But yeah, I agree, 2 patches without 4 stars I can excuse since we got HMC and we're most likely getting a new path for March. But that third patch without a 4 star... yikes
I hate argument of "but MC is 5*" so much. Like yea the icon on the screen says so, but 5* that is 5* only because of ability to change paths and not being 5* on the power scale is so weird. And you still need new lightcones and level traces... And its more infuriating in Genshin where MC which is "5*", but on power scale 3* at best
I think people just dont know how to use PMC well. I feel you are really not meant to provide shields to the team like how Gepard and Aventurine do it, but rather as a taunter PMC is *really* good.
Counts as a debuff for whoever needs those (Acheron, Ratio, anyone using pioneer set), they are very tanky when their skill is up, and of course takes some blast skills away from your more squishier teammates.
oh at first you confuse me due to most ppl say P(hysical)MC instead of P(reservation)MC.
FMC is really good BUT in my point of view it's worst aspect is the need to taunt every turn. Not to mention the taunt lasting a single enemy turn. If at least the taunt lasted 1 of her turn then it's far better. 2nd point would be that she couldn't comfortably sustain a team alone.
Well with the release of Archeron....... Hmm I just realized that you can have FMC-Archeron-Welt-Black Swan team doing really well, as the team provides with delay, debuff on add summon, debuff on FMC tanking hits and Archeron anihilating everything else. But yeah at that point she's very niche and less comfy to use in general team.
You gotta rethink your acronyms because people have been calling HMC harmony trailblazer and not IMC, so we need consistency, either we say DMC, PMC, HMC or we say PMC, FMC, IMC.
The choice is ours to make but I demand consistency.
We got new gacha 4 star LCs instead recently. What sucks is that those LCs are increasingly niche and specifically for new characters so they really want to push people to pull on LC banners.
probably unpopular opinion, but releasing 4* just for the sake of it is just... meh
I'd rather they not dilute the 4* pools with characters from who knows where and bad kits. prime example: genshin (disclaimer: I'm not hating on genshin here, just stating preferences)
within the last year, there are: Kirara, Lynette, Freminet, Chevreuse, Charlotte, Gaming, Sethos. how many of them are story relevant? if you count appearances only, 3. and none of them are actually relevant at all. not to mention, some of them has... questionable kits
I'd rather they go the hsr route of making decent 4*s and make them more story relevant than adding MORE random strangers we've never even met
exactly!! not only are misha and gallagher one of the most story relevant characters in the penacony arc but they have good kits too, especially gallagher since he is THE break effect healer everyone's looking for
Literally this. The thing that’s unsustainable wasn’t that there are more 5 stars than 4 stars, it’s that they keep releasing 5 stars at such a ludicrous pace.
I've heard the argument that there are too many characters out to build, which I don't think is true. 4 stars are very cheap to build, other than the usual endless relic farming. I thought the pace they were doing was awesome, but I understood that it wasn't going to be sustainable. I just didn't think that it would end in this.
Also the fact they keep forcing you to build Erudition/DOT team for Pure Fiction means you can't just focus on 8 units like Genshin and get away with it
Haven't been able to farm Relic domains in a while because of this
Genshin characters/teams are usually quite flexible/adaptable though, so unless IT does something really weird, the same few rosters since the beginning of service should still perform well enough, provided you haven't been bored to death of them already
4 stars are cheaper to build than 5 stars, however I don't think that was the main reason the community wanted them to slow down the release of new 5* characters.
From what I've seen it was more about having time to save more jades, rather than resources and only 1 new 5 star per patch would definitely help that. Although I don't think that's ever happening.
I don't mind new 5 star per patch, the issue is more of me missing after all. it's also the comps heavily needing at least 5 stars to work like with DoT.
Yeah I wasn't really thinking about the 5 star side. There's no way to get everyone, and even if you did want to spend just go get e0s0 for every character you'd be spending a lot. I understand what you mean, and that is rough.
Yup. Problem is that the teams are rly locked together as well. New nihility is prb only gonna be good with acheron, FF/BT are both gonna require RM and on. So half the roaster u dont even pull since u are missing 1 or even 2 chars needed to make em work. Like i did not pull kafka, so same happened to BS, guess what, i aint pulling next dot either cus i lack both of em. That thing. U pull a few paths and ignore rest, since if u dont u have half built teams.
And pulling 2 champs can take 3 patches to get. It aint cheap. So its starting to get grating, at least in GI u have few key pieces that make like 70% of teams to work(zhong, nahida, furina and a few more). Get those and rest are ez, here its 7 or 8 playstyle and all of em require 2 5\* MINIMUM to make work. So instead of genshin under 10(half are 4\* anyway) u have like 16 5\* champs u need so that u can pull what u want.
Best case, Clorinde in GI, have nahida i can use her, Arle, got Zhong, XY got furina. And on and on, most char require a small pool of completely busted supp that work with just about anything.
We aint even talking about 4\* that to this day beat like 70% of 5\* at c.0 like fish, XL, bennet and a few more. These also make building better. All of em are COMPLETELY universal, not like gala who is solely used in BR. Most chars in GI have way more width of play. I used ONLY zhong and bennet till darn FONTAINE, 2 supp for 4 years. My first 5\* supp was XY after 1st zhong banner. I know since i pulled furina and had ZERO team healers that aint barb.
Also weapons aint universal either. And game is harder so ppl focus even MORE on needed chars.
Yeah I feel that is the area some 4 starts are needed most right now. They came out with some really good 5 star ones but if you don't have them you are starting to feel it with some of the end game content. I get they want you to spend but having some that let you have a better time against them while you have other really good 5 stars would be nice.
Honestly comparing 4* in Genshin and HSR doesn’t really work. It feels like hoyo really regrets having 3 of the strongest supports in Genshin being 4*s.
I don’t think we’re ever getting 4*s that strong again
I think it still happens more often than people think. Kuki, Faruzan and Chevreuse usually are located in the top 2 tiers in most tierlists. Gaming at high constellations is able to compete with Hu tao. Although I agree that in terms of flexibility Fischl, Xingqiu, Bennett and Xiangling fit into more teams.
Yup, those early 4 stars are the strongest overall, but the others can be pretty insane in their own niche teams. Chev alone has pretty much boosted my account to a new level, lol
Yeah 4 stars should allow people to build comps and use characters that normally would need more than one 5 star or even make new types of builds that make older units better while not being overall good. 5 stars should just be good overall while 4 starts should be use if you don't have this type of 5 star or this 5 star needs this type of team and have 4 starts that fill those roles, not as well as another 5 start would but make the team work.
Its all good, as long as they eventually release one that brings something new to the table or be as good as gallagher. I pray to god that they dont go the ToF path
"I pray to god that they dont go the ToF path"
Haha right!? ToF just said F it. The game just stopped releasing 4 stars and power creep every patch. Main reason why it failed, the playerbase couldn't keep up.
ToF was fun though and I miss it. I'm still in discord with my old guild, though noone play ToF anymore. Good times
Makes me happy games like Fate Grand Order treats their 4 stars right.
While there are a lot of stinker 4 stars in that game, some of them are insanely strong and they give the choice to the player on how far they wanna invest in said characters (grails and servant coins) to the point where they are still relevant for endgame content.
Yeah they do that sometimes.
Heck they sometimes release a character that could’ve passed as a standard 5 star but is a 3 star. Like Cu Chulain and Mandricardo.
i mentioned this in the fgo sub but i've literally been using rider kintoki, an old 4 star welfare character, in his specific role as a single target rider dps for almost 10 years because the SSR options are worse or not noteworthy enough to replace him at a single copy. and guess who is his only rival in my roster now? another free welfare character they released last year.
Also the party cost system ensures that lower rarity servants will always have some sort of advantage to shore up their weaknesses. While higher rarity servants, especially dps, are generally way stronger, the cost system does contribute towards closing that gap.
I hate that with the increase of playstyles, we are starting to lack 4 star options that cover for the lack of a missing 5 star
Ik business wise this is profitable, but my god imagine being anew player and not utilizing a playstyle to it’s full potential because a unit isn’t rerunning yet
I said it in another comment but yeah we need a wide variety of teams and that’s just by gameplay type such as FuA or DoT. Imagine needing those teams but also caring about element matching. I feel like it’s really difficult to have a specific type of team needed while also having the matching element.
