame is endgame and I’ll hrt there soon with lots of supports. Im not worried about it. Feels like everyone just want to clear endgame without pitting in any investment for endgame. At the end of the days its still a gacha game.
Sorry for the typos, my phone not getting my inputs right lol.
Bro if someone is talking about endgame, then OF COURSE they are at least lvl 80 on every character they use. The problem is that lvl 80 and max traces is not enough. You need some good relics, eidolons if you bring 4 stars and the right team for every situation. But now we have main dps that directly implant a weakness on enemies or ignore their resistance (Acheron), and the game is now balanced around them. Try to do anything with a Clara or a Himeko, that's not happening
@@legacymse7095 lvl 80 on every character. I doubt that. Endgame should b challenging. Put clara in a fua team and she excels. Clara, lynx, dr.ratio and last slot for further weakness break. Which btw all the characters I mentioned are free. Game is not hard, a few synergies and strategy going in. He clearly has a skill issue.
You clearly misunderstood...my casual ass couldn't ascend my lvl since ages becoz of the powercreep
If u don't have the current broken DPS characters then all u r missing out on is the later 2 or maybe the last stage of MOC....But to clear all the other stages U need good supports and sustains...So my recommendation to all the new players would be to pick up Harmony and Preservation characters first because these characters are very difficult to powercreep once u have 2 sustains and 2 broken Harmoney for ur 2 teams then U can go nuclear on DPS characters left and right...!!!
And don't worry if u do end up pulling lets say Ruan Mei or Robin or Sparkle then they will make even ur 4 star DPS characters do incredible dmg maybe not enough to make u clear MOC 12 every time but more than enough to clear MOC 10 every patch.
Honestly the only problem is missing out on materials to pull for more chars that would be able to clear that content ... Because you can't clear it already
Powercreep in HSR is fake anyway. They release very situational units that are amazing in very specific scenarios; then, it just so happens that the content surrounding a character's release makes these scenarios common. Boothill and FF are break units and it just so happens we got more break oriented enemies, crazy right? Similarly to how when BS released we got the dino enemy that just so happens to have a lightning and wind weaknesses and be hard-countered by DOT, who would have foreseen that?
But like, if the devs don't put these favorable encounters in MC/PF cycle the respective characters can piss off. Look at how they made Himeko and Herta goated just by making pure fiction a thing, and then making sure there's always a fire/ice weak enemy in there. This goes both ways and they can (and will) do this to keep the meta rotating at a steady speed.
In that sense, I think it's actually healthy for the game. You can't just invest into two teams and be done (cough cough genshin), you need a lot of horizontal investment. The characters that you already had might eventually go out of fashion for a couple patches, but you can count on the devs resurrecting them once their re-run comes around.
There is always a little powercreep; if a unit is undertuned on release, it makes no sense to enshittify every upcoming character just to keep them inline. Luocha is a good example of this, he had nothing going on for him other than his low SP footprint (zero utility support lol), so in that sense, he was dead on launch.
Additionally, I think that a 5* should be principally stronger than a 4*, and a limited 5* should be stronger than standard 5*. These ratings are there for a reason; if it were to be expected that all characters are similar in strength, then what even is the point of 4*/5* standard/limited distinction? That is to say, I don't think it's an issue that Sparkle mogs Bronya, or that Aventurine mogs Gepard.
All in all, I don't think that the powercreep is a big issue in this game. While you need to have a broad batch of teams (ideally one per playstyle archetype), the units within that team rarely feel unfairly powercrept. Let's take Kafka DOT for example; look at Robin vs Ruan Mei, they are both contenders for the same slot, and they're so close to each other in terms of balance that it's not worth pulling one if your sole intent is to replace the other. When a character *does* get powercrept, it's usually by a rarer unit; for example Guinaifen/Pela (who are 4*) might be replaced by a certain Foxian Nihility in Acheron teams (and it's fine, because he's a limited 5*, nothing unexpected here).
Yeah, as direct evidence to your first point, everyone pulled for fu xuan and basically used her no matter what on any content. Then, all the sudden with penacony we have units that specifically require your sustain option to provide shields to counter them. Oh, and conveniently Hoyo releases the best shielder in the game by far. Fu xuan is obviously not bad by any means, but its still an ef you to the playerbase if she is your built sustain option for your first team and say, you run Loucha on your second. Honestly, 90% of the videos complaints could be fixed if they do a balance pass over fire TB and tune their numbers up to current content. Then there you go, f2p have an option to smoothly sail into current content, everyone has a decent shielder for the required. And for why I say that, its because not everyone pulls every standard unit. For example, as a day one player, I still don't have a clara or a bailu, but my welt is e5. Even long term players might not have all the standard banner options available to them.
I also agree with you that limited characters should be stronger than standard characters, but I also think that if that is the case then everything should be tuned to standard characters. I cannot imagine doing Sunday's fight without a gepard or better, and if your a new account pray that a sustain is on whatever banner you join on.
@@LockedOnTargetShow The latter is true and I genuinely believe the devs are out of touch with the playerbase when it comes to balance in story content. It's almost a tradition by this point for them to introduce a new boss enemy in the story, and then nerf them a week later, because the casual players and/or low spenders can't complete a quest, lol.
@@AbcightDev So true. I think they’re starting to realize. In the latest story quest, you can literally talk your way out of a boss battle with a certain character. 😂
i wouldn't say it's fake because the devs literally cater the content to the new units, even so far as creating new mechanics that would make prior units significantly worse. and what makes this powercreep actually substantial is that it gets reinforced with successive patch cycles where on top of either very restrictive moc buffs/mechanics, we have spongeified enemy HP and increased damage output. i think the most egregious example of my first point is when imbibitor lunae came out and i distinctly remember being the moc buff was the addition of the warp trotter that i believe gave skill points upon defeat, but this warp trotter really messed with welt's performance, who before, was doing really well as the imaginary dps, because his skill would end up not bouncing on the bosses and getting artificially weakned with additional targets, something imibitor lunae didnt care about because his kit always has splash/aoe implements.
I think it's all skill issue. I also stoped to play around 1.4 and came back at the end of 1.6 but I had a plenty of characters built, be it limited or not, 5* or 4* idc, I build a lot of characters and everytime I struggle to beat a MoC or a PF stage I always test and try to compose the best combinations until I eventually get the 3* and for me that's part of the fun. If people were here complaining about limited characters being stronger than the previous one I would get it, but if you say that you didn't touch the game for 8 months and can't beat silly story bosses, that's just skill issue.
