Is This Mode Really Good Enough? | Imaginarium Theater 1st Impressions
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Timestamps
0:00 Intro
0:24 How the game mode works
4:01 Thoughts
7:32 Outro - เกม
this game mode is easy enough for older players and restrictive enough for newer players that both sides will end up hating it with no resolution in sight. peak game design
do not mess with them, these are the same guys who made clearance mechanic and designed dehya
L take, immeasurable disappointment, boring not hard at all and unintuitive LMAOO
They did everything that people do not want as an endgame mode, it feels like a spit in the face tbh lmao
@@hugolicious1886 tf you on about
meta players will never be happy in this game. This is another mode that can be done quickly every month for them. Good
It's easy enough for newer players to clear the lower difficulties and be satisfied with their results. They also get trial characters and whatever broken character their friends have for easy clears.
Good game design just like Kuki, Baizhu, Kokomi and SigeWIN
this mode is more of an account roster check than anything
Good, a reason to build characters. It's not like constellations or great builds are even necessary for these easy fights. So it's not even incentivizing whaling as much as the abyss does because you can clear with trash units as long as they are somewhat built unlike abyss.
Bad, a reason to make us spend more to get more characters.
@@jupi_jupi f2p take between 4 to 7 weeks to have a character "build" and thats not even considering artifacts
the mode is ass, stop coping
best take about it
@@andersongomes3211you would be correct if all the enemies and bosses weren't very weak. You could clear this with all 4 stars easily
I dont mind it being easy but if it’s supposed to be a 4fun mode, i’d like them to crank the buffs up a LOT. Something along the lines of 300% atk spd, halved cooldowns, or changing overload to pull enemies in instead of knocking them back. Something to give it replay value to see how crazy different characters can get with different buffs.
As it stands it’s kinda just floors 9/10 of abyss with team restrictions.
Nutty, game changing buffs feel delightful in any game
bro basically described SU, i agree with you 100%, this is what i'm saying in comment sections about this new gamemode, they don't need to give rewards or being hard, just need to be fun, if the mode has high replay value, that alone will carry all the heavy lifting.
Rewards and challenge are just things that boosts this initial lift that the new mode can provide to you as a player.
I owned the theater with 4* like a god. I shredder everything without buffs.
The thing is, it's quite easy, and some people really never intended to step out of their own meta and burned resin in artifacts only, but once you need to have a decent horizontal investment then they can't do anything more than cry..
I wonder if Arlecchino mains actually need super buffs to kill everyone in the theater. The only issue I see is having not synergistic teams at the start, but once you know how to deal with that, everything is rather easy.
@@Syokool the thing isn't that you need the buffs to clear like a god, in HSR SU you don't need to, my Acheron will bully any normal level of SU without the blessings.
The giga buffs are fun because they allow you do things you cannot in the normal game or can fill the slot of something lacking in your current team.
Like how you can easely reach 1 million damage with hunt path, or play Kafka without other DoT characters in a Nihility path.
I agree. Roguelike gameplay is supposed allow you to become a literal god, by the endgame
this just feels like a combat event except you need to bring the trial characters yourself
That’s a nice way to put it 😂
The prototype of IT where you actually did get a suite of random trial characters was far less punishing, and more fun.
To me, the main issue seems to be that they've stacked so many different layers of restrictions on top of each other, that they can't make it challenging in any meaningful way without hard-blocking like 95% of the player-base
Kind of a weird spot, you can't challenge it without a full rooster, you can't ask for a friend character without starting the challenge and once you're in there the game doesn't require the characters in the first place due to it being too easy.
I'm convinced that no one tested it but if someone did, they had all the characters so they didn't even see the problem.
IDK why they didn't just take the simulated universe approach and make a long gauntlet with one team and selectable bonuses. Instead it's a weird middle ground between abyss and SU.
Genshin can never make challenging content for older players(especially non f2p ones)without restricting 95% of the playerbase. Like if I could I would like to have like 5 rocky guys (the fontaine local legend) but bump up their hp to 5 mil in one chamber and you have to kill them as quick as possible. Like that's the least they can do to make anything challenging imo but I know theyre not doing that since even some of the guys in this comment section would complain that it's too hard.
That's why I like IT since the restrictions make it more fun.
@@spacebanana712 honestly it's more of catering towards casual old players that have all these characters but didn't invest in theme and love the scenery music.characters
@@spacebanana712 They could always introduce enhanced trounce bosses to End-game Abyss, pre-nerf Azhdaha/Childe/Raiden/Signora... with a timer. Then watch all these so-called "hardcore" players melt down from not being able to clear abyss when their Neuvillette or Arle get one-shotted off-the-bat.
If you are extra-sadistic, introduce story mode Raiden with vision lock.
My biggest issue with the mode is that it does not feel like a permanent mode. Feels like an event that you can complete in one day.
Abyss is the same way, though, no?
@@Tovyexactly. I wish we'd gotten the boss event as a permanent one, the customizable difficulty felt really nice...
@@scylla1772 most fun I had with combat in the game was with that event
@@Tovy Depends, the abyss feels like something to strive for but once you manage to get there it loses that magic, arguably newer players have a harder time trying to face an abyss that has players that have been clearing from the 1.X times, they should've went with more abyss and leave the first 12 floors alone.
This one is just a douche move honestly, raising 6 characters of every element to level 70 to be somehow ready for this is extremely expensive on the resource side and now add to it how Hoyo likes to move the goalpost and how this will probably become a ridiculous dps check at some point and we have a recipe for disaster.
They effectively make new players choose, before you could just focus on two teams and work from there, now you have to either spread your resources thin to raise 42 characters to 70 and make some of them actually good enough for the game mode or hyperinvest into 8 for abyss, this effectively cuts some portion of the playerbase income in half since they don't have enough characters and they aren't ready for the abyss yet.
This would be fine if the abyss would've kept the twice per month cycle and one of the two modes had become the "difficult" one, now we have two easy endgames with only 200 gems extra and with twice the preparation, and the unique rewards are ass honestly, poses for pictures really? at least let us display the character posing on the profile or something not something for a gadget that a small portion of the playerbase uses, teapot decoration 2.0, a sneaky way of giving less rewards towards the main core of the game if you ask me.
Because it is, it literally took me longer to shuffle my artifacts around than to clear it.
Having a vigor system akin to wuwa's tower but forced 4 character teams is such a Genshin impact classic at this point because the gamemade is easy to a point you can probably solo and save your characters stamina for the bosses.
This is what bothers me the most. Allowing us to start the challenge without a full team would improve the game mode a lot.
Why do I have to consume Vigor on characters that have absolutely nothing to do in the team other than filling the slot?
The only challenge to this mode is having enough char to actually do it. Once you're in it's trivial and the heavy RNG ruins any potential fun with teambuilding or playing around boons etc
The boons are so specific. "Crit fire dmg hits boosts normal attack dmg" like fuck you if your Arle is out ig
@@blueberrycrepesYoimiya omegaLUL
Jokes aside, true, these buffs are somehow worse than abyss blessings.
Remember when they let you increase constellations by 1 in the past? Or stacking buffs to attack speed? Pepe ridge farm remembers...
@@blueberrycrepes lmao this happened to me, my stupid ass blindly used Arle on the first two acts immediately, 'cuz I wasn't really planning to clear all the acts yesterday, but miraculously I reached Act 8 , but then I had to use Yoi and Hu Tao together with Baizhu and Kazuha which ngl is one of the weirdest team I ever used against Copellius
i love my aloy c1 @@wojter322ify
No. You can't use some niche characters and expect them to be dps or sub-dps in this hard content. For example, Kuki. I have her at lvl 90 full EM build. Outside of hyperbloom or tazer she is useless. And bad rng makes it that her vigor or Alhaitham's is wasted too soon and she can't help him. However Alhatab needs shielder more than anything in this madness.
I am from CN, most people here are complaining about why the elements are limited and why we need so many characters to play especially why we have to start each round with 4 characters. This mode is really cringe.
Edited: Wow not expecting these many likes. To be more specific, people here are not complaining about the difficulty, most of them think it’s easy. Many people including some guide makers said that genshin’s element reactions got restricted after this long time waiting for something new to play is really sarcastic, they give examples like Hutao cannot vape or kuki cannot hyperbloom and so many and the character on the banner(well it’s just farina) can’t be used is also sarcastic.
For myself, I understand that if you want the primos it is really not that hard to get those, but this mode indeed has some bad mechanics that are not fun to play, excuse me for my bad English if it is hard to understand.
CN is complaining? Good, maybe hoyo will change something in this new mode, like ease on rng and restrictions (I’m coping)
Make Vigor 3 for the dpses probably. I had bad rng at first run as I had 3 dps together in the choices. Expected to run out of options in the last act. Luckily I had that "gain 1vigor for a character" blessing and got Hutao. Had to play overload Hutao lmao.