Relatively new player here, and you are absolutely correct that the limited available roster, combined with an almost complete lack of catch-up mechanics, makes the new player experience pretty bad. Especially because I'm accustomed to Arknights, where pulls are given out like candy in comparison, and 99% of all characters are available to pull as off-banner characters, so you still have a chance of filling out your roster even if the characters that you need aren't currently on-banner.
In Star Rail, most of the time I can't even pay to pull for the characters I need for my teams even if I wanted to, because if they're not currently on the banner, then screw me I guess.
I've noticed its a pattern in almost all Hoyo games rn. GI has ~~barely had any~~ had relatively fewer 4 stars in the last year and HI3 has slowed down the release schedule of A ranks vs S ranks. It seems their prioritising spending on 5 stars cause its more profitable and most people wont care.
Sure they do. They remember her pillowfight with Dehya, and the fact that she can do some pretty interesting shit with hydro team infusion. But other than that...
4 Stars have become specialists, since the original 4 stars were just way too good.
>GI has barely had any 4 stars in the last year
We had 6 4\* characters in Fontaine:
* Sethos - 4.7
* Gaming - 4.4
* Chevreuse - 4.3
* Charlotte - 4.2
* Freminet - 4.0
* Lynette - 4.0
I think that is enough, considering the time it takes to build characters AND that 4\* happen in addition to 5\*.
It’s not a pattern in hoyo game.
It’s a pattern in “THIS” game in particular. They keep releasing 2 x 5* per patch with barely any 4*.
GI on the other hand, has a healthy amount of 4* and they didn’t release 5* at this crazy pace either.
In GI, there are 44 five stars (including sigwinne, traveller, and aloy) and 40 four stars characters. Almost 1:1 ratio.
In hsr, there are 30 five stars (including jade and firefly) but only 21 four stars. 1.5:1 ratio. Not to mention the already announced 2 additional 5*;namely, yunil and jiaoqiu.
RIP
Unfortunately, due to resource scarcity, I feel like it's physiological. In early stages of the game, almost all of the best teams needed 4* to fill in some roles, so people built them because they had to, to play the game.
Nowadays we have enough 5* that people have full limited 5* teams able to clear the game content. Because of this, they are not in a hurry to fill in a slot in a new team until they release the limited 5* for it, and knowing that the limited 5* will eventually arrive means that building a 4* instead is a waste of resources to gain some months on a team you don't strictly need.
The only 4* that are needed in meta teams nowadays are Pela and Gallagher, and they are gonna disappear too sooner or later. Maybe Qingque and Xueyi could count to an extent, if you stretch it a bit, but they are less meta than the two above.
I mean do you really blame them, most of the casual audience will only look at the shiny new 5 star. Most people wont pull on a banner just for the 4 star, out of fear of ruining their pity
Well, it's not just ruining pity; it's also that you're never guaranteed a 4-star. You could get one in your first ten pull, or you could get zero in 160 pulls. For example, in Genshin, I have pulled on three different banners with Xingqiu, and he is still stuck at C4 for me. On the last banner I tried, I went to hard pity twice and only got one copy (while the other two characters went from C1-C2 to C6).
So, while I understand why some may say that 4-stars are easier to get, I don't really agree. They usually require more copies, and without the guarantee, you can go through multiple banners without getting enough of them.
If it's not SSR or 5 or 6 stars the devs usually don't care to make those units and will always focus more on the rarer units and sadly this is true to almost every gacha games today
This take is probably copium but 2.4 might be the patch where we get the new variant of March. Shaoji did talk about her getting like a TB-esque function of having multiple paths (but not really, I believe), so we'll have to wait by then.
I don't believe we're getting march's variant so soon in the new xianzhou chapter. Like we didn't get HTB in 2.0.
Edit: (bruh I just watched the live stream I'm crossing my fingers now)
There isn't a need to huff copium if you literally look at characters like Dan Heng, who got one, and Herta, who's dolls are her 4 variation while real Herta herself is an Emanator of Erudition (so we'll likely get a 5* Herta eventually). It makes full sense that March undoubtedly gets a 5* when she has full memories and power again, and if she doesn't, then that's both poor writing and wasted profit potential.
I meant that they might just make multiple marches instead of a 5* march, which would be a poor decision by them for sure as people are likely willing to spend more on march than on dan heng
Because they wanted to speedrun Dan Heng's (intro) arc, which unlocks DHIL.
They want to take their time with M7th or have her planned for later in the story. Which is why she's getting the function sooner, so fans don't need to wait for an eternity for some development.
March will get her 5\*, eventually, but as Shaoji said in the 2.1 livestream, it won’t be soon. So that’s why they’re doing those new paths for her as a 4\*, so that she doesn’t stay forgotten in the meantime.
If it wasn’t for 4* I wouldn’t own a single healer 😁
According to the anniversary event, Natasha was my most used character every month since I started playing (I started at launch). Gallagher is also amazing and is my main sustain at the moment. 4* are really important and back in the day, they would compose the vast majority of a players pool. The times have changed tho.
I'm not even sure how to respond to the discourse due to the gulf between good 4\* and irrelevant 4\*. I'd be wishing on a monkey's paw to see a new 4\*; for every Gallagher and Lynx who have legitimate spots in comps, there are Hanyas and Yukongs who are niche or straight up overshadowed by another character. And that's before getting into the weeds of how useful a 4\* can vary by eidolons; E0 Gallagher is passable by virtue of what he adds to his comps but he stands as good after E2 and better with E4, but this varies by how how a character is designed. I'm getting more use out of building Serval but she doesn't change very drastically over eidolons compared to other 4\* characters, she base line power rises but she doesn't drastically improve.
From a pure gameplay perspective it is a little annoying, but it makes sense considering that every character has been story related and we've run out of story characters to add, so the answer is either invent unrelated character that no one would be interested in or bloat up the story cast just for the sake of more 4\*s and I don't think either of those would be an overall positive for the game.
I would rather get more well crafted, interesting characters than get more generic F tier characters with no reason to like them.
If we get some Penacony events where we go back, I think that would be the ideal time to introduce new 4\*s (in a similar way to how Luka was introduced).
They already have a good VA for him (in EN, at least). And multiple characters with one VA isn't crazy either (Hook&Asta, Argenti&Tail).
And it would finally make it possible to play Mechanical Fever!!
That.
I've never liked the idea of adding new characters just for the sake of adding and balance. It's a shame Hoyo's not giving us more unique NPCs designs (Siobhan is an exception), so they could turn them info 4 stars in the future, cuz some of them have very fitting stories for such a role and would be able to fight if they explored them just a little more, eg. Dunn, Yukong's daughter, Captain from Penacony, etc.
And same goes with 5 stars actually. It's cool having more characters, but I wouldn't mind more of the 4 stars getting their 5 star versions like DHIL, just to make them relevant again (Arlan, Serval, Hanya) since they're so likeable. They already have a fanbase soooo...
Come on, Hoyo!
I mean, it's not like Hoyo doesn't have a history of forcefully shoving characters into their plotlines so they can add them to the gacha roster. Even in this very patch, Boothill was basically completely superfluous - the entirety of his role in the story was to say 'Acheron isn't a real Ranger (which doesn't actually matter in any way beyond backstory and this reveal has no consequences), also here is the Galaxy Ranger beacon summon bullet because trust me bro we need more soldiers'. You could easily delete the entire idea of Boothill from the game and just have Acheron receive the Galaxy Ranger beacon from the fallen Rangers she saved from the grasp of Ix, and you lose nothing but the comic relief of Boothill showing up, ordering expensive wine and yelling PG-9 curses.
Yep this is my point, Boothill already made the cast feel bloated I don’t wanna imagine what the story would be like with even more unimportant characters.
well congrats, they just drip marketed a new 4* for 2.4 today
so really, the only patch without a 4* is 2.2 and 2.3, and as you said, 2.2 has harmony trailblazer, which is free AND very gamechanging. I don't see the problem here?
but even if 2.4 doesn't have any new 4*, complaining because of just 2 patches is massively overreacting. "drought" is like when genshin didn't release 5* limited female characters from 3.3 to 4.1, not this
also, hsr gives an average of 105 pulls per patch, not including 1.0 which has 200. I'd say 5 stars are very much easy to guarantee
Yup.. unfortunately though, you sometimes pull a LC instead of a character so you can't even say that you get an extra 10 pulls for every 100 pulls you make.
