I'm specifically talking about ENVIRONMENTAL reactions. You know, like setting grass on fire or electrifying water. I feel like they haven't really been expanded upon since Mondstadt and there are a lot of cool ones that could be implemented.
A few of my ideas include:
- Using anemo in the desert blows sand at your opponents and can temporarily blind them (but they can also blind you).
- Using geo or applying electro during a thunderstorm could cause a thunder strike on you, the enemy or a geo construct (like a lighting rod).
- Using pyro in an area with lots of water could create a cloud of water vapour that you could jump on to cross small lakes or ponds without swimming.
I think the problem is, that these reactions would also need to work in older regions who have not been designed for that. It could break a lot of puzzles. I think this is also the reason, why new regions always get gimmick mechanics, that are specific to that region and completely forgotten after we enter a new region. Allowing Natlan units to use their unique powers outside of Natlan was most likely seen as a big mistake at Hoyo, so no new Nod Krai unit has gotten a useful exploration mechanic since.
Can agree, Chasca's flight broke so many puzzles for me in the earlier regions.
Same with wanderer he just allowed me to skip so many puzzles just from being able to fly to the chest or oculous
Me literally anywhere in liyue "huh... Looks like they want me to use travelers Geo ability... Pulls out my wanderer/albedo/venti combo
Same but with wanderer but he’s a 3.x character lol
Been cheating so many puzzles with Zhongli's pillars, Kaeya's skill, Venti's flight, Xiao's skill, Kazuha's jump and Wanderer's flight or Furina's jesus walk since I got them. Just because we can reach that oculus without touching the intended environmental method doesn't mean we won't touch newer characters.
These are just players being creative with what the have and a good thing imo. Being restrictive when Genshin's exploration is already on the slower and clunky side (I love Wanderer but anyone who has used his flight can feel how linear it is lmao) compared to their newer competition is just recipe to frustrate many.
Giving options to make exploration smoother (because not everyone likes the characters they're on, like Sayu or Wanderer) is a way to keep up with competition if they can't improve their spaghetti code.
I am not sure if you can really compare some of the Natlan high constellation mobility with what older units do. A high con mavuika is basically the archon of transportation.
Obviously you are right though, creative puzzle solving should always be a welcome mechanic, and Genshin is a very slow game at times. I was just trying to think like Hoyo.
Personally I loooove mobility abilities. And I am terribly sad, that no unit since Nod Krai got one. Laumas alternate sprint is a joke and not even worth mentioning.
Laumas is a flavor passive
They already opened the floodgate, why stop now?
the cynic part of me wants to say "so new players still buy primos to get old Natlan units, even if they fall out of Meta eventually" haha. But I dont know, maybe to push new mechanics in the future. Some people want to play the new units in exploration content, so they are kinda forced to do all puzzles the "intended" way.
mavuika being able to climb, fly, and drive on water st the same time has made a lot of the game 10x easier on me
Yeah for me too. It is a little sad, because it makes it hard to explore with other teams. Mavuika+Xilonen(+Citlali and maybe Iansan) is just insane for Exploration.
even outside natlan, I love mavuika, she's at c2r1 for me, but I can't say she didn't break the game when she released lol
There are a lot of special environmental reactions in the game, if you just look:
You can use Anemo in the desert to blow away sand piles (sometimes you'll even get a chest for it). You can also use it to blow away leaves around the map.
There is a place in Nod-Krai, where lightning strikes can help you jump higher.
Electrifying water kills fishes, so you can collect them easier.
Fires (also the cooking ones) get put out, if you apply Cryo or Hydro to them.
Note for the fires: Electro puts them out and spreads the fire if it's from a cooking one or brazier (if you have three braziers and only the middle is lit up, it will put out the middle and the outside ones will light up). Anemo also puts out fires on the second hit.
I remember the big one that blew my mind in 1.0 was applying pyro to break the electro rocks after thinking it was just an uninteractable environmental hazard. You can actually extrapolate this one step further and mine regular ore by briefly applying pyro with Guoba and applying electro at the same time. My main team did not have a claymore character, and swapping takes so long so that's just how I mined until I got Zhongli.