@@thornszkits not even about the vigor, just having one of the "upped" characters already wipes the floor clean
its about the full team restriction and youre forced to lose 4 of those vigors in total every floor.
and (16) leveled characters is a joke. the anemo i had was only wanderer faruzan but they are forced to be the first pick so i wasted my roster ???? literally had no other anemo the rest of the run
they had a good event with "vigor" mechanic some patches ago and i had fun (hard time) doing solo/duo runs. no idea why would they abandon that idea.
@@TD2T Atleast those past events let you go even with just 2 characters
@@aryune Yeah, they're filling the game up with 1 star reviews
the restriction of using a full party of 4 should be removed or vigor increased by 1 for a single charechter, i hate having to sacrafice a vigor point
EXACTLYYYY having the sacrifice point in rounds where i couldve easily run 1 2 3 characters then end up not having enough extra cast at the end is annoying. I know i shouldve planned it out better and not buy every boon but still
It's already easy enough that sacrificing a character won't take away your ability to complete it.
@@stryfer1989 it doesnt but u will be lowering the total required amt of characters to even start the mode, it also allows u to save good units for the end instead of being fucked by rng at the start.
@stryfer1989 it wont but the RNG definitely can, if your friends didn't tried already the new mode, you can't bring them and if the game gives you all your folders characters in a row, you can be at a very bad state where depending of your box, you have 1 use of raiden and arlecchino left and you have razor dori thoma and faruzan because faruzan was the character that got the rez but no more anemo dps
@@yeager6947 I mean being fucked by rng is one of the main thigns they did right, I think they do vigore perfectly
rather, it's not that harmful and a proper feature for low investment players
and it's something that scales properly to hinder whales and the such
there are alot of steps they need to take but the restrictions were a very smart decision that prevented this from being a TOTAL trainwreck
Personally the only complain i had is, why i need to be forced to use 4 characters when i can just use 2 and it works just fine? 💀
I hope their change it so I able to use few character in start
I spent more time scrounging my artifacts into the 18 characters than I did playing 💀
Same plus farming artifact fodders so I can upgrade said artifacts 💀
I literally had to use atk goblets on a few characters just to have enough full sets to use.
and don't forget fixing all the builds afterwards🤢 I'm not willing to gear for an hour for this. it's not fun enough
I literally gave all my support chars emblem set 😂😂
this mode made me play bad teams not because they are now good but because they are the only teams I could play
I think people are missing the point on what's wrong with this mode but Zajef made it clear at the end of the video.
Its not that the mode is easy enough or unplayable depending on how much time you been playing or how much your characters are built, the point is that the mode is not interesting enough to be engaging. I swear I had more fun talking with the characters between the stages than playing the mode itself cuz the objectives weren't anything that difficult or because it was just more of the same thing with challenges similar to abyss. And boons are almost non-existent in practice, no matter how cool they seem.
As someone who loves rougelikes like "Enter the Gungeon" and Hades I agree this mode is missing the soul of those games.
It would have been waay more fun for replayability if the game did something similar to the rougelike mode in wuwa (forgot the name sorry) of inwhich you get to use the characters you have but without the acutal build just the weapon. It makes it so even a new player by either RNG/strategy can progress further than a hyperinvested player which makes each run different and more fun in general.
Lastly my guess of why they didnt do that even though thry have experience ace-ing like with SU in HSR is that they are afraid to anger the whales if their hyperinvested c6r5 characters can't just speedrun the new mode because bad RNG during the run compared to the plebs but im probably wrong.
"more of the same" disappointed me more than the convoluted rules and restrictions, I never enjoyed Abyss much and hoped for something different
I hate that I’m forced to use weird teams, putting in them characters with no synergy just to fill the slots.
characters i dont like in teams that theyre terrible in I LOVE GENSHIN IMPACT
I use vv xiao. (He isn't built hes just a vv bot at level 70 with the one star polearm).
you have 18 slots. make 2 characters have synergy every floor and you're fine
@@Jinni-iras17514 but I don't wanna be "fine" I want to have fun
@@tedu6152 You still have Abyss for playing optimal teams, if this isn't fun for you. Personally, I like trying to make suboptimal combinations work. I haven't had to pull out Tankfei for over a year now or use Yoimiya for her burst as a melt enabler or Klee purely as a battery.
I do agree with Zajef that boons (even the whole roguelike aspect) needs work, though.
Increasing the number of support characters from friends might be a nice idea for newer players
I wish it was like 3-5 characters overall, and just let us use 1 per friend. Also wish we could see who used our characters and which ones.
nope, you can't use support characters to fulfil the requirement
@@BorisKashirinyou can, but only 1 slot.
I agree ppl without many chars need to be able to use friends support a lot of more.
@@Syokool i have 17 characters and cant use support to get to 18
@@BorisKashirinleveled up my amber to 70 just to not use her lmao
Ur so right. Even as someone who has a ton of built characters just sitting in my roster, it didn’t feel fun doing this game mode. The rng was just pure cringe, and the boons felt so irrelevant that it just made me sad. They should really take a note from hsr’s simulated universe.
it's funny how we have different opinions.
For me i like this change because i can spend just one day in a month to finish both IT and Abyss.
I love all of my characters and that's why i lvl up them all but some characters are not fun to bring in the abyss. This mode enables me to play all of my characters with random teams and think about how would i do the rotation and i can still clear it confortably because the content isn't hard at all, it's just restrictive. 9/10 for me. The boon can be improved tho so we can see weird mechanics with our characters. I had fun with Sethos and Lynette dps build taking turn as the main dps while Dori and Dehya provide support. Not that easy because u still have to find the best position to maximize ur dmg output but not hard enough to make me rage quit. Imagine bringing those team in the abyss.
Nah simulated universe was fun at first but now it’s just tedious and time-wasting relic farming. I really like Planar Extraction as the solution to this problem.
Nah, you dont need real teams. I literally cleared everything using teams of 4 dps chars. Idk what rng youre talking about.
@@lehang5840 SU has Swarm and Gears modes (and now DU) that make it have replay value. This is what they should have been inspired by, not this roster check slop of a mode.
the boons felt like they didnt do anything and honestly genshin just isn't designed in a way where those buffs are both applicable easily and noticeable
the team building was fine tho...
it's also really weird ur supporting characters can only be used by 15 people in one season, like why? it's not like we even gain anything from having them used it's just first come first serve for friends of a highly invested accounts and that's just kinda really sad. My 15 supports have been used up already and if i have friends who hadn't tried it by today i litteraly can't help them out anymore that's kinda bs ngl
yeah. i honestly feel really bad because literally 80 people added me after i left a twitter reply with my uid talking about the several high con 5*s and top 1% characters i have available for use if anyone wants them. my 15 slots were gone 20 minutes after i set them up lol
This majority sucks becauss I feel many if not most people with highy invested charaters would love to share them to help others/gives them a change to feel what they can do as most probably would never pull for a high cons limited 5*. Now it feels justified if a whale for example purges their freinds list to save the 15 chances for close ones or in speedrun communities where a c6 klee would be prized for example.
Why even that limit anyways as you can realistic only use the character twice and maybe 3 times if u get lucky with an extra vigor charge from RNG crate at most.
@@baizhu yeah same mine were gone in a day and I didn't add people for imaginarium theatre but I hang out with a lot of lower AR players bc I like helping them out but I was also excited to for example share my C6 chevreuse with my friend that do have high invested accounts and idk it feels really wrong I feel bad about it too. It's also just so weird bc why did they raise the friendship cap from 60 to 100 just before this??????
My honest thoughts... It felt like a combat event, it was more the hype and excitement before do it, and when i ended it was like "Wait... that's it?"
I largely agree with zajef, and I was gonna make my own pros and cons list:
pros:
1) aesthetics and character dialogue. I was very pleasantly surprised with how this mode looked, and being able to chat with characters outside of quests (and especially those I don't have) was very nice.
I know not everyone cares about this kind of stuff, but for me, this made the event stand out from all the other boring ones where you skip through NPC #5000's dialogue to get to the event domain that's just located in a field. the credits reel was cheesy in a fun way, more fun than just looking at the abyss history at least
2) the support character function. it feels nice to show off your well-built favorite characters. I like it in star rail too.
...and that's kind of it unfortunately, but I think the pros are still nice.
cons that zajef didn't already mention:
1) I hate how it boots you out each time and you have to click the book to start it. wish it was a seamless transition or at least an engaging one. (seriously, it feels criminal that labyrinth warriors was so much fun but they never brought it back)
2) it's replayable in the sense that it's random, but it's not replayable in terms of rewards. I finished it in half an hour and there's not really much more to do, except chase after a couple of achievements.
swarm disaster, gold and gears, and now divergent universe have way more replayability, way more rewards and achievements, and that's directly tied to buffs and curios etc. that being actually worth a damn. and you also technically get a mediocre bit of credits and relic exp so if you're REALLY bored and have no stamina to farm, you can get crumbs there.
not for imaginarium theater. I know mora and exp farming can come from fighting open world enemies but I'm not *that* resinless.
anyways, I'm still gonna cling to the hope that the first one is the worst one, and that they'll gradually make improvements to it. you know, like how they did for the spiral abyss 🤡
I actually like that its fast to clear😭 I dont really apreciate how hsr endgames consume so much time.
