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Happy Underpants
Jul 23, 2007
When I have an issue with this game it comes from a place of investment. If I thought the game was just bad I'd scrape it off my heel and move on with my day but so many parts of this game are really good.

I'm talking about the food pics, more people should see themselves the way this game sees hash browns.

In addition to that some of the moments in this game are trampled on by the glut of exposition. For me it was the Venti quest. I got to experience a really touching moment about the intersection of ambition, self image and expectation. I was genuinely moved.

Then there was a cutscene. Obviously I wasn't moved enough. I needed to know how epic that revolution was. Big moving art piece, dramatic music, the works. Tore me right out of the connection I had with that narrative.

That's how most of the story quests hit me. I get drawn in by the lure of sincerity then get drowned by word after word of purple pap.

There's also the split between people who've played since launch and people who have just started or have come back from a hiatus. My introduction to Kazuha was a big fight scene and I knew I was supposed to be invested in this person despite seeing them for the first time. The "Who is this idiot" feeling was the norm for a lot of post release characters, it's like I'm watching a show from mid season. I feel like not being there for all the past events leaves me missing characterization and world building other people have access to.

It's just alienating and instead of wanting to catch up I want to retreat to the parts of the game I enjoy: Hitting things, picking flowers and making numbers go up.

TL:DR Here at the Genshin Impact Writing Studio we take the finest lilies, or heck old leaves, and plate them in 6 millimeters of pure gold! That clank as they hit the floor is the clank of quality!

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Tae
Oct 24, 2010

Hello? Can you hear me? ...Perhaps if I shout? AAAAAAAAAH!
Kazuha was mandatory before inazuma, was he not?

MoonCrab
Nov 19, 2014

A mildly pertubed emoji face
Yes, the Kazu quest is actually a part of the main story. In fact, his flashback cutscene where his friend is killed and he runs away is kinda the foundational story that the main Inazuma plot was built upon? The story starts with him wanting to revive the vision, he revives the vision in the climax, the ending is him leaving the vision and moving on.

Originally I was gonna post a meaner response but then I though to myself, hmm, can I really blame anyone for dropping the main Inazuma storyline from their memory? Not in good faith lol

Happy Underpants
Jul 23, 2007
Wait what? I never got this quest I never knew about Kazuha's friend. I had no idea how to interpret the second vision on his belt the first time I saw it. When did it happen and where?

ninjoatse.cx
Apr 9, 2005

Fun Shoe
The jank is what makes the hardest content hard. Venti turned 90 degrees to fire his ult? Decided to climb onto a geo object in the middle of an arena? Can't want over a nigh invisible ridge while aiming a bow in the abyss?

My new favorite is having no Fing clue what's supposed to be climbable or not. It kinda feels like there are different climbing physics for every section.

Sanctum
Feb 14, 2005

Property was their religion
A church for one
I memoryholed that quest so hard when I asked someone what's up with that sword in the coastal gulf of north of narukami shrine they said it was for Kazuha's brother and I was like "wait, who?"

Oh yeah right. So why is everyone cool with sara killing kazuha's brother?

Happy Underpants
Jul 23, 2007
Diluc turning 180 degrees to obliterate the hilichurl with his ult instead of the Ruin Grader will never stop being hilarious. I love that sullen dullard, I'm glad he was my first five star.

Tae
Oct 24, 2010

Hello? Can you hear me? ...Perhaps if I shout? AAAAAAAAAH!

Sanctum posted:


Oh yeah right. So why is everyone cool with sara killing kazuha's brother?

That wasn't his brother, it was a good friend.

And the whole point of that scene is that the war is over, the decree is done. There's nothing gained by getting revenge on Sara, despite her giving the okay. Kazuha put objective peace over his lingering feelings.

Ruby Prism
Aug 7, 2011

With this, I'll be able to make the ultimate pie!

Happy Underpants posted:

(...) In addition to that some of the moments in this game are trampled on by the glut of exposition. For me it was the Venti quest. I got to experience a really touching moment about the intersection of ambition, self image and expectation. I was genuinely moved.

Then there was a cutscene. Obviously I wasn't moved enough. I needed to know how epic that revolution was. Big moving art piece, dramatic music, the works. Tore me right out of the connection I had with that narrative.