Is there... like... a lack of incentive for gacha game devs to buff old units? Literally the only thing I can think of is it may cost them revenue since people will be less inclined to get new characters since theirs still works fine, but most people already pull for the characters themselves/them bringing something new to the table. It doesn't even have to be equalised buffs, just buffs that bring them up a bit so they don't struggle as much. New player friendly is always gonna be a pretty big reason as to why powercreep in the long run isn't gonna work.
No, many games do that and it works finely. It's just this is a specific company we're talking about, the hope is low from start
Old units doesn't even reach the point when their need buffs but people already crying about power creep. It's not about certain companies, it's about certain clowns.
Pretty much just mihoyo being mihoyo ... They would rather sell you a new char that solves the problem than actually fixing the problem
Some gachas do it through giving a new power up mechanic that is unique to older units first
It's not HYV specific, most gacha games suffer from powercreep.
But yes, there are means to assist older characters, either:
- directly (new passives or stats: see Arknights module system)
- indirectly (new lightcones or relic sets, game modes or enemy mechanics)
I am coming from the perspective of a day one player and I myself am having issues with HSR’s powercreep, I got and built Clara last month and she does pretty good in my Ratio/Aventurine team, and whoopdido Yunli is coming out and she’s gonna be twice as good as her. I myself an very lucky and have four good sustain units in HuoHuo, Loucha, Aventurine, and Gallagher, and yet I’m still loosing at least one unit or come close to it when grinding(outside of my aventurine team which also has gallagher for that exact reason). Having a fully perfect and constantly updating team to fit the current state of the game will be become a problem for many people. I myself have tried to future proof my 3 current teams and am planning a 4th team so that eventually I’ll never have to pull new characters again and only pull for reruns. But with the amount of powercreep occurring in the 2.0 updates, it’s looking like I’ll have to pull for one or two 5*s every patch. Anyways you made good points this was a good vid man!
Seele is still one of the best chars to 0 cycle MoC though even right now in 2.2. for the aventurine boss fight most sweaty star rail pvp players will tell you that the team that can 0 cycle aventurine with the lowest cost and with a sustain( least eidolons and signature light cones) is a Seele one (3 cost: E0S1 Seele, E1S0 Robin , DDD Tingyun and E1S0 huohuo). her kit is just mechanically amazing , relatively low ultimate cost and her additional 'turn' on kill that helps with her rotation. The problem is her multipliers which can be solved with gear and better supports. I just want to point out how mechanically strong kits coupled with vertical investments are very important for the longevity of a char. If the char's kit is simple with just big damage multipliers he/she is likely to be less relevant every patch.
As a gatcha game resource management is also important . kind of understandable how a totally new player or a casual player will face massive difficulties. I myself started an alt account 1 week before the free ratio went away . I still have pulled 0 5 star limited dpses but I have cleared MoC 11. my 3 DPSes are clara, E6 serval and ratio. ( lol clara is still extremely competitive especially at E1 and above)
Seele is the best character to not clear anything.
Not me making the mistake of leveling Yanqing, thanks god I've got Aventurine to help him out, but the unit is THAT bad now.
They also understood that destruction character were doing the same, and I'm glad they fixed it with the Pure Fiction end game content but still kinda sad for just hanging around in the game sometimes
Power creep is real but more important problem than that is how comeback/new players can clear at least the story if they only has natasha or very old characters that can't keep up with new content anymore. Giving up free characters like Dr Ratio was a good move, probably they need to give free *5 healer so new players can play with a new DPS and healer (and they shouldnt put expire date for those characters in the mail).
I mean Ratio was also a super marketing move to make people but the IPC team, which worked well, and it's indeed super fun, even at E0 though you probably shouldn't use it if it don't match either weakness, because if it don't match weakness Ratio will be unreliable.
hope they release things like eza's (from dokkan) for older characters that you can unlock which makes irrelevant/worser units more relevant again
I agree that when i will not be able anymore to finish the Trailblaze Missions & Continuation with the Astral Express crew (Trailblazer, Himeko, March 7th, Welt & Dan Heng + Natasha until Gallagher), then the game will be basically a pay to play. End Game modes are a different thing : those willing to invest their time, saved jades and even money are legitimately rewarded with the 3 stars clears.
So far my experience has been really smooth by making the choice early on to kind of sync the character levels at Equilibrium Level -1. This gives me 10 character levels to play with in case the Mission content is a little too hard.
For example, ascending my characters to Level 61 was the reward for finishing Luofu and currently, at end of Penacony, they are at Level 65 and i plan to up them up to 71 after 2.3 patch story.
The Argenti fight was the one too hard & i did not know it was skippable, so i leveled them up just a bit to see and it worked just well enough.
The Sunday boss fight was an Epic experience, lasting for so long that the 2 last times he got run over by the Train, no one had any catch phrase left to say anymore :)
The Meme & Aventurine did not cause any real problem with DestructionMC + Welt + March 7th + Gallagher. The Meme is fast compared to what i have so that was the challenge ; fortunately Welt imprisonment happened to be a nice counter. Aventurine dices were countered by the fact these characters either attack multiple targets or have AoE Ult.
The Phantylia fight however was something else ! I am not sure which level i was exactly but i remember it was at least 12 levels under the recommendation. So, of course, i entered without any hope of winning, just to gather info. Turns out that Phantylia & summons were absolutely obsessed by PreservationMC's taunt and basically never targeted anyone else. So, as Natasha kept healing him and the flowers kept stealing Skill Points, the (mandatory high level) Jing Yuan and my Dang Heng only had to rely on their Basic and Ultimate, with Imbibitor in the background sending a heavy blow every now and then... And somehow it worked !
Now, i have to admit that i enjoy a VERY slow and step by step progression and that i do not mind a boss fight lasting close to 1 hour ! I might be a weird one there ; it just makes the game closer to a usual RPG for me. So far so good.
However indeed, i wonder how much the EQ level is influencing the TB Missions & Continuance. I sure have noticed that the Echo of War bosses at higher difficulty are doing things that i do not recall them doing during the mission fights. If that is the case, it solidifies my strategy to wait for a good opportunity before upping the EQ level. And work on the characters equipment in the meantime (i am currently learning about Speed mechanism !). Until maybe there will be a point were having non standard units will be mandatory even for the story mode...