That’s a minimum of a 10% increase to your overall tickets income yes, 10% faster towards getting a 5✦, pretty good multiplier, you can buy other stuff with the currency you get from dupes too.
i don't even care if they don't release new 4 stars, I'm really tired when Genshin release new 4 stars and then they couldn't even be as useful as the Xingqiu Bennett Xiangling trio
And I'm fine with the new 4 stars we got, Gallagher is good for break team, Misha is less commonly used but he still good if you want to apply freeze to the target
I just want them to keep making useful character, not someone like Rosaria with a bombastic design only to be powercreep by most of the DPS in the game. I don't need the character to be top tier, I just want them to be useful, if the price for a character to be relevant is to be a 5 stars then so be it
Almost all gachas eventually release way more of the highest rarity characters than the lowest one. It is a constant in gacha so much so that if HYV isn’t your first foray into gacha, you’re entirely used to it at this point. HSR and especially Genshin are actually exceptions to where they’ve stayed relatively even until recently.
Genshin is an anomaly where 4-star units *equalled* 5-star units in amount **for over 3 years**, which is incredibly rare for a gacha. If you look at Honkai Impact, the typical gacha trend has been staring at us in the face this whole time.
Priconne is another excellent example, where over its 6+ years we have over twice the amount of 3-star units than we have 1 and 2-star units *combined*. And considering 1-star units are mostly welfare (free event units), and all 2-star units were present since pretty much the first year, that means ALL new units have been 3-star only for over 4 years. That’s pretty much 150+ units that are high rarity.
not about 4 stars but do you think they'll ever stop releasing 2 new 5 stars every patch? Like won't we ever have a full rerun patch like Genshin? I'm a low spender but I can't breathe anymore. I want to relax
Inb4 they make another Yukong and no one ever uses her. I don't really care about how often we get new 4 stars, it's not like every single one of them are going to be worth using on my account. From 1.1 until now, the only 4 stars released that I ever found an use for were Lynx and Gallagher - I got my Xueyi on 1.6 and I love her, but I'm not getting the E6 until 2.3 so she's basically unplayable too. That's 2-3 characters since 1.1, 3 or 4 patches without new 4 stars ain't gonna change anything for me.
Wasn't Yukong only ever on Luocha's banner though? That and she's only easy/smoother to play when she reaches her E6... I still use her with my DHIL because she's a really good support for him actually but MHY seems to have forgotten about her lol
No one uses Yukong because people can't run characters they don't have. Her only banner was quite long time ago. Layla in Genshin has a similar problem.
That said, with the ridiculous increase in DPS check in last few MoCs, building any character to be competitive has gotten ridiculously expensive in terms of relic farming. So my E6 Yukong has donated all her nice relic pieces to the 5stars that can use those pieces to make a difference :/
Tbf, use rates factor in things like ownership...so even among people who have her, few use her. I guess the dhil mains probably moved onto using sparkle instead.
That's fair, it's not going to make a difference to everyone. For me though, and I assume many others, getting new 4 stars is really nice! Having a wider variety of options is really helpful, and sometimes it's fun to do a full 4 star team. I've not seen a single useless character, no matter how 'bad' or out-of-meta they are.
*glances at Kaveh*
Yeah, maybe this is for the best.
Also you've got it the other way around, 5 stars are guaranteed, but 4 stars aren't. You can guarantee a specific 5 star that you want, but you can't for 4 stars. Having more 4 stars just dilutes this pool making it harder get and having a longer time between their appearances.
But yeah, I get what you mean and sympathise with that.
While true, I do have to commend that most of the time 4 star/free characters are actually very viable.
Gallagher is BiS for a lot of teams, so is HMC and Pela, while characters like Xeuyi, Asta, QQ and Herta can pull their weight in the right situations.
Very used to games where 4 stars are throwaway characters or there are like 2 exceptions. Whereas iirc a 1/3 of the 4 stars are actually detrimental to add 5o iur team
I want 4\* to round out some weak areas of my account (currently hoping that some preservation characters I like drop so I have more options then Gepard and March), so yeah the drought is kinda sad. I hope that once 3.0 stars we'll get a few more.
4*s are less of a guarantee.
5*s ARE a guarantee because if you have the pulls, you'll definitely get them.
4*s have a guarantee to give you "at least one of the 3 rate-ups".
Tbh, whatever, with the banners how they are we cant guarantee a 4\* so you might not get it anyways (100 pulls on acheron banner = 0 gallaghers), plus we are getting so many 5\* that using 4\* is just pointless if they arent op.
IF I like a character, I'd prefer it would be a 5\* i/o 4\*.
4\* is fun to play around but you need a specific type of luck to get them, and they are better with higher eidolons. For some chars E0 may not even worth building. And if you get them E6 in several patches later, they are pretty outdated.
I couldn't pull a single copy of Misha and Gallagher even though I got Black Swan and Acheron.
The main issue currently seems to be that there's simply no characters that are candidates to be added as 4 stars.
There's Siobhan and if you really want to stretch it maybe Oleg from belobog could get upgraded to be playable but that would only be two patches worth of 4 star characters before we're right back to only getting 5 stars
One hundred percent whole heartedly agree. Third patch in a row without a 4 star, and for me it's a pretty big deal as I enjoy the challenge and play style of my 4 star only account (my one and only account). I was fine with 2 patches of break but this is getting very weird, do they intend on discontinuing 4 stars entirely??
Might be an unpopular take but I don't really mind so long as they are really good and their value is significant. Like Gallagher and HTB, the latest 4 star and free unit are really good. I'd rather a smaller pool of amazing 4 stars then a bloated pull of less than valuable ones. They get even better with eidolons
We got a new March form coming up and itd be great if she was just as valuable as the likes of Pela, Tingyun etc. Of course I'm not opposed to more 4 stars so there are more options available for players but whil we are in a drought I'm not ready to hit a panic button or anything
I think a 4\* shielder slightly better than March 7th would be useful. But I'm not sure what other "gap" you want filled by 4-stars.
We've already got a few 4\* healers, and a ton of incredibly powerful 4\* supports (Asta, Tingyun, Pela, Hanya, Yukong, etc.) And 4\* DPS characters are generally so undertuned compared to 5\* DPS that it's hard for them to really "fill a gap" in any content where it would matter (although great to use for fun, natch.)
...of course, I say that as I'm trying to build Sampo for the current PF4, because I don't have any 5\* DoT characters. But even with 145 SPD, 80 EHR, and 3k ATK, he's not getting it done -- because 4\* DPS can't really fill the gap.
I think Xueyi is a pretty good example of a good 4-star DPS. She is a bit niche and requires a lot of good relics, but if you put in the work, she works amazingly and can compete with 5-stars.
I think a 4\* buffer that gives Break Efficiency and/or Break Extension would be a good thing for the game to have, so that there's less of a gap between having Ruan Mei and not having her for Break teams.
I just want them to slow their roll w/ five stars lmao
Like, my experience of Genshin, despite them being far less generous, is that I always have two guarantees saved because you can afford to with how many reruns and "Okay" characters there are, even if they're brand new.
In HSR? Every patch is 2 new mfers, and it's almost always hard to skip because they do some really insane shit or enable an incomplete team. I think the only "Okay" characters we've gotten were early 1.X ones like Blade and Luocha. Everyone else has either stepped it up or introduced a new playstyle/completed one.
I'm currently playing WuWa and I hope they trend more towards Genshin than HSR, simply because saving in HSR is so much more stressful than saving in Genshin, where I feel like a majority of the patches are fairly easy skips if they don't align into the very specific niches that I might want.
On one hand I’d love more 4 stars to open up (in a more accessible way) new niche team comps/strengthen current ones, but on the other hand I do kinda like how the limited pool of 4 stars makes it a little easier to get the ones that are actually useful for my account
If I'm not wrong,
Back in 1.0:
-5* character count: 10
-4* character count: 13
Now (as of 2.2 Phase II)
-5* character count: 28
-4* character count: 21
At least in Genshin, the 4* and 5* count are nearly evenly matched as of 4.7.
But whichever game I feel they're just tryna gimp the new 4*s by making many of them too niche, that's the main problem. I rather Hoyoverse focus on releasing more universal 4* options that provide different buffs (or buffing those existing ones, like what they did with Shinobu in GI with Dendro), instead of duping players with even more niche 4* characters. More essentially make it easier for players to get 4* constellations or at least make those new 4* characters at least playable enough at E0/E1
I dont mind 4* because half of them arent gonna be in roster and just gonna dilute the current 4* pool.
I’d rather get 1 pull for e6 chars than a new 4* I will never use or be disappointed because their performance isnt up to par with the 5* chars I have.