I do still find the restrictions annoying but end game being fast is a relief to me
I dont understand what you mean with improvements bcs they dont do it with the abyss. The only thing that will change every month is the chara selection based on its elements
Yup…. In the next 2 years😂
as an arknights player who played their endgame content ( integrated strategy). this genshin endgame is shit. its just stacking random things together and the buffs/boons are so weak to the point that it's non-existent. in arknights it makes you want to play IS more but genshin, nah i won't touch it again because its hot FUN
@@raihanrusli2720 i think they were joking with that because of the clown emoji
At least it has a lion, witch and the wardrobe reference
You mean Narnia?
@@actpianocover6329 lion, witch, wardrobe, is the original book name. Narnia comes from movie title
@@poggeraxolotl I don't mean to sound petty, it really is a minor detail but by "Narnia" you can still be referring to the whole book series, so it doesn't necessarily come directly from the movie title
It's just the name of the second book of "The Chronicles of Narnia"
@@NilsHello oh didnt know that
Considering what they have in HSR, that you build a team THAT YOU WANT and at the end of the event you feel like gods smashing through everything, this event is really underwhelming.
I'm just putting together badly made teams till I find some resemblance of synergy, the buffs feels like they don't matter.
Because HSR is a mid game that has unnecessary 3d bc the game is basically two dimensional.
There's no need to make things the same in genshin where you actually need skill.
@@Syokool oh yeah, lot's of skill involved into farming domains for 6 months until you can power through any of their badly designed enemies with their badly telegraphed attacks.
@Syokool your counter argument about needing skill doesn't work for this mode with this much Rng. This mode just isn't fun.
Yeah that weird ass team you end up in after few chars dropped 😂, i fought coppelius with hutao, arle, xianyun, fischl😂😂😂. Icant bro this mode is so bad
@@Syokool "mid game" genshin is losing revenue every month and hsr only keeps increasing. (hsr is on this month's rank 1 revenue by a big %)
i like the idea of a game mode that incentivizes creative team building, but the restrictions just feel stifling rather than forcing you to be creative. i think the game mode would be better if rather than the game giving you four characters that bypass the element restrictions, you can choose four characters yourself. like i only had baizhu out of the four characters, and it' sucks for newer players who dont have any of them. i also think they should let you choose your starting line up out of all the available characters. it'd make the restrictions slightly less annoying. also, i agree they need to buff boons. there's no incentive to get a boon over unlocking another character to use, and it'd be cool if they actually changed it so there was
The biggest disappointment is that it replace one abyss cycle every month. That means people who don't invest on alot of characters will have to spend their resource but don't get anything in return because reward is basically the same.
Pretty sure it is increased but ok
@@divinesan7786 I think they mean that while you can streamroll abyss by investing in only 8 characters and just run the same teams always (or more realistically 12 because sometimes there are elemental checks), you would need to invest for alot more characters for IU (but arguably much less needed) im comparison. A freind in discord did the math and basically you get 220 more primos per month now or extra 16.5 pulls per year.
For a new player who would want to clear the new event soon, its probably not enough to account for the extra number od characters they would need to get. Although thats only my guess work because i been playing for 3 years and like to pull for more characters rather than cons/weapons so cant say I personally felled troubled with this event.
@@agiant5715 new player shouldn’t even consider playing this because it is for endgame players
@divinesan7786 Im not talking about them doing it immediately lol. Its just because for these types of gachas games you usually would have the endgame as one of your goals when starting the game. Thats why new players usually just 1st focus on building one (and later 2) teams to carry them though both abyss and overworld content (also because resources are limited in the early game)
Dont forgot that a new player can still start with the 1st abyss floors and overtime climb to higher and higher ones (with the sense of accomplishment that comes with it), but the new gamemode completely restricts them even if u include only the allowed AR 35 players. The mindset of thinking that the game has a "no new players allowed mode" would lead too less new players sticking around = less player growth = disaster for the longevity of a live service game.
Sorry for the rant, but what I loved about genshin when I started is how no content was gated behind a paywall or a very long grinding session and now as a vetern I would hate for the new players to not feel the same as I did.
If this had been a random event, I would have done it, collected my rewards and moved on with my life forgetting it ever existed. As a permanent content option though it is genuinely awful. 1 elemental reaction, DPS only builds and conditionless artifact sets. The RNG means that your characters have to be geared to be effectively standalone and newer fontaine units that can self support are vastly better than the rest of the 5* roster.
They wont be able to balance this in a way that makes it fun. Too hard and you're going to have to reroll your run to get the characters you need to have a specific functional team, too easy and it's like this version of just take 1 dps and 1 off field elemental applier. The other 2 slots are just your come alongs to meet the 4 character requirement.
Nicely said. This IT is just really bad designed.
I know you don't have your 4* built at all.
It's time to stop grinding artifacts and understand that not playing the same Kazuha, Neuvillete, Furina isn't a bad thing and that there are a lot of 4* that can bring even more fun and team options.
@@Syokool They're gonna struggle when they cant play their meta characters xD
@@Syokoolseriously, I could almost fill out the requirements just for having built every pyro bow user. Let alone Gaming, Yanfei, and all the electro units. The only time I'm going to struggle is with a geo rotation, since I'm pretty sure having Wriothesley, Layla, and Charlotte built with Rosaria and Kaeya on the way will cover cryo fine. Then again I actually have Yunjin, Ningguang and Navia built with Itto and Gorou existing.
@@Syokool My XQ, Fischl, Bennet, Layla, Thoma, Faruzan, Kuki, Sucrose, Beidou, Kirara, XL, YaoYao, Noelle, Gaming, Razor, Collei & Heizou are all level 89 or 90 built with weapons and their own artifacts.
Candace, Barbara, Yun Jin, Ning, Sayu, Yanfei, Lynette, Amber, Dori, Gorou, Kaveh, Kujou, and Lisa are all 70/80 but don't have dedicated artifacts.
I have 63 characters, with only Xinyan and Sethos unleveled.
There isn't anything else to do in the game than build characters.
Whoops - I forgot half the Cryos. Diona, Kaeya & Rosaria are all 90. Frem, Charlotte & Chongyun are 70/80.
Newer players = I don’t like this, I don’t have all characters
Older Players = I don’t like this, it’s too easy
Tbf it being easy isnt the issue. If this mode was any harder we would hate it even more as then even older players would get cheated out of rewards.
The issue with the mode is that it nerfs your account by making everything random and only 2 use per character by default.
That would be fine if stuff like boons were competent buffs that made a difference but most arent even 1% dps increases.
This mode was specifically cooked up to catch someone offguard who is newer to the game or neglects some elements he doesnt like.
They brought the HSR "you need a dps of every element" design philosophy to genshin.
Yeah, I don't care about it being relatively easy. It's Genshin. It's going to be easy. Don't get me wrong. I would very much like a mode like this, where someone can go to level 8 and get 1k points, and someone else can go to level 4 and get 400, but if they do that 2.5x, they also have 1k points, and get all the same rewards. But whatever.
What bothers me is I'd like for this mode to encourage playing different characters. This mode, though, doesn't really do that. I'm using the same main damage dealers as always (barring the start, where I'm forced to use trial characters... characters I don't have or haven't built because I don't want to play them), because of vigor, how we add characters, and boons being eh, whatever. I have enough characters built. I just don't get to do interesting things with them in this mode.
I hate playing random ass teams and loosing vigor of characters I'd like to play later just because they force 4 characters teams AND rng what character you get and when.
The "hard" part is just "we won't let you build teams in a game where team building is a key part".
Frustrating and boring at the same time, wow
They should take notes from HSR's Divergent Universe and temporarily upgrade possessed characters so they can be used in IT... or just add lvl 90 trial characters for each character you have, but haven't built
It is so bizzare that same company (though different team) can't think of this when they design game mode. I was calling this mode easy and finished it within 10 min while my other AR56 friend could not even start it cuz lack of units.
Omfg I was screaming about them not doing this. It's crazy no one thought about it.
But what is the actual reason to not encourage people to build characters?
Like, one thing is ppl suffer in the abyss by not having Xingchiu, Beidu, Heizou and Sucrose properly built.
It's justifying ppl being bad in the abyss by giving them things so they keep being bad in the meta of combat. It's pretty reasonable to build everyone to lvl 70. I'll never agree with ppl asking for this charade while others keep complaining that owning Neuvillete c6 to clear everything is a bad game design.
@@Syokool You can still be encouraged to build every character for another endgame content, that's what HSR do (PF, MoC)
the thing is, this game... idk why despite being almost 4 years already, can't even offer that many of endgame content variety.
Woah buddy I'm gonna have to stop you right there because you're making too much sense right now
I have a few issues with this mode, and I think it really is a missed opportunity for the game.