That's how most of the story quests hit me. I get drawn in by the lure of sincerity then get drowned by word after word of purple pap. (...)

The way I saw it at least, that cutscene, which was in the same style as a few others told in Venti's voice, needed to be a grandiose fairy tale precisely because Venti is desperately clinging to his bard friend's persona. That bombastic retelling followed by Venti's uncharacteristic silent contemplation, sitting on the palms of his statue's hands... was incredibly contrasting and powerful to me. It's still probably my favorite character quest in the entire game.

Their exposition dumps have grown to comical levels post-Inazuma though and I have to attribute it to a different localization team.

As for not knowing who Kazuha even was, maybe when Mihoyo made it easier to get to Inazuma they mistakenly removed Beidou's tournament quest off the list of quest requirements? Because yeah, you're supposed to be introduced to him and his backstory before you even set foot in Inazuma.

MoonCrab
Nov 19, 2014

A mildly pertubed emoji face

Happy Underpants posted:

Wait what? I never got this quest I never knew about Kazuha's friend. I had no idea how to interpret the second vision on his belt the first time I saw it. When did it happen and where?

You know how Beidou has a semi secret fight club, and you win it in order to get her to sneak you into Inazuma? That's when it happens. It's not a character quest, it's straight up archon quest baybee

Sanctum posted:

I memoryholed that quest so hard when I asked someone what's up with that sword in the coastal gulf of north of narukami shrine they said it was for Kazuha's brother and I was like "wait, who?"

Oh yeah right. So why is everyone cool with sara killing kazuha's brother?

It's just his friend, not his bro. It happened because Tomo (fanon nickname) literally walked up to Raiden's palace and demanded a duel to the death, because his dream seemed to be to stand up to Raiden. Like, the Kujou clan didn't generally go around killing people during vision hunt. Tomo just decided to get killed by Raiden all on his own (understandable tbh), so when Kazu and Sara meet later on they decide to put it all behind them.

Happy Underpants
Jul 23, 2007

This is it!! I was skipping everything because I was rushing archon quests and this was the moment I gave up on the game's dialogue! It was during the Liyue festival and I was just under leveled enough to make that ocean serpent fight a complete slog because I only had four leveled characters and none of their talents leveled because I didn't know how domains worked!

Closure at last, Thank you.


This makes sense to me. I'm used to never having been the target demographic for anything ever but that cut scene would have landed way better if half way through Venti fell off of a chair.

Rexxed
May 1, 2010

Dis is amazing!
I gotta try dis!

I just did this quest line to get to Inazuma tonight, and Kazuha is on Beidou's ship as you talk to her about going to Inazuma and she introduces you. Then he's at the tournament and talks to you about the masterless vision he put up as the top prize, he also tells you about the final competitor, then asks you to show him your fighting style against some slimes (while the masterless vision is stolen). He then provides the wind currents to chase down the thief. So it's not a long interaction but you spend more time talking to him during that quest series than even Beidou.

Happy Underpants
Jul 23, 2007
I remember all this. I do I do. I recant my prior pugnaciousness. Now I just think it's funny.

If I ever roll Kazuha (Which I will because of this thread's opinion of him) I will have a fun time imagining my brain dead traveler asking who he is and what he's doing here.

Edit: wait wait wait, same spiel: who is Scaramouche and how were they able to drop me using bad vibes in that one cut scene?

Happy Underpants fucked around with this message at 07:05 on Apr 23, 2022

Zwiebel
Feb 19, 2011

Hi!
They just changed bow tracking in 2.6 and it was never that bad. I'm not quite sure what people are experiencing when they say it's terrible, but I've never really had major problems with it, playing physical Fischl, Yoimiya, Yanfei or Ningguang. I kinda hate Klees tracking because her attack range feels way too short (unless she has elevation). But most people seem to like her a lot and I never see people complain about her gameplay, so it's probably just a matter of me not getting used to it. She's basically melee range, I suppose.
The recent tracking changes mostly affected flying bosses like the golden wolflord, but here's a comparison video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylciX7o48xQ
I guess this got buried under the discussion surrounding the Yae Miko tracking issue, but it's not like they aren't working on this stuff.