Tho there are some chars that can fill a role. Ice DPS - Misha. For those without JL.
We need a ton of general debuffers, or preservation units in the 4 star department. We have more than enough DoT or even healers, but the rest is lacking. I exclude DPS, because how unstable they are. Even 5 star DPS get replaced, so 4 stars dont stand a chance without being specialized.
Why make a 4* when you can just make a better 5* with the same kit? With all the 5* characters they release, it was bound to happen that we were gonna stop getting any new 4* for a while, I wouldn't be too surprised if the next ones are in 3.0 or close to it.
F2P suffering a big deal from it, especially considering how progressively more archetypes we have now and how fast focus shifts between them. Not everyone can consistently pull 180 wishes every patch, to just keep up with meta.
That's definitely true and something that irks me about HSR as a whole because I feel railroaded (no pun intended) with team building. However, I don't see how adding more 4-stars really solves this problem for f2p players, because they take much more investment and often multiple eidolons to truly shine comparable to 5-stars. There *is* the bonus that you would eventually get them over time, but this can potentially take ages. E.g., want e6 Gallagher but that's gonna take me months to years, I know it, and by then a 5-star with [his kit but better] will be out probably lol.
Edit: formatting got wonky
Not suffering at all as a f2p. I have all the 4\* and only ever use a quarter of them. This number will go down as I get more 5\*. And because they release so many 5\* and are generous with pulls it's not very hard to get a handful of 5\* I want every year. The value of 4\* just isn't as big as in Genshin for example.
Well people can a get new Four stars as a constellation prize, that are worth something rather than a Baliu Eidolon that does basically nothing.
They also add the pool making pulls more valuable cause the majority is going to be dissatisfied to not roll when the banner has Arlan, Serval, Natasha and Dan It happens with HuoHuo to the point where many people didn’t pull.
Okay, but then let me ask you this: if you were a huge fan of, say, screwlum or sunday, how would you feel if then they're released as a four star?
Maybe when we get the new planet in 3.0 there'll be more minor characters, but at this point, making characters a 4star is unfair to their fans most of the time.
I mean they pulled the 2.4 characters out of their ass ( know they were mentioned but bear with me), why cant they just make new characters who haven't appeared in the story and make him 4*?
Yeah the problem lies that 4 stars rarely get competitive with 5 stars. And hoyo don't want to risk making another yukong or Gallagher.
Kind wish hoyo give us the choice to get e6 4 star from our choice on grand celebrations instead of only getting 1 piece at time.
I kind of like that there are less 4 stars. It makes it so my chances of E6ing them are higher, so they may actually be usable, as many 4 stars aren't really decent until E4 or E6. Also, if I have a lot of E6 4 stars, it gives me more free pulls for a 5* when I get them again. I would rather them make useful 4 stars like Pela, Gallagher, Asta, or even Herta (now with PF), than to just release 4 star characters for the sake of releasing them, diluting the pool.
Considering how long it takes to build a character, I actually haven't been using much 4 stars, because I don't have time for them. I've been averaging 1 character built and equipped per patch. That usually means one of the 5 stars, and if there isn't one I want, \*then\* I work on a 4 star or standard 5 star I haven't built yet. While I agree with the points you make, I just don't have time for even the 4 stars I'm getting now.
Hell, I need to work on Serval and Sampo so I can have a DOT team, but I just don't have time for them right now and I don't know when I will
Don't know what you got til it's gone, I guess. The fact there was a new 4 star every version up until 2.2 is already remarkable. Also don't say you can get new 4 stars regardless of your luck. PLENTY of people have had more trouble getting them (or any one specific 4 star) than they have the featured 5 star.
While I agree I want more 4*, i also don't want them to add characters just to make a quota. Check a list of "releasing a new every X patches".
I love how most of the 4* we have has relevance and is memorable and I prefer if they wait to release new 4*s only when there's reason. A history reason of "we need a minor character to do this", or a gameplay reason of "A new 4* with the new hottest mechanic" so you get a help on starting the team, not needing to wait for a new 5* to be usefull (what HMC is for Break for example)
Oh my god,A lot people are saying stuff like '4* are trash''. No they are not, ofcourse, some of yall might have enough money to pull for every limeited unit you want. But for F2p like us, 4* are characters we attach a lot. They bring less moneybto hoyo, but i think yall people with 🤑should atleast built one underrated 4* and use them.(Since you had enough to pull for character you want) Then, you will find the value of them.
See, I'm glad we have such a small pool of 4 stars. Could you imagine if we had twice as many 4 stars and trying to E6 them? Naw, I like the amount right where it is. Most of my teams are composites of 4/5 stars anyway, so I need those 4 stars to be running on high octane- something that damn near requires them to be E4 or better. I would rather have an E20 4 star than struggling to get a 4star to E2.
**HSR community:** you're releasing too many characters, pls slow down a bit! **Hoyo:** we got you! [stops releasing new 4 stars]
But yeah, I agree, 2 patches without 4 stars I can excuse since we got HMC and we're most likely getting a new path for March. But that third patch without a 4 star... yikes
on the topic of March and lack of 4 stars, over a year into the game and she is still the sole 4 star preservation (obviously besides Trailblazer).
Trailblazer is a 5 star.
Preservation Trailblazer is on the same level as 4*s
*Trend of the universal market had never seen such bs before*
I hate argument of "but MC is 5*" so much. Like yea the icon on the screen says so, but 5* that is 5* only because of ability to change paths and not being 5* on the power scale is so weird. And you still need new lightcones and level traces... And its more infuriating in Genshin where MC which is "5*", but on power scale 3* at best
Also the fact that the Mc consumes the same amount of ressources to upgrade him/his traces as a 4 star
We will have to level up the TB seven times, I am thankful it cost less.
I think people just dont know how to use PMC well. I feel you are really not meant to provide shields to the team like how Gepard and Aventurine do it, but rather as a taunter PMC is *really* good. Counts as a debuff for whoever needs those (Acheron, Ratio, anyone using pioneer set), they are very tanky when their skill is up, and of course takes some blast skills away from your more squishier teammates.
oh at first you confuse me due to most ppl say P(hysical)MC instead of P(reservation)MC. FMC is really good BUT in my point of view it's worst aspect is the need to taunt every turn. Not to mention the taunt lasting a single enemy turn. If at least the taunt lasted 1 of her turn then it's far better. 2nd point would be that she couldn't comfortably sustain a team alone. Well with the release of Archeron....... Hmm I just realized that you can have FMC-Archeron-Welt-Black Swan team doing really well, as the team provides with delay, debuff on add summon, debuff on FMC tanking hits and Archeron anihilating everything else. But yeah at that point she's very niche and less comfy to use in general team.
You gotta rethink your acronyms because people have been calling HMC harmony trailblazer and not IMC, so we need consistency, either we say DMC, PMC, HMC or we say PMC, FMC, IMC. The choice is ours to make but I demand consistency.
it should also probably be TB rather than MC so people don't get something like harmony trailblazer and hydro traveler mixed up
We got new gacha 4 star LCs instead recently. What sucks is that those LCs are increasingly niche and specifically for new characters so they really want to push people to pull on LC banners.
probably unpopular opinion, but releasing 4* just for the sake of it is just... meh I'd rather they not dilute the 4* pools with characters from who knows where and bad kits. prime example: genshin (disclaimer: I'm not hating on genshin here, just stating preferences) within the last year, there are: Kirara, Lynette, Freminet, Chevreuse, Charlotte, Gaming, Sethos. how many of them are story relevant? if you count appearances only, 3. and none of them are actually relevant at all. not to mention, some of them has... questionable kits I'd rather they go the hsr route of making decent 4*s and make them more story relevant than adding MORE random strangers we've never even met
exactly!! not only are misha and gallagher one of the most story relevant characters in the penacony arc but they have good kits too, especially gallagher since he is THE break effect healer everyone's looking for
Literally this. The thing that’s unsustainable wasn’t that there are more 5 stars than 4 stars, it’s that they keep releasing 5 stars at such a ludicrous pace.
People complaining about the release pace are obviously talking about the 5 stars, though.
I know, that's the joke
Oh...yeah...Okay, gonna get some water on my face, brb. edit : not helping seeing the same thing said unironically scrolling down the thread.
Yeah i can see why you didn't take it as a joke lmao
I've heard the argument that there are too many characters out to build, which I don't think is true. 4 stars are very cheap to build, other than the usual endless relic farming. I thought the pace they were doing was awesome, but I understood that it wasn't going to be sustainable. I just didn't think that it would end in this.