The biggest issue I have with it is that the enemies have specific capability checks, but to meet them, you have to be absolutely sure not to use the required characters too early, but you can't always do that, and the best strategy to have the characters you need for each setup is to completely ignore all the cards other than the ones that give you access to your characters. In my first 8 star run, what I did was burn all the trial and my unbuilt characters on the easier stages, only go for cards that gave me more characters, and try and save the good characters for the boss chambers. What this means is that the boons feel completely pointless in the face of having to get more characters.
And if you don't have the right characters, you can basically hit a really frustrating wall, and if you do, you have to start all over again, which takes way longer to do than abyss. All for basically the same gameplay you get with the rest of genshin, just with a lot more unoptimized teams in challenges that can be rather frustrating to complete.
I feel like this was the answer to all the "put simulated universe into Genshin" requests, when what they put in is basically not simulated universe but has the random boon cards. You don't pick one team and make a build across a run with the cards you get, but instead you have to scrounge up whatever odd teams you can at that particular stage of a run, some of which admittedly can be difficult if you don't have the right team.
But the biggest missed opportunity is replayability. This mode has the same issue with Spiral abyss that after you get your stars, it isn't fun enough to replay, and there is no incentive to replay it several times. You don't have really cool rewards that take several clears to get like exclusive weapons and gear. You get your primos and your tokens, see if there are any poses you want (if you're the type of person who takes pictures) and leave until the reset the next month away. The randomness doesn't lead to cool, crazy gameplay like you can get in simulated universe, etc, and all it seems to do is force you to think or get really frustrated at the challenge they want you to do (because sometimes you literally do not get a choice which battle encounter you get to do on non-boss stages), which isn't engaging. It isn't strategizing to maximize fun, it's strategizing to minimize frustration. That's not something that gets a player like me coming back for more.
The lore might be cool, but I had more fun playing this latest abyss cycle than I did playing imaginarium theater.
Characters have 2 stamina, you need 4 main dps and the rest should be supports.
Then you can argue supports work as dps as well.
The problem is people that truly never ever build Sucrose, Thoma, Beidu, etc. Ofc it's not fun if the only thing you did was playing the same characters. Once the game asks for more horizontal investment people get mad, if the game don't add more challenging stuff people get mad.
It's baffling.
@@Syokool You seem a bit dense. People arent complaining that the mode is hard, they are saying the mode is bad. We all have those characters built, we all cleared 1st try, its not hard.
@@Syokool I have built every single one of those characters and easily cleared with 8 stars and the mode still isn't fun.
imo, spiral abyss has more replayability. I have an account thats basically optimized for IT (both horizontally and vertically invested) and I found IT not really fun enough to be worth replaying. I like clearing floor 12 with a bunch of different teams comps and archetypes and strategizing around abyss enemies. It's more fun when the units are in synergistic and optimized teams than IT's rng team selection. I honestly think I'd have MORE fun with IT if I were playing with a more casual and less invested account
WW's roguelike mode is more fun in the sense that the buffs matter a lot and the boss is super hard as well. I think you just need to increase the buff and difficulty of everything.
That's exactly my issue.
I was kinda hoping for a WuWa's style Somnoire Illusive Realm. It would be amazing to have something similar in Genshin.
For those not familiar with it : it's a rogue-like style series of fights and random events that grant currency and boons. Currency lets you buy more boons at specific points. You can only play 1 character with 1 echo (ability).
Boons will not only add stats, but sometimes modify how your character works. As an example, imagine a boon that triggers a Xiao plunge attack impact when he does his CA. Some boons can also let you burst twice in a row every X seconds, or drastically reduce your E cooldown.
The character selection is very limited in WuWa, probably because the way abilities are modified can be quite creative. We could have a stage that forces us to play either Qiqi or Barbara, but the boons would make them interesting to play!
This is what I'd love to see implemented in Genshin.
That gamemod is trash my friend
This is just a gambling addiction check
I have all these characters only to use them in meh teams because the game gives them randomly + its very strict with elements, it feels more like a little harder event than a "endgame" game mode. I still preffer abyss because its harder and puts your account to the test, theater just checks if you pull alot.
My thoughts exactly, everyone talks about wanting incentives to use more characters, and I agree, but only getting to use them in nonsensical teams means it's all pointless. Sure I could level my Thoma, but what's the point when the other three end up being Arle, Wrio, and Venti instead of an actual team where he contributes.
@@karai_skythoma is also a shielder, if you got him c6 he can also buff your arle, sucrose and venti can reduce elemental resistance of the element they swirl and can crowd control, so is not a bad team i guess. And the elemental resonance of anemo and pyro
@@kelsie6969 yeah but the enemies are weak enough for you to solo them with most dps characters or just one support
Not pull, but build. You don't even need to extra pulling unless you're a fairly new player, just gotta go back to the characters you left at level 20 and raise them to a point where they're viable.
The most of electro and pyro characters are not even bad.
Benet, Xiangling, Chevreuse, Gaming, Thoma, Kuki, Dori, Beidu, etc can complete this event quite easily.
If you didn't skip them, you have no problem in any content of the game. Sadly most people think that artifacts is what a player must seek ignoring lay lines actually give permanent boost to any account.
The only thing I really hate about this new endgame is why they need to put restriction on how many times OUR characters can be borrowed by someone else. Like, you already limit friend unit to only one per run for everyone, why also limit the number of times our characters can be borrowed to 15 times per rotation and once exceed that, the rest of our friends just can't borrow our characters anymore? I think that's just dumb esp when it's not like we get anything from our friends borrowing our characters either...
Other than that...meh. It's alright, I guess. Ppl said it's P2W but my alt literally can clear it WITHOUT A SINGLE LIMITED 5-STAR IN THAT ACCOUNT (is a standard banner only account), so I feel like it's just ppl complaining about needing to play the game to play the game...Just like how some ppl in HSR complain about bosses being too hard then got mad when ppl tell them to build characters to counter boss's mechanic. The enemies in general are fairly easy to beat even when almost half the roster are just lv 70 trash 4-star with 1-1-1 talent and f-up artifacts I just randomly pieced together just to get by anyway, so...
to try and stop everyone from just adding the person with the single most broken characters and using that. Seems like there could be a better way to do it though
The problem is that access to this mode is tied to the gacha, if you are a unlucky and you always get the same characters which is not one of the 3 elements (anemo, electro, pyro) or you pool one of 8-trial ones, you are screwed. I looked at my character archive (it writes down the date when you get each of the characters) it turns out it would have taken me a year and a half to acces new endgame (btw, I am not f2p, Welkin + Battlepass from 2020).
@@mooseclamps It's silly to do that, though. Like why does A get to use my Yae, but B, who had real life stuff to do and didn't log on fast enough, doesn't? Either my Yae is too powerful to be used, or she isn't.
Added to that, I have Siggy on my list of pickables. No clue how many of the 15 uses went to her. I know at least one, and it is probably more. She's not broken, or at least, not in the way you're using the word. People are picking her to try her out, because she's new, because she's well geared, and the regular trial mode is pretty worthless, between poor build choices, no choice in team used, and the inflated energy particle count.
The big difference of hsr's SU and SU and genshin's IT, is that in hsr they buff the enemies so high but at the same time buff your characters through curios and blessing and these can impact your gameplay, and you still have complete freedom on what characters you want to choose. While in genshin they keep the enemies the same but to make it difficult they just handicap your character selection. The boons arent significant, you should just spend it on summoning characters since the summoning is also randomized.
Seriously this game mode is throwing the team composition out of the window even for endgame players. In worst case scenario you can end up with dps only or support only on your available roster.
I know the idea of hoyo trying to make more charas useful at the same time, but imo they should just make abyss woth 3-4 teams at this point
Genshin has always being restrictive of teams since day 1.
Like you will never kill a hydro slime with hydro characters, because the meta is using elemental reactions. It's ever present in events and the abyss, or you would see not team building at all.
Genshin itself is more complex than HSR. We have a timer, need to know almost all character's usage, interactions and combos, evasion, priority and elemental application. Doing the same as star rail is basically making us kill lvl 1 mobs and receive the presents. HSR is even a more casual than genshin, it doesn't need hard stuff and people is not looking for harder stuff by playing it.
@@Syokool no. Saying the game is restrictive bcs you cant kill hydro slime with hydro elements is very stupid. Its a restriction but the solution is far wide because other 6 elements and physical exists. Heck I think someone trying to kill hydro slime with hydro even tho the game pretty much display "immune" every time you hit it is a very stupid person. Your example doesnt make sense, you cant differentiate restriction and restrictive
@@Syokool imo even tho hsr design is simpler, its actually more difficult to complete due to its gimmicks, from just raw dmg, follow up atk, break, super break, toughness etc. Sometimes you also need to think which enemies to atk first, which atk you use etc. They give you a problem but the answer is a lot of times tied to these gimmicks and each charas have their own gimmicks. While in genshin, if you find an enemy immune to an element, just use the other 6 and you are fine and still dealing huge dmg
For genshin, its pretty much easy braindead for me, despite its complexity (even tho its still fun). Heck the fact you say there is no team building at all reinforce the opinion of genshin being easier actually. But as I said, not having a good team building in IT is an annoyance
@@raihanrusli2720Since you say HSR gimmicks like toughness break are difficult to min max, then so is Genshin with its ICD and elemental reactions. You can play brain dead in both games, while at the same time discover that there are better alternatives to maximize your runs than the brain dead ones. Each character has their own gimmick, isn’t that what every game in existence has?