Hopefully never : Hoyo can not be sure players will have limited 5* at any given point of the story, particularly new comers 🙏
I'm honestly really confused about most of what you're describing as the problem in this video. I'm a new player, I think I started early april or end of march and I haven't really run into any of the issues you're describing here. I did most of the story content up to aventurine without pulling for any limited 5 stars, and never really struggled with any content up until him. I don't consider myself particularly good at this game either, so I'm not trying to say it's a skill issue, I just don't really understand where the difficulty you're describing comes from. I didn't particularly struggle with regular enemies or bosses, and while I certainly couldn't clear MoC or PF until I raised my equilibrium level a bit and improved my characters, that seems understandable since it's 'end game' content.
I don't think I ever lost fights more than a few times throughout the story, and when I did fail to beat aventurine after a couple attempts, I sat back and thought about my strategy for a bit and then came back with a team featuring more AoE characters to effectively deal with the dice rolling mechanic and made sure to save ultimates for when he uses it, and proceeded to beat him first try with that strategy.
Also, at 11:15 you said that any character can clear most of the difficult content?? Wasn't the point of the video that you need to have pulled for newer 5 stars to keep up with the story content? Are you saying you found MoC easier than the story bosses?
I hope this doesn't come off as me trying to brag or flex - again, I don't think I'm particularly good at this game and I don't have amazing builds on my characters either. I'm just not sure where all this issue you're describing is?
To be clear - I'm not trying to argue powercreep isn't a thing either, just that I don't see your issue?
His issue - he doesn't play for 8 months. And when he's back - he think he should clear everything with what he has 8 month ago.
@@user-eo2db5il3x i think he's mainly talking about the story, not "everything". And quest bosses are always easy so yeah, not being able to clear even that is a problem.
I think this video wasn't exactly well thought out
There's a discussion to be had about powercreep in star rail but i think this guy was just frustrated, turned the mic on and vented...which honestly? Fair enough
I definitely agree with your perspective, and while I am a day one daily player, I am not a sweaty minmax player. I don't share the opinion of people here that my early dps (Clara) became obsolete when I get later DPS (Kafka, Acheron). I pulled Jing Liu poorly because I love her design, and never use her. I skipped Sparkle because I dislike her as a personality.
Basically, I am an inefficient player, but I like playing the game, and that's why I am usually just 2 stars short of clearing MoC while in Genshin I can barely make it past floor 8 of abyss. The relic grind feels disgusting to me in Genshin but feels natural and simple in HSR. I think that's where this guy's problem is. He doesn't like playing this game, so he can't make progress or even have the patience to understand his potential teams. As a new player he might have reached forward too fast like I did in Genshin, but without the ability the roll equilibrium back a level to catch up.
@@Ali_Fuchs sure, but we're just hearing him vent. I've seen streamers not clear a story boss simply because they hadn't bothered to level up any traces, or they just equipped any relics to fill slots. It might've been good enough right up until the point it isn't, and this guy might just be expecting results from the game without putting in adequate investment.
Basically, playing the game will help you play the game, but he isn't interested in playing the game so it isn't working out for him.
If you think HSR's powercreep is bad, take a look at HI3rd. I really, really hope the powercreep will not become as bad as it is in HI3rd...
i played honkai impact third for 4 years, i know how bad it is lol
the bug was the bane of my life back in january it was so brutal for me and my friends that started or reloged back into the game to get a free ratio...
This was actually a pretty fun rant to listen to.
I won't deny there is powercreep, I haven't felt it since I've been keeping up to date with HSR since it's release but it was interesting to see the perspective of a person that took a long break because you are definetly able to notice the changes that happened more clearly than the rest of us.
Majority of the powercreep is indirect and they all incentivize getting the latest unit. However this is NOT the case for normal story content. Not everyone does MOC/PF (and upcoming Apocalyptic Shadow) which are the dedicated endgame modes. And these are endgame modes already which are supposed to be the toughest content in the game.
Most of the content is doable f2p and powercreep is only obvious on the endgame modes. And HSR being live/gacha game makes powercreep inevitable no matter how hard they try to prevent it. There are even certain cases where they do reverse powercreep instead of forward powercreep (the debut of PF shooting Jing Yuan, Himeko and Herta to meta status). But powercreep is an issue that’s applicable to every gacha game, not just HSR.
100%
What u said is correct but u have to remember that he wasn't just talking about powercreep but the rate of power creep. 50+ characters in 1 yr is crazy 😢
@@Pha3th0n fair point - and releasing characters at a rate this fast simply aggravates the issue. I sincerely hope Hoyo slows down on the release of new characters, especially 5-star ones, or like with Dr. Ratio, give one to us for free.
And this is why HSR players really sometimes want a filler patch...
JY is still not that good in PF...
He doesn't have goated FUA like Himeko/Herta, instead he has the slow ass, random targeting, CC bait, lightning lord
Acheron is way better which is sad considering he is Erudition
The first half of the video I didn't I see a point but the last point tou mentioned I can understand, if I didn't start star rail when I did and didn't get the characters I wanted for one reason or another I don't know if I could clear some of the story. I had rough spots in the story but I eventually overcame them with brute force but also because I had the proper supports/sustains. I still use Seele and will still probably be using her after firefly comes out but the spike is there.
Uh considering I did the story including Penacony with preservation MC, March and two of OG Danheng, Himeko and Welt, the difficulties you ran across sound... weird. My Himeko and Welt aren't even built that well, the mmainstats are there but the substats are a mess.
And Herta and Himeko are basically T0 for Pure Fiction.
I used Phys Trailblazer until the 2.1 boss fight to fit the fact we appeared with the bat in cutscenes (then went fire as we used the lance, then imaginary once unlocked).
The Break Meta power creep is not a bad thing for more end-game-facing power creep. Similar to Hyperbloom in Genshin, this allows lower investment to catch up to the scaling difficulty of the content, which is important for new player acquisition and retention.
Powercreep is Star Rail is a very fun topic, because while it exist, it is pretty small, and probably a healthy amount (and a lot of it can be explained just by saying that devs didn't fully understand how much certain roles have to do in 1.0 era).
And as someone who builds wide, I would say that the most of the biggest powercreep is how much are you willing to invest into units.
My Acheron has similar build to rest of my characters and she consistently feels bad in comparison. While characters I pick because I want to play with a certain team sometimes just destroy.
Similar thing happens with sustainers, even though I have Fu Xuan and Aventurine, I end up using Natasha and Gepard a lot, because they are quite often a better choice.