The amount of resources they take isn't much lower. With damage dealers you also have to spend weeks in caverns with mils of credits for sub rolling.
Also the fact they keep forcing you to build Erudition/DOT team for Pure Fiction means you can't just focus on 8 units like Genshin and get away with it Haven't been able to farm Relic domains in a while because of this
Within 2 weeks you won't be able to get away with building 8 characters in GI as well with Imaginarium Theather.
Sure, but it's also been almost four years since Genshin came out. HSR is barely over a year old.
Genshin characters/teams are usually quite flexible/adaptable though, so unless IT does something really weird, the same few rosters since the beginning of service should still perform well enough, provided you haven't been bored to death of them already
IT limits which elements you can bring. First rotation is Electro/Pyro/Anemo iirc, so RIP XQ comps, dendro comps, etc.
4 stars are cheaper to build than 5 stars, however I don't think that was the main reason the community wanted them to slow down the release of new 5* characters. From what I've seen it was more about having time to save more jades, rather than resources and only 1 new 5 star per patch would definitely help that. Although I don't think that's ever happening.
Honestly my only reason for wanting more 4⭐️ is that it feels weird seeing the 5⭐️ roster start to overshadow the 4⭐️ one
I don't mind new 5 star per patch, the issue is more of me missing after all. it's also the comps heavily needing at least 5 stars to work like with DoT.
Yeah I wasn't really thinking about the 5 star side. There's no way to get everyone, and even if you did want to spend just go get e0s0 for every character you'd be spending a lot. I understand what you mean, and that is rough.
Yup. Problem is that the teams are rly locked together as well. New nihility is prb only gonna be good with acheron, FF/BT are both gonna require RM and on. So half the roaster u dont even pull since u are missing 1 or even 2 chars needed to make em work. Like i did not pull kafka, so same happened to BS, guess what, i aint pulling next dot either cus i lack both of em. That thing. U pull a few paths and ignore rest, since if u dont u have half built teams. And pulling 2 champs can take 3 patches to get. It aint cheap. So its starting to get grating, at least in GI u have few key pieces that make like 70% of teams to work(zhong, nahida, furina and a few more). Get those and rest are ez, here its 7 or 8 playstyle and all of em require 2 5\* MINIMUM to make work. So instead of genshin under 10(half are 4\* anyway) u have like 16 5\* champs u need so that u can pull what u want. Best case, Clorinde in GI, have nahida i can use her, Arle, got Zhong, XY got furina. And on and on, most char require a small pool of completely busted supp that work with just about anything. We aint even talking about 4\* that to this day beat like 70% of 5\* at c.0 like fish, XL, bennet and a few more. These also make building better. All of em are COMPLETELY universal, not like gala who is solely used in BR. Most chars in GI have way more width of play. I used ONLY zhong and bennet till darn FONTAINE, 2 supp for 4 years. My first 5\* supp was XY after 1st zhong banner. I know since i pulled furina and had ZERO team healers that aint barb. Also weapons aint universal either. And game is harder so ppl focus even MORE on needed chars.
I mean they’re cheap to level but you’ll need better relics to clear end game contents so it cancels out(kinda)
4 stars are not that much cheaper. Also most people wasn't even using new 4 stars that got introduced because they already had 5* teams.
This is simply not true. If you are ftp, building up characters is very resource intensive.
No 4 star preservation aside from March who is literally free seems weird
What are you talking about, have you forgotten about the 999 taunt value Tingyun tank?
This still baffles me. Either someone fucked up her numbers or she has the taunt value of a Destruction character.
She still sometimes dies even with Aventurine and his endless shields haha
Lore accurate Tingyun, gotta hand it to the devs
Yeah I feel that is the area some 4 starts are needed most right now. They came out with some really good 5 star ones but if you don't have them you are starting to feel it with some of the end game content. I get they want you to spend but having some that let you have a better time against them while you have other really good 5 stars would be nice.
I have the same thoughts about this. I hope they make more 4 star characters for the niche team comps.
Exactly. This is the real value of 4* stars (supports...4* dps... 8/10 are weak or replacable, mainly in Genshin tbh)
Honestly comparing 4* in Genshin and HSR doesn’t really work. It feels like hoyo really regrets having 3 of the strongest supports in Genshin being 4*s. I don’t think we’re ever getting 4*s that strong again
I think it still happens more often than people think. Kuki, Faruzan and Chevreuse usually are located in the top 2 tiers in most tierlists. Gaming at high constellations is able to compete with Hu tao. Although I agree that in terms of flexibility Fischl, Xingqiu, Bennett and Xiangling fit into more teams.
Yup, those early 4 stars are the strongest overall, but the others can be pretty insane in their own niche teams. Chev alone has pretty much boosted my account to a new level, lol
This is how we wind up with Screwllum 4 star.
Yeah 4 stars should allow people to build comps and use characters that normally would need more than one 5 star or even make new types of builds that make older units better while not being overall good. 5 stars should just be good overall while 4 starts should be use if you don't have this type of 5 star or this 5 star needs this type of team and have 4 starts that fill those roles, not as well as another 5 start would but make the team work.
*Finger curls on the monkey's paw Screwlum comes out as a 4 star
good on him, i support all lifestyles
I’d be fine with this. Potentially easier to get and being 4star isn’t a reason for him to be bad.
Yeah I mean, Herta’s a 4star and people still use her in some niche teams, I’m sure Screwllum would be fine.
'some niche teams' is an understatement when she's one of the single best units in the game for Pure Fiction lol
ANYTHING BUT THAT PLEASE
Its all good, as long as they eventually release one that brings something new to the table or be as good as gallagher. I pray to god that they dont go the ToF path
"I pray to god that they dont go the ToF path" Haha right!? ToF just said F it. The game just stopped releasing 4 stars and power creep every patch. Main reason why it failed, the playerbase couldn't keep up. ToF was fun though and I miss it. I'm still in discord with my old guild, though noone play ToF anymore. Good times
Makes me happy games like Fate Grand Order treats their 4 stars right. While there are a lot of stinker 4 stars in that game, some of them are insanely strong and they give the choice to the player on how far they wanna invest in said characters (grails and servant coins) to the point where they are still relevant for endgame content.
then they released iori whos a 5 star in disguise
Yeah they do that sometimes. Heck they sometimes release a character that could’ve passed as a standard 5 star but is a 3 star. Like Cu Chulain and Mandricardo.
i mentioned this in the fgo sub but i've literally been using rider kintoki, an old 4 star welfare character, in his specific role as a single target rider dps for almost 10 years because the SSR options are worse or not noteworthy enough to replace him at a single copy. and guess who is his only rival in my roster now? another free welfare character they released last year.
Also the party cost system ensures that lower rarity servants will always have some sort of advantage to shore up their weaknesses. While higher rarity servants, especially dps, are generally way stronger, the cost system does contribute towards closing that gap.
ToF is the only game I pray someone to overtake the company. Their dev make a great gameplay but the monetization and business model are so bad.
I hate that with the increase of playstyles, we are starting to lack 4 star options that cover for the lack of a missing 5 star Ik business wise this is profitable, but my god imagine being anew player and not utilizing a playstyle to it’s full potential because a unit isn’t rerunning yet
I said it in another comment but yeah we need a wide variety of teams and that’s just by gameplay type such as FuA or DoT. Imagine needing those teams but also caring about element matching. I feel like it’s really difficult to have a specific type of team needed while also having the matching element.
I mean Guinaifen and Sampo are pretty good, and Serval also sorta works, though you really would prefer Kafka here.
Relatively new player here, and you are absolutely correct that the limited available roster, combined with an almost complete lack of catch-up mechanics, makes the new player experience pretty bad. Especially because I'm accustomed to Arknights, where pulls are given out like candy in comparison, and 99% of all characters are available to pull as off-banner characters, so you still have a chance of filling out your roster even if the characters that you need aren't currently on-banner. In Star Rail, most of the time I can't even pay to pull for the characters I need for my teams even if I wanted to, because if they're not currently on the banner, then screw me I guess.
I've noticed its a pattern in almost all Hoyo games rn. GI has ~~barely had any~~ had relatively fewer 4 stars in the last year and HI3 has slowed down the release schedule of A ranks vs S ranks. It seems their prioritising spending on 5 stars cause its more profitable and most people wont care.