It also hasn't been that long since they addressed the problem a lot of melee characters have had with regular Riftwolves and their weird hitboxes making them inconvenient to attack with melee characters.

QoL changes seem to take them a while, but having played Mona since 1.1 and then finally getting her dodge fixed in 2.0 made me come to the conclusion that it's more of a priority issue rather than an unwillingness to change these things.
I don't have the confidence that they'll be able to fix everything (or are willing to), but on the other hand I tend to think that a six week patch schedule delivering substantial content is insane for a long running service game. Maybe playing MMOs years ago has just lowered my standards too much.

Sanctum posted:

Oh yeah right. So why is everyone cool with sara killing kazuha's brother?

Kazuha said he was cool with it in the 2.2 event that gave us a lute and they just talked about it again in the Irodori festival.

EDIT:

Happy Underpants posted:

Edit: wait wait wait, same spiel: who is Scaramouche and how were they able to drop me using bad vibes in that one cut scene?

Scaramouche was a rando with a big hat in the limited 1.1 event Unreconciled Stars and he was playing nice until he decided he should kill the traveler. This got ruined because Mona was there and she's a walking lie detector, pointing out that Scaramouche has secretly been an rear end in a top hat all along and they got away. Then they meet him again at the end of Unreconciled Stars and he's being a nasty rear end in a top hat and exits while calling everyone else a sucker.
The bad vibes in the archon quest was more because of the crystal marrow harvested from Orobaxis corpse rather than anything Scaramouche did. We don't quite know yet why it affected the traveler like that.

Zwiebel fucked around with this message at 07:27 on Apr 23, 2022

Kale
May 14, 2010

If you missed one flagship event way back near the start of the game then Fischl has never appeared in the story in any capacity and there's no way to see her in it at all that I'm aware of, people just talk about her from time to time and you can sometimes very rarely get her on event wishes. Kazuha has at least shown up from time to time and pretty recently even.

Kale fucked around with this message at 07:17 on Apr 23, 2022

Rexxed
May 1, 2010

Dis is amazing!
I gotta try dis!

Kale posted:

If you missed one flagship event way back near the start of the game then Fischl has never appeared in the story in any capacity and there's no way to see her in it at all that I'm aware of, people just talk about her from time to time and you can sometimes very rarely get her on event wishes. Kazuha has at least shown up from time to time and pretty recently even.

I got her from a wish and I have no idea who she is except from her profile story entry. I've been playing about two weeks.

Tae
Oct 24, 2010

Hello? Can you hear me? ...Perhaps if I shout? AAAAAAAAAH!
They made alot of qol, like the ability to just go to Liyue or Moonstadt or inazuma wasn't there at the start of 2.0 at all

RareAcumen
Dec 28, 2012




The gadget menu has shortcuts for like, L1+ Triangle/Square/Circle but you can only use Circle and it bothers me that they've never let us set every button to something.

x1o
Aug 5, 2005

My focus is UNPARALLELED!

Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:

Important notice for the web event I sent Albedo and Klee on a super long trip and the shiba inu showed up and when you click on him he makes the cutest shittiest little face and gives you mora.

I've also seen a cat and a hydro slime do the same thing. These web events are super adorable and we need more of them.

padijun
Feb 5, 2004

murderbears forever

YoshiOfYellow posted:

The auto-aim being dysfunctional as hell with certain bursts (ie Venti, Diona, Ayaka).

ninjoatse.cx posted:

The jank is what makes the hardest content hard. Venti turned 90 degrees to fire his ult?

is it possible you're not used to his ult? it's extremely reliable, he always launches it the same distance at the closest enemy. If venti is facing the wrong direction AND too far away from the enemies it doesn't auto target

I've been using him on my chasm exploration and resin burning teams recently and haven't noticed anything wrong with it :shrug:

Shinji2015
Aug 31, 2007
Keen on the hygiene and on the mission like a super technician.

Zwiebel posted:

Scaramouche was a rando with a big hat in the limited 1.1 event Unreconciled Stars and he was playing nice until he decided he should kill the traveler. This got ruined because Mona was there and she's a walking lie detector, pointing out that Scaramouche has secretly been an rear end in a top hat all along and they got away. Then they meet him again at the end of Unreconciled Stars and he's being a nasty rear end in a top hat and exits while calling everyone else a sucker.
The bad vibes in the archon quest was more because of the crystal marrow harvested from Orobaxis corpse rather than anything Scaramouche did. We don't quite know yet why it affected the traveler like that.

