The Genshin progression dilemma

Relapse time!

In the wake of new content coming to the vibrant world of Teyvat, and the ongoing delay of the one game which would break this curse, I've been sucked back into Genshin once more. (I try to get free but they keep pulling me back in!) Thus I am again enshrined in the anime world of husbandos, gacha mechanics and elemental cocktails, and I've actually having quite a time of it, I must admit. Much of the newest update has touched upon just about every single point of contention that the general public agreed on and if this is the sort of feedback that MiHoYo tends to run this entire game's lifespan by, then I might want to be here for the whole journey. However, as I slowly get wrapped back up in the cycle, I have found myself slowly coming to terms with something of an intrinsic problem that wrapped me up and broke me down the first time, and I'm wondering if it's going to lead to another prolonged absence from the game in the future. It's also something destined to become ever worse as the game expands throughout the months and years, and it's progression. There's a dilemma here.

So first let me take you over what Genshin progression looks like. Right now it's a juggling between currencies, and oh there are just so many currencies to deal with. So the primary thing to remember is Mora, that's essentially gold, but it's so universal and handed out in the thousands so that you'll forget it's event there, until you run out and then realise that there's actually no dedicated way to grind for Mora. (Excluding the bounties which were added in the latest patch.) You need Mora for validating every upgrade you make in this game, but the upgrades themselves do require materials which need to be sourced from literally everywhere in the gameworld. You have material dungeons that only open on certain days, bosses that roam around the place who drop items, mineral deposits littered across the land, chests with experience boosts and fauna in various regions. All of these contain the sort of items that you, as a player, need in order to keep your characters levelling, and keeping them levelling is important because of the ever present pressure inferred by the World Level system

The World Level system which Genshin's adventure revolves around is both is biggest blessing and it's biggest curse, and I'm about to explain why. Almost every achievement you perform in the game nets  some amount of adventurer EXP which congregates in the overall profile and adds towards the Adventure rank. The higher your rank, the more missions become available to you and thus the more story content you can access. However there are little stops at every 10 ranks, starting from rank 15, in which the World Level is increased. (Either automatically or provided that the player can complete a dungeon which is required in order to earn any more adventure EXP or to level your characters to higher thresholds) This makes every single challenge in the game harder so that you'll never be too overpowered to enjoy yourself, but it also implements this buff in concentrated blocks so that you don't get that feeling of never improving. (Good job team, even Ubisoft couldn't manage that balance) Enemies will hit harder, live longer and spawn as tougher incarnations; making the gameplay ever fresh. Increased World Level also means that every activity reward is improved in quality too, so overall there's no downsides to hitting the upgrade button. Or rather, almost no downsides. 

You see, the problem with this system is that is takes up so much effort in order to level up just one character to keep competitive in the difficulty level, that when it comes to managing a team of four that's almost overwhelming. But Genshin isn't about maintaining a team of four, indeed the very concept encourages players to collect every Hero that they can, totalling more than they could ever comfortably manage. This means that inevitably, some heroes are going to be left behind in the mad rush to keep up with the World Level, and whilst you might say "Well then, just stop ranking up whilst everyone catches up" remember that everything contributes to the adventure Rank, meaning that if you are to hold on, that means pausing all missions and significant side activities too, because overwise you'll literally be wasting precious adventure rank XP. So there's the basic thesis for why the progression can be problematic, but let me put that information into a practical example for you.

Currently in Genshin I'm managing an Alpha team of a DPS, two supports and a healer, which was good enough to keep me competitive up until a point. Eventually I realised that my healer was falling behind in her duties, and it was because she was level 40 whilst everyone else was level 50. Easy enough to fix, except for the fact that at 40 she had hit her 'ascension wall' (The point at which EXP boosts become useless and you need to gather specific 'ascension' materials in order to make her susceptible to more.) The further problem being that her particular ascension asked for a boss material, which was common enough, except that this boss was one I'd never fought before called the Oceanid. Now because I've being raising an Alpha team it would probably make sense that I should be able to take out any boss in my world level, except for the fact that my DPS is Diluc, a fire dealer, and this boss is a water boss. Essentially all of my DPS was useless and my team would crumble easily. 'Fair enough' you might think, 'forcing diversity and shifting tactics  is what makes for long lasting gaming experiences', and I would agree with you, but there's a Catch-22 in there that I wonder if you caught.

In order to keep up to date with the latest world level I had to forgo keeping my 13 or so heroes balanced and razor focus on my team of four, so whilst these guys could juke it out with the roughest on in the world right now, all my bench warmers were useless. And by World Level 3, there's really no chance in heck that fresh-faced unpowered heroes can take on a boss without refocusing and dedicating ludicrous amounts of time to building them up (whilst putting the greater progression on hold) to overcome a really arbitrary road-bump. I managed it, but it foreshadowed a worrying precedent for this game as it expands. I recently just received the pictured banner leader for November, Childe; which is a great pull for sure. But I can't use him without dedicating a sheer week of materials and resources that I just can't really spare because I need them to keep my main team going. As the rooster expands this problem is only going to mount and soon it won't matter how many cool new characters that they add, players will be staunchly sticking to the only one's that did they any good to begin with.

And you want to know the bizarre thing? This isn't even a problem that only Genshin impact has; because you see, the recent Avengers game also suffered from an almost identical issue that stunts it's endgame potential. In Avengers, each hero is granted an expansive RPG progression system with standard trees and masteries, all of which pile on top of each for the endgame experiences. But each new character starts from the bottom and Marvel's Avengers is at it's least fun when character's haven't reached their mastery levels yet, so the desire to keep playing becomes diminished because the promised new content of 2 Hawkeyes, Antman and a Spiderman losses it's lustre. In both cases it's the concept that is most encouraging which slips up the flow of the game, and I wonder if this is intentional on their part or just an unfortunate consequence of the model; because if this literally an intentionally mapped out way of time-gating progression, even I have to admit that it's pretty ingenious. (If unendingly infuriating.)

So what's the solution? How do we fix this almost unassailable divide without invalidating grind but still making new characters as exciting as they should be? Well I think it's actually quite simple, there could be some sort of rubberbanding system in place where World Level decides an EXP multiplier for lower level characters, something which will taper off until you hit the recommended levels and then it's grinding like usual. I think that would really fix a lot of the issues and allow us all to have the huge roosters of diverse fun heroes to choose from like I think MiHoYo are going for. But maybe I'm being unrealistic and missing out something fundamental, please let me know if that is the case down in the comments. But until I see otherwise, I'll assume that this is a decent solve all. (Which I'll probably send their way some time after this, they tend to listen to feedback.)