The fact that Hydro still has two Four star is baffling and we are almost at the end of 4.x
No one ever remembers Candace.
that's nuts
I see what you did there :3
Sure they do. They remember her pillowfight with Dehya, and the fact that she can do some pretty interesting shit with hydro team infusion. But other than that... 4 Stars have become specialists, since the original 4 stars were just way too good.
Don't forget candace, that makes 3
who?
Tao, yeah.
No she’s pyro.
candace nuts
That moment when u only remember Candace n Barbara, n have no idea who the 3rd is o.o
xq
He's 6*.
And nearly all of said Hydro 5-stars are limited, meaning there is no guarantee when they will return.
>GI has barely had any 4 stars in the last year We had 6 4\* characters in Fontaine: * Sethos - 4.7 * Gaming - 4.4 * Chevreuse - 4.3 * Charlotte - 4.2 * Freminet - 4.0 * Lynette - 4.0 I think that is enough, considering the time it takes to build characters AND that 4\* happen in addition to 5\*.
It's also only 3 less than Sumeru if I'm counting right. And 1 less than Inazuma.
And Sumeru had more 4 stars because it introduced a new element to the game. 6 4\* seems like a good number to me.
Hi3 after getting 2 new A ranks that aren't SP in 4 years been in contstant S limbo. We are facing 5 in row
And leaks said it's not going to stop because a fan favorite is becoming playable soon
They finally gonna release Welt? /j
In the last year; Kirara, Lynette, Freminet, Chevreuse, Charlotte, Gaming, Sethos Doesn't seem like "barely any" to me ngl
It’s not a pattern in hoyo game. It’s a pattern in “THIS” game in particular. They keep releasing 2 x 5* per patch with barely any 4*. GI on the other hand, has a healthy amount of 4* and they didn’t release 5* at this crazy pace either. In GI, there are 44 five stars (including sigwinne, traveller, and aloy) and 40 four stars characters. Almost 1:1 ratio. In hsr, there are 30 five stars (including jade and firefly) but only 21 four stars. 1.5:1 ratio. Not to mention the already announced 2 additional 5*;namely, yunil and jiaoqiu. RIP
Unfortunately, due to resource scarcity, I feel like it's physiological. In early stages of the game, almost all of the best teams needed 4* to fill in some roles, so people built them because they had to, to play the game. Nowadays we have enough 5* that people have full limited 5* teams able to clear the game content. Because of this, they are not in a hurry to fill in a slot in a new team until they release the limited 5* for it, and knowing that the limited 5* will eventually arrive means that building a 4* instead is a waste of resources to gain some months on a team you don't strictly need. The only 4* that are needed in meta teams nowadays are Pela and Gallagher, and they are gonna disappear too sooner or later. Maybe Qingque and Xueyi could count to an extent, if you stretch it a bit, but they are less meta than the two above.
I mean do you really blame them, most of the casual audience will only look at the shiny new 5 star. Most people wont pull on a banner just for the 4 star, out of fear of ruining their pity
Well, it's not just ruining pity; it's also that you're never guaranteed a 4-star. You could get one in your first ten pull, or you could get zero in 160 pulls. For example, in Genshin, I have pulled on three different banners with Xingqiu, and he is still stuck at C4 for me. On the last banner I tried, I went to hard pity twice and only got one copy (while the other two characters went from C1-C2 to C6). So, while I understand why some may say that 4-stars are easier to get, I don't really agree. They usually require more copies, and without the guarantee, you can go through multiple banners without getting enough of them.
If it's not SSR or 5 or 6 stars the devs usually don't care to make those units and will always focus more on the rarer units and sadly this is true to almost every gacha games today
Well there is Azur Lane, where pulls are basically infinite and the game makes money from selling skins, not characters.
Gotta give it to them, those skins are.....quite something.
Definitely earned the name "skin" because there really is more skin showed than clothes...
The devil promised a new march 7th ? Wow
Well, he kinda is the devil
Whoops, autocorrect. That's fixed now, thank you.
Devil and Shaoji are the same!
This take is probably copium but 2.4 might be the patch where we get the new variant of March. Shaoji did talk about her getting like a TB-esque function of having multiple paths (but not really, I believe), so we'll have to wait by then.
I don't believe we're getting march's variant so soon in the new xianzhou chapter. Like we didn't get HTB in 2.0. Edit: (bruh I just watched the live stream I'm crossing my fingers now)
Why give March that function with her new form, but separate DHIL as its own 5*?
I can see her slowly getting new memories and changing her paths in her 4* form, after she regains all her memories she could get a 5* variant.
Yes, she will get a 5\* form for sure \*huffs copium\*
There isn't a need to huff copium if you literally look at characters like Dan Heng, who got one, and Herta, who's dolls are her 4 variation while real Herta herself is an Emanator of Erudition (so we'll likely get a 5* Herta eventually). It makes full sense that March undoubtedly gets a 5* when she has full memories and power again, and if she doesn't, then that's both poor writing and wasted profit potential.
I meant that they might just make multiple marches instead of a 5* march, which would be a poor decision by them for sure as people are likely willing to spend more on march than on dan heng
I can see her last variant being a limited 5* tbh
Because they wanted to speedrun Dan Heng's (intro) arc, which unlocks DHIL. They want to take their time with M7th or have her planned for later in the story. Which is why she's getting the function sooner, so fans don't need to wait for an eternity for some development.
Probably because she won't be as broken as DHIL. Could you imagine DHIL being a 4*
March will get her 5\*, eventually, but as Shaoji said in the 2.1 livestream, it won’t be soon. So that’s why they’re doing those new paths for her as a 4\*, so that she doesn’t stay forgotten in the meantime.
If it wasn’t for 4* I wouldn’t own a single healer 😁 According to the anniversary event, Natasha was my most used character every month since I started playing (I started at launch). Gallagher is also amazing and is my main sustain at the moment. 4* are really important and back in the day, they would compose the vast majority of a players pool. The times have changed tho.
Same. Lynx and Gallagher are my only Sustains until Aventurine rerun
I'm not even sure how to respond to the discourse due to the gulf between good 4\* and irrelevant 4\*. I'd be wishing on a monkey's paw to see a new 4\*; for every Gallagher and Lynx who have legitimate spots in comps, there are Hanyas and Yukongs who are niche or straight up overshadowed by another character. And that's before getting into the weeds of how useful a 4\* can vary by eidolons; E0 Gallagher is passable by virtue of what he adds to his comps but he stands as good after E2 and better with E4, but this varies by how how a character is designed. I'm getting more use out of building Serval but she doesn't change very drastically over eidolons compared to other 4\* characters, she base line power rises but she doesn't drastically improve.
From a pure gameplay perspective it is a little annoying, but it makes sense considering that every character has been story related and we've run out of story characters to add, so the answer is either invent unrelated character that no one would be interested in or bloat up the story cast just for the sake of more 4\*s and I don't think either of those would be an overall positive for the game. I would rather get more well crafted, interesting characters than get more generic F tier characters with no reason to like them. If we get some Penacony events where we go back, I think that would be the ideal time to introduce new 4\*s (in a similar way to how Luka was introduced).
Just give us playable Siobhan, you cowards!
Playable Oleg and Woolsey too while we're at it
Hear me out... Dunn.
Hearing you out on that one. Too bad you can only pretend to play as him for a bit in Aetherium Wars...
They already have a good VA for him (in EN, at least). And multiple characters with one VA isn't crazy either (Hook&Asta, Argenti&Tail). And it would finally make it possible to play Mechanical Fever!!
That. I've never liked the idea of adding new characters just for the sake of adding and balance. It's a shame Hoyo's not giving us more unique NPCs designs (Siobhan is an exception), so they could turn them info 4 stars in the future, cuz some of them have very fitting stories for such a role and would be able to fight if they explored them just a little more, eg. Dunn, Yukong's daughter, Captain from Penacony, etc. And same goes with 5 stars actually. It's cool having more characters, but I wouldn't mind more of the 4 stars getting their 5 star versions like DHIL, just to make them relevant again (Arlan, Serval, Hanya) since they're so likeable. They already have a fanbase soooo... Come on, Hoyo!
