Power creep is phrase that may be familiar to those of you who play live service gacha games. The idea is that older characters slowly get outperformed by newer ones, as developers aim to keep you spending on your roster.
This means that, unless you’re investing heavily, it can become difficult to complete endgame content, as enemies get stronger and your older units slowly fall behind the curve. It’s a real balancing issue for developers.
But Honkai: Star Rail may be looking to address the problem by buffing some of the old characters in its cast.
In a post on its own social network HoYoLAB, the studio said that it’s looking into “issues close to Trailblazers’ hearts, including difficulty deploying older characters on the battlefield and the strengthening of these older characters”.
While it didn’t really share any details, and it’s unlikely it’ll have any new information to reveal during this week’s scheduled v3.1 livestream, it’s interesting to learn that it’s planning to improve its older characters moving forwards.
Of course, this doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll just improve the stats of those units. For example, the introduction of Sunday recently made Jing Yuan relevant again, so it may look to find solutions through the creation of new units. Or it could introduce different Light Cones or other resources.
We’ll need to wait and see what it’s got in store, but breathing life into outdated characters strikes us as a smart decision. After all, gacha is all about unlocking and using your favourite units, and if those have fallen far behind the power curve, then that’s not much fun, is it?
[source hoyolab.com]
Comments 18
They should buff Clara. Svarog is basically a summon so they should make him and all the robots of his boss version part of her kit.
This would be great. It's one of my few complaints about HSR and one reason I refuse to pay if they are just going to make them less relevant in 6 months or less.
I expect a LITTLE creep but HSR has been particularly bad at this. Remember when Imbibitor Lunae was the hot stuff or worse Jingliu... now where are they? And what of all the launch characters? Compare that to other games like Genshin where some of the launch 4-stars like Bennett, Xiangling and Xingxiu are still some of the best in the game, but more importantly almost anyone is viable in the right team.
HSR the gaps are too large by comparison, characters are literally phased out of all but the story content.
@z0d15g0d They have confirmed they are buffing older characters and that standard banner characters , Bronya, Bailu ,Geparda , Clara , Welt , Himeko and Yanqing are first, how exactly they are has not been confirmed yet.
Give them all new miracle outfits, problem solved. 😂
@Omegaweapon1987 That's good to hear but I suspect Bailu will be forever useless.
@Omegaweapon1987 - Do you have a link to them actually naming those characters? Why buff free characters when paid units like Blade, Jingliu, Seele etc have fallen off a cliff. Bronya, Clara and Himeko don't even need any buffing as they are still very much usable in current content.
@Shigurui the link to them buffing older characters is here - https://www.hoyolab.com/article/36867900 , but which characters in what order is only via leaks from honkaistarrail_leaks on reddit
@themightyant Spot on! Look what happened to my beloved fully spec'd Seele! Absolutely no use for her nowadays whilst The Herta and Acheron combined with Sunday blow everything out of the water.
@Omegaweapon1987 Actually Himeko is still a top-tier character that has already undergone a renaissance with the Break meta.
@Omegaweapon1987 - Right, so reddit rumours with nothing confirmed. Not saying standards won't get buffed but Hoyo earn nothing from doing that. Makes more sense to buff Blade etc to entice spending on rerun banners, can almost guarantee the current Silver Wolf rerun has earned them next to nothing seeing as she's also fallen off a cliff.
I've got Blade, Jingliu, Seele and others rotting away on my account because they're all useless right now and nobody will pull them on reruns unless they can bring them back to at least be usable in anything besides story/overworld.
@Silenos Who? She's been forgotten to time
(one time Seele main) sniff
@Shigurui to be fair it's from reliable leakers so I believe it. I have Dan Heng Imbitor Lunae, Luacha , Dr Ratio , as well as all the stndard banners
Expectation: Jingliu gets a new support
Reality: Firefly gets a new support
@Omegaweapon1987 - I know there are plenty of leaks that come to pass and Hoyo are so ass backwards at times that buffing standards that don't need it wouldn't surprise me in the least, I just think it'd be a huge slap in the face to do that when paid units need it far more and they need to sell units. We'll just have to wait and see.
@z0d15g0d - Bailu is an easy fix. Make an Abundance LC that can cleanse on skill. That would make her usable at least.
@Shigurui True but how many players would opt to waste that LC on Bailu. I'd rather use it on Gallagher.
@z0d15g0d - Really? I haven't used my Firefly team for ages but I'm pretty sure Gallagher's E2 gives him a cleanse on skill.
@Shigurui Haha I completely forgot about his E2. I still use team FF but I've got Lingsha and Fugue in there now.
@z0d15g0d - All good dude, I completely forgot the DDD LC on Robin is absolutely useless. Didn't stop me though lmao.
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