"Ehe te Nandayo!"
Having literally just finished up my tasks for the day, I.E. using up all my Resin, doing my dalies and then stopping my Monstadt Katheryne in order to pick up my rewards before inevitably accidentally hitting the B button and swinging my ruddy huge greatsword at her face, (thank god for no friendly fire) I'm ready to talk about my time with Genshin. Because by the time you've reached the point where you're logging in for less than 30 minutes a day in order to maximize your effective time usage; you know you've pretty much hit the endgame. Story events stop becoming prevalent around the late 20's of your Adventure Rank, and by rank 36 you reach the end of such content until the next region is released. (Which as far as I'm aware is probably going to be this December at the earliest.) In the meantime all there is to do is to sit and grind the content that is here, and that's when you start coming across what everyone on the Internet is identifying as 'the Resin problem.'
Resin is a resource that you'll have since the beginning of your adventure, but like many of the early game currencies you'll likely completely forget about it. Just tuck it away to the back of your mind and focus on exploring this world of magic and waifus that has opened up before you, only for it to creep up on you as being the single most important resource in the game right now. Mora? Got plenty of it, have literally never come close to running out. (Good thing too, as I have literally no idea how someone is supposed to farm that in a dedicated fashion) Primogens? I'm waiting for the update next month with all the new characters before wasting that. Starglitter? I'm honestly too frugal to spend it. No, Resin is the currency that you'll be forever running out of and thus will forever need to get more of, and that's because of both it's utility and capacity limitations.
Resin is the resource that acts as energy would for any mobile game, basically it's the thing that stops you from perpetually grinding away at the tasks of the game until you've maxed out everyone and have no need to come back tomorrow. Call it the great habitualiser, because its main purpose is to instil a habit in the player until this game becomes part of their daily routine. Though just to be clear, unlike in other mobile games (I'm still shocked to think that this is a mobile game as well; how far things have come) Resin doesn't technically stop you from playing any of these endgame events. However Resin is required in order to collect the reward from these events, which is arguably the entire point of embarking on them to begin with, but at least you can still jump into those boss fights if you're simply just itching for the action. (It's also nice that you aren't being charged for the attempt, as is the case with some games.) So all in all I'm disgruntled, but okay with the Resin system, acknowledging that this is a free-to-play and thus we must dance at least a little to it's tune. My issue is with the limits.
So you have 120 Resin. That's a hard cap, you cannot stockpile anymore. There isn't even an option to expand that pool with premium currency, (not that such an option would be preferable, but it's the sort of thing you'd expect) so you'll be eyeing that number everytime you hit the map screen. But what does 120 mean exactly? Well, in order to get your rewards from beating a normal, run-of-the-mill world boss it's going to cost you 20 Resin. In order to get the reward from running crafting material dungeons, which already rotate their inventory on a week-long schedule, it's 40 resin. And in order to take on the impressive and fun weekly bosses, who are already limited to once a week, you need a eye-watering 60 Resin. So how do you get Resin back? Well you can spend the refill token, which only refills 60 and are rare to begin with; spend 50 Primogens, which it the same currency you use to buy Gacha spins, so that's not happening; or wait. You regen 1 Resin every 8 minutes. That means you'll get your full 120 in about... 16 hours. Yeah.
So my daily Genshin playtime would already be getting cut short if it wasn't for the fact that currently the very first Genshin event is running, Elemental Crucible, and guess what; it's requires 40 Resin in order to get your reward for each run! (And I do like the reward on offer; 25 'Adventurer's experience' certainly does look tasty) So I'm literally logging on to run the Elemental Crucible 3 times a day, with each run lasting anywhere from 3-5 minutes, before quickly scooping up my dalies and going back to Persona 4 or whatever else I have lined up. That's less than 30 minutes a day. I know I'm talking a lot about time investment in this blog, but it is a big deal. The more time I spend in the game a day, the more engaged that means I am and the longer I'm going to want to keep coming back. Now diminishing returns are obviously to be expected in this regard but you want that to be because I've become satisfied with the progression I've made and the exploration I've done, not because the game's mechanics are squeezing me out of the game.
In their utmost defence, miHoYo have actually acknowledged this issue and seem to be working on something to calm it down a little, which is so much more than they need to do. Genshin made back it's development investment in less than 2 weeks and I'm sure they could easily double that without listening to fan feedback and responding, but they clearly want this game to stick around and, you know what, so do I. Of course, what it is that they intend to do about it is anyone's guess, but the very fact it's being addressed at all marks the curious way in which this mobile game is challenging some of the norms of it's contemporaries. I've grown more and more attached to Genshin as I've played it over these past couple of weeks, to the point where I'm even starting to like some of the characters who at first came across as paper thin. (I still think Diluc's whole deal is a lot more obvious than the game thinks it is, but I'm enjoying him nonetheless) I genuinely want to see this game grow and develop with the times.
Will fixing the Resin alone pave the way for that? No, but it's a start. Having spent a lot of time in the Elemental Crucible I've also honed in on another, if lesser, problem that needs fixing; the co-op. Ignoring the bugs which sometimes lock me out of depositing elemental clots during the event, the actual makeup of Co-op itself seems oddly antithetical to the design of the game. Genshin seems to be about designing teams of colourful heroes with powers that can be laid down and switched between for the best combos and synergies, yet for some reason you can't make use of this in co-op. Or rather, it becomes a lot more difficult to. You see, for each player that joins your game, you'll be dedicating one of your party slots to their character, meaning if you have 3 players in your game you'll only have one hero to play as. This means no showing off your cool party and having to rely heavily on your teammates for synergy, which sort of becomes a problem when no one wants to play a healer.
But as I've stressed before these are early days for Genshin, and after no-lifing my way to the endgame within the first two weeks I was destined to bump into the title's teething problems. The game is still polished and fun enough to rival pretty much every other live service of the past two years, so I'm willing to let some questionable policy decisions slide so long as the team are prepared to address them. Honestly, this is the sort of game I can imagine sticking around in the public consciousness for a decent while if its growth is handled right, and that's a proposition which gets me excited to be on board. So good luck to miHoYo in the weeks to come; hope your success keeps up.
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