@@lehang5840 every game have, but imo genshin has problems but a ton of solution is also available, while in hsr ot feels more restrictive. Okay I dont really want to talk about this bcs what I highlight in my comment is about imaginarium theater and its comparison to du and su
I know some people who enjoy the idea of building teams out of random characters and love this game mode. Personally I hate it. Playing random units that don't fit together and bashing overworld-level enemies just isn't satisfying. I enjoy a well crafted team rotation with proper elemental reactions, matching cooldowns and optimized energy. In theater you get none of that. Have fun with your 12k dps arlecchino-wanderer-c0 faruzan-thoma team. It can clear, sure, because the enemies have 50k hp, but it'd be more fun watching paint dry. The only saving grace is that I only have to do it once per month. Half of our abyss resets died for this trash.
Not to mention, there was ABSOLUTELY no reason to gatekeep it to 18 level 70+ units. You can enter abyss, which has considerably stronger enemies, with level 1 characters. You can atempt platinum in the Saurian boss event, which has the strongest enemies in the game's history, with level 1 characters. You can even do those with only one level 1 character on your team. They only added this requirement in Theater to force people into wasting resin on units they don't like, and to pressure us into pulling more than what we want. Of course they would, it's a gacha. But that doesn't sit well with me.
Yeah I can't believe some people are defending this shit...
@@miranolastname2366 im AR 60.... electro is the element i have most built... I still cant enter hard mode... vertical investment cooked
For Veterans player like me this isn't problem but yeah some fresh account struggle in 8th floor include my friends. That's why I give him tips just build all characters with decent artifact only main stats you needed.
I agree with every word said here. Sadly, Arlecchino-Wanderer-C0 Faruzan-Thoma is pretty much how the average Genshin player approaches the game while hating on Abyss. I almost can't trash talk Hoyo for making this mess of a game mode because it seems like what their audience wanted.
Can't even enter hard mode myself until i level up four characters i don't care about. Meanwhile my C0R0 account gets 36 stars first try once i know the chambers well enough.
Best comment. You mentioned everything I was thinking. This mode is just annoying. Nothing else
I'll say this was the most fun I've had in a Genshin mode for a while, but it felt like something was missing... It's exactly what you said - the boons don't feel meaningful.
It will take careful balancing to make it where the boons have impact, the fights are hard enough to where you need them and there are just enough resources to get enough boons with enough characters to clear while also not being difficult to the point where most players get turned off. (There's already a wave a complainers, as expected.) Can Hoyo manage that?
P. S. One thing they did in a previous event was having boons that effectively changed how a character worked. I'd like to see that implemented, but I'm not sure if it should be in this mode or a third new mode.
i found other problems whit booms and invitations like:
you get boom that activates of specific condition but you lose characters that can meat that condition
you can get random refresh of number of uses of character but you need to spend points to invite that character again
there is limited number of characters you can get so at the end you may end up whit "invite" option but cant get any character wich limits your possible buff options
booms are random so is possible to buy boom and have 3 options that do nothing
there can be condition like "do x swirls" and you get "easy to move" enemys that dont want to group and run away from you and unless you have kazuha or venti you need to just chase them
in every stage you get that flower symbol condition but i dont think you can see what is condition for each boss before you get to boss so for example last fight have brake shield using Ousia skill would be nice to know that BEFORE you use up all characters that can do Ousia
For boss one, actually you can check them before, so you can prepare better
Some ideas I had for Wondrous Boons that could make Imaginarium Theater more interesting:
- Elemental Skills gain one additional charge. Max x charges.
- Every x seconds, enemies will be afflicted by [element].
- If all characters in the party are [element], [get a big buff].
- Hitting an enemy's weakspot with a charged shot will deal true DMG equal to x% of its max HP. (x-seconds cooldown)
- Constellation level is increased by 1.
- Increase all characters' resistance to interruption by x%.
Some other copy/pastes from HSR's SimUniverse could work too, like dealing extra DMG based on current HP or shield value, get a shield every x secs, get healed every x secs...
Some artifact sets' effects could also be reused (eg. Clam, Noblesse, Instructor, etc)
I looked forward to it, and ended up very disappointed. I don't mind the element restriction, or that they require 18 characters. I am happy to build different characters and try out less popular reactions and I actually thought this could be a good chance to use my 4 star characters.
I really really don't like that they randomly assign you characters each round instead of letting you decided what team to use for each round beforehand. I ended up getting Xiao and Wriothesly for the last rounds. Many 4 stars characters could only shine with certain teammates, without proper teammates, their only use to just to fill the slot and get carried by my 5 star dps.
I always think the core of Genshin battle system is not action but team-building, and this mode doesn't give you much room to think about team synergy. I'd rather have tankier enemy and let us decide whom to use for each round.
Same idea, it has 3 elements restriction, therefore they can make 4 slots of each elements. Every time you clear a stage, you unlock next character in each elements in order 1>2>3>4, or you can speed them up via Wondrous Boons. This will let player to plan their strategy beforehand, like I'd like to have Venti up in a protecting monolith stage to reduce the annoyance from enemies.
I'm a player who build every characters and all of them have their own gear, no switching between each other. Yet I can say that some minor rules aren't fair or reasonable. Forcing 4 characters in every stage is unreasonable, ie I have both Scara and Jean C4 and that should be enough, why do I need shield if I have good movement, it's unfair forcing player to waste a vigor from other 2 characters.
Lastly, yes, the main core of GI is team building, not combat, and that's why the game has a lot of retard and slow moveset enemies that have 3-5 sec charge up before release their attacks, or if you stagger Fontainian humanoid meks and keep hitting them from behind, they won't be pushed out from you but toward you instead, because the only one stagger animation they have is being pushed backward.
I find it annoying that the dev team already have experience with doing the "random characters strategy" team building right before. I forgot the name, but in 4.X we had a limited time event inwhich we had to use a pool of trial characters each with 2 vigor charge in a number of stages similar to IU and the challenge was that you also only get to choose from a randomly small selection of those characters after each stage.
It was fun because due to the enemies beening fine-tuned to the trial characters builds (funny how many were angry that they couldnt oneshot compared with their actual builds for example), you had to strategically choose which characters to choose because going for the optimum teams always would lead to a bad time at the end. Like how for my 1st run I went for national which lead to me failing at the middle because lyney just didnt have the dmg to kill the tanky robot mobs before the time limit without a pyro character in their team.
In contrast this gamemode for me is less about planning for team building chances and more of trying to have one dps and one sheilder/healer for each act. The most thinking I had todo is keep my venti intill the defense act which feels like a huge miss opportunity for this mode
@@agiant5715 I believe you mean Triumphant Frenzy event in 4.4, right ? That event was really good, it had both knowledge-check and skill check.
About the last part, you can only plan strategy beforehand if you have your key characters up (ie. Venti) and your key characters(whatever their role) don't lose all vigor. Otherwise the only plan you can do is gate keep your key character's vigor for their stage and pray to RNG to unlock your key characters as fast as possible without using Wondrous Boons like what we have at the present.
"we dont want new players to get anxiety from abyss so we made a MORE RESTRICTIVE and more annoying version enjoy!!!!! boons" -hoyoverse
“Good luck getting all the primos you need to expand your roster! What’s this you don’t have enough primos, you should do the new game mode, oh but you can’t 🥴 Better pull out the credit card 😘🤌💵”
-Genshin devs with lore accurate customer service emoticon use
You guys are so bad at a stupidly easy game that It isn't fun anymore
They literally didn't say that. It's a bad translation. They said they didn't want players to feel forced to do abyss.
I found it fun but that was mostly because wolfy is adorable and I’m exited for hexenzirkle lore
i love your pfp
@@pencilonpaper1026 thanks!!! it’s a photo I found on Pinterest when I was like 10 and I put a instagram filter on something on it lmao
Yeah. I'm happy lore players got something out of it, but it's such a failure if the combat gamemode is more exciting for lore players than combat players.
Here is my personal opinion as someone who has played since launch, so I have all characters level 90 all with their own builds. I feel like this mode has some glaring flaws, but could be amazing with just probably like 2 changes. As it is right now, when the novelty wears off it'll just feel like abyss with extra steps.