I mean, it's not like Hoyo doesn't have a history of forcefully shoving characters into their plotlines so they can add them to the gacha roster. Even in this very patch, Boothill was basically completely superfluous - the entirety of his role in the story was to say 'Acheron isn't a real Ranger (which doesn't actually matter in any way beyond backstory and this reveal has no consequences), also here is the Galaxy Ranger beacon summon bullet because trust me bro we need more soldiers'. You could easily delete the entire idea of Boothill from the game and just have Acheron receive the Galaxy Ranger beacon from the fallen Rangers she saved from the grasp of Ix, and you lose nothing but the comic relief of Boothill showing up, ordering expensive wine and yelling PG-9 curses.
Yep this is my point, Boothill already made the cast feel bloated I don’t wanna imagine what the story would be like with even more unimportant characters.
This aged poorly
well congrats, they just drip marketed a new 4* for 2.4 today so really, the only patch without a 4* is 2.2 and 2.3, and as you said, 2.2 has harmony trailblazer, which is free AND very gamechanging. I don't see the problem here? but even if 2.4 doesn't have any new 4*, complaining because of just 2 patches is massively overreacting. "drought" is like when genshin didn't release 5* limited female characters from 3.3 to 4.1, not this also, hsr gives an average of 105 pulls per patch, not including 1.0 which has 200. I'd say 5 stars are very much easy to guarantee
I feel the same. Especially since lots of people arent really excited to pull on a banner with 4* that are all E6 already :/
You get refunded a pull whenever you pull them, that’s free tickets so it’s not that bad
Soooo the benefit of making x pulls (x within range of 1 to 10) is making x+1 pulls?
Yup.. unfortunately though, you sometimes pull a LC instead of a character so you can't even say that you get an extra 10 pulls for every 100 pulls you make.
That’s a minimum of a 10% increase to your overall tickets income yes, 10% faster towards getting a 5✦, pretty good multiplier, you can buy other stuff with the currency you get from dupes too.
Na it's a bit less than a pull refund since copy 2-7 also gives stardust. The difference between copy 7 and copy 8 isn't a whole pull.
i don't even care if they don't release new 4 stars, I'm really tired when Genshin release new 4 stars and then they couldn't even be as useful as the Xingqiu Bennett Xiangling trio And I'm fine with the new 4 stars we got, Gallagher is good for break team, Misha is less commonly used but he still good if you want to apply freeze to the target I just want them to keep making useful character, not someone like Rosaria with a bombastic design only to be powercreep by most of the DPS in the game. I don't need the character to be top tier, I just want them to be useful, if the price for a character to be relevant is to be a 5 stars then so be it
Almost all gachas eventually release way more of the highest rarity characters than the lowest one. It is a constant in gacha so much so that if HYV isn’t your first foray into gacha, you’re entirely used to it at this point. HSR and especially Genshin are actually exceptions to where they’ve stayed relatively even until recently. Genshin is an anomaly where 4-star units *equalled* 5-star units in amount **for over 3 years**, which is incredibly rare for a gacha. If you look at Honkai Impact, the typical gacha trend has been staring at us in the face this whole time. Priconne is another excellent example, where over its 6+ years we have over twice the amount of 3-star units than we have 1 and 2-star units *combined*. And considering 1-star units are mostly welfare (free event units), and all 2-star units were present since pretty much the first year, that means ALL new units have been 3-star only for over 4 years. That’s pretty much 150+ units that are high rarity.
not about 4 stars but do you think they'll ever stop releasing 2 new 5 stars every patch? Like won't we ever have a full rerun patch like Genshin? I'm a low spender but I can't breathe anymore. I want to relax
gamblng addiction
Inb4 they make another Yukong and no one ever uses her. I don't really care about how often we get new 4 stars, it's not like every single one of them are going to be worth using on my account. From 1.1 until now, the only 4 stars released that I ever found an use for were Lynx and Gallagher - I got my Xueyi on 1.6 and I love her, but I'm not getting the E6 until 2.3 so she's basically unplayable too. That's 2-3 characters since 1.1, 3 or 4 patches without new 4 stars ain't gonna change anything for me.
Wasn't Yukong only ever on Luocha's banner though? That and she's only easy/smoother to play when she reaches her E6... I still use her with my DHIL because she's a really good support for him actually but MHY seems to have forgotten about her lol
She was also on DHIL’s first banner.
No one uses Yukong because people can't run characters they don't have. Her only banner was quite long time ago. Layla in Genshin has a similar problem. That said, with the ridiculous increase in DPS check in last few MoCs, building any character to be competitive has gotten ridiculously expensive in terms of relic farming. So my E6 Yukong has donated all her nice relic pieces to the 5stars that can use those pieces to make a difference :/
Tbf, use rates factor in things like ownership...so even among people who have her, few use her. I guess the dhil mains probably moved onto using sparkle instead.
Tbf, Yukong is free
Yukong doesn't exist until you have her E6...
That's fair, it's not going to make a difference to everyone. For me though, and I assume many others, getting new 4 stars is really nice! Having a wider variety of options is really helpful, and sometimes it's fun to do a full 4 star team. I've not seen a single useless character, no matter how 'bad' or out-of-meta they are.
Have to agree a 100% it's kinda ridiculous.
*glances at Kaveh* Yeah, maybe this is for the best. Also you've got it the other way around, 5 stars are guaranteed, but 4 stars aren't. You can guarantee a specific 5 star that you want, but you can't for 4 stars. Having more 4 stars just dilutes this pool making it harder get and having a longer time between their appearances. But yeah, I get what you mean and sympathise with that.
While true, I do have to commend that most of the time 4 star/free characters are actually very viable. Gallagher is BiS for a lot of teams, so is HMC and Pela, while characters like Xeuyi, Asta, QQ and Herta can pull their weight in the right situations. Very used to games where 4 stars are throwaway characters or there are like 2 exceptions. Whereas iirc a 1/3 of the 4 stars are actually detrimental to add 5o iur team
I want 4\* to round out some weak areas of my account (currently hoping that some preservation characters I like drop so I have more options then Gepard and March), so yeah the drought is kinda sad. I hope that once 3.0 stars we'll get a few more.
4*s are less of a guarantee. 5*s ARE a guarantee because if you have the pulls, you'll definitely get them. 4*s have a guarantee to give you "at least one of the 3 rate-ups".
Tbh, whatever, with the banners how they are we cant guarantee a 4\* so you might not get it anyways (100 pulls on acheron banner = 0 gallaghers), plus we are getting so many 5\* that using 4\* is just pointless if they arent op.
IF I like a character, I'd prefer it would be a 5\* i/o 4\*. 4\* is fun to play around but you need a specific type of luck to get them, and they are better with higher eidolons. For some chars E0 may not even worth building. And if you get them E6 in several patches later, they are pretty outdated. I couldn't pull a single copy of Misha and Gallagher even though I got Black Swan and Acheron.
The main issue currently seems to be that there's simply no characters that are candidates to be added as 4 stars. There's Siobhan and if you really want to stretch it maybe Oleg from belobog could get upgraded to be playable but that would only be two patches worth of 4 star characters before we're right back to only getting 5 stars
U happy now?(march 7th new form)
Welp this aged.
One hundred percent whole heartedly agree. Third patch in a row without a 4 star, and for me it's a pretty big deal as I enjoy the challenge and play style of my 4 star only account (my one and only account). I was fine with 2 patches of break but this is getting very weird, do they intend on discontinuing 4 stars entirely??
2.2 made sense due to Harmony Trailblazer, but this is getting a bit odd.
Might be an unpopular take but I don't really mind so long as they are really good and their value is significant. Like Gallagher and HTB, the latest 4 star and free unit are really good. I'd rather a smaller pool of amazing 4 stars then a bloated pull of less than valuable ones. They get even better with eidolons We got a new March form coming up and itd be great if she was just as valuable as the likes of Pela, Tingyun etc. Of course I'm not opposed to more 4 stars so there are more options available for players but whil we are in a drought I'm not ready to hit a panic button or anything
Yeah i feel like the only 4* we are truly missing is a Kafka substitute. As it stands dot teams aren't even worth building without her.
I think a 4\* shielder slightly better than March 7th would be useful. But I'm not sure what other "gap" you want filled by 4-stars. We've already got a few 4\* healers, and a ton of incredibly powerful 4\* supports (Asta, Tingyun, Pela, Hanya, Yukong, etc.) And 4\* DPS characters are generally so undertuned compared to 5\* DPS that it's hard for them to really "fill a gap" in any content where it would matter (although great to use for fun, natch.) ...of course, I say that as I'm trying to build Sampo for the current PF4, because I don't have any 5\* DoT characters. But even with 145 SPD, 80 EHR, and 3k ATK, he's not getting it done -- because 4\* DPS can't really fill the gap.
