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Using BotW as a benchmark to compare

Game Mechanics

• combat
• teams
• exploration
• environment
• numbers

Replay

• Nostalgia
• Currency

WIP

Example1:

• Noelle
• GMC/Ninguang (battery)
• Flex1
• Flex2

My favourite domain team, and also fun in OW if I swap to favonius weapon on Noelle. Prefer GMC for domains, and Ning for OW. Flex slots are just whatever I need for shields/etc generally. I built this originally to use swap out flex to any 2 element combo as needed:

• Pyro = Xiangling + Bennet
• Cryo = Kaeya + Rosaria
• Electro = Fiscl + Beidou
• Hydro = Xingqui … Yelan didn't exist yet, so figured he'd carry it.

But ended up not bothering with Beidou at the time, and just ran Xingqui+Fischl as a combo instead. It's all over been my most flexible team, I've enjoyed it into practically any content yet that doesn't just directly hose geo.

Example2 (National):

• Xingqui
• Xiangling
• Bennet
• Chongyun (flex)

Constantly swapping in and out to use bursts and skills to fuel, line up orders with normal attacks between to trigger rain swords. It works for small periods, but playing that constantly would just be really annoying. If I had to play that in open world I'd hate it, and even if I had to use that constantly through multiple domains or other content. I like it for being an old v1.0 team with 4stars, that uses reactions I generally don't have a problem with (unlike dendro). Also like it swapping chong with Jean for sunfire and extra survival. I don't really enjoy sucrose but probably would have liked it with Heizou if I learned it better.

Example3:

• Yanfei
• Yelan
• Fischl
• Barbara

Where I can run Yanfei+Yelan, or Yanfei+Fiscl as needed, or it turns, or swap into Barbara with either of the 2 sub dps if pyro doesn't work. Flexible for most kind of situations, can activate more or less sub dps as needed. Would probably be better with Diona as healer, but I just don't like playing her.

Example4 (Fantastic4):

• Jean
• Yelan
• Ayaka
• Diluc

The 4 characters I leveled up to play in coop with pharaun, in order to have a variety of characters for coop that would be roughly at the same power level as pharaun's characters at time time. They made for a surprisingly fun OW team for me, and has honestly been some of the most fun I've had in OW since I started. Having potential 3 on fielders, with Yelan as an off field damage dealer, and Jean as healer/tank. Let me set up yelan, and then swap into Jean to swirl hydro with the skill, and then swap into either Diluc for Vape or Ayaka for Freeze. It was one of the most varied and adaptive OW teams I've played, combined with Yelan and Ayaka's OW mobility which just felt really good. It also helped that since they where mostly underleveled/geared, they didn't trivialise OW as much as my built up characters where.

Generally does things well, slightly outstay it's welcome per area, base game v1 was perhaps a tad too big compared to botw which seems to have gotten the size just right to make players tapper out and run out of interest near the end while still ending at a still positive note. GI v1 felt like it outstayed that by a bit.

v2 and further, would probably feel better in that regard if I came at it from the start, finished the previous v in 3-4 months, and left starving for more. As I came in at v2.4 I already had a backlog, that grew with v3 coming out before I was done with v2, and same with v4 etc. But by that point other issues also appeared.

For the actual experience itself. The towers are ok, I'm kind of mixed on the whole system from different games (including botw), the teleporters are pretty common, chests and the various oculi are generally well paced and spread out. The actual environment/map itself tends to be well setup, I like the more natural feel and style to the layout. That you can often walk around to find easier ways and so on. Roads and paths makes generally sense.

In that regard I both liked and disliked v2's islands, as they make for good bit sized contents to engage with. But other parts of the game drags you around so much you're not allowed much time for that. And by v3 I was just barely getting done with v2 and just put entire v3 on indefinitive hold because I was sick of it.

Mechanics. some ups and downs, you get tired of the seelies in the long run, as well as many of the different types of puzzles like the torches and various timed elemental altars etc. And the world in general doesn't scale difficulty enough to really feel that engaging after a certain point in PP. Still over all manages to do it well, especially if you can keep it to more bit sized experiences instead of trying to dive into everything all at once. Dragonspine might still be my favourite, despite how annoying that cold effect can be.

The element system is the main mechanic used for environment interaction, and it's one of my favourite things in the game. That so many things to be found in the world is designated as the different elements and thus can be reacted to. Combined with the general design of open world means that most encounters have a decent variety of different ways to combat them in different ways.

On the other hand, it often lacks some of the options that BotW did, like pushable boulders, moveable planks/parts, destructible trees and boats as examples. Which could have been more ways to interact with the environment. Also they could have expanded further on the elemental system to larger parts of the world, like trees and grass being dendro, rocks being geo etc.

These things have been one of the main things that have kept the combat entertaining for me, where domains and other similar encounters has not due to feeling too sterile and monotonous to make the combat very fun for me.

Or redundant power creep.

If looking at AR25, AR35 and AR50.

• AR25: Unit/Weap ascension 2, level 50, 3star artifacts, max level 12, talent 2.
• AR35: Unit/Weap ascension 4, level 70, 4star artifacts, max level 16, talent 6.
• AR50: Unit/Weap ascension 6, level 90, 5star artifacts, max level 20, talent 10.

Some exceptions, like getting 4 or 5 star artifacts earlier from week bosses. But largely there is very little difference between the different points. The largest one being that at AR35 you get access to all the artifact types as 4 star artifacts have the largest variety, as well as unlocking the Ascension 4 talent of a character. AR50 effectively cut down some options by making the 4star only artifact sets too weak in general.

So the only difference between a characters in the different groups is largely numbers. The difference between an AR35 and an AR50 character is just the numbers involved. Even at AR25 the difference is a single A4 trait, and a completely different selection of artifacts from AR50.

Similarly enemies just gets higher levels with more bloated stats to compensate. They largely increase slowly to fit a roughly similarly spot/role, but with a slight weakening over time, to retain the feeling of player growing stronger.

So these numbers doesn't change how you play the character or the game. Number porn. It's primary purpose seems to be just grind, taking resources and thus time or money.

Clearly, I would have preferred to see them shave off as much as possible of these numbers, and rather balance the game around a much smaller number scale. But lacking that I must admit that the increase in AR feels rather pointless to me. I could just as well stop at AR35 or even 25, and adjust difficulty by restricting some upgrades. And I'll still have the same experience of the game. The main point against this would be Spiral Abyss highest floors balanced for the max power level, but considering I don't have any interest in this, there's really nothing that encourages me above playing at a lower AR.