That's really the essence of the problem imo. If you want to interact with a lot of these pre-4.0 gimmicks you either need to specifically craft an overworld team that may or may not have your favorite characters, or you'll need to constantly swap. All of these niche elemental interactions are cool in theory, but the ability to seamlessly interact with the world no matter what characters are on your team is just so much more fun long term.
Sumeru is the culmination of the elemental design direcrion that they eventually abandoned, especially the desert. If you want to have a seamless experience you must have pyro for torches, anemo for sand piles, dendro to activate the dendro stuff, and electro to interact with the activated dendro. For me that meant locking myself to Klee, Kazuha, Nahida, Fischl for 2-3 map expansions. It was fun enough in the end, but that's also 3 limited characters worth of fun factored in as well.
I know that these citations are different from your examples, which are more 'optional,' but the thing is that Hoyo designs systems for the entirety of the playerbase. If they see that 40% of players are not interacting with something, it's a failed system and going to the chopping block for something else. It's not worth their time to make something only 60% if their base will ever spend time on.
That would be cool, but there are two problems
1. The indie company called Hoyoverse can not do that.
2. The game would be heavier.
Adding mechanics like that wouldn’t really change he game’s footprint. It’s additional resources, like art assets, that add to space, not code.
Players complained about it in V1. Mihoyo probably gave up after those complaints.
I feel like they were phased out after 3.0 for a good reason. Having to constantly switch characters must've been a huge pain point in that patch: you had to have dendro, a bow character, electro and pyro for shroom puzzles, somehow remove pyro and electro so you don't farm the worse fungi mats. Hence why a lot of content post 4.0 rely on the extra button instead. Is it lamer? Yes, but people were indeed irritated, and that feedback is all you need.
I'm not talking about the ones used for puzzles
Too much effort. We can assume that codebase is pretty messy in the beginning as they were at beginning of game. Then they probably realised alot more optimizations and now if u want to change something at base then it might be cooked to understand and change old code. We know how legacy code change can be. We can already see many puzzles being ignored by chasca mavuika (like liyue domains etc). So its not a good idea to change anything in foundation level. That being said nod krai ones are good since they are designing char which are main gimmck with specific rxns. Like i can see why aino and jahoda cant proc lunar dmg on own because as 4* if u can do that then ppl will use old char with this and it will be even more messy. But nod krai 5* base kit itself is designed on basis of lunar gimmick. So they dont need to worry about old char
I don't think you'll get that in this game. I feel like their philosophy when it comes to open world exploration focuses more on story rather than gameplay. Especially now in Nod Krai where the puzzles are almost non existent.
Most of the world quests gameplay is just going from one place to another to fight something. Story is the sole focus and gameplay takes a huge backseat.
This also makes sense with the genre. Most of their audience isnt looking for anything deep. A lot of them just want a quick dopamine of fun where they can relax. Gachas are the TikTok of gaming after all.
This sucks as an answer but you're better off looking for that kind of deep complex mechanics in gameplay at single player games.
Hi u/Spiral1407, please consider checking the most recent pinned weekly question megathread here https://www.reddit.com/r/GenshinImpact/about/sticky when you have a moment to help fellow community members. Thank you.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
Ngl it takes a while for someone to even have this in game resources required to even do all the current reactions…. I think what we got is fine
I'm not talking about combat reactions though
Yeah? It still takes a while for someone to get at least 1 character of each element to have a full access to potential reactions ya know plus we gotta take into account that lots of regions aren’t designed for new environmental reactions too :/ I’m personally happy with what we got
It really doesn't tho. You get access to every single element with the free 4 stars.
I’m going to have to disagree. Frankly, I find a lot of the environmental reactions a pain to deal with. Lighting the grass on fire makes using pyro characters a liability in many areas, due to (un)friendly fire. Electrocuting water is the same for electro characters. I find those situations usually cause more inconvenience for me than my enemies.
I’d prefer that characters of different elements have mostly consistent performance across various environments, rather than being significantly more or less powerful depending on the usually arbitrary choice of location for an encounter. Adding more uncontrollable complexity to combat doesn’t make the game more fun, in my opinion.