Kale posted:

If you missed one flagship event way back near the start of the game then Fischl has never appeared in the story in any capacity and there's no way to see her in it at all that I'm aware of, people just talk about her from time to time and you can sometimes very rarely get her on event wishes. Kazuha has at least shown up from time to time and pretty recently even.

Stuff like this makes me really want them to make it easier to catch people up on things they might have missed. I tried Genshin at launch, but I fell off initially; it wasn't until they announced Aloy would be a free character for PS players (which happened to be right when I had just completed HZD for the first time) did I give the game another chance and got hooked. So I missed everything between 1.1 and until like 2.3 where I had mostly everything unlocked and could participate in flagship events.

I get they want you to participate in the events as they happen and if you're interested in the story, that's part of the motivation to get to where you can enjoy them, but it's not new player friendly. I had no context for Scaramouche when he appeared in the Inuzuma archon quest other than him being a Fatui, and knowing that he had tried to kill the Traveler beforehand would have given him more of an impact

silvergoose
Mar 18, 2006

IT IS SAID THE TEARS OF THE BWEENIX CAN HEAL ALL WOUNDS




Yeah scaramouche was the one plot that comes up later that you could completely miss. There was actually different dialogue from scaramouche if you hadn't seen him before, which imo was a nice touch.

AG3
Feb 4, 2004

Ask me about spending hundreds of dollars on Mass Effect 2 emoticons and Avatars.

Oven Wrangler
Was the Fischl event the last/only event where you had to use resin to participate, in order to fight over those meteor fragments? I can't remember. Either way, the game dropping the need to spend resin to do events early was great. Not in the least because it means you don't need to play the events every day in order to get all the rewards possible, you can just save them for a weekend or something and catch up.

That's one major QoL change at least.

Xun
Apr 25, 2010

AG3 posted:

Was the Fischl event the last/only event where you had to use resin to participate, in order to fight over those meteor fragments? I can't remember. Either way, the game dropping the need to spend resin to do events early was great. Not in the least because it means you don't need to play the events every day in order to get all the rewards possible, you can just save them for a weekend or something and catch up.

That's one major QoL change at least.

Yeah that was the only one where you needed to spend resin for the rewards. There was at least one more where you could choose to spend more resin to farm it past the free loot tickets you get from the event too, but it just dropped oceanid drops so who cares

No Wave
Sep 18, 2005

HA! HA! NICE! WHAT A TOOL!

AG3 posted:

Was the Fischl event the last/only event where you had to use resin to participate, in order to fight over those meteor fragments? I can't remember. Either way, the game dropping the need to spend resin to do events early was great. Not in the least because it means you don't need to play the events every day in order to get all the rewards possible, you can just save them for a weekend or something and catch up.

That's one major QoL change at least.
There were three. The elemental crucible early on, unreconciled stars (fischl/mona/scaramouche), and the special oceanid boss that showed up in vagabond sword later. Unreconciled stars had an event shop and everything, crucible+oceanid just gave xp books with a 20% improved drop rate (they were also the only way to farm white books at AR45+ until white books got added to the teapot shop)

Incoherence
May 22, 2004

POYO AND TEAR

silvergoose posted:

Yeah scaramouche was the one plot that comes up later that you could completely miss. There was actually different dialogue from scaramouche if you hadn't seen him before, which imo was a nice touch.
I'm trying to think if they've ever done something that plot-relevant since. Stuff like the Kazuha plotline in this patch is neat but is probably not going to come up again later. I guess Labyrinth Warriors had Childe reveal to you that he's tracking Scaramouche because he disappeared after he got Raiden's Gnosis?

Glazius
Jul 22, 2007

Hail all those who are able,
any mouse can,
any mouse will,
but the Guard prevail.

Clapping Larry

padijun posted:

is it possible you're not used to his ult? it's extremely reliable, he always launches it the same distance at the closest enemy. If venti is facing the wrong direction AND too far away from the enemies it doesn't auto target

I've been using him on my chasm exploration and resin burning teams recently and haven't noticed anything wrong with it :shrug:

It's a little more complicated than that. It does aim at whoever's got the arrow on them, that's true, but it acts differently on little vs. big targets.