Also I feel like enemies increasing in strength is natural progression of difficulty and had nothing to do with new characters being stronger.
Also I wrote that before I actually watched the part about Natasha not being able to heal in Penacony, and that whole segment was certified "skill issue" moment, seriously Natasha is amazing at low investment levels. And related note Lynx's healing and SP generation is worse than Natasha's, if you really need another sustainer you can just use Fire TB or March which work extremely well in that role, as second healer doesn't solve anything other than having a second panic buttons.
uh, question how come lynx SP generation is worse than natasha? while she basicly cleanse using her ult?
@@snowflak6173 Lynx has higher energy cost, which quite often means that you need Skill to get it. And having Cleanse only on Ult leads to a lot of awkward moments, when you have to choose between healing and Cleansing.
I also sometimes struggle with the story enemies even tho ive been playing I'd say pretty regularly and my account is pretty lucky so i definitely understand the struggle
Not gonna argue with powercreep it's a thing but what I see here is just rushed equilibrium before being ready for it. People run MoC with 4 stars, it's a thing. Lynx's healing is better than Nat's but Gallagher isn't a good healer until well invested into his traces and even then he's NOT better than Luocha and is significantly harder to sustain with. Really this whole thing screams skill issue and not much else. So many people beat the game using F2P chars, yes including Penacony.
I could say the same thing about huhhoh she harder to sustain than luocha she still better sorry mate gallagher is just superior and honestly he not that hard to sustain with
gallaghers only good when theres more than one enemy to get healing from on the field, i learned that the hard way ughhh
In Penacony the speed, the damage increase and tankyness on the new enemies was quite noticeable. I did still pull trough with old limited 5 stars but my team is well invested and I do agree that for someone starting the game it can get difficult to progress with 4 stars and standard banner units.
True, Penacony's enemies lift the bar too high
Yeah the only problem is still time though, you can beat everything even with old chars but that require some months of investment
I have noticed many of the overworld enemies in Penacony are not facing the us and thus do not attack us unless we get closer or in their line of sight. I took it as a way of reducing the difficulty and the number of fights.
@@iamwayne6138 That is correct. For older DPS more invest it needs to deal with newer enemies may be easier to defeat with the newer DPS game mechanics.
@@iamwayne6138so I guess it isn’t powercreep, it’s power(you have to spend months grinding just to keep up with the new damage ceiling that new characters introduce)
I think the way to solve this could be buffing other character or make something like an interlude from fgo it always work quiet well since in fgo most of the time these buff make old character more viable heck i clear the new boss in that game with just 3 star now i know these are 2 diffirent game but i can expect star rail devs to add this since the star rail director is a fate fans and these interlude and give us a better look at the character too
I used Dan Heng IL and he had no issues in Xianzhou. But when the story of Penacony unlocked I feel there are something about the creeps there. They are stronger and less likely to be finished by oneshot combo
yet im still using the seele i got when hsr came out 🙏
Just for some reference though, I use main physical Trail Blazer for all of Xianzhou, and was fine, it sounds like you weren't keeping up your own pace with relics and talents, and not optimizing proper skill sets
You cooked on this video, love the HSR vids
In terms of power creep, do you think it would be a good idea to follow what fgo did, and gave the older units( *primarily standard characters especially yanqing lmao* )buffs to match the current state of the game or givve them a new nichè?
I'm sorry it's been difficult for you but I can't relate. I started playing in January and my two first standard banner characters were Bailu and Gepard. To this day they are still my two primary sustains (I have no other 5* ones) and I have been able to 12* MOC 12 and 3* PF 4 just fine for the past few versions. Sure, it's harder than if I had better ones and I have to be careful+restart the round sometimes, but I'm in no rush to get new sustains as long as they continue to work for me. And they aren't fully built either. None of their traces are maxed out and they have mid relics.
There's some whaling going on if you say you can all stars the endgame with mid relics and traces. So yeah, you can't really relate
ok but calling gallagher luocha powercreep is crazy
Gepard is a Standard Character and Aventurine is a limited Character (same as qiqi and every other healer in genshin).... Why the first take is always bad when people say that Star Rail has a huge powercreep problem?
Just saying that the first take is so bad that makes a lot of people just quit of your vid, the rest is good.
I didn't pull for acheron out of the fear of the upcoming characters still waiting for the annihilation gang
I got Acheron but oh boy, I want Katerina.
In all honesty, that's a stupid mindset; you might as well give those pulls to me.
Coz if you dont pull a character fearing "future characters" you will do the same for those "future characters" you speak of...
Just pull for who you like man, well unless pulling for meta is what you like, in which case you should be pulling whoever is the meta rn, not saving away for "future" coz it keeps changing.
@@karthikcubers6531 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾
This doesnt make any sense lol
Who? Do we know anything about them?
I agree with this and I think Star Rail should make Bosses in Story Mode far easier to defeat. Some players even the old one cannot be bothered or stressed to farm so much relics and gambling their sanity away when all the 5 rolls dodged the double crit substats, and they still want to go through the story without a hitch. Safe the hard and challenging contents for MoC and gangs and don't put a boss who force you to gamble and sodomize you in the back if you don't bring AoE or 3 sustains with you.
i remember playing HSR in earnest a few months after the ps5 version released. i enjoyed the challenge of playing with only 4* characters for awhile and being f2p, but i also remember struggling a LOT. I remember waiting so long to get a healer through Natasha and then waiting to pull for Lynx (i think she was on Blade&Ruan Mei banner) just to have a better sustain than Natasha. I've been playing pretty religiously after a certain point, but I do distinctly remember difficult bosses often being perfectly aligned to being defeated by the latest character out at the time (i.e. Argenti in the Washtopia quest being weak to physical when Argenti was first released while also being crazy difficult for new players or low spenders). I also remember having to pull and build Luocha just to beat one of the story bosses in Penacony. Granted, I was planning on getting Luocha anyway because it hurt to only have Lynx as my best healer, but wow... i can't imagine getting to that point as a new player and not having the proper (or enough) sustains just to clear story content.
i am definitely feeling the power creep as a Blade main, but i never considered not having the proper supports at the right time until i saw this video (like, if I hadn't pushed to pull for Aven during his initial banner, it's highly likely i wouldn't have beaten the final Penacony boss as quickly as I did (which was still a difficult battle since i only have 4* fire and thunder damage dealers). this would have been devastating for me since i was grinding on the daily at that point). we desperately need more viable yet accessible 4* sustains, especially preservation now that harmony MC is out. maybe also a way to tweak difficulty of the enemies? so whales/dolphins who want a challenge AND new/casual players can still enjoy the game.