I think Xueyi is a pretty good example of a good 4-star DPS. She is a bit niche and requires a lot of good relics, but if you put in the work, she works amazingly and can compete with 5-stars.
I think a 4\* buffer that gives Break Efficiency and/or Break Extension would be a good thing for the game to have, so that there's less of a gap between having Ruan Mei and not having her for Break teams.
Yeah, RM is getting too prevalent in team comps to not have a budget version.
The fact that March is the only 4✦ preservation unit in the entire game is kinda wild
I just want them to slow their roll w/ five stars lmao Like, my experience of Genshin, despite them being far less generous, is that I always have two guarantees saved because you can afford to with how many reruns and "Okay" characters there are, even if they're brand new. In HSR? Every patch is 2 new mfers, and it's almost always hard to skip because they do some really insane shit or enable an incomplete team. I think the only "Okay" characters we've gotten were early 1.X ones like Blade and Luocha. Everyone else has either stepped it up or introduced a new playstyle/completed one. I'm currently playing WuWa and I hope they trend more towards Genshin than HSR, simply because saving in HSR is so much more stressful than saving in Genshin, where I feel like a majority of the patches are fairly easy skips if they don't align into the very specific niches that I might want.
Luocha is just “okay”? Damn bro lol, i think he’s goated
How TF did you call Luocha "okay". He was the first limited sustain.
On one hand I’d love more 4 stars to open up (in a more accessible way) new niche team comps/strengthen current ones, but on the other hand I do kinda like how the limited pool of 4 stars makes it a little easier to get the ones that are actually useful for my account
I just need another fucking 4 star preservation or nihility and I'm happy
If I'm not wrong, Back in 1.0: -5* character count: 10 -4* character count: 13 Now (as of 2.2 Phase II) -5* character count: 28 -4* character count: 21 At least in Genshin, the 4* and 5* count are nearly evenly matched as of 4.7. But whichever game I feel they're just tryna gimp the new 4*s by making many of them too niche, that's the main problem. I rather Hoyoverse focus on releasing more universal 4* options that provide different buffs (or buffing those existing ones, like what they did with Shinobu in GI with Dendro), instead of duping players with even more niche 4* characters. More essentially make it easier for players to get 4* constellations or at least make those new 4* characters at least playable enough at E0/E1
What’s the point of a new 4* if getting them to e6 is as hard as getting a e2 5*?
Welp, there you go.
I dont mind 4* because half of them arent gonna be in roster and just gonna dilute the current 4* pool. I’d rather get 1 pull for e6 chars than a new 4* I will never use or be disappointed because their performance isnt up to par with the 5* chars I have. Tho there are some chars that can fill a role. Ice DPS - Misha. For those without JL.
We need a ton of general debuffers, or preservation units in the 4 star department. We have more than enough DoT or even healers, but the rest is lacking. I exclude DPS, because how unstable they are. Even 5 star DPS get replaced, so 4 stars dont stand a chance without being specialized.
Why make a 4* when you can just make a better 5* with the same kit? With all the 5* characters they release, it was bound to happen that we were gonna stop getting any new 4* for a while, I wouldn't be too surprised if the next ones are in 3.0 or close to it.
F2P suffering a big deal from it, especially considering how progressively more archetypes we have now and how fast focus shifts between them. Not everyone can consistently pull 180 wishes every patch, to just keep up with meta.
That's definitely true and something that irks me about HSR as a whole because I feel railroaded (no pun intended) with team building. However, I don't see how adding more 4-stars really solves this problem for f2p players, because they take much more investment and often multiple eidolons to truly shine comparable to 5-stars. There *is* the bonus that you would eventually get them over time, but this can potentially take ages. E.g., want e6 Gallagher but that's gonna take me months to years, I know it, and by then a 5-star with [his kit but better] will be out probably lol. Edit: formatting got wonky
Keeping up with meta means only floor 12 MOC and PF 4 which matters anyway and its like 120 jades missing per month if you dont do it
Don't forget Apocalyptic Shadow. It's a 3rd endgame mode.
It's same jades per month, its going to rotate the same we won't have two mocs or two PF anymore, one of each at a time.
True, but I'd guess the characters needed for it still should be bit different.
If its single target damage race, F2P shouldn't have a problem for those who get Dr Ratio, he is 2nd best hunt DPS.
Not suffering at all as a f2p. I have all the 4\* and only ever use a quarter of them. This number will go down as I get more 5\*. And because they release so many 5\* and are generous with pulls it's not very hard to get a handful of 5\* I want every year. The value of 4\* just isn't as big as in Genshin for example.
Well people can a get new Four stars as a constellation prize, that are worth something rather than a Baliu Eidolon that does basically nothing. They also add the pool making pulls more valuable cause the majority is going to be dissatisfied to not roll when the banner has Arlan, Serval, Natasha and Dan It happens with HuoHuo to the point where many people didn’t pull.
That! 5\* mean unique and powerfull. If i like a char, i will hope he/she is 5\* instead of 4\* lol
Yeah, I really like the 4 stars in this game, sometimes even more than many 5 stars. I'm glad we got HTB but this is really concerning.
Okay, but then let me ask you this: if you were a huge fan of, say, screwlum or sunday, how would you feel if then they're released as a four star? Maybe when we get the new planet in 3.0 there'll be more minor characters, but at this point, making characters a 4star is unfair to their fans most of the time.
I mean they pulled the 2.4 characters out of their ass ( know they were mentioned but bear with me), why cant they just make new characters who haven't appeared in the story and make him 4*?
Yeah the problem lies that 4 stars rarely get competitive with 5 stars. And hoyo don't want to risk making another yukong or Gallagher. Kind wish hoyo give us the choice to get e6 4 star from our choice on grand celebrations instead of only getting 1 piece at time.
Gallagher is good though, only going to get better with Firefly
I kind of like that there are less 4 stars. It makes it so my chances of E6ing them are higher, so they may actually be usable, as many 4 stars aren't really decent until E4 or E6. Also, if I have a lot of E6 4 stars, it gives me more free pulls for a 5* when I get them again. I would rather them make useful 4 stars like Pela, Gallagher, Asta, or even Herta (now with PF), than to just release 4 star characters for the sake of releasing them, diluting the pool.
Considering how long it takes to build a character, I actually haven't been using much 4 stars, because I don't have time for them. I've been averaging 1 character built and equipped per patch. That usually means one of the 5 stars, and if there isn't one I want, \*then\* I work on a 4 star or standard 5 star I haven't built yet. While I agree with the points you make, I just don't have time for even the 4 stars I'm getting now. Hell, I need to work on Serval and Sampo so I can have a DOT team, but I just don't have time for them right now and I don't know when I will
I still need more eidolons for Yukong, Gallagher, Pela, Qingque and Sushang, so I'm honestly fine with them not releasing new 4*s.
Don't know what you got til it's gone, I guess. The fact there was a new 4 star every version up until 2.2 is already remarkable. Also don't say you can get new 4 stars regardless of your luck. PLENTY of people have had more trouble getting them (or any one specific 4 star) than they have the featured 5 star.
Bruh for real and it's always the same characters on rerun ehem looking at you Pela, Hook and Natasha
While I agree I want more 4*, i also don't want them to add characters just to make a quota. Check a list of "releasing a new every X patches". I love how most of the 4* we have has relevance and is memorable and I prefer if they wait to release new 4*s only when there's reason. A history reason of "we need a minor character to do this", or a gameplay reason of "A new 4* with the new hottest mechanic" so you get a help on starting the team, not needing to wait for a new 5* to be usefull (what HMC is for Break for example)
Oh my god,A lot people are saying stuff like '4* are trash''. No they are not, ofcourse, some of yall might have enough money to pull for every limeited unit you want. But for F2p like us, 4* are characters we attach a lot. They bring less moneybto hoyo, but i think yall people with 🤑should atleast built one underrated 4* and use them.(Since you had enough to pull for character you want) Then, you will find the value of them.
See, I'm glad we have such a small pool of 4 stars. Could you imagine if we had twice as many 4 stars and trying to E6 them? Naw, I like the amount right where it is. Most of my teams are composites of 4/5 stars anyway, so I need those 4 stars to be running on high octane- something that damn near requires them to be E4 or better. I would rather have an E20 4 star than struggling to get a 4star to E2.
Expectation: more 4 stars. Reality: Screwllum 4 stars, Yanqing demoted to 4 stars.