On little targets it'll hit them and create the spin cycle right where they are. They'll start out taking damage from it.

On big targets it'll aim in that direction but still go out to max range, so that if they're at less than max range they might not start out taking damage from it and you'll have to get them to walk into it somehow if they aren't being pulled.

It might be that whatever internal projectile is used to create the vortex, you're aiming down at little targets so you hit the ground nearby and start the cycle very close to them, but you aim up at big targets and so it forms at max range?

A similar thing can happen with Diona's ult, which she hackysacks out to splash against something for a bad cryo zone, but the game actually honors the projectile arc so if you launch it at something in motion it can sail past where they were and drop the zone some distance from the fight.

Sanctum
Feb 14, 2005

Property was their religion
A church for one
Here's hoping they run Kazuha alongside Yelan's banner so even more people miss out on him. :getin:

I'm definitely going for Kazuha c1 over anything else. Perhaps his best single constellation and it's also his first. If you aren't familiar with Kazuha - the way he rotates you use his skill and then burst (mainly so you absorb anemo particles during the burst animation and can swap immediately.) Kazuha's charged skill has more AOE, more damage, more suction, more elemental application against shields, and generates more elemental particles. With c1 you get a free charged skill before bursting so you are more than doubling his particle generation on burst rotations in addition to the extra everything else. Typically you burst every other rotation (15s CD) so c1 looks like a massive upgrade.

c0 Kazuha generates 3 particles every 6s so if you're wondering why the kageuchi or favonius sword aren't as popular on Kazuha it's because Kazuha doesn't need the energy. He is the wind.

Rexxed
May 1, 2010

Dis is amazing!
I gotta try dis!

Alienware arena has a 50 primogem code giveaway. I don't think there's any requirements other than to make an alienware arena account and click the button. I made an account years ago for some other key giveaways. You certainly don't need to own any alienware/dell hardware:
https://na.alienwarearena.com/ucf/show/2162651/boards/contest-and-giveaways-global/Giveaway/genshin-impact-50-primogems-v2-6-key-giveaway

Mailer
Nov 4, 2009

Have you accepted The Void as your lord and savior?

Sanctum posted:

Here's hoping they run Kazuha alongside Yelan's banner so even more people miss out on him. :getin:

Just save up for quad pity. It's so simple!

No Wave
Sep 18, 2005

HA! HA! NICE! WHAT A TOOL!

Sanctum posted:

Here's hoping they run Kazuha alongside Yelan's banner so even more people miss out on him. :getin:

I'm definitely going for Kazuha c1 over anything else. Perhaps his best single constellation and it's also his first. If you aren't familiar with Kazuha - the way he rotates you use his skill and then burst (mainly so you absorb anemo particles during the burst animation and can swap immediately.) Kazuha's charged skill has more AOE, more damage, more suction, more elemental application against shields, and generates more elemental particles. With c1 you get a free charged skill before bursting so you are more than doubling his particle generation on burst rotations in addition to the extra everything else. Typically you burst every other rotation (15s CD) so c1 looks like a massive upgrade.

c0 Kazuha generates 3 particles every 6s so if you're wondering why the kageuchi or favonius sword aren't as popular on Kazuha it's because Kazuha doesn't need the energy. He is the wind.
Fav sword R5 is unironically the ideal 4* pick on kazuha a lot of the time, but it's not a decision most people are able to make because you usually don't have that much control over your EM artifacts.

kater
Nov 16, 2010

this game looks absurd on ps5 goddamn.

padijun
Feb 5, 2004

murderbears forever

Glazius posted:

It's a little more complicated than that. It does aim at whoever's got the arrow on them, that's true, but it acts differently on little vs. big targets.

On little targets it'll hit them and create the spin cycle right where they are. They'll start out taking damage from it.

On big targets it'll aim in that direction but still go out to max range, so that if they're at less than max range they might not start out taking damage from it and you'll have to get them to walk into it somehow if they aren't being pulled.