So as someone who came back to the game during Robins banner, feels like I was only able to catch up because of her and thankfully getting a Kafka/Sampo combo going before I left( and didnt come back in time for Dr Ratio).
Feel like they should( but never will) is give everyone a free Adventurine or one of the newer supports just to help bridge the gap
As a newer player i definitely 100% agree here,i am now tbl 67 and a half so most things aren't a massive issue,but i started exactly in the kafka ratio half in 1.6 i think it was? Which no limited sustain was there until loucha in 2.1,i was genuinely considering deleting the game cause it was just too much,everything was one shotting me while i barely did any damage,i got stuck at that stupid ahh bug,i also got star railed by aventurine,thank god i was able to get a decent enough DOT team before 2.2 or else i would've also been hardstuck on sunday! Every single major boss was a hard lock for me until igot loucha and just slowly killed them with kafka and swan DOT
haven't watched yet but i already agree with you, i thought Acheron's jump would be an exception now it looks like the norm with firefly ngl.
If it was,why pull for new characters? They literally set char creation to overdrive to milk the players.
So yeah
This is same take I heard when imbibtor came out and jingliu was as strong as him some genious people where whining like "we thought our beloved imbibitor is an exception", but no. It will hapen a lot.
@@x1UnnameD1x but shes not as strong.
As in she needs a lot of time to ramp damage up,dhli can mop the floor with every e
E0 JL can clear stages without ice weakness and work with trash relics, just slap on her any CD you have. E0 DIL only good vs Imaginary and requires proper investment.
@@user-eo2db5il3xdhil better lil bro
up until recently, i had no problem clearing overworld content at all. And keep in mind, before acheron, I was mainly using Jingliu, SW, Bailu, Fireblazer, but after acheron came out i used her, black swan, bailu, and fireblazer. Up until the sunday boss fight (spoilers I guess?) I had no real problem clearing difficulty, and should not have in theory and problems with that boss. But whether its because i finally ascended my world a level or because they force you to use harmony blazer which, honestly, fireblazer was the only shielder i had and because of how needed a shielder was, even with food buffs (which i hardly use as i dont like to use them) it was difficult. Even to the point of needing to wait for fu xuan and getting her on her rerun just to barely get through it including some weakness break food buffs. That was the one time i felt the powercreep be so bad and significant that i was basically stuck. Everywhere else has felt more of a need better build/get good noob feeling, but not that boss, it felt like i literally was blocked from any form of progress no matter how hard i tried. So yeah.
Tldr. clearing content is easy up until the end of penacony no matter who you use, but powercreep is still very much real and a problem.
I feel like an issue some people, and maybe even you, run into is leveling your equilibrium level too fast. I started(f2p) a few days before 2.2 dropped and couple weeks ago leveled up equilibrium after I barely got 2-3 characters properly built for the last level. Set me back a good few days of grinding before I could progress in some content again. I do somewhat agree with the sentiment that the good "f2p" characters that everyone recommends I do not have (pela, tingyun, etc., ig all my luck got used up in getting Bronya in the departure warp and then Gepard a couple of standard banner 10 pulls later), but I didn't have much issue with much of the content until penacony. Even the bug one that a ton of people struggle with I got done on my second try.
I feel like a lot of these problems are just about what you'll find in any gacha game, go back to mondstadt and you'll find yourself one shooting a lot of overworld enemies, go to Fontaine's enemies as a new player and you'll get clapped, this is how these games are designed, hell even non gacha JRPGs are all designed like this, and Natasha can definitely solo sustain btw, and I don't see a problem with releasing a lot of characters, this is only a problem for deranged collectors who love gambling, you 100% don't need to get all characters, is there powercreep in HSR, yes, just like it's in Genshin, Arlechinno powercreeping Hutao and Diluc (no I refuse to consider Xianyun Diluc as Diluc, he's just a plunging stick), Neuvillette powercreeping everyone and their mothers, and the 4 stars argument not being in rate up is literally the same as in genshin, you don't get Sucrose for free, you don't get bennet for free, you don't get XQ for free, you don't get most of the good 4 stars for free except XL, (and she's trash without bennet), my point is that these aren't HSR problems, these are gacha games problems
11:49 You can choose the difficulty in each and every domain. Plus new endgame content was introduced months after the game came out, because the developers knew it would take time to get 2 full teams.
I admit it’s difficult for newcomers and returnees, but this wasn’t a mode made for them, it was made for loyal players, who consistently played the game. Why is the game so difficult?
Maybe you think it’s just a video game, but Pure fiction was by *design* made to make people pull for certain units. It’s just a huge advertisement campaign. It’s supposed to be difficult so you can’t just get the highest scores, it forces you to stay, eventually spend money etc. It’s a strategy made for player retention and increase sales. So (your) frustration was intended.
And yes loyal players are stronger. Why? We only did dailies and grinded after one week of story content after 1.0. So we just upgraded our characters for weeks. It was borderline boring.
And this was the way the game was intended to be. (I don’t say it’s a good set up, but you essentially just postponed what we did/had to do MONTHS ago).
What every player had to go through. (Similar in Genshin when we’re going from Liyue to Inazuma). So in the end the difficulty spike should encourage you to stay or spend, because otherwise you fall off or behind. And if you stay maybe you’re more prone to spend something…. Are these predatory game mechanics? Yes. But what do you expect in a gacha game? (Also the meta isn’t that old characters are bad, but that the buffs in these modes doesn’t favor them. ) But wait until they rerun and suddenly you see a power spike in certain teams and characters. 😉
Edit: Haven’t you also complained that Genshin was too casual and you needed more difficulty? Hoyo tapped exactly in the domain for these exact players, who wanted more difficult content. (And please don’t believe day one loyal players could all fully max the MoC).😂😂😂 It’s still hard.