Two amazing additions are the friends cast (allowing newer/more casual players to enjoy and experience more and higher con characters) and the vigor system (making people branch out and experiment). The elemental restriction and to a lesser extent the random character selection, however, dull those two additions and make them feel almost like gimmicks. The main complaint with endgame I feel was that we could not use our multiple teams in challenging environments, but this mode doesn't really solve that. It just feels like "Oh do you have 18 lvl 70 characters of this element?", that's it...
Without the elemental restriction and random characters, it could make the focus more on strategic team building around the vigor system while also giving greater emphasis and enjoyment with the friends cast system. Also with this change, the difficulty could be slightly higher or more levels could be included (for something that Is now on a 30-day cycle, to beat it in 10 minutes was a little lackluster, but that's just me personally).
Overall, I feel like this could have the potential to be the best mode in the game, but that would depend on hoyo listening to public opinion.. ( side note, just add a random reward for each boss clear like a random 5star artifact and now it's replayable and you got a perfect endgame mode).
They should just remove that Friend assist restriction or at least extend it to 4 or more to make it more accessible to newer players.
They should also perhaps increase the number of elements to four instead of three.
After which, tweak the difficulty to above abyssal levels so that the Vigor function would actually make a difference, as well introduce new bosses that are not in the abyss cycle (Story mode bosses).
So far, many players are complaining that
for Vets, this mode is a cakewalk.
for newer players, they got hard-capped by the level restriction.
for dendro/hydro/cryo/geo enjoyers, they got hard-capped by the elemental restriction.
for vertically-invested or character-focused or non-pull players, they got hard-capped both by the char limit and elemental restriction.
for "RP" players, they got hard-capped by being 'forced' to play chars they would not otherwise.
My main critique is that this mode has no replayability. Like Abyss or SU, you play it once for the monthly primos and get out.
They could introduce more rewards, not dissimilar to star rail (5* artifacts or a separate shop for limited 4* weapons or Masterless starglitter)
if they do keep the whole elemental restriction thing then I totally agree with increasing the friend assist cap, but I think it'd be too much if they did both; and if it's one or the other I'd much rather get rid of element restriction since that would fix all the issues you listed for the most part
@@jevo_youtube Genshin wants its players to be more social and make more friends so relaxing the Friend Assist cap would be in-line with what they have in-mind.
I disagree with getting rid of the Elemental restriction entirely as the whole point of this new end-game is get players to explore more reactions (Overload/Super-conduct etc.). However, three elements is far too restrictive as it is (Overload/Swirl), there really should be a 4th element.
I think the elemental restriction is fine. I'm fine with it being a horizontal investment check that forces unorthodox teams as it makes it different from abyss, that's what gives it the potential to be fun. What isn't fun is that all of team building is taken away from you because reserve characters are introduced randomly into the actives. The boons are also so poor that you should ALWAYS take add character because being able to assemble a proper team with an on-fielder and 3 off-fielders (some of which can be healers or groupers) does 50 to 200% more damage than a team with 3 on-fielders or 2 healers. And playing one of those bad teams is just UNFUN because you end up using the one well-built onfielder to sweep the floor and ignoring the other characters.
Boons need to be massively buffed, they're way too weak.
Characters that get added to active after a battle should be your choice, and the character addition boon should have three versions: 1 random character, 1 random character of an element, and pick one character (each with ascending point costs). Now you have some control over team building, but there's still some element of randomness if you take the cheaper character boons.
Once these steps have been taken, you can make the enemies stronger because the average team+boons are going to be a lot stronger. Right now the average team is so poor the mode would be a ridiculous RNG reset-fest if they gave us enemies that weren't barely stronger than overworld.
@@possumsam2189 really you think so? To me, Genshin has the worst Co op and nothing about this event promotes being social. Just yoink a character from your friend's list/add random people for characters. That is beside the point though, my reason for thinking that would be too much is there are only 8 levels. With four characters each with 2 vigor, you can be guaranteed carried in every level. Hell with just even a choice of 2 characters, that is 4 guaranteed levels with a chance at 6 with the random character refresh boon.
what i hate about this mode is that it's 70% menus and 30% gameplay
If it keeps giving us good lore each time, I'll take it. Still beats doing the same abyss rotation 2-3 times.
To be completely honest, 90% of my attention in this mode went to the exclusive dialogues with the characters you used on the previous act 😂
The gameplay itself is, well, one of the game modes of all time that's for sure.
I will say tho, despite the fights being really easy with the correct pairing of characters, I can really see how players with smaller rosters/built characters will struggle in this mode.
I hate having to bring 4 characters per fight *so much*. Synergistic duos like Scara + Faruzan or Bennett + Lyney would have been a nice way to conserve stamina on my other party members, but noo, I have to fill in all 4 slots with characters even if they offer no synergy.
My first thought hearing new endgame: Nice, I have new place to test my team comps
My team comps on theater release: 5:55
The element restrictions is cool. So the player wont just go hyperbloom and national to clear it. Incentivize to use other teams archetype. But forget about getting the proper teams because the character is randomized. Player also have to use 4 characters in the party. It's okay if all 4 of them makes synergy. But from my experience, often times it's 2-3 characters at most that makes somewhat synergistic team. The un-synergistic character could be useful with other characters player didnt get yet. But they have to wasted the vigor just to fill 4th slot requirement.
Imo, this is just that previous battle event that have randomized character gimmick. Depends on the player luck, the randomized can be fun or making it worse experience. I doubt hoyo will make changes or add QoL soon. Gotta wait for another 3 years and pretends it's all "work as intended" for now.
Had much more fun playing this than doing regular abyss. I hope they add more special invites in the future, preferably 4 stars to ease in the difficulty of meeting the character count requirement. Or they could increase amount of characters that can be borrowed.
So like 20 minutes of content? Seems kinda short from the look of it. I wish they would just copy/paste sim universe from HSR, that would be so cool. I also kinda hate all the restrictions. Seems like they wanted a way to nerf the gacha system without actually admitting it (aka move the min requirement to obtain all primos from "2 teams of 4" to "idk a whole bunch of built characters I guess").
Half of that 20 minutes to complete this “end game” for established accounts is throwing artifacts on characters before starting and just going through all the menus. Actual combat part can be easily done in less than 10 minutes and has no replay value from it being too easy.
The thing is they dont want players to be using the same 8 characters for the next 3 years. I see this pattern with the new game mode in hsr too
Labyrinth warriors domain is time limited event.
This stuff is permanent mode.
Theres no justice in this world
Should I be worried zajef only has jstern on his friend list?
Kinda a love hate relationship.
@@Syokool whats the love hate relationship if i may ask?
Zyox was on there but hes so short you missed him
I love how it just shows Jstern's C6 R5 Hu Tao lmao
no that is bcs other player on the friendlist hasn't start playing imaginarium theater yet or doesn't set the support character that you can borrow with
Its crazy how Hoyo had already made 2 of these gamemodes, the Elysian Realm in Hi3 and the one on HSR and they still managed to fuck it up for Genshin. They are never beating the Genshin is the least favourite child allegations
It was amazing for me. 😂 On Act 8 I only had Alhaitham, Sucrose, Venti, Diluc, Yoimiya, and Father so I didn't really have anyone who can just apply Ousia. At first I didn't even think of using Alhaitham because I had no one to support him (no electro and not even a single dendro character who can give him energy to quickly get his burst back). And the best I could think of was to use Father, Diluc, Yoimiya and a VV swirl from either Venti or Sucrose. But that wasn't doing it. It was only when I decided to swap Alhaitham with Yoimiya that I was finally able to do it within the 90s time requirement and seriously I appreciated my characters to an even more deeper level than I used to. Maybe for some people it's easy, for me it's just the right amount of difficulty to feel some kind of thrill for it. It's a nice addition and honestly, I wouldn't mind it if we'd be able to do that and the Abyss simultaneously without them alternating every now and then.
I don't play HSR, so I can't compare to that, but I was honestly surprised how unfun I found this compared to Depth of Illusive Realm in Wuwa. Which was ridiculously easy, but at least it was flashy in a fun way. Here... I felt like I was struggling in every single chamber and yet I seem to have gotten all the rewards anyway? Just truly a baffling experience.
Ah yes, Illusive Realm where you faceroll everything on difficulty 5, up until you get oneshot from full health by Aix in final chamber and you just wasted half an hour of your life.
@@phoenixlauYeah and thats fun lol. Its a power fantasy in a combat game that encourages you to dodge, and getting defensive boosts arent hard either with the shop. This new genshin game mode doesnt feel different enough in the buffs to make it entertaining, imo the onlt good part is the hub and characters you can interact with
Not to mention the buffs aren't just extra attack crit but completely change the kit of characters and you're throwing meteors by the end of run
@@phoenixlau I got oneshot by the monkey the first time, can't relate.