It might be that whatever internal projectile is used to create the vortex, you're aiming down at little targets so you hit the ground nearby and start the cycle very close to them, but you aim up at big targets and so it forms at max range?

A similar thing can happen with Diona's ult, which she hackysacks out to splash against something for a bad cryo zone, but the game actually honors the projectile arc so if you launch it at something in motion it can sail past where they were and drop the zone some distance from the fight.

I don't think it's anywhere near diona's ult but I guess I don't know enough of the specifics. as far as placeable ults go it feels extremely straightforward. I quit using diona because of her bad ult, I dont see any of those problems with venti

MoonCrab
Nov 19, 2014

A mildly pertubed emoji face

Rexxed posted:

Alienware arena has a 50 primogem code giveaway. I don't think there's any requirements other than to make an alienware arena account and click the button. I made an account years ago for some other key giveaways. You certainly don't need to own any alienware/dell hardware:
https://na.alienwarearena.com/ucf/show/2162651/boards/contest-and-giveaways-global/Giveaway/genshin-impact-50-primogems-v2-6-key-giveaway

drat, looks like I already used one of these. Here's my spare:

MBNK77VUQF3D

Kekeke!
Nov 5, 2003

"Jesus christ man where did all these koreans come from!"
All the talk about dialogue time got me to jump in from my typical thread lurking. I live in China and decided to give genshin a shot because the game is absolutely massive here. I teach undergrads and familiarity with the game is absolutely huge among them. What is quite impressive is to see how the game has a lot of reach across gender. I have an Inazuma background on my phone and I get a lot of comments on it from students.

I'm also teaching some experimental classes to our university's affiliated high school and let me tell you, every boy seems to play genshin. On my first day a student asked me if I play games and then instantly followed up asked me if I played genshin. When I told him yes, the class went wild and now i get constant questions about the game every week. Its funny if a little annoying. One thing I want to mention is that genshin seems perfectly designed to handle Chinese video game regulations for minors. Before last year the government imposed a time cap on how much people under 18 could play video games and it was regulated requiring people to register game accounts with a national ID card. No ID card connected to the account, no unlimited game time. I could really see this regulatory environment in genshin's design. These days kids only get an hour to play on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. One student asked me how long it took me to finish the Inazuma content. He asked because he was telling me how difficult it can be to rush through events when you not only have the event time limit, but also a total of three hours a week to do everything you want. I think someone mentioned earlier in the thread how frustrating it must be for Chinese kids to have to waste time on dialogue.


I enjoyed the Inazuma event a lot because I enjoy the character writing. The Itto quest was delightful and was my first encounter with the character. His CN voice actor nails the part. Genshin got my partner to try playing video games for the first time as she also teaches undergrads and also notices how big her students are into genshin. I wouldn't say genshin's story is incredible but it is very compelling if you are more familiar with Chinese culture as the game has both overt but also subtle story aspects connected to that culture.

A good example of this is the Shenhe story. On the surface the story is about Shenhe being abandoned because her father believes she brings bad fortune to them. The subtext of the story is quite interesting. It was not uncommon in rural China for girls to be selectively aborted due to the social desirability of having a son. Even before the modern era, poor families might even abandon a newborn girl seeing them as a mouth to feed that would only be a liability compared to a male son. Obviously Shenhe's story is a bit different in that it involves exorcists and blood magic and sacrifices, but the average Chinese gamer is going to very clearly see the parallels with her story and the cultural preference for male children and all the personal tragedies associated with that. I've had a woman tell me about how her grandparents took her for a walk and then abandoned her. Her parents understandably estranged them after that. One of my friends in her 30's had to be raised "in a cave" as she described it because she was a second daughter and her parents couldn't afford the penalty on a second child. I'm not saying this is the only interpretation of Shenhe's story, genshin is clearly a fantasy pastiche. It's just really shocking in a game that was called a Chinese Zelda clone suddenly hits you with a story of an unwanted daughter that resonates so well with its Chinese audience.

The Shenhe story is a great example of how well Genshin presents a story that has so many Chinese cultural elements to a wider audience. Shenhe's story is already an emotional and compelling story without this cultural background. I don't think that without it, much of Genshin's writing becomes bad. But I do think there are some moments that feel a bit different when you can see the underlaying cultural elements a bit more clearly. My partner used to teach calligraphy and really found the entire Xingqiu's bad handwriting plot to be quite funny. I think its been at least a 100 years since anybody cared about the penmanship of a signature in most Western societies, but the association with calligraphy and education in China is remarkably strong even today. You can sort of suss this out from the story. But if you know that association, its quite endearing that Xingqiu who by all means should have excellent calligraphy is probably such a bookworm that he entirely neglected his calligraphy lessons.

Kekeke! fucked around with this message at 15:53 on Apr 24, 2022

Sanctum
Feb 14, 2005

Property was their religion
A church for one

No Wave posted:

Fav sword R5 is unironically the ideal 4* pick on kazuha a lot of the time, but it's not a decision most people are able to make because you usually don't have that much control over your EM artifacts.
You'd need crit rate for fav sword and that's hard to do with Kazuha when EM and ATK are a higher priority. His skill is about 80% dmg that can crit and 20% swirl dmg which can't crit so I'd say crit rate is still useful. However Kazuha's burst does a higher ratio of swirl dmg and the party elemental buff scales linearly with EM so there's no diminishing return. That's why people say EM is #1 most important.



I have Kazuha up to 712 EM but his ATK dropped enough that he's not reliably instakilling groups of lesser enemies with his skill anymore. God forbid I have to use the charged version, that's a 9s cooldown. :mad: I should be flying away before the loot even touches the ground.

Maybe that much EM isn't worth it outside of very specific DPS main pairings like Hu Tao or Ayaka that deal enough damage to justify Kazuha going all EM. Most of the time Kazuha will be doing more damage than anyone else despite the fact he's buffing their damage.

ninjoatse.cx
Apr 9, 2005

Fun Shoe
Sac Sword on Kazuha. Hold E, then press e. Congratz, all the fodder is dead, and your burst is up :shrug:

Shinji2015
Aug 31, 2007
Keen on the hygiene and on the mission like a super technician.

I really appreciate this insight; it's pretty easy for people not familiar with Chinese culture to miss context that Hoyolabs would be approaching the game with, especially with the Liyue characters. Like, I'm familiar with some of the issues of China's policies with children, but I never would have connected that with Shenhe, and learning about that gives me a better appreciation for the character.

Out of curiosity, are there other characters we might be missing context in general? I know Yun Jin had a slightly negative reaction with her singing voice, but that seemed to be more due to a lack of familiarity with Chinese opera than anything

RareAcumen
Dec 28, 2012




Kekeke! posted:

All the talk about dialogue time got me to jump in from my typical thread lurking. I live in China and decided to give genshin a shot because the game is absolutely massive here. I teach undergrads and familiarity with the game is absolutely huge among them. What is quite impressive is to see how the game has a lot of reach across gender. I have an Inazuma background on my phone and I get a lot of comments on it from students.

I'm also teaching some experimental classes to our university's affiliated high school and let me tell you, every boy seems to play genshin. On my first day a student asked me if I play games and then instantly followed up asked me if I played genshin. When I told him yes, the class went wild and now i get constant questions about the game every week. Its funny if a little annoying. One thing I want to mention is that genshin seems perfectly designed to handle Chinese video game regulations for minors. Before last year the government imposed a time cap on how much people under 18 could play video games and it was regulated requiring people to register game accounts with a national ID card. No ID card connected to the account, no unlimited game time. I could really see this regulatory environment in genshin's design. These days kids only get an hour to play on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. One student asked me how long it took me to finish the Inazuma content. He asked because he was telling me how difficult it can be to rush through events when you not only have the event time limit, but also a total of three hours a week to do everything you want. I think someone mentioned earlier in the thread how frustrating it must be for Chinese kids to have to waste time on dialogue.


I enjoyed the Inazuma event a lot because I enjoy the character writing. The Itto quest was delightful and was my first encounter with the character. His CN voice actor nails the part. Genshin got my partner to try playing video games for the first time as she also teaches undergrads and also notices how big her students are into genshin. I wouldn't say genshin's story is incredible but it is very compelling if you are more familiar with Chinese culture as the game has both overt but also subtle story aspects connected to that culture.

A good example of this is the Shenhe story. On the surface the story is about Shenhe being abandoned because her father believes she brings bad fortune to them. The subtext of the story is quite interesting. It was not uncommon in rural China for girls to be selectively aborted due to the social desirability of having a son. Even before the modern era, poor families might even throughout a newborn girl seeing them as a mouth to feed that would only be a liability compared to a male son. Obviously Shenhe's story is a bit different in that it involves exorcists and blood magic and sacrifices, but the average Chinese gamer is going to very clearly see the parallels with her story and the cultural preference for male children and all the personal tragedies associated with that. I've had a woman tell me about how her grandparents took her for a walk and then abandoned her. Her parents understandably estranged them after that. One of my friends in her 30's had to be raised "in a cave" as she described it because she was a second daughter and her parents couldn't afford the penalty on a second child. I'm not saying this is the only interpretation of Shenhe's story, genshin is clearly a fantasy pastiche. It's just really shocking in a game that was called a Chinese Zelda clone suddenly hit you with a story of an unwanted daughter that resonates so well with its Chinese audience.

The Shenhe story is a great example of how well Genshin presents a story that has so many Chinese cultural elements to a wider audience. Shenhe's story is already an emotional and compelling story without this cultural background. I don't think that without it, much of Genshin's writing becomes garbage. But I do think there are some moments that feel a bit different when you can see the underlaying cultural elements a bit more clearly. My partner used to teach calligraphy and really found the entire Xingqiu's bad handwriting plot to be quite funny. I think its been at least a 100 years since anybody cared about the penmanship of a signature in most Western societies, but the association with calligraphy and education in China is remarkably strong even today. You can sort of suss this out from the story. But if you know that association, its quite endearing that Xingqiu who by all means should have excellent calligraphy is probably such a bookworm that he entirely neglected his calligraphy lessons.

This is all very interesting! I truly know very little about China so most of these aspects of the character went over my head- when Shenhe showed up I went 'Oh wow, they put a Xianxia/cultivation character into this game, this rules' so it's cool to know all the little details about things, like Xingqiu's handwriting caligraphy handwriting being something he should be more concerned about improving rather than not a big deal. Between whatever management in the Feiyun Commerce Guild means as a job, his swordsmanship training, pranking Chongyun, and writing that Legend of Sword series I just assumed that it wasn't a big deal right up until they drop it on you that everybody wants a signature from the author in the book right then.

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ExtrudeAlongCurve
Oct 21, 2010

Lambert is my Homeboy

Shinji2015 posted:

I really appreciate this insight; it's pretty easy for people not familiar with Chinese culture to miss context that Hoyolabs would be approaching the game with, especially with the Liyue characters. Like, I'm familiar with some of the issues of China's policies with children, but I never would have connected that with Shenhe, and learning about that gives me a better appreciation for the character.

Out of curiosity, are there other characters we might be missing context in general? I know Yun Jin had a slightly negative reaction with her singing voice, but that seemed to be more due to a lack of familiarity with Chinese opera than anything

Have we mentioned how she's called "sir" and there's a whole story about it?

At first I thought I was hearing it wrong since my Mandarin is pretty weak but no, really, everyone calls her "sir" and it's very gendered. I looked this up out of curiosity and it's addressed in her character story.

quote:

When Yun Jin's grandfather was in charge of the Yun-Han Opera Troupe, long-time fans respectfully addressed him as Sir Yun. After Yun Jin took charge later, these fans frequented her performances as well.

There was once after a show when an impressed fan half-joked with others, "the Sir Yun we have now sings rather well too."

A voice from the crowd immediately countered by saying: "How can you address a young girl as Sir?"

Upon hearing this, Yun Jin curved her lips.

"Those who were born early, learn early. They are naturally better-informed than others. It's every bit right for them to be referred to as Sirs."

"But one doesn't have to be old to be knowledgeable. Besides, why can't a girl be knowledgeable?"

"You are quick in mind and speech, and are thus qualified to be called Sir. I have answered your eminent question — that also makes me a Sir."

Her remarks impressed the fans present, who shared this story to many. In the end, everyone followed the trend and started to call her Sir Yun whether they had or had not met her in person.

It's actually a very powerful little vignette about sexism in an art form that was traditionally only practiced by men.

Yun Jin as a character owns bones as does Liyue in general.

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