I’m so happy I pulled aventurine on his rerun when I started to play the game again. use if I didn’t I would’ve hVe progressed as much as I did
I am a dolphin, I get every character but very rarely get any light cones. I do not get any eidolons. I have not missed any event rewards, I've completed every battle pass, I've let my fuel cap like maybe 3x since release. And I seem to always struggle with the last floor of MoC and sometimes pure fiction but not commonly as much. Like even just the most recent one, took me like 3 hours (just for floor 12) and some team organizing and bit of leveling/upgrading skills. And then finally beat it in 9 cycles. But the thing is, I have all the characters, every strategy is open for me, I have them build like level 75 or 80, level 8 to 10 talents, decent light cones, they are pretty much build to or slightly above or below recommended endgame stats you see on prydwen. My point is I think you are really right, the enemies are getting too hard way too fast. I struggle a bit, when I have like everything, figuring out how to beat this most recent MoC if I didn't have Ruan Mei probably would've taken me like 6 or 7 hours instead of 3. Now I do know how to, It'd be to have insanely good team comp with INSANELY good speed tuning. Like where my boothill and bronya get out of order after 2 turns but with adversarial LC passive speed + tingyun speed then with a bronya normal atk it'll put them back into order for the next 2 turns allowing me to actually get boothill to be able to land 2-3 hits on a broken enemy without ruan mei helping hold them in their broken state. But it's just crazy that that's the level of optimization needed to clear it well. Want to do it without all the strongest characters? Gotta super optimize the whole teams stats like that which sure isn't easy with how relics work and then someone gets hit with some sort of sleep or stun rng during fight it's just a reset.
when Swarm disaster first came out, I was having hard time clearing diff 3 with Natasha and fire mc TOGETHER in a team. But then I pulled Fu Xuan and I cleared diff 5 first try with nearly all paths with single team.
oh and boi, I forgot to mention. I also got Fu Xuan's LC on first day and god's sake. her LC better than even some limited Abundance units lmao (restore everyone hp by 80% at the start of every round)
Imo it heavily depends on a character.
For example, as a day1 player I benched seele and blade, but i still use bronya himeko (1.0), silverwolf (1.1), kafka (1.2), fuxuan danheng (1.3), huohuo (1.5), ruan mei (1.6), all the time and they still feel and are super good. I don't really agree the powercreep is as huge of problem. A ton of older characters are meta and new characters only keep enchancing them.
Yea, damage dealers are getting powercrept, but it's always gonna be the case. Same with diluc < klee< hutao=arlecchino. It's sad that seele isn't good anymore, but she's still usable, just like blade/ jingyuan.
Seele is still good, but nowadays, she requires heavy investment and teammates to compete with the new content. She also requires strategy and especially, she needs conditions to perform optimally - that is, minions you can one-shot to proc Resurgence - without those conditions her DPS falls off a bit, but if those conditions are met she still does incredibly great and still clears. I'm still using her on MoC, and I used her on some fights in Penacony. Powercreep, in my opinion, is less of an issue than it seems to be.
i have a feeling that Blade and Jingyuan was never intended as an op dps, rather sub dps. I don't mind it, I like to use Blade, he is one of my favorite, if he gets rerun, I want to pull his eidolons. :)
Honestly I agree so much on this.
Healers - Natasha is just unplayable, let's face it. March is just too skill point heavy. People talk about bringing Lynx as a sustain but like... have they ever used Lynx? She's weak as fuck, her heals are absolutely pathetic. Meanwhile, Gallagher can heal 100% of a teammate's HP with his E, implant a lifesteal debuff with his ult AND he can act immediately after his ult AND his enhanced basic attack heals EVERYONE.
Support- Every 5 star support is busted in it's own way. I would say they're pretty balanced among each other. But Tingyun and Hanya have been absolutely powercrept, no doubt about that. I believe Bronya did too
DPS is hard to say because support are the reason why a DPS shines, but it's clear that standard 5* dps are pathetic compared to the newer ones. Though it's pretty obvious that Acheron is just better than everyone else
fair enough about the bosses doing having way more HP pools, but thats only an issue in like MOC 12
10:00 - 10:06 That's the reason why I pulled for Imbibitor Lunae, to do swarm content, and to have an imaginary dps unit that can attack all enemies. Helped that Sparkle was in the next patch and I got her as well.
Swarm was MADE to sell DHIL. It took me a lot of time to do propagation part of swarm content with Blade and in a way he's made to work with propagation's "boost basic attacks" perks.
@@gurr1264 Qingque...
@@pato4201 I have her and she's lvl 1. Why bother wasting recourses on her when i already had Blade maxed out?
@@gurr1264 better than pulling on a whole new 5 star for that sole purpose
@@pato4201 I got Blade before Swarm? so for me it's better to use him.
About Genshin, I’ve never played the game before so I hope for an answer. How many characters were they releasing per version? For HSR, I know it’s 2-3 characters per patch, but for Genshin to have about 80 in four years while Star Rail has about 60 characters within the first year is crazy to me.
2 five star for first two patch, 1 in the archon patch, 1 liyue adepti per cycle, a bunch of 4 star here and there, and the last patches( x.7 or x.8) usually have no new characters, but archon rerun exception being now in fontaine because they were aware of wuwa.
Star Rail had a bunch of characters on the backburner
Argenti had his story quest lines recorded before the game even came out and characters like Jiaoqiu have had preliminary kits from the start of the game
Genshin’s character releases aren’t like Star Rail’s where they have a set pattern.
The first update version 1.1 introduced four new characters, two new five stars (Childe and Zhongli) and two new four stars (Diona and Xinyan), it’s the first and only time that Genshin has added four new characters in one patch, they likely did it just to add to the roster since it was so small back then.
A trend of adding two five stars without a new four star began from version 1.2-1.3, however from version 1.4-1.6 they only added four new characters, Rosaria (Four star) in 1.4, Eula (Five Star) and Yanfei (Four Star) in 1.5 and Kazuha (Five Star) in 1.6.
From then on the patterns would switch around, sometimes we’d get one five star, then maybe two five stars, then maybe one four star, or one five star and two four stars. Version 3.8 broke this rule and didn’t release any new character that patch, it’s the only time Genshin has done that.
As a person who plays both games, it’s clear that Genshin does take its time with character releases, and what bothers me about Star Rail is that releasing two new five stars each patch is super unnecessary, not only does it stress players out with all the characters, but it’s clear that Hoyo doesn’t care about some of them, Jade got what I like to call “The Topaz Treatment” in the beta, where she got completely neglected while Firefly got a bunch of buffs and tweaks to her kit, and while I don’t think every character needs constant changes in the beta, it’s clear that Hoyo really didn’t care about Jade, heck look at her banner compared to Firefly’s and it’s clear they didn’t want her to sell well.
So what’s the point of releasing Jade if they aren’t gonna care about her? Why not release Firefly by herself, have people spend all their money on her and then release Jade later on and have her banner be stacked as well, wouldn’t two stacked banners separated into two different versions sell better than one stacked banner and one terrible one in the same patch? I feel like they’re shooting themselves in the foot with some of these characters, Jade would make tons of money if they had just adjusted the character releases, actually put effort into her kit and then have her banner be stacked.
It wouldn’t affect Firefly’s sales because we would only fully know about Jade releasing and her kit in the second phase, i.e. the phase after Firefly’s banner has already made a bunch of money. It feels like a better business strategy than what they’re doing right now, and it would be less stressful on new players in a way.
@@samkelly5045 only firefly got changes, because nobody complained about Jade? And everybody complained about firefly being weak? That's why there was almost no changes for Jade
They release the exact same account tbh. Your perception is a bit messed up. They follow the same pattern. It's always one or two 5 star per patch, with maybe a couple 4 stars
i agree with that my f2p account is in panecony and I can´t get past the adventurine boss because my only build dps is ratio, my other units Gepard, Pela, Bronya, TB and Tingyun. There is no way to win this fight the gamble kills all but pela slowly but surely and ratio deals barely dmg to adventurine, now I´m building Boothill to be able to win this battle hopefully if that doesn´t work I build Herta but damn this really sucks sometimes. It takes days to build one unit as free 2 play
I do agree that powercreep is a huge problem in star rail. I have been playing since 1.0 and decided to make a new account. Bailu and xueyi got me through most of the begining content, but pulling robin and her signature lc made the game 100x easier than it already was.
I mean I have both invested seele and acheron, i never use the former despite liking her more since she is inefficient even for exploration, and that's just an year
I play honkai impact too and I'm also familiar with the powercreep that goes on in that game. A lot of the of best dps and supports back in the day are now usless in the challenge content, especially in abyss/superstring dimension. Only a handful of valkyries are competitively viable (mainly the newst ones.) Luckily it's only problem in endgame content since the game gives you trial units for the main story mode, no gatcha required.
Good video overall. Late, but good to have you back, Soul. Love your content.
Idk if this same thing or not but during dhil + swarm su dropped, imo it was weird because the whole content are easier if you have him. I was a little worry about the game future but it wasnt that bad, I cleared all of it and got all reward without him.
That one was unfortunate because the bug's weakness are imaginary and quantum, two of the most premium element in the game at that time. Actually we still don't have 4* imaginary dps. March is coming soon though.
Now we have more options. Everyone has Dr. Ratio. For quantum there's Xueyi.
Power creep is a thing, but it mostly for endgame content like moc. I have account where I do only standard pulls because I want to save up for e6 5* and my luck is really terrible on this acc (got e1 Bailu and than her lc, recently I got Gepard but he is still not leveled up). And mobs and bosses in world are actually fine to me, only Sunday was a bit problematic and I needed 2 tries. Overall, the developers are still doing a good job of balancing content for the world. (Endgame unfortunately requires too much damage to complete)
I agree that the powercreep is a problem. Especially with aventurine. And his boss fight.
I am lucky to have ruan mei. I used clara, march, ruan mei and linx for that boss fight and it worked pretty well. But there are many times where i wished i had welt on the xianxhou or even in penycony. Or many times where i struggled using fire trailblazer to just survive the onslaught of damage.
that's what makes the game more fun for me lol. Using your old character to do the current MoC or pure fiction (herta/himeko) just makes it more rewarding and not boring
Even Adventure is getting power creept in floor 12 of MoC this time as a sustain… He just came out. 😅
Another issue is even for at launch players that are F2P might not have the right units to Break this floor… I’m leveling Clara I just got because I can even survive the first half of floor 12 without the right unit type damage.
I started playing in version 1.0 and i called it that the powercreep will be alot ever since DHIL got released
I dont have Luocha but dam gallgher is actually rlly good..
The powecreep in this game is so real, especially after acheron came along..
It's not long before Acheron also got powercrept again
Eh I wouldn't rlly say Acherno got powercrept. Aren't firefly and Acheron on the same level or something?
@@ShayIsHereee sry, I meant she will probably get powercrept again in the future. I have both of them and they are on the same power level
I think its because mihoyo recently keep releasing certain niche memory turbulances or buffs which are really adventageous to newer units and encourage people to pull.
Yes, there is certain team that can ignore those advantage but its still doable for older unit to clear if you knew what you are doing.
Luckily they increase the rewards so its not really that bad.
The powercreep is realistic but is evidently small in HSR. I've seen people talking about how it makes defeating enemies or farming in general harder because of the misalignment, but some people like me are able to rush through contents with a bit of management done.
I'll have you know, Soullivan, my E2S1 Acheron does in fact struggle with so-
Nah, I can't even finish that statement with a straight face.
I'm a new player, started on robin's banner so like a month ago. Just realized that i never really struggle with the story bcs i got Gepard from my welcome banner. Fire MC, serval, herta & gepard can defeat aventurine (though barely, but you can). Sunday boss is tad bit easier (weird but huh, thanks i guess). So, new players technically can progressed through the story even without limited dps as long as they got Gepard... (or any 5 star shielder. Natasha & march wouldn't be enough i think). Well but isn't that the true enemy boss here? the gacha 😞
I did it with Natasha and March ... And honestly it's good to use both of them especially in the Sunday fight cuz they both have a clense to deal with the Trinity
Yeah there's powercreep, the problem is how to balance it from being a shock to returning players if it tilts overboard vs. becoming a snoozefest endgame with no incentive to continue investing in chars for vet players (ie. genshin)
Don't have any real hardline takes but perhaps it makes sense to level set expectations that you will not be able to full clear hardest endgame when one initially gets back into the game, at least until you pull for a couple of new-ish chars
I agree 100% with you, that hoyo relase way too much limited 5 stars, banners are too short. This is a real problem.
But.
Moc was always fitted to the newest meta characters, last moc very hard. Current is much easier, and I don't even have a break team, Blade and Jingliu (with very avarage build) cleared moc 11. Also don't forget about swarm disaster and gold and gears. If you now what you are doing with blessings, you can beat it with many characters/team comps. Not to mention divergent universe, where you have all your characters leveled up. Oh, and this cycle is for Jade, which means, all 3rd plane enemies has quantum weakness - so I just brought a Qingque team.
Hoyo try to make pull in every banner, but you in reality you can just skip them, and only pull for your favourite. I will skip Jade, Argenti, Yunli, Huohuo on both acc, and skip Jiaoqiu and Black swan on my main acc. Who said, I have to pull all of them?
Gallagher as Luocha power creep? What??? You put Gallagher in a super break team with a full free HMC, and he makes damage? What a suprise. Luocha is still better healer with his high healing, field and free turn healing, and he can make 30-50k damage with HMC... (It's not against Gallagher, I like to use him.)
Also, most people who are struggling with Aventurine boss have bad teams or they are after equilibrium, or their builds are bad. I saw many others beating him with Herta, Misha, other cheap units. Same with the big boss bug before the critter pick event. Also I saw somebody, who could beat Sunday with really badly build characters (his lvl 80 Dan Heng IL made 7-11k dmg...), he needed only 3 attemps. My partner beat him with Bailu as only sustain. Poeple are beating the newest moc with Himeko team.
If people learn to let go their competitive nature, they can let go the newest meta characters too. I let go of pure fiction difficulty 3/4, apocaliptic shadow 3/4, moc 10-12 (depends which moc, which acc), swarm/gng difficulty 5 and conundrums, most likely I will let go of du treshold 5-6. It's personal issue, that people want to clear every contents in a month nad they complain that they can't.
Power creep is real and bad, but your video seems exaggerated.
i believe progressing through the story will be a problem only if you come back to the game with an already high leveled account with no good relics farmed (which i don't even know how one could have such account but whatever), since the world level makes it so the enemy are lowered in level and even the newer bosses i believe their scaling becomes abnormally high once they reach level 90 and above, so before that point they should be weak enough to be beaten even with a beginner team unless i'm heavily overestimating the scalings
i definitely agree with you that there's incredibly evident powercreep and problem creating-solution release cycles in star rail. however you've said that certain units just aren't designed around new content anymore ie you bringing up natasha not being able to sustain in penacony and i feel like that's not really the case. people are very much able to use natasha in the latest moc 12 in total 4 star runs and are able to clear in time and this might be some of the highest dmg output from the end moc ever, and the penacony order robots also place nasty dots that natasha can actually cleanse on demand. this isn't even really a point of defending natasha's relevance but i think hsr actually has very strong 4 stars (outside of maybe arlan) in specific scenarios. i think where the powercreep is in selling the new game modes and creating artificial problems, like how many accounts could've not invested in strong erudition units and then pure fiction comes out. on the other hand, herta and himeko instantly became a lot better with pure fiction but for a lot of players, it highlighted an account issue that wasn't there before. i thinkt he same will happen with apocalyptic shadow and not having insane single target dps that also happen to be really fast or self-action pushing
the unit that was least powercreept was ... Herta XDDD
Also I had similiar problem. I quit on Blades banner and rejoined at start of Robins banner. My units, Seele, Balde, JY, Gepard, Welt... yeah.. all almost univested. But I was lv 66 or 67... I still need to get supports from a whale to clear some of the weekly bosses. The Sunday boss took me a week..
However I got Robin and it started to feel diffferent. From the time I started until now I only level traces... Ratio, Robin, Lynx etc.. Now I have saved enough for RM and I am so sorry I didnt pull Aventurine cos Gepard is not doing well. Still Gepard + Lynx helps me clear the content in 1000 turns..
As soon As I got Robin. Blade, Seele + lynx clear everything in overworld no problem
Personally i dont really feel it coz i cleared the main story till 2.1 with march, dan heng 4 star, mc and natasha. End game content is difficult only coz i havent bothered to build most charectors yet.
I still use gepard e1 in penacony, su and all other still work fine :> especially the revive he have and freezing my enemy with a very high chance
I understand your point but on the other side power creep is also a good thing for the game cus if you can already do everything in the game with just your seele, it gets boring after a while and having to get new characters for new content in the game makes you have a reason to continue playing the game. Obviously direct power creep is bad for the game like the example you mentioned with Aventurine and Gepard but indirect power creep like sparkle and bronya isn't a problem so much because they have (slightly) different uses and isn't just directly replacing another character. This way you can still use each character just in different situations.
I understand your argument tho and agree to an extent. Great video
I definitely would be pretty miserable if Fu Xuan wasn't rerunning right now. By the end of the Luofu chapter Gepard could not sustain my team effectively anymore.
It's by design to make people open their wallet. if they want they can apply a "story difficulty mode" , but they dont.
the weep for the rtrded shit got me good i also thought the same thing when she said that sht
I got luck and in my first 50-60 rolls I got Bailu. She is carrying my whole team in campaign like crazy. Thx god i got her xD( Sadly i lost my 50/50 on Boothill and got her again :( ).
That's why I've always started playing gachas on day one. It saves you a lot of trouble. These games just aren't made to be picked up randomly or enjoyed casually. Either you commit wholeheartedly or maintain your sanity by avoiding gacha games altogether. I wish I had done the latter.
Aren't there only 49 characters? Though, I do agree with all your points (and I also think 49 characters in only one year is still insane, I'm not putting that point down either). In every game, there is bound to be power creep. However, unlike genshin, HSR puts you in a situation where you need certain characters or else you won't succeed... whereas in Genshin, for example, all the elements seem to have at least one interaction with each other, therefore assisting you. Let's say you had a dendro team; even if it was with Yaoyao or Collei as your dendro applicator, plus maybe Barbara for hydro and Fischl for electro, if you build them right, you have a hyperbloom team already. In genshin, you can survive off of one team in the overworld just fine. But in HSR? Now we have weakness breaks and all that.
Thank you for this video. I really hope that HSR doesn't go down the same path as Genshin where they didn't listen to the playerbase...I've only been playing for a week and I'm so addicted to this game. However, I'd hate for that to get ruined by constant grinding/farming because I'm worrying about whether I'll be able to pass the content.... maybe, just maybe, HSR will listen.
Although I agree there is powercreep, I completely disagree that it's making the story too hard. For MoC / PF, sure, although I haven't really gotten there yet. I started roughly a month ago (missed the Ratio giveaway), and beat the entire story with only using Fire MC, Bronya, Natasha, Serval. No eidolons, except a few on Natasha. Relics with random stats, not even maxed. Traces at like level 3-5. You can definitely screw yourself over if you increase your equilibrium level without investing in your characters first, if you don't manage your resources properly though. There was this one trashcan miniboss in penacony that kept one-shotting my team after I raised my equilibrium level, but just leveling random relics fixed that problem.