I think the special guest should also allow you to invite four from your account roster, one element each. Because some accounts like mine will have none or very few special characters owned. The mode is fun when you're able to do them but I find the restriction a bit excessive. Especially if it's an element(s) where it doesn't favor your account roster.
it's just so wild bc genshin has had so many combat events - a lot of which were super fun - you'd think they'd have the formula down by now :/
I had a lot of fun with it, using the characters I stopped normally using and trying to get just a bit of synergy when having to make some stupid teams! Hopefully they will develop some more fun boons later to keep it fresh
I was able to complete it but it was very hard to do, im a very old player but this really told me I dont have enough characters built, ive mostly ignored artifact farming and usually just have only 2 good teams for spiral abyss and share a very small amount of artifacts. well now its time to change how I play the game
I enjoyed the previous iteration of this event, so naturally I enjoyed this one for the same reasons.
Love the feeling of trying to make lemonade with suboptimal options, any person that has played draft/sealed format in TCG will be familiar with the appeal.
My only gripe is with flower economy, it feels like obtaining units is too heavily incentivized early game (to the point where you straight up run out of units if you don't actively draft more).
This makes it so you never want boon early. Conversely, picking units becomes moot endgame, as you've already drafted entire roster. Feel like one/both should be automatic/cheaper.
Very agree with the useless buff thing, all I did is never choose buff and always use points to add character, making it less rng in team building, then everything is easily passed through
funnily enough, I've seen a lot complaining because they get messed up by the RNG in teambuilding, yet I never encounter something like that because of my strategy above, I always have more than enough character to choose
the benefit of using points to add characters than choosing buff is very unbalanced
For a game supposedly about elemental reactions and team synergies, this game mode just shows all of genshin's flaws.
I wonder if they're just easing everyone in... Considering that Abyss DPS checks back in the early days weren't nearly as high as they are now, perhaps for now things are straightfoward so that we all can easily figure it out? Like you mentioned - right now people who'll struggle are folks who haven't built that many characters which used to be ok for Abyss (lol National 1 side, Hyperbloom the other, move on).
Maybe later on things will ramp up? Hopefully?
There are some speculations that Natlan will bring a massive change in the meta, so it's understandable they don't want us to main only 8 characters forever.
It only took 3 rotations of HSR's Pure Fiction to get ramped up.
@@Syokool I would prefer if they just made abyss 13 to 15 and make it a 3 sides instead of 2 sides if they wanted people to build more characters.
So… this is supposed to be the end game mode that’s less anxiety inducing than the Spiral Abyss..?
Just wanna add a point. The UI for borrowing char from friend appear after you fulfill the char requirements. It means you need to get 18 characters (with current element rotation) to at least 70, just to not using 1 of your character because you're using the borrowed character. Yes, building 1 character to lvl 70 with no talent no artifact no weapon isn't that expensive (probably is for newer player), but it's annoying.
HSR just added an upgraded version of Simulated Universe, the Divergent Universe. And in that mode, all characters you have are set at max level, and have pre-sets relics/artifacts so you don’t have to build them to use them(you can use your own build btw).
They literally don’t need to do this because technically you only need 4 characters to clear, but it’s there because it could be fun and gives the players a sort of “trial” for maxed out characters before you build them. Amazing Genshin doesn’t implement the same system, even though it technically needed it more due to needing more characters to build.
Genshin does give leveled up characters in trial and events, that doesn't make people build characters bc everyone is busy farming artifacts.
It doesn't work well in genshin when everyone is so engaged in getting the perfect artifacts and still fail to complete the spiral abyss.
They give you fully leveled characters in divergent universe because is a time limited event and if you don't complete it in time you will lose all the rewards
@@Syokool their trial characs are so horribly built it's almost unusable, i put them in the 4th slot since imaginarium won't allow 3-person teams
and it replaces your relics with bad relics.. whsts the point?? plus rampant powercreep
@@fantastictizable Divergent Universe is not a time limited event what are you smoking, the timer it has is how long it will take to expand the mode with new content.
I didn't mind it. It's a shame it's a one-time monthly thing that lasts no more than 20 minutes with no real reason to go back to it. But I like that all you have to do is complete all the stages to get all the rewards rather than get all the stars. I'm not enthralled about the poses as rewards because I never take photos but I'm sure someone will like them.
And bonus, after this new mode release, the game NEEDS a artefact preset system.
Wuthering waves did this part right. Look at their version of SU, theres crazy shit like infinitely stacking aspd and meteors for every certain # of attacks you do, feels completely different than regular combat
I did not choose a single boon I full invested into more characters :'3 I'm hoping this is just testing the waters and it'll get more challenging as time goes on like Abyss did. I do think it's fun, the animations are cute and I'm excited for the character poses with my favorites once those come out. If they ever add more silly rewards I think emotes would be hilarious !
I enjoyed it, like a lot, I actually like the restrictions because otherwise I would just speedrun anything. Like abyss has stopped being engaging for me ever since 2.2 and I just picked the same teams and did it with literally 0 emotions. But now I at least had to use my brain to think about some goofy team comps.
They also make older characters more relevant since ennemies are more squishy. Some of the rooms have unlimited time limite and require different challenge set for CC and survival characters. Venti carried me on these defense challenge. This game mode didnt give me a good first impression but I can see the potential
I would much prefer harder abyss content, it doesn't feel good when my Xiao can clear the stage alone but I am forced to put a Raiden in there who could also clear the stage alone just to fill a spot. The content is too easy to the point that there is no incentive to think about team comp, you ended up just picking one carry and three random fillers which you won't even use and clear it without any trouble.
@@None38389 harder abyss would still be too easy to be engaging imo. I will still pick my main teams and just destroy everything. I would personally rather have something engaging but easy, than something that is still easy but not as engaging.
Contrary to me, i never speedrun abyss but i clear almost every abyss with different units and teams. This feels less fun because i cant use a specific comp that i use for abyss and not because of the elemental restriction, but the vigor and the starting 6 character that were forced to use before i can obtain more units.
I liked it. The restrictions forced me to adapt, and use characters & teams I wouldn't normally, as well as test out ones I don't have. It also has way more balanced enemies than the Abyss.
But I get the issue regarding the roster. It's especially restrictive for people who don't have enough characters. What most surprised me was that vigor doesn't regenerate once depleted, and feel like this could have circumvented a lot of the issues.
I really don't want them to buff the enemies in any way. The Abyss is a horrible experience and has been for a long time. I still felt challenge from this game mode, if not only because I couldn't always build optimal teams, and that challenge is something I appreciated. To me, it felt good to have to approach things differently than in the Abyss. I also appreciated the little challenges we had to complete, aside from being restricted to a specific element/mechanic and not having a character representative of it available. All the more reason why it feels like Vigor should regenerate.
It would be good if you could use less than 4 characters though, I agree, and get the impression that of Hoyo would just add more characters into the Starglitter shop, a lot of the major design oversights could be at least somewhat feasibly remedied. In that regard I'm pretty satisfied with people pointing out all these issues with the theater, because it makes it incredibly difficult for Hoyo to ignore the very core issues with the overly restrictive way they designed four star pulls and character investment (namely how impossible artifacts are). It all boils down to the game design error of over reliance on RNG.
wow genshin fumbled the bag again ?? shocking
6:17 A chatter comment’s on screen reads “Supporters are kind of necessary to bring many of here” at same mom and dad Zajef only uses Arlecchino to beat the round. Lmfao 🤣
This comment also goes directly against what Zajef is saying in this part of the video - there is absolutely no need to make these teams anything more than slightly functional - good supports are the most important part of creating a highly functional team, so it is not especially necessary to use them to this game mode
I think what they were trying to do with this mode is force people to step out of their comfort zone and discover new fun teams. That didn't happen of course
Did for me, absolutely love it. Casuals were always going to hate and be a massive mob, and there was always going to be those that mostly invest in a few select characters that'd be upset being i
Incentivized to invest in more characters. This mode is a great attempt at a counter to what Abyss has you do, and I'm satisfied.
This video is almost as long as IT completion time.
Do I need to unlock hard mode to get all stars bc I cleared normal twice and only got rewards for first 6 stars
I guess this game mode will actually give me incentive to learn how to play characters that I've built but never bothered learning. I had decent trouble on this either because I was unprepared (i.e., my artifacts and weapons were wrong) or because I had no idea how to play some of these characters. I also anticipate that the theater will get significantly harder as the patches increase.
They already said the first one was rather easy.
This mode is fun sometimes but get stuck having to many dps on the team make it so I have to run 2 of them but make one supportish so when that happens I use Yoimiya as a support or Yanfei being better in tankfei mode if necessary.
There are so many Yanfei non believers that it hurts.
Hooray more circle impact. When I heard roguelike I thought you'd actually be doing a dungeon.
The thumbnail of the video showing Wolfy sleeping on the sofa chair is literally the perfect summary of this content.
Bedge
I don't like being forced to use characters I don't enjoy playing... scara and clorinde are not the most fun for me but I had to play them, not to mention sometimes you end up with teams with no synergy so even more lame to play
I heard from the grapevine that the event was too easy, and then when I actually played it I was fucking myself over bc of the character restrictions lmao. Once I got the hang of it though it was really fun for me. I think the backlash to this event comes down to the fact that it's too easy for people used to abyss, and too hard for newbies who don't have enough characters. I think for dolphins or F2Ps who like building characters but don't have any place to use them, it's quite enjoyable. A few things I would change personally:
1. You should be able to pick the opening characters. This is something that I truly believe holds this mode back a lot, because starting with the same opening characters all the time greatly restricts the rest of the run too.
2. Enable changing artifacts after each act. The fact that they force you to go back to the theatre after finishing an act and yet you can't change artifacts for your characters (the artifacts are snapshotted from the beginning) is utterly bullshit. What's the point of forcing you back to the place when you can't do anything other than talk to your player characters?
3. Add more variety to the buffs. I mostly agree with Zajef in that the buffs are very boring and don't change the experience much
Overall a very nice contrast from Abyss' vertical check. I understand the negative feedback from it, but I do think it's a good start. Hope Natlan adds co-op raids lmao
Tell me how the f.. are we supposed to beat Coppelius with Raiden, Faruzan, Yanfei, Dehya ???
@@r.d.6290 Build tankfei if you have C4 and use her and Dehya to break Coppelius shield. Build Faruzan with VV so that you can enhance overload with her burst. Raiden is Raiden.
If you want a serious answer though you have to save the meta characters for each boss battle--so at least one main DPS for each tier that can realistically bite through them. I saved Bennett Xiangling on my first run and Chlorinde Chevreuse for the second run (Chevreuse's and Chlorinde's Ousia break the shield)
@@r.d.6290 You got shield breaker and you got damage dealer, what's the problem? Also they did gave us Arlecchino, just save her all the way to the end if you have to.
I appreciate that this mode encourages horizontal investment vs abyss. Over the years I've felt pretty stupid for leveling more characters+talents instead of just grinding better artifacts for the two or three teams I actually use in abyss. Now I feel slightly less stupid for leveling random characters I like because it means they're not dead weight here.
I love this tbh. As someone who has a lot of characters, most of which are sidegrades to the premium unit of that element, now finally they have purpose and and i can get to use them without feeling like i hate myself
This mode is only difficult if your account focuses on niche builds. Healers and dps simply beat it. The balance is based on that. I beat it with my xangling, toma, faruzan and cloud retainer
This is nothing but a punishment for those who share artefacts among multiple DPS. Hoyo really want people to have a set for each character not change it.
question for those who have played this mode since I can't rn
do the buffs apply to overworld? Idk if what I heard was real or fake since I don't look at leaks. if so, is it possible to turn them off?
The "fantastical blessing" buff applies to all of the opening characters (wanderer, clorinde, arle, etc) in every mode aka overworld, abyss, etc. Can't disable them. You can see the current buff if you go to that character in the character menu, you'll also see a little arrow by their portrait.
@@jupi_jupi thank u 💖
My artifacts are already shit as a casual player in my current roster, how would I be able to build another atleast decent 5 or more characters? I'm just not gonna try with this mode.
The fact that it’s inherently easy without any real possibility of future powercreep is objectively good - not only do the primogem rewards stay the same, but they even become way more accessible. I hope it stays the way it is, I’d rather not sweat for something that was basically taken from my pocket.
Hard mode is way harder than Abyss. Enemies are at the same level as Floor 12, and Hyperbloom is completely banned. As someone who started in Sumeru the Abyss/Imaginarium change is just annoying. Next month's Theatre will include Dendro/Hydro and be insanely easy for me unlike this one, and that only highlights the problem.
@@aquasis995Can't beat content without hbloom - "game is unplayable, that's too hard!" ok bro
Honestly you kinda brought this to yourself. Actually, you deserve it. You seriously expected to play and beat the entire game with nothing but hbloom?!
@@neocodexx weird toxicity and assumptions aside, my point is that Hyperbloom is a cheap option you had for Abyss, but not Theatre, which was an example of how limiting and anti-F2P it is. These janky Pyro Anemo Electro teams are all miserable.
@@aquasis995 Honestly I think Genshin just feels miserable to play in general when you have janky and non-synergistic teams (which this game mode sorta forces you into).
@@aquasis995 alright I won't poke any further since you're relatively new but it was just funny to point it out. "Just play hbloom" was thrown around for far too long in as the main recommendation and here we have the result and it's Hoyos fault too
What I really liked about the theater is that it incentivizes you to invest horizontally. Abyss needs few strongly invested charachters, while theater requires a lot of characthers with mid investment. This way, overlaping units can still be used. For someone with a Hutao and Arlecchino on their account, they probably only used one or the other on abyss, while in Theater its more advantegeous to use them both
This is not a good thing. It's one thing to encourage horizontal investment. It's another to pinish people for investing vertically.
@@PhilipWester and how is the theater punishing people for investing vertically?
@@LucasLima-qk1lw Because people who invest vertically tend to not also invest horizontally.
@@PhilipWester and would you say abyss is a bad system because It punishes people who invest horizontally?
@@LucasLima-qk1lw No? You can enter abyss without investing vertically, on the other hand IT forces you to waste books/mora on otherwise useless characters to even enter it
The thing that felt the oddest to me is team building in that game mode. We were conditioned into thinking in synergies, reactions, complementary builds, enablers etc.
And now... I throw everything out of the window and play a double carry team like Clorinde, Arlecchino with Faruzan and Kuki Support. An almost 0 synergy team, that doesn't feel good to play, especially because I had the choice between lvl 80 trial Faruzan and my scuffed lvl 90 Faruzan.
I guess I will invest at least the minimum in each of my characters now, so they are better than the trial ones, but that doesn't remove the weird feeling of team building.
we played similar events before, how tf did they see feedback from those and then make this
I like it more than abyss and it is a really good step after near four years of no endgame.
Waiting for the future of this permanent content.
this is my hot take, not every character need super good artifact. Many players spend resin on artifact and neglecting many 4* chara. Now they're complaining not having enough chara to play imaginarium theathre.
are the star rating doing somethin? I tried hard to get them but the end it seems only act clear matters??
Just for bragging rights on your profile.
This is just Hoyoverse's "f**k you, give me more money" mode.
i see a lot of people complaining about the replayability of the mode, though i personally don't mind it since i want to play other games and have IRL obligations.
Also if you don't have enough characters, keep in mind there's an easy/normal mode, that's why those modes are there, its for newer players. I swear people often forget these things cause they just focus immediately on the hardest mode.
I've also seen on other channels, where their audience is more casual, people are actually finding this mode "difficult" mainly cause they haven't played long enough to have built characters (since early game resources, you can only really focus on building 2 chars, and mid game you can get to around 8). And it think thats the point of this gamemode, it incentivizes you to build more characters and not just putting all your eggs into one basket. Though i also think this is a marketing tactic to make the playerbase pull more.
this not me saying the gamemode should not be improved, in fact i agree with the boons being a bit underwhelming. They could make the boons significant, and made it so the latter stages would be much harder but still easy enough if you got the right boons. this makes it so you can do a challenge run where you just don't pick any buffs.
I like this mode. I'm not surprised that so many people hate it - it was obvious that Hoyo would never be able to create a mode that satisfies everyone, or even most people. I happen to fall into the camp of people who hate the abyss and like the theatre. The fact that the boons don't make or break the game is the REASON I like it. My least favourite part of Sim U is the way that your characters' builds and your roster design barely matter at all because the blessings do 98% of your damage, and blessings are completely subject to RNG. ("Your decisions matter" is also a stretch considering that in SU/Swarm/GnG you are just clicking whatever blessing adds to your path resonance about 98% of the time - there is very little actual decision-making process.) This mode asks you to adapt on the fly and use characters in non-standard ways (I'm gonna try Cyno on 4pc golden troupe next time), though the balancing is not perfect and the season's elemental options are very hurt by the heavy prevalence of onfielders. It is reasonable to not enjoy this, but I personally love "random bullshit go" game modes. It's very easy if you just want the rewards, slightly harder if you want the medal, and incentivises building + using characters that I've been neglecting otherwise, and these are all positives in my book. I have zero desire for them to suddenly start adding hard combat to Genshin after 4 years of being a casual slow-paced exploration game, so this works for me.
Does anyone know what the point of the stars is? I managed my characters poorly on the first try and only got 7/8 stars but still got the full reward.
As someone that build every character to be on a "funtional" state after building the main teams, I gotta say, it was alright. My only issues real issues were that you are forced to use a team of 4 characters so you are not forced to use characters that you want to save for future chambers. But even like that, i just went and called as many characters as i could early and then it was mostly a breeze until the last chamber were i actually had to squeeze damage from basically a mono electro team while having a support that wasnt the best against Copellius damage.
Most complains i have seen come from meta slaves that they cant use their fully operational oneshot team for everything. Like, bruh, you are already given like 6 ready to use test units and if you arleady have them you can use yours, so its not like you are fucked on that front. The elements restriction is not too bad and the randomnes at least makes you think in how to optimise on suboptimal teams. Just use your brain a bit and dont go rushing in burning your top dogs